The Legion, by Simon Scarrow
For the tenth instalment of his Macro and Cato series of Roman historical novels, it’s destination Egypt for Simon Scarrow. Our heroes have come a long way from their beginnings on the German frontier: Macro is still a Centurion but Cato, with his intelligence and diplomatic skills, has now gone from being his underling to being a Prefect and thus his superior, a situation they are both struggling to get used to and which puts a strain on their long-standing friendship.
In a continuation from the storyline to preceding novel Gladiator, the two men are in pursuit of the rogue gladiator Ajax, who led a slave rebellion on Crete and who has given both Macro and Cato ample reason to hold personal grudges. Tasked with bringing Ajax to justice, Macro and Cato are in the province of Egypt, vital to the supply of grain to Rome, when an invasion by the neighbouring kingdom of the Nubians hugely increases the risk to the Roman Empire. They have to put their mission to one side as they are seconded to the Egyptian legions and sent south to join the war effort. Due to a chain of unfortunate events, they soon find themselves taking charge of the campaign, with the Romans greatly outnumbered by the invading Nubians. It takes a combination of Cato’s knowledge of military history and Macro’s bloody minded tenacity to see them through in a substantial set piece battle.
Working the Room: Essays, by Geoff Dyer
A lot of has been written lately about whether essays are the novels of the twenty first century, the form best suited to our times: short pieces, directly drawn from life, equally capable of fact and whimsy, and able to keep hold of our ever-diminishing attention spans. Geoff Dyer is often used as evidence for the prosecution of the novel by figures like David Shields, whose disillusionment with modern fiction is well known. Dyer’s latest book of essays, written over the last ten years, is a worthy champion of its form. Wide-ranging and personal, they include work on everything from D.H. Lawrence to donuts, and are written in an engaging, conversational tone that holds your attention throughout.
Of course, it’s not without faults. Some of the writing seems a bit too hasty, careless in places, which can be distracting. While the variety of subjects reveals Dyer’s impressive range of knowledge, it also means that not every essay will appeal to every reader, unless your interests happen to align perfectly with his. His essays on photography also suffer from a lack of illustration; only a couple of photographs accompany each essay, at best, which makes some of his references difficult to follow.
Avatar: Collector’s Vault 3D
Released to coincide with the upcoming Collector’s Edition DVD, James Cameron’s epic adventure Avatar has now been documented in this ‘definitive companion’ hardcover book that is presented almost entirely in 3D and with enough insight on the fantasy world of the Na’vi and the world they inhabit to justify the ‘definitive’ tag line.
The main thrusts of the book outside of the imagery are several chapters devoted to providing an in-depth guide to the fictional world of Pandora – these range from character profiles (which are often coupled with pull-out character cards that sit neatly in robust pockets amongst the pages) to information on local flora. It really is that in-depth. As such, the appeal of this portion of the book depends on your level of interest in the world they created – if you thought Avatar was the most incredible piece of film you’ve ever seen (as many did) then you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy in the wealth of information on offer here whereas those less inclined will probably bore quickly of this feature and focus on the large-scale artwork that frames each segment of text. Read more
Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, by Don Paterson
Books of literary criticism do not frequently make you laugh out loud, and they reference Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’ even less frequently, yet Don Paterson’s Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets manages to do both while still providing a perceptive and erudite commentary on the most famous collection of poems in the English language.
The book consists of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets printed in full, with each followed by a three to four page essay giving a basic gloss, some comments on the language and style, a deeper reading, and a rag-bag of other thoughts and ideas. No two essays are alike in their approach, and each adapts its self to the requirements of the preceding poem. The easy-going, often tongue-in-cheek, and decidedly un-academic approach Don Paterson uses is in stark contrast to the usual sober tone of such books, a difference Paterson defends succinctly: “Serious literary criticism, fair enough; but overly serious literary criticism does literature a wee bit of a disservice, because it fails to honour the spirit of play in which the work was conceived. Can’t we lighten up?” And lighten up Don Paterson certainly does, writing while he is “wide awake, bored, half-asleep, full of the cold, drunk, or hungover” but still reaming eloquent, amusing and thought-provoking throughout.
The Voronov Plot, by Yves Sente & Andre Juillard
International action men and noted moustache connoisseurs Captain Francis Blake and Professor Philip Mortimer are tackling nefarious intrigue once again in The Voronov Plot, the eighth of the Blake & Mortimer adventures to be translated into English although, technically, the fourteenth book chronologically. Blake and Mortimer were created by Edgar P. Jacobs and the dynamic duo originally debuted in Herge’s Tintin Magazine before graduating on to their own twelve book series. Following Jacobs’ death in 1987, two new author/artist teams were tasked with reviving the Blake & Mortimer series: while Jean Van Hamme and Ted Benoit were working on The Strange Encounter, Yves Sente and Andre Juillard published The Voronov Plot.
Opening in 1957 (an estimation based on Professor Mortimer’s oblique reference to the Treaty of Roma on page 10), The Voronov Plot is set in a period dominated by the Space Race. While the rest of the world waits with baited breath, as a precursor to Sputnik the Soviets launch an experimental rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch appears to have gone well, but just minutes after take-off the rocket encounters a shower of meteorites and, heavily damaged after the collision, crashes back down to Earth. General Ufa, the military overseer of the rocket project, dispatches soldiers to recover the remains of the rocket, but it quickly becomes clear that more than just rocket debris has been returned to Earth. All of those sent to recover the rocket soon die of severe internal haemorrhages, causing Professor Ilyushin, the scientist who designed the rocket, to speculate that it must have picked up some kind of deadly intergalactic bacteria during its brief time in space.
C, by Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy has in recent months been publicly heralded as a champion of the avant-garde, so readers approaching his third novel, C, could be forgiven for expecting it to be plot-less and impenetrable. As anyone who has grappled with the likes of Joyce, Beckett and Robbe-Grillet knows, though avant-garde literature has many virtues, accessibility isn’t always one of them. A word of reassurance, then: C is surprisingly user-friendly. It features such middlebrow amenities as plot, character and location, and working out who is doing what, where and when is in general fairly straightforward.
In fact, in some ways C couldn’t be much more conventional. Not only a historical novel (that most Booker-friendly of formats), C even follows a traditional bildungsroman arc, taking as its subject the life-story of a central character. The novel starts with the birth of its protagonist Serge Carrefax in 1898, and ends, symmetrically enough, with his death in 1922 – the year that saw the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Wasteland, and is often held to be the high-water mark of the Modernist movement. However, though the architecture may look familiar, C is a novel that is likely to perplex as many readers as it captivates.
The Secret Crown, by Chris Kuzneski
The Secret Crown, the sixth novel by Chris Kuzneski, is a thriller primarily set in Germany. It starts with a prologue leading up to the death of King Ludwig II in 1886. The narrative moves into the present day where a black market dealer called Kaiser finds a bunker filled with crates belonging to Ludwig. Kaiser thinks they might hold some treasure, so he invites the only treasure hunters he knows to investigate with him. These hunters are ex-military Americans called Jonathon Payne and David Jones.
Payne, not only has a similar name to Bruce Wayne but also a similar background – both are orphans, highly trained, billionaires, run their own businesses and were raised by an elderly man. All that is missing is the batman costume. His Robin comes in the package of Jones, an African-American character. When describing Jones early on, Kuzneski writes he “was a smart ass, not anti-gay,” after Jones makes another gay joke. This is just one example where Kuzneski tells the reader what to think of his characters rather than shows it.
Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman
Odd and the Frost Giants began life as one of those slim World Book Day volumes (available for £1 or free with a voucher given out at school) designed to encourage children to read and if ever there was a mythical adventure sure to fire the imaginations of reluctant young readers it is this. In fact, the tales of Odd proved so popular that Neil Gaiman has expanded slightly the original story (from 112 to 144 pages) and re-released Odd and the Frost Giants as this smart little illustrated hardback.
Odd is a lonely, introverted young Viking struggling to fit in with his boisterous stepfamily (his mother having married Fat Elfred after Odd’s father was killed during a raiding expedition) and to cope with his crippled leg. Not long after his father’s death, Odd had attempted to fell a tree with his newly inherited axe only for the tree to fall awkwardly and crush his foot. In a Viking society obsessed with bravery, tall-tales and physical perfection, Odd’s personality and disability have marked him out as an oddity (although, interestingly, the name Odd actually means ‘the tip of a blade’).
As the harsh Norwegian winter stretches on and on, Odd decides that he can no longer cope with living in the oppressive environment of the village and so he runs away. Hiding out in an isolated, snow-bound cabin, Odd befriends a bear, a fox and an eagle. Each of these creatures is more than they seem and each has a story to tell. Rather than being regular forest animals, Odd’s new friends are actually the mighty Norse gods Thor, Odin and Loki. Loki was tricked into handing over Thor’s magical Hammer to one of the Frost Giants and all three gods were then exiled from Asgard and trapped in animal form. It is up to Odd to overthrow the Frost Giants and restore the gods to Asgard before the Viking world is changed forever.
Neil Gaiman’s love of mythology is obvious to those who are familiar with his adult novels such as American Gods and Anansi Boys and, although Odd and the Frost Giants is an original story, it is built on a foundation of popular Norse myths (for example, the tale of Mimir’s Well). This use of mythology helps to ensure that Gaiman’s story has a rich historical underpinning and a fabulous cast of already well-developed characters. The three main gods a delight and it is both fun and funny to witness their traditional attributes being embodied in their animal personas. Odd himself is a very sympathetic hero; despite the mammoth setbacks that he has experienced and his confirmed outsider status, he remains pleasant, friendly and caring. And, in the best Viking tradition, he is also brave and daring when it is really important to be so. Despite existing in a time and place very different from our Odd, the hardships that Odd endures and the way he determines to overcome them make him a very relatable character. Odd turns out to be a fun and dependable hero of similar style to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Ryder.
The adventures that Odd must undergo in order to defeat the Frost Giants are exciting and suspenseful and Gaiman does an excellent job of maintain the fast pace and thrilling tone throughout the book. This hardback edition would make a lovely gift as Gaiman’s wonderful story is beautifully complemented by Adam Stower’s delightful illustrations. Odd and the Frost Giants is a fantastical adventure among Vikings, gods and giants that is sure to both thrill and amaze young readers.
This review first appeared on Bookbitz.co.uk, our sister site offering reviews of children’s and young adult books.
The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek
High art collides head-on with S&M in The Piano Teacher, by 2004 Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek – a Jekyll and Hyde for the age of hardcore pornography. Erika Kohut, the main character and eponymous ivory tinkler, is a middle-aged teacher at the Vienna Conservatoire. A socially repressed ice-queen and failed concert pianist, by day she enforces the rigours of classical technique and enlightens her pupils on the finer points of Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms. By night she trawls the seedy porno joints of Vienna, spies on couples having sex in public parks, self-harms and indulges in violent sexual fantasies.
Heard this one before? For anyone who has read, say, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray or American Psycho, the basic outline of this story will be pretty familiar. On the outside the picture of bourgeois respectability, like Humbert Humbert, Erika Kohut’s austere facade conceals a cesspool of rotting monsters. Suffocated by her own high-cultural propriety – as well as her tyrannical mother, with whom she has been engaged in a life-long, love/hate power-struggle – she is secretly consumed by loathing for the complacent, repressed social mores of which she appears to be the epitomy. As in the forerunners mentioned above, the novel plots the course of Kohut’s destructive alter-ego as it spirals out of control.
Erika has until now managed to limit herself to her night-time prowls, wild cat-fights with her mother and clandestine trysts with a razor blade (the scenes involving self-harm are some of the most disturbing in this self-consciously shocking novel). However, her violent fantasies come to a head when she meets and is seduced by her pupil Walter Klemmer, a dashing young would-be ladies’ man. In him Kohut’s frenzied and lurid desires find the vent they have for so long lacked. Young Klemmer is drawn ever deeper into the disturbing world of her sexual imagination, forcing both characters to confront the clash between their social personas and primal, repressed desires.
While the central trope breaks little ground, one senses that Jelinek’s use of a Jekyll/Hyde character may be a deliberate ploy, adapting a male persona to address the contemporary social and sexual expectations and pressures placed on women. The contrast with Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho – written seven years later but adapting the same literary archetype – highlights aspects of Jelinke’s critique of the female condition. Whereas Patrick Bateman directs his anger outwards against the world around him, Erika Kohut’s rage is time and again directed against her own physicality, the female sexuality degraded and objectified by male pornographic imagery. Whereas Bateman’s nihilistic despair is a product of excessive freedom – a parody of the unbridled capitalism of the 1980s Wall Street boom – Kohut’s narrative is defined by ever-building claustrophobia and constraint.
This constraint is rendered stylistically by Jelinek’s use of stream of consciousness, flitting between the voices of Kohut, her mother (often as imagined by Kohut herself), and Klemmer. The contrast between these interior voices ties in with the novel’s larger themes. Kohut’s icey monologue is rendered in short, stunted sentences, a grammatical constraint that pulls against the surreal imagery of her thoughts to heighten the novel’s broodingly claustrophobic mood. In direct contrast, Klemmer’s monologue reads as Lawrentian pastiche, the spiralling clauses of his lengthy sentences reflecting his heightened sense of his own sexual power.
While The Piano Teacher is a difficult novel to enjoy in a conventional sense – definitely not recommended for pre-bedtime escapism! – it has some provocative and often profound things to say about the distinction between what society designates ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the arbitrariness and absurdity of borgeoise social mores, and the destructive nature of gender stereotypes. While the self-consciously sinister tone of the narrative initially feels hammed up and formulaic – the Brothers Grimm meets domestic misery memoir – as the novel goes on it begins to display the multiple levels on which it operates. Ultimately The Piano Teacher emerges as a sophisticated and deathly black parody that undercuts the sanctity of every cultural form it touches.
Take part in the great Bookswarm Treasure Hunt!
An Amazon Kindle worth £109, a limited edition Faber hardback worth £100, a set of ten Introducing books worth £70 and many other wonderful books besides.
There’s something for everyone in this great festive haul, courtesy of Bookswarm and a number of very generous publishers.
To win, you will need to answer a series of questions, the answers to all of which can be found on the Bookswarm family of websites:
You can enter the competition on any one of our five websites, but you can only get the questions from the PDF you can download from this page.
It might take a little bit of time, but with such a wonderful array of prizes on offer, we know you’ll go for it (and we’re sure you’ll discover some books to interest you along the way!)
Enter your answers here
No more submissions accepted at this time.Terms and conditions
- Closing date for entries: 12th December 2010.
- Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
- Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
- The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
- Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookhugger. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
- The winner’s name(s) may be published on the Bookhugger website after the closing date of the competition.
- The competition is not open to Bookhugger employees and their families, or to employees of Bookhugger publishers and their families.
The Heroes, by Joe Abercrombie
Whatever happened to the heroes?, asked the Stranglers – well, one thing’s for sure, they didn’t make it as far as Joe Abercrombie’s latest substantial slice of fantasy, because, you see, the Heroes of the title are a group of standing stones plonked on a hill in the North. It’s the kind of hill that, throughout our own history and that of Abercrombie’s fantasy world too, men have been sent to fight and die over simply because it’s as good a place to have a battle as any other – and there is plenty of fighting in The Heroes. If his first forays in to twisted fantasy were his answer to the classic fantasy quest novels that we all know and (some of us) love, this book is instead the author’s answer to Bernard Cornwell, an account of one big battle told from the perspective of multiple participants, and with precious little heroism on show.
The backstory, which is scarcely important, is that the North is as at war with the Union once again. After his betrayal of the Bloody Nine at the conclusion of The First Law trilogy, Black Dow rules the North, but, as usual, the Northmen are not united, and a faction has sided with the Union, led by the Dogman. After some traditional military incompetence, the Union army and the Northern host concentrate for one big, decisive battle, with the Northmen occupying the summit of the hill that is capped by the stones known as the Heroes. Let battle commence… Read more
The Art of Eloquence: Byron, Dickens, Tennyson, Joyce, by Matthew Bevis
This study by Matthew Bevis, part literary-criticism, part social-history, examines in depth the relationship between literature and political speech. With particular reference to Byron, Dickens, Tennyson and Joyce he considers how their writing was influenced by public voices and parliamentary discussion, how these influences manifested themselves in their published works, and how the writers themselves were involved in such debate and discussion.
Bevis’ interest lies mainly in the opposing forces operating on literature: towards segregation and specialisation on the one hand, and towards public property on the other. What all four writers considered in this book share is the ability to view arguments from multiple angles and to ventriloquise a wide range of voices, as well as the ability to work towards their own artistic ends whilst simultaneously satisfying their reading public. This, argues Bevin, is also the key skill of a successful politician.
Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814, by Dominic Lievin
This weighty tome is an award winning account of Napolean’s conflict with Russia. It is an epic tale spanning four years of campaigning that led to Napoleon’s demise – made famous by Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Lievin cuts through the dominant view that the un-defeatable Napoleon was beaten by the Russian winter. Not so – Napoleon was outmanoeuvred and out-classed, and this did not happen very often.
The difference here is that this book maps the war through the eyes of the Russians. Surprisingly this has not happened before, since you could argue it was Russia’s biggest success. History is usually written by the victors, however this particular war served as a useful story for the emerging powers of Europe in the later 19th Century. Thus it has been rewritten by Europeans to their own ends: Germany and Prussia, and also France whose soul was searched during Napoleon’s void (Tolstoy’s tale ended in the middle of the war, when all hope seemed lost). That Russia was seen as a passive and indeed lucky force is clearly untrue, as is the well worn cliché that Napoleon was beaten by the Russian weather, which I for one was taught at school. Russian history has had its own tale and the Tsars for obvious reasons were overlooked in the brave new communist era.
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen – 50th anniversary edition, by Alan Garner
It never fails to amaze me how some scenes from a book stay with you. The one thing that has always remained in my head, from when I first read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen all those many years ago, is the episode where Colin and Susan, along with Fenodyree and Durathror the dwarfs, are compelled to escape their enemies through the twisting and flooded subterranean tunnels and the narrow, claustrophobic crawlspaces leading from the West Mine to Earldelving, under the hills of Cheshire. With just ‘mere’ words, Alan Garner brought home to me the full terror of being squeezed tightly between the crushing weight of millions of tons of rock above and trillions more beneath. However, in truth I can’t credit this children’s classic (this year celebrating its 50th anniversary) from instilling in me a fear of enclosed spaces or discouraged me from taking up potholing as a pursuit, but it certainly didn’t help either. (I have a healthy dislike of both, in point of fact)
Even now, three and a half decades on, that particular chapter (Chapter 14, The Earldelving) still has the power to send ice-cold shivers of fear through me. It isn’t any wonder, then, that this book, first published in 1960, has continued to be in print from that time to this. Neither is it any wonder to see why it has become such a classic of children’s literature, beloved of both young and old alike.
The Poetry Lesson, by Andrei Codrescu
The title does not lie. The whole of this book takes place within a two hour ‘Introduction to Poetry’ class. For those of you who took ‘Intro to Poetry’, this book will remind you of what you hoped it would be like. There are sneaky peeks into the antics of the Beat Generation. There are satisfyingly obscure jokes and references. Then there are the rambling stories about sex and drugs and poetry slams. For anyone who thought ‘Intro to Poetry’ was a pointless waste of time, this book will also confirm your suspicions. The lecturer tells crazy stories, half of which are made up. He rants about ‘commie kitsch’, ‘cultural lesbianism’, and tells everyone that one of the necessary tools of poetry is a susceptibility to hypnotism. He even admits, “I don’t want answers to questions posed by my ranting.”
Half The Sky, by Nicholas D Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
“We can almost certainly reduce the number of fourteen-year-old girls who are held in cages until they die of AIDS”. It’s hard to argue with a sentence like that. In fact, it’s hard to argue with this entire book, which continues on similar themes.
Put together from years of field research by Pulitzer Prize-winning husband and wife team Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, both of whom are staff reporters for the New York Times, Half the Sky focuses on the horrific consequences of gender inequality across the world. And if you think gender inequality means unequal pay, you are woefully mistaken. For much of the world it means forced prostitution, honour killings, the denial of medical treatment and education, and the ingrained mindset that women have literally nothing to offer the world but their vaginas. The book’s subtitle, “How To Change the World”, comes from the authors’ repeated emphasis that ending the mistreatment of women and girls is not only beneficial for the victims themselves, but for the whole planet: productivity, development, efficiency, living standards – all would improve on a global scale.
Simon Scarrow
Simon Scarrow was born in Nigeria and was raised in a number of countries before settling in Britain. He has always been interested in writing and started on his first novel once he had finished his degree and started working in the civil service. After two years of working in London he decided that he was better suited to a more academic career and returned to university to do a research degree. Once that was over he became a teacher. After he secured his first book deal he continued teaching full-time for as long as possible. Finally, at the start of 2005, he realised that he could not teach well while devoting so much time to writing and reluctantly decided to give up on teaching until he had more time to devote to it.
He has published ten Roman historical novels, the latest of which is The Legion, and a quartet of books about Napoleon and Wellington – Young Bloods, The Generals, Fire and Sword and The Fields of Death. A novel for young adults, Gladiator: Fight for Freedom, is published in February 2011.
We asked him about his inspirations and his craft.
Read more
Storm from the Shadows, by David Weber
I would like to start by saying that I am a huge David Weber fan. For those of us who like our space operas long, convoluted, unpredictable and packed with lots of technical jargon and fantastically human characters (and especially for those of us who like happy endings), Weber delivers time and time again. Having said that I do have a confession to make – unlike many Weber fans who go straight out to the shop to buy the latest instalment in hardback and dive straight back into Honorverse, I am guilty of buying what I think is the latest instalment in paperback (several times in some instances) and then putting it on the shelf and looking at it for a couple of months. This isn’t because I don’t want to read it – not at all. It’s more that Weber has now created such a successful and long-running series that I feel almost obliged to go back to the beginning and remind myself all over again who these fabulous characters are that people such a fascinating universe.
This is what happened with Weber’s last venture into the core strand of Honorverse; At All Costs. Even worse, moving constraints meant that it had to be boxed away without even being read! Therefore, when I came to the latest paperback in the series; Storm From the Shadows, I hadn’t read up on what had happened previously and therefore various events came as a huge shock to me (noticeably Thomas Theismann’s invasion of the Manticore home system). This should have been annoying and off-putting and made me go and dig At All Costs out of the attic before getting sucked into STORM. However I didn’t – and this is the genius of Weber: however long his books, however convoluted his plots, however many primary and secondary characters there are populating however many systems and worlds, he still has the most extraordinary ability to suck you into his world and refuse to let you off the roller-coaster ride until he kicks you out at the end of his book desperately wanting to know What Happens Next?!
Company etc, by Samuel Beckett
“With leastening words say least best worse. For want of worser worst.” So writes Samuel Beckett in ‘Worstward Ho’, one of the four late prose fictions collected in this new edition by Faber. As an exhortation it may not strike one as particularly inspirational, yet in many ways it is the key objective for one the twentieth century’s greatest writers. To write about the ‘least best’, the very lowest ebb possible, and to do it with ever fewer materials, both in terms of plot and vocabulary, drove Beckett till the very end of his life.
The four major works of short prose included are ‘Company’, ‘Ill Seen Ill Said’, ‘Worstword Ho’, and ‘Stirrings Still’. In addition to these, there are several other shorter texts: ‘One Evening’, ‘The Way’, ‘Ceiling’, and ‘what is the word’. Though Beckett is best known as a playwright and novelist, the short story is a form in which he is equally adept and equally successful. Every piece is uncompromisingly and unmistakably the product of his unique vision: dark, tragic, yet compellingly beautiful and even blackly humorous. Anyone who has read his later plays and novels will be familiar with the style, particularly of ‘Company’ which includes multiple nods to his other works, either through quotation, or through the echoing of situations and tropes.
Lightborn, by Tricia Sullivan
Tricia Sullivan’s Lightborn initially appears to be a new twist on the zombie novel: in a near-future society, technology has been developed which allows neural stimulation and recreation via patterns of lights watched by the user. These Lightborns, colloquially known as Shine, are an accepted part of society, being used for pleasure, for learning new skills and so on. When everything goes to hell in the fictional American city of Los Sombres (somewhere in the desert West), it’s Shine that’s to blame, and only Roksana, a teenage girl who is unaffected by Shine, and the younger children who are not yet susceptible to it, escape the effects.
We then meet up with Xavier, a teenage boy living outside Los Sombres in the aftermath of the disaster, a refugee from the city who lost his father and whose mother has been driven mad by the Shine. Los Sombres is under quarantine by the army, with hi-tech robots prowling the landscape where adults fear to tread; meanwhile, Xavier and others his age take drugs to retard their physical development and delay the moment when they become at risk from the Shine. Into the refugee community, which is organised by the local Native American tribe, comes a stranger from Los Sombres, and following his arrival everything starts to change. The theft of his special drugs drives Xavier to take the drastic step of lighting out for Los Sombres in search of more – and what he finds there is not what he had been led to expect.
NewsNow
Literature News 24/7-
The Bookgeeks Interview
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 [...]
-
Latest Competition
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.
Latest Bookbitz reviews
