Ox-Tales: Earth, by Kate Atkinson, Rose Tremain and others
As the name suggests, this collection of short stories is part of a quartet named for the four Classical elements, all of them featuring work by famous writers who have effectively donated their work for Oxfam to publish. The contributions are fairly wide-ranging too, with Ian Rankin splashed on the cover next to Kate Atkinson, Rose Tremain jostling for space with Marti Leimbach, and so on. It’s a pleasantly worthwhile venture, and, on the cover at least, it seems to be well conceived.
Within, the emphasis definitely seems to be on variety, with a broad range of subjects covered: from the death of Tolstoy to The Death of Marat via an autistic child and memories of a Ukrainian mother, the stories all enjoy their own very individual link to the book’s overarching theme. But how do those stories measure up to one another? Well, despite a generally high standard, it would seem to be that variety is the order of the day here too. The opening poem by Vikram Seth does nothing for me, and people who enjoy modern poetry will probably wonder whether it was really worth putting his name on the cover for such an inconsequential piece. But then the first story from Rose Tremain, for all its literary incestuousness – writers writing about writers, again – is actually an excellent read, balancing a rather dry humour with a genuinely interesting and emotional recreation of historical events.
The Forest of Hands & Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
What makes the zombie apocalypse so alluring to both readers and writers is not necessarily the zombies themselves, but the freedom such a scenario allows for the portrayal of human relationships. Against a gruesome backdrop of flesh eating automatons nothing else matters but the fight for survival. The lengths to which those ‘unfortunate’ enough to survive the initial breakdown of society will go to to ensure that survival, firstly of themselves, and then of the human race, form the structure and events of most of the zombie genre’s novels to date. Sometimes there is a place for hope in these books. And sometimes, albeit very, very rarely, there is time for love. Such an emotion dominates Carrie Ryan‘s wonderful debut novel The Forest of Hands & Teeth.
By setting the events about 15 to 20 years after the outbreak, Ryan is able to introduce an established belief system, a quasi-religion, to the lore of the zombie. Mary lives in an isolated village, surrounded by fences that keep out the hungry undead that wander the landscape. The village is in the middle of a huge forest that seemingly goes on forever. Or at least that is what the children and teenagers are told, for this village is governed by the Sisterhood, a group of elder women who maintain the status-quo through strict tutelage of the Scripture, a regime of hard work and constant vigilance, and a societal set-up that ensures the best possible chance for the continuance of the family line. Read more
Skin Trade, by Laurell K. Hamilton
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake has left St. Louis for a short trip to Vegas. But Blake is not heading to Sin City for the bright lights, she’s chasing a vampire serial killer, one who has already escaped her once. He’s responsible for a trail of destruction and death that stretches across the country, and he is getting more vicious and more powerful as he travels. Skin Trade follows Anita as she struggles to contain both her growing powers and the deadly killer.
Vittorio draws Anita from the safety of St. Louis with a horrific prize from his latest set of murders. When she contacts the Las Vegas Police Department, it quickly becomes clear that catching this killer will be impossible for the police, or Anita, alone. She will need the help of the Vegas PD, a SWAT back-up, and three other US Marshals to bring Vittorio to justice. All of these teams are not instant allies, though, and the politics and in-fighting that goes on is nearly as dangerous to Anita as Vittorio. Of course, she has not left her own problems behind in St. Louis; she still needs to feed the ardeur she inherited from the vampire Jean-Claude, and, as her powers continue to grow, Anita begins to fear that they will consume her from within. Read more
Fall of Thanes, by Brian Ruckley
Brian Ruckley’s unremittingly bleak Godless World trilogy finds its conclusion with Fall of Thanes, and it’s increasingly obvious that this trilogy was well-named indeed. The descent of a recognisable if basic human civilisation in to barbarity and madness, when higher functions are stripped away by the increasing power of Aeglyss, the half-human, half-kyrinin hybrid, is shown in brutal clarity by Ruckley. Having co-opted the armies of the Black Road and given them a victory over the True Bloods, the power flowing through Aeglyss is corrupting both him and all those around him – random acts of senseless violence abound, and base instincts seem to be overtaking all of the people’s of Ruckley’s wintery world. His taking the rotted city of Kan Avor, reclaimed from the floodwaters, as his base, is a clear symbol of his relationship with decay.
Orisian, the Thane of what is left of the Lannis Blood, continues his mission to defeat Aeglyss by delivering the woman Krina to him – he alone has the vision that she is the key to the half-breed’s defeat. Although there is a touch of Frodo about Orisian, in that he is central to the defeat of the darkness, yet is somehow not as sympathetic as he ought to be, his mission in this volume feels more purposeful and central than it did in the last, and you feel for his ever dwindling retinue as they are gradually picked off by enemies or driven insane by the madness sweeping across the land.
A Deadly Trade, by Michael Stanley
Detective “Kubu” Bengu returns in A Deadly Trade to solve a complex and compelling mystery. This book is the Botswanan detective’s second outing, and he, and the rest of the characters that populate the novel, are well established and engaging. The authors (Michael Stanley is a combination of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) treat Africa and its history as a separate and powerful character, and the impact of history on the story is what transforms this book from a standard crime procedural to something with more power and impact.
The book begins with the violent death of Goodluck Timbu. He is found, throat slit, in a tent at the Jackalberry Camp. Created for bird-watchers and tourists, the camp is surrounded by hippo and crocodile infested waters and, underneath the genial eye of Morne “Dupie” Du Pisanie and the slightly tenser management of Salome McGlashan, Jackalberry hides more than just a murderer. The original detective on scene, Detective “Tatwa” Mooka (nicknamed “giraffe” for his height) needs to call in Detective “Kubu” (nicknamed “hippo” for his girth) for help with a case that quickly becomes as complicated as the region’s history. Read more
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
A decade ago Iain Pears wrote An Instance Of The Fingerpost, a dazzling, intricately plotted story of murder, Restoration politics, religious dissent, maths, espionage and the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey in 1663. Its ambitious structure saw the same story told from four different perspectives, each adding and subtracting to an overall picture that only came together at the very end of the novel. It was a thrilling book, as broad in scope as Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle and as well executed as The Name of The Rose and so much did I enjoy its twists, turns and diversions, I must have given a dozen copies away to family and friends.
However although anyone who read An Instance Of The Fingerpost will easily recall its brilliance, if they went on to read Pears’ other books they will just as easily recall the huge disappointment that nothing else in his canon came close to matching it. Now at last with Stone’s Fall Iain Pears has written the book that lovers of An Instance Of The Fingerpost have been waiting ten years for – and it is an absolute joy. Read more
The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paulo Giordano
Mathematics becomes metaphor in first-time novelist Giordano’s story about the life-altering capabilities of choice and consequence. Though the introspections of its characters are romanticised to a degree, The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a realistic take on what it is to be human in that it does not pander to those seeking tidy happy endings. Instead, it juxtaposes the precision of numerical calculation with the many imperfections of existence.
Prime numbers are those that are divisible by only themselves or one. They do not fit with others. Enter Mattia and Alice, a pair of outsiders who the novel suggests are like twin primes, or primes only separated by one other number. Close but untouchable. Linked but never joined. Whether this will be the ultimate fate of Mattia and Alice forms the narrative momentum of the novel. Read more
Turbulence, by Giles Foden
Giles Foden’s latest novel, released to co-incide with the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings, is a good example of how a writer can take one small aspect of something momentous, in this case weather forecasting for an invasion, and develop it to form the backbone of an impressive story. Turbulence centres around the Allies’ desperate need to accurately predict the weather in the English Channel in June 1944, to select the optimum window for the biggest amphibious operation in history, and the journey takes us via Scotland in the company of Harry Meadows, a gauche young Cambridge academic, with the events being recounted much later by Meadows as he takes part in an unlikely scientific undertaking that’s fascinating in its own right.
Meadows was an academic meteorologist whose talents were severely under-utilised in his lowly Met Office position, vital though his work is to the war effort – Foden does a good job of impressing on the reader just how important weather forecasts were, and what lengths all sides went to to collect data. Plucked from obscurity, he is ostensibly sent to operate a new weather station – but his real mission is to befriend Wallace Ryman, a genius, a polymath, but unhelpfully for the war, a pacifist (and based on a real person). Ryman has a theory about how to predict and model that most random and unpredictable of physical phenomena, turbulence, and Meadows has to find out what it is and how to use it in time for Operation OVERLORD.
Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold
Probably the most frustrating thing about Glen David Gold’s writing is the length of time that he has taken between publishing his novels. Following the massive success of Gold’s debut novel, Carter Beats the Devil, fans have had to wait eight years for Sunnyside, his latest book. His first novel having been a fictionalised biography of the American magician Charles Joseph Carter, Gold has continued along a similar vein in Sunnyside, a fictionalised account of the career of Charlie Chaplin, the birth of Hollywood and the impact of the First World War on life in America. Similarly, one of the major themes of Carter Beats the Devil was the occurrence of seemingly impossible events, an idea which Gold has developed further to form the mass delusions that provide the excellent opening sequences of Sunnyside.
On November 12th 1916, Californian lighthouse keeper Leland Wheeler informs his mother that something is very wrong. Quickly taking up her telescope, Emily Wheeler is just in time to spy a small boat being piloted by the unmistakable figure of Charlie Chaplin as, buffeted by waves, it drifts towards rocks and inescapable disaster. This turns out to be just the first in a series of over 800 sightings of Chaplin that occur on the same day all over the country as Americans seek desperately for some distraction from their upcoming entry into the First World War. These sighting are disturbing for all involved but particularly for Chaplin who, having been elevated to super-stardom, is just beginning to experience doubts about himself.
Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer, by Jonathan L. Howard
Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, as the title of the first book by Jonathan L. Howard, (and the character himself) proudly proclaim. He is also arrogant, intelligent, sporadically empathetic, a master of a variety of modern and ancient languages, socially inept, and, oh yes, missing his soul (after trading it to Satan for further necromantic knowledge). He, and the book he inhabits, are also a great deal of fun.
Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer, begins with a disappointment. Cabal, it turns out, has forgotten the dread rod when he summons a demon to lead him into Hell, but the dread rod, and most of the trappings of Satan and his world, are mere distractions and theatre, and Cabal knows where the truth lies: Satan is bored and wants a new way to torment others and entertain himself. Luckily for Cabal, that gives him the opening to bargain for a chance to retrieve his soul—at the price of one hundred others. Read more
Bones of the Hills (Conqueror 3), by Conn Iggulden
As we reach the third volume of Iggulden’s unstoppable historical series, it has become more than just a book about Ghengis Khan: for much of Bones of the Hills, Ghengis is a pervading presence as much as a character, guiding the lives and actions of other central characters: his sons, Jochi and Chagatai, his generals, Tsubodai and Jebe, his wives, Borte and Chakahai, and his brothers, Khasar, Kachiun and Temuje. It is the Khan’s iron will, his vision and his philosophy that guides the expanding Mongol nation in their conquests, and that same vision that sends his cavalry soldiers to places as far away as Kiev in Russia, the borders of Korea and even in to the fringes of Eastern Europe. It’s a relentless expansion by a ‘nation’ forged through the will of one man, a nation that largely stays true to its nomadic traditions.
Following the drive eastward through the lands of the Chin in the second volume, Lords of the Bow, Ghengis turns his attention to the West in response to the execution of his envoys by the Arab kings of Central Asia. For a leader determined to show no weakness to his enemies, this is an unforgivable snub, and soon the Mongols turn their backs on the Chin and head West to teach the Arabs a lesson. Their encounters with a giant Arab army, which significantly outnumbers them and which has elephants among the ranks, are suitably epic, including a massive, protracted pursuit of the Mongols by the entire Arab cavalry arm, and the subsequent bleeding of the Arab infantry on the dusty plains.
Inkdeath, by Cornelia Funke
Inkdeath is the final book in Cornelia Funke’s hugely popular Inkworld trilogy and it proves to be a great, action-packed if rather sprawling conclusion to the story. Following the adventures of Meggie Folchart and her bookbinder father Mortimer across two worlds, our own “real” world and the fantastical Inkworld, the events of the previous books in the trilogy, Inkheart and Inkspell, were massive in scope and featured a veritable army of characters, leaving Funke with a lot to live up to, not to mention a lot of ends to tie up, in Inkdeath.
Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart and the creator of the Inkworld, became trapped in his own creation during the events of Funke’s Inkspell and, in his despair at the death of Dustfinger, has turned to drink and vowed never to write again. Without the guiding hand of Fenoglio and heavily influenced by the self-serving alterations made by the nefarious Orpheus, life in the Inkworld is spinning out of control. Following the death of Cosimo the Fair, the city of Ombra is governed by the hated Milksop and ruled over by the now immortal Adderhead. With nearly all of the men of Ombra having been killed during the fighting between the army of Cosimo and the forces of the Adderhead, life for the remaining citizens is becoming increasingly wretched.
The Spies Of Warsaw, by Alan Furst
That’s more like it.
Alan Furst speacialises in taut espionage stories set in Europe during the run up to the Second World War. Since publishing the first of these, Night Soldiers, in 1989 Furst can stake a legitimate claim to having revitalised the entire spy fiction genre. Now twenty years on he writes in a far more crowded field but continues to represent the gold standard against which all spy books must be judged.
The Spies of Warsaw, like much of Furst’s work, divides its time between Paris and mittel Europe as the lights go out one by one. It is a world of emigres, attaches, journalists, officers, people with deep roots and displaced people with no roots – all of whom have been drawn by circumstance into the dark world of espionage. Initially drawn in by events, all eventually become agents of conscience, fulfilling either their professional sense of duty, or gradually awakened to the importance of personal responsibilities.
The Forgotten Legion, by Ben Kane
Judging by the volume of historical fiction devoted to the Romans, there’s something endlessly fascinating to us about their blend of sophistication and savage cruelty. With the likes of Conn Iggulden and Simon Scarrow firmly entrenched in the history of Rome space, not to mention a number of new entrants, it is important for such new entrants to find themselves an interesting angle on the topic, and that’s certainly something that Ben Kane has done: while the great city of Rome, heart of the Republic, dominates the framework of this story, and features strongly in the action, by the end of the book our protagonists are half a world away and clearly destined for more adventures in future volumes.
Kane’s central characters are all outsiders to the world of Rome: Tarquinius, an escaped Etruscan slave, is a haruspex, or soothsayer, and a member of a race whose traditions have been forgotten or appropriated by the Romans; Brennus is a formidable Gaulish warrior (no, he doesn’t swig from a bottle of magic potion before a fight) forced to fight as a gladiator ; and Romulus is a young Roman, born in to slavery, the child of a rape, whose interesting parentage is likely to play a key role in future volumes. You don’t have to be a soothsayer to realise that circumstances will bring them together and that they’re going to have some adventures.
Fever Crumb, by Philip Reeve
Fans of Philip Reeve are in for a treat with this imaginative ‘prequel’ to the Mortal Engines series. The book follows the adventures of the eponymous heroine, Fever Crumb, first encountered as an abandoned child being brought up by the Order of Engineers, who apply logic, rather than emotion, to their existence. Sent away to work as an apprentice for archaeologist Kit Solent, it becomes apparent that there is a mystery about Fever and the scar on the back of her head that she has carried since she was a baby.
The backdrop for Fever’s adventures is a shattered London, once lorded over by the autocratic Scriveners, with their dappled skins, whom Fever – strangely and dangerously- resembles. The Scriveners, however, were overthrown by the Skinners, who in turn are threatened by the mysterious, nomadic Movement which exists outside the Orbital Moatway, an ‘Ancient feature’ which guards London’s borders. Reeve depicts a tough, tribal world in which only fragments of technology survive . Though set in the future, this is a society harking back to medieval times with its Guilds and Societies; Mad Max meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Read more
Bad Vibes, by Luke Haines
Bad Vibes is a first person, “I was that soldier” account of a life lived on the front line of the indie pop wars of the early 1990s. The story is necessarily a small one and our guide is petty, abusive, egocentric and a borderline sociopath. Things are not initially promising. But luckily Luke Haines is both scabrously funny and brutally self aware and Bad Vibes turns out to be a hilarious story of pop’s second rate winners and losers. But mostly losers.
It is a tale of a not so epic journey from obscurity to obscurity, via brief flirtations with real artistic and commercial success. Haines’ band, The Auteurs, were Britpop precursors who at crucial points found imaginative ways to blow their opportunities to hit paydirt. Chiefly it must be said due to Haines’ bitter egocentricity and his many self-mythologising grand gestures of self-destruction. It is fair to say these gestures never quite reach Wagnerian levels of gotterdamerung. Whereas history’s most famous Wagner buff ensured his own downfall was accompanied to the tumultuous sound of the destruction of Berlin, Haines’ nemesis arrives as he ruins a recording of TGI Friday by calling Chris Evans a c**t.
Bears of England, by Mick Jackson
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase ‘bears of England’? Maybe Winnie the Pooh, affable and bemused, Paddington Bear, friendly, inquisitive and always ready for a marmalade sandwich or soft-furred teddy bears, cuddly, much-loved companions of childhood. Writer Mick Jackson reaches into a far darker series of stories about bears to create this idiosyncratic book, an intriguing blend of folk-tales, fact and fiction. Don’t come to this expecting a cosy, charming read; this is a far more interesting book than that.
The opening chapter, titled Spirit Bears, sets out humanity’s deep fear of bears and also casts a chilly eye on human behaviour, two themes which resonate throughout the book. From spirit bears, Jackson soon moves on to draw on the brutal realities of bear-baiting and circus bears. He uses this history as a backdrop for a series of engrossing ‘tall tales’ with the captive bears, humiliated and mistreated, intent both on escape and also on gaining justice. Read more
The Grand Conjunction (Astropolis Book 3), by Sean Williams
So, farewell then, Imre Bergemasc, one-time ruler of the known universe. Your creator, Sean Williams, has certainly put you through a lot in the Astropolis trilogy: you have fought wars, shifted loyalties, made copies of yourself, become humanity’s leader among the stars, woken up in the body of a woman, lost your memory, discovered a copy of yourself was trying to kill you (a situation for which English grammar is barely adequate) and who knows what else besides. Now, finally, in The Grand Conjunction, you (and we) get to find out just what the hell is going on!
At the end of volume two, Earth Ascendant, you resigned your post as First Prime and headed off in to the stars to try and find your other self, the self that you believed had turned itself in to a Fort (a kind of super-brainy person distributed among many human forms), the self that has made multiple attempts on your life. After all, you’re only alive by accident, a copy that should have been erased, resurrected by mistake. Clearly, you got sidetracked, because the faux-noir opening of this book is an unexpected but enjoyable diversion, with its cast of shady characters and distressed innocents straight out of Raymond Chandler. It’s good fun trying to work out what’s going on, and crossword fans will definitely find it satisfying.
The Maze Of Cadiz, by Aly Monroe
You can read an extract from this book at our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.
What at first sight appears to be a cash-in on the recent success of Winter in Madrid, turns out to be the start of a new wartime spy series in the tradition of Eric Ambler and Alan Furst.
The title does not lie, and the setting is indeed Cadiz. It is 1944 and while the war rages across Europe, in neutral Spain Cadiz is a geographically, socially and politically far-flung corner where nothing much has happened since it ceased to be the centre of the world 500 years before. This is a forgotten place, sun-scorched, impoverished and run by a faceless military. It is a world of informants, arbitrary bureaucracy, bribery, severe shortages and a kind of resigned acceptance. Into it steps British diplomat Peter Cotton, fresh into his first posting and immediately sent to clear things up following the accidental death of his predecessor. However, relations between Britain and the Franco dictatorship are delicate and the diplomat’s death may not – inevitably – be quite as it seems. Read more
Fire and Sword (Revolution 3), by Simon Scarrow
Simon Scarrow’s Napoleon and Wellington juggernaut rolls onward, with the author offering up probably the strongest volume of the series so far. The approach of the previous books is continued, with parallel narratives of the two great men who we know are destined to meet on the battlefield of Waterloo. That’s still in the future for Fire and Sword, however, and what we have here covers Napoleon’s investiture as Emperor of France and extensive continental campaigns against Austria, Prussia, Russia and the beginnings of France’s entanglement in the Iberian Peninsula; meanwhile, Arthur Wellesley, having made a name for himself in India fighting colonial wars, is back in England and struggling to distinguish himself for service in Britain’s wars against the tyranny of the French.
It’s interesting to see the development of the two men’s characters as they age: Napoleon is becoming arrogant and conceited, unable to admit to mistakes, and wasteful of the lives of his men; Wellesley is still stiff and rather hidebound, but proves that he has learnt valuables lessons about leadership from his time in the subcontinent. He is a hard man to like – although his decision to honour a commitment to marry Kitty Pakenham, who he has not seen for ten years, is commendable, the way he reacts when he finally sees her, and the way he treats her in their marriage, is less impressive. Scarrow does a good job of giving him some kind of inner life, though, which is challenging for a character normally seen from the outside as aloof, supremely self-assured and intolerant of weakness or indulgence.
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Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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