Aviation thrillers reviewed: 16 Souls by John J. Nance and Polar Three by Carolyn Pasqualino

The other day I was in the mood for something fast, easy to digest, and filled with aeroplanes. So I bought a couple of aviation thrillers. For those unfamiliar with this sub-sub-sub-genre, there are technological thrillers written for an audience of aviation enthusiasts (such as myself). Not entirely surprisingly, the number of novels in this field is a bit limited.

So, first, 16 Souls by John J. Nance, who is pretty much the big name author in this genre. Sure, Michael Crighton had a crack at this sort of book with Airframe, but John J. Nance has endeared himself to planespotters far and wide by being a former pilot and by writing pretty much exclusively about planes and pilots in peril.

As such, 16 Souls is a pretty slick, accomplished thriller. I read virtually all of it in one night, because I wanted to get to the next bit. It's the story of a pilot, Captain Marty Mitchell (alliterative names for the win!) who is about to go on trial for murder in the second degree as result of a deadly accident he was involved in. The novel alternates between scenes set in the trial's timeline, and flashbacks to the incident as it unfolded.

In all honesty, it's the incident itself which is exciting and interesting to read about. Fortunately, Nance has returned to premises that are closer to realism and further away from OTT scifi.
(Side note: The book that propelled Nance to bestseller status was Pandora's Clock, an excellent scifi aviation thriller about a deadly virus on board a 747. The drama and action is amped up to 11 in that one with a missile-armed business jet, explosions, and Outbreak-style mayhem. Then, in Medusa's Child, a book about a nuclear bomb aboard a 737 during a hurricane, it gets amped up to 12, and some of his other novels bounce up and down on the suspension of disbelief until it snaps. I kinda gave up on him after reading Blackout, which toyed around with every aviation enthusiast's wet dream - incapacitated pilots mean a kid with flight-sim experience is called upon to try to fly and land a jumbo jet - and then ruins it with a completely unbelievable crash scenario that is physically impossible.)

Where was I? Ah yes, the premise. 16 Souls imagines a mid-air collision wherein a small aircraft isn't completely shattered, but gets somehow embedded in the bigger airliner that plowed into it. It may be incredibly unlikely, but it's not outside the realm of the imaginable. And from that scenario, Nance derives a plot of suspense as he keeps the reader guessing about what the pilot will do, and how this will result in disaster.

Much as the story of the accident is exciting, the story of the pilot's legal woes is not. First, we see him attempting suicide, largely as act of revenge against the system for daring to prosecute him. Then, we follow his (female, rookie) lawyer's attempts to keep him straight and prep for the case. It's a bit like the movie Sully, which withheld the full details of the accident from the audience until a key scene during Sully's NTSB hearings, but in this book, the legal thriller just gets in the way of the interesting stuff. And Marty Mitchell is a really annoying character once he's outside the cockpit. Sure, he's meant to be traumatised, but he comes across as whiny and entitled, because he rails an awful lot against lawyers for daring to suspect and accuse him of a crime. He seems to think that a pilot in command of a plane is above earthly law.

The other thing which was mildly annoying is that John J Nance appears to have turned into a slightly sexist dinosaur. Maybe his thrillers were always such - it's been many years since I read most of them - but I remember that he seemed ahead of the curve at one time. For example, in Pandora's Clock, a male rookie works with a more seasoned female agent (they reversed the sexes for the TV adaptation, which was quite telling). In 16 Souls, on the other hand, a heavily traumatised crash victim later describes the pilot to an investigator: "Just to look at him inspired confidence. Like he came out of some Hollywood casting company, you know? Square shoulders, tall and trim, chiseled facial features. Salt and pepper hair, very neatly cropped. That deep, rumbling, authoritative pilot voice. I figured he was in his mid-fifties and probably former military. He just looked like Air Force or Navy. Maybe it's a female thing, ... but if a guy like that is willing to fly, I'll be his passenger any day."

OK, so Nance is no longer writing planespotter-porn, now he's writing pilot-porn. Fine, let the women characters swoon in the middle of their trauma. Then you get some male characters having a chat where they get paranoid, whine and bemoan these PC times:
"tell me what form of payment should be rendered for past intelligence proviced. Cash, check, liquor, ... women?"
"Women? Shit, Scott, your sense of humour is gonna get us in deep trouble one of these days when the call gets monitored by the NSA or something and someone posts it on Facebook."

...while the woman lawyer ponders how to keep her client in line: "I need to keep him focused and ready for court, and I'm worried about letting him out of my sight. Maybe I should just sleep with him!"
(Yeah, it's an internal joke she's making in her own head, but somehow all the lady-swooning over pilots seems tacky to me.)

16 Souls is, in the end, a decent aviation thriller. It holds the attention. It may not feature deep characters, decent humour, or complicated insights into human nature, but it's easy to digest, readable, and the scenario it presents is tense and exciting. It is bloated by a legal thriller that doesn't, and at times it feels like reading tacky old-pilot fantasies / wishful thinking, but it's worth your while if you like planes.

Rating: 3/5

My thirst for Jet A fuel not being entirely slaked by this point, I then read Polar Three by Carolyn Pasqualino. She, too, is a pilot, though not a retired one.

Polar Three is the story of a cargo 747 flying from Chicago to Hong Kong across the Polar Three air route. (There are only a handful of air routes across the pole). Unfortunately for its crew, the temperatures outside are colder than predicted, cold enough to threaten freezing their fuel inside its tanks. Add a solar storm and a communication cut-off, and the plane is in trouble...

Polar Three is a quite different novel from John J Nance's offerings. For one thing, the crisis scenario is much less far-fetched, and not overdramatised at all. Essentially, the troubles the crew is faced with are realistic troubles that real pilots encounter, and their responses are authentic.

Things are a bit less realistic once the flight is over, as many solutions are served on a platter to the characters.

Polar Three differs in other ways from Nance's novels: the characters in this book are professionals, interacting professionally, and staying at professional distance, throughout the story. This means the reader doesn't get a huge amount of gooey emotional stuff or personality to connect with. Instead, we're reading about collegiate colleagues  working on problems as a well functioning, but somewhat bland team. It can feel a little sterile. Pasqualino must have noticed that problem, so she added two dogs to the story, who basically inject some woofy warmth to proceedings. But I'll be honest, the book lacks human interest. (There is a joker among the characters, but his jokes are the sort of safe and predictable office jests that everyone smiles at out of politeness. Small talk with a smiley at the end.)

Polar Three is a fairly dry novel, in that the book gets very technical and accurate. It feels like watching a Just Planes! video from time to time, as radio contact is covered in full and accurately. At another point, a lengthy part of the novel features detailed aircraft maintenance. As aviation enthusiast, I enjoyed much of this, or at least, I did not find it tiresome. I suspect for readers with less fondness for aircraft and flying, the novel is unlikely to be anywhere near as enjoyable.

Dry, technical, authentic: Polar Three is an acquired taste, appealing to a niche audience. That said, I liked reading an aviation thriller that put authenticity first. I did not dislike any of the human drama (because there was very little), and I never rolled my eyes in annoyance. I had hoped for a somewhat grittier story of survival against the odds in Arctic ice, but there was something pleasantly mellow about the book, while it still held my attention.

Fellow aviation enthusiasts may well find this book worthwhile, and it earns a lot of kudos by being consistently credible. Not bestseller material, but a book that wannabe pilots can savour.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean

Where the World Ends is a novel about a group of youngsters (and a few men) whose working excursion to a stack out in the sea turns into a nightmare when no one comes to collect them after their working time is up. Just a few miles away from their home town, they become marooned on an inhospitable, dangerous, steep rock jutting out from the ocean.

St Kilda was once one of the remotest outposts of British influence in the North Atlantic. A set of islands populated by a few dozen people eking out a harsh living based on sheep farming and foraging (harvesting wild sea birds for food, oil, feathers and fuel). The Warrior Stack, where the story takes place, was a prime location for fowling at the end of the summer, so youngsters were taken there to camp for a fortnight and harvest all the birds they could.

Our protagonist, Quill, is one of the older boys. He has one good friend, Munroe, and a head full of fond thoughts about a girl who visited their island. He has some charisma, looks out for the younger boys, and knows how to get along with people even if they're unpleasant.

The grown ups - a teacher, a gravedigger / assistant to the church, and only one practical man, aren't very effective as a leadership group. The gravedigger is self-important and soon establishes himself as minister / spiritual leader, but he is resented by the other men and, though obeyed, despised by most of the boys. The teacher sinks into depression, so he disengages from everyone and seeks out solitude a lot. And the practical man is content to do his own thing. There is no functional leadership, really.

Which means that the only contestant for a leader whom the youngsters follow out of choice is Quill. With some semblance of diplomatic skills, a sensible head on his shoulders, courage, strength, etc., he becomes a de facto rival to the self-appointed minister.

At times, Where the World Ends reads like a Scottish Lord of the Flies. Man vs nature very rapidly turns into Man vs other men. However, conflicts don't become as entrenched: as islanders from a tiny community, these men and boys are used to living in tiny groups, with frictions and resentments, but ultimately, the capacity to get along just enough to survive.

As an adventure story, Where the World Ends is a bit bleak. The harsh surroundings are one thing, but the boys (and men) are mostly not very likeable. Quill is a decent guy, but the other boys include a hateful, toxic bully, a pompous uber-religious preachy kid, sullen loners, and kids ready to turn into an angry mob with the slightest encouragement. Essentially, this is a story about boys and men barely getting along (and rarely working together) to survive - there are almost no friendships, there is little camaraderie, and the only relief comes in the form of stories they tell each other to remind themselves of home and humanity.

I was surprised by the bleak and harsh mood of the novel. I bought it under the impression that it is a children's book, or YA. (The author is an award winning children's writer, and some reviewers suggested it's a book for mini-Bear-Gryllises). Instead, I found myself reading a novel that would have been squarely aimed at adults, had it been written 40 years ago. It's shorter than contemporary fiction for adults, but in tone, subject matter, character complexity and story, there is nothing particularly child-like about it. The brevity and pace won't test the patience of younger readers, but the story won't feel patronising or childish to even the most prolific adult reader.

Rating: 4/5

Book Review: One Way by S.J. Morden

One Way by S J Morden tells the story of Frank, a convict whose prison sentence long exceeds his life span. One day, a mysterious visitor makes him an offer he can't refuse: instead of spending the rest of his natural life in the prison he's in, he could be trained to go to Mars, and live out his life there, building the first Mars base. It's a one way ticket, and legally the Mars Base would count as prison, but at least his life would be filled once again with achievement...

One Way is a novel that is possibly being slightly mis-sold: the blurb sells it as a murder mystery on Mars, with a small handful of suspects. If you buy it expecting a blue collar Agatha Christie novel on Mars, you may be slightly disappointed: the bulk of the story takes place before the whodunnit begins. However, that's not a bad thing: the book earns its way to Mars, carefully building up the characters and the preparation before delivering a cracking space adventure that doesn't have to hide in the shadow of The Martian.

One Way is a great science fiction read. In fact, its science is barely fictional and mostly current, rather than futuristic. It's also a great adventure novel, a great thriller, with an all-too-believable central premise. If there is a flaw, it's that the thing it's sold for - the whodunnit - isn't all that mysterious, once that part of the plot kicks in.

It's hard not to compare One Way with The Martian, as it features the same phraseology (talk about "the hab", hydrazine, air locks) and some of the basic premise (staged deliveries to the surface of the planet before the astronauts arrive, a botanist growing food inside the hab, Mars rovers, small nuclear reactors, and sand storms), and a comparable sense of peril as Mars is a more hostile environment than our characters are quite ready for. However, One Way doesn't go down the humorous route in the way The Martian did, focusing instead on a tense interplay between characters who don't have much reason to trust or like each other. The Martian is a fundamentally optimistic novel about people working together against all odds, and a hero never losing his sense of humour as he faces one challenge at a time. The Martian has no villain. One Way is a much more grim-faced look at how Mars might be explored by the likes of Jeff Bezos, written in a time where optimism is thin on the ground and moral bankruptcy and corruption are dominating global news. In One Way, everyone is a villain and there are no heroes. It's the Trump era's answer to The Martian of the Obama era...

A cracking thriller, compelling and convincing.

Rating: 4.5/5

Fuchskind von Annette Wieners

An einem nebligen Herbsttag kommt Friedhofsgärtnerin Gesine Cordes einfach alles unheimlich vor. Der Pförtner scheint nicht zuhause zu sein obwohl das Licht an ist, irgendwo im Zaun muss ein Loch sein, denn ein Fuchs ist in den Friedhof eingedrungen, und es klingt, als schlich da jemand durchs Gebüsch...

Zu ihrer vollkommenen Überraschung findet sie dann ein unterernährtes, frierendes Baby. Kaum gefunden, erleidet es dann Krämpfe, as wäre es vergiftet.

Unterdessen findet man um die Ecke eine nackte Frauenleiche, und als kurz danach auch noch ihr Ex-Mann auftaucht, passt gar nichts mehr zusammen.

Fuchskind ist ein Krimi-Thriller, der zweite in einer Serie. Man merkt schon, dass es nicht der erste Roman über Gesine und eine ihr inzwischen befreundete Komissarin ist. Es wird oft auf die traumatischen Ereignisse des vorherigen Sommers hingewiesen.

Am effektivsten ist der Roman, wenn Gesine sich um das Baby kümmert, denn die Empfindlichkeit des schwerbehinderten Babies und die Fürsorge der Friedhofsgärtnerin, deren Sohn in ihren Armen verstorben ist, wirken zusammen sehr Einfühlsam (obwohl ich selber Babies nicht besonders mag).

Allerdings gelang es dem Roman in anderen Gebieten eher weniger zu überzeugen. Die Sache mit dem Ex-Mann klingt eher nach Seifenoper als nach Krimi. Zudem gibt es viel zu viele Täter und nicht genug Gründe für ihre Taten. Das Netz der Verbrechen, das die Autorin hier gewebt hat, hält leider nicht zusammen - es zerfällt wenn man es mit dem geringsten Zweifel anhaucht.

Das hochspannende Finale kann den Roman daher leider nicht retten - er ist zwar mehr oder weniger unterhaltsam, aber letztendlich nicht sehr befriedigend.

Bewertung: 3/5

Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda by Ahmed Masoud

Vanished is part mystery thriller, part coming of age tale and part chronicle of recent history. Ahmed Masoud, a Palestinian ex-pat living in the UK, set out to introduce readers to a part of the world that most of us will never set foot in: Gaza.

The novel is framed by events of 2014: our protagonist, Omar, leaves his wife and son in London to make his way to Gaza during the bombardment of the strip by Israeli forces. Having had news that his former home has been bombed, and unable to reach his remaining relatives and friends by phone, he feels a strong obligation to return, no matter what the cost. En route, he begins to write down his life story, so that his toddling son might one day understand what drove Omar to leave him behind, should he not return.

Omar starts his life story with the year he decided to become a detective and find out what had happened to his own father. Omar was a baby when his father disappeared one night, and by the time he is eight years old, he wants nothing more than to find out how and why. His investigations are dangerous, however. Over the course of his quest, he finds himself embroiled with the Israeli security forces, rebel fighters, nationalist and Islamist politics, the peace process and the intifadas.

Vanished is a very readable novel. The prose is plain and matter of fact. The narrative moves briskly even when events don't (sometimes, years pass between significant events and paragraphs of text). Our protagonist's struggles are all too authentic. However, in its desire to present 25 years' worth of history alongside the mystery plot, the novel inevitably loses focus as time goes on - just as Omar's quest becomes sidelined in his life as larger events take hold of him.

There are many things about life in Gaza that seem a little surprising to outsiders like me. Though it's densely populated, there is a very strong sense of community in each street. People know each other. Similarly, everyone knows who runs the Israeli army in Gaza, and everyone refers to him by his first name. I cannot be the only one who is constantly perplexed that Benjamin Netanyahu is referred to as "Bibi" by politicians and media alike. After reading Vanished, I must conclude that this way of talking about people, which sounds overly familiar to my ears, must be the norm in that part of the world. Perhaps most importantly, the Gaza in this novel is a living, breathing enclave, with people leading everyday lives and having everyday concerns. Children go to school, treats, sweets and beatings are dished out by the grown ups, young people head to university and make plans for their futures and careers, while dreaming about and trying to hang out with members of the opposite sex...

However, the book does have its fair share of flaws and problems. Perhaps the most unsurprising is the way Israelis are portrayed: monstrous child-raping killers, nameless oppressors, bullies. There is no Israeli character with any redeeming features in the book: they are clearly the villains of the piece. For a book which handles shades of grey and complexities between the different resistance groups and political factions among Palestinians quite well, this treatment of Israel is a little too simplistic. Then again, I doubt the citizens of occupied France / Poland / Czechoslovakia / Jersey during WW2 had many nuanced things to say about the German occupation forces...

Towards the end, the story loses drive a little bit. Events speed up radically, to the point of becoming a little confusing. At one point, I really struggled to understand whether I was reading the framing narrative or the life story narrative. The ending feels rushed, as if the author had grown tired of the book and just wanted to get it out of the way. Or, perhaps, as if it received less editorial TLC than the start of the book.

For me, the most problematic aspect of the book lay in its gender politics. I have not read (m)any novels written by Arab authors. I tried reading one (HWJN), but gave up on it, due to problematic gender politics in that novel.

For most of its length, Vanished treats female characters as any other novel would. I can't really discuss the problematic aspects, but I do know that any feminist friends of mine would read certain elements with their teeth very firmly clenched, and even I felt quite uncomfortable.

Vanished does a good job of being entertaining. It is educational in the way it depicts Palestinian society, though very simplistic beyond that microcosm (Israel BAD, Palestinians OPPRESSED). It's worth a read for anyone who wants to know what living in Gaza must have been like in the recent past.

Rating: 3.5/5

PS: For a very nuanced, intelligent and nevertheless thrilling and exciting novel handling the effects of oppression on oppressors and oppressees alike, I would heartily recommend Kindred. Perhaps such things can only be written about with such masterful nuance a hundred years after the fact...

Die Lebenden und die Toten von Nele Neuhaus

Ich lebe schon mein halbes Leben in Großbritannien. Daher rostet mir langsam die deutsche Sprache aus Unnutzung ein - also muss ich im voraus um Entschuldigung bitten, falls ich den einen oder anderen Fehler begehen sollte.

Die Lebenden und die Toten ist ein Kriminalroman, der in der Umgebung Frankfurts spielt. Es ist der siebte Roman der Bodenstein & Kirchhoff Krimiserie, allerdings der erste, den ich aus jener Serie gelesen habe.

Wie jeder gute Krimi, beginnt auch Die Lebenden und die Toten mit einem Mord. Eine alte Frau wird beim Hundegassigehen durch einen Kopfschuss von einem entfernten Scharfschützen umgebracht. Pia Kirchhoff, eine Komissarin bei der Kriminalpolizei, bekommt den Anruf obwohl sie eigentlich Urlaub gebucht hatte, weil sonst niemand zu erreichen ist. Ihr Pflichtgefühl zwingt sie, zum Tatort zu fahren. Ihr frischverheirateter Ehemann (besagter Urlaub war zwecks Flitterwochen gebucht gewesen) hat kein Problem damit, aber Pia ist natürlich nicht sehr begeistert...

Anfang des Falles scheint es, daß es kein Motiv für den Mord geben kann. Das Opfer hatte keine Feinde, keine Bedeutung, und niemand hat von ihrem Tod etwas zu gewinnen. Wenn eine zweite alte Frau ebenso durch Kopfschuss von einem Sniper ermordet wird, beginnt die Polizei eine Mordserie zu befürchten. Schlimmer noch, eine Serie von Zufallsmorden, begangen aus großer Entfernung, von einem Täter der keine Spuren hinterläßt - ein Albtraum für Polizisten. Das halbe Team hat Grippe, es ist Weihnachtszeit, und ein Irrer macht die Gegend unsicher: Pia beginnt, daran zu zweifeln, ob sie es verantworten kann, wie geplant nach Ecuador zu fliegen...

Man merkt dem Roman schon an, daß er Teil einer langen Serie ist. Zum einen gibt es reichlich Kollegen im Polizeirevier, die eine Rolle spielen. Zum anderen gibt es hin und wieder Stellen, wo der Text Hintergründe und frühere Fälle zusammenfasst. Nicht nur Fälle - frühere Verlobungen und Exfrauen und Exgatten sind auch reichlich vorhanden. Andererseits funktioniert der Roman problemlos, auch wenn man nicht jede Kleinigkeit der Vorgeschichte der Polizisten kennt. Es wird eher zuviel in Infodumps abgeliefert als zu wenig. Es hat allerdings den Anschein, daß, nach sechs anderen Romanen mit Happy Ends, innerhalb der Teams weniger Funken fliegen als vielleicht zu Anfang der Serie. Pia denkt an ihre ersten Fälle mit Bodenstein zurück, und daran, wie unterschiedlich sie damals waren, und wie sehr sie sich inzwischen aneinander angepasst haben. Dieses Team ist eine gut geölte Maschine.

Kein Wunder, daß neue Berater hineingeworfen werden. Einer, dessen Zweck es ist, zu nerven, und eine, die anscheinend nach diesem Roman Mitglied des Stammtischs werden soll.

Ein Krimi soll spannend sein. Nach und nach stellt sich ein Motiv fest, und dann gewinnt der Roman auch an Spannung, denn wenn die Polizisten ein Motiv kennen, dann gibt es bald auch Verdächtige zu ermitteln...

Die Lebenden und die Toten is ein durchaus unterhaltsamer, spannender Roman. Teilweise habe ich ihn mit Genuß verschlungen. Leider gibt es auch ein paar Plotlöcher und Fehler. Das Motiv einer der Morde macht keinen Sinn, und ganz am Ende wird glatt ein Augenzeuge vollkommen vergessen (bzw ein Opfer, daß wohl doch wissen musste, wer ihm etwas angetan hatte). Manche Charaktere scheinen eher künstlich in das Buch gezwungen und sind dann leider zu eindimensional. (Die Nervensäge ist zu nervend). Ich hatte den Eindruck, daß inzwischen alle Polizisten so kollegial, professionell und gut mit einander auskommen, daß die Autorin sich neue Problemchen ausdenken musste, um ein bisschen Zoff zu schaffen - und diese Problemchen wirkten nicht immer überzeugend. Hauptsache ist natürlich die Spannung, und die liefert dieser Krimi.

Alles in allem, ein recht guter Krimi.

Bewertung: 3,5/5

PS: Als ausgewanderter Deutscher fiel mir auf, daß die deutsche Sprache dabei ist, sich zu anglisieren. An einigen Stellen schien es mir, daß englische Begriffe sich seit meiner Zeit in Deutschland eingedeutscht haben. Zum Beispiel wird an einer Stelle "darauf insistiert" statt "darauf bestanden". Ich weiß nicht, ob das Internet daran Schuld ist, oder Fernsehsendungen (CSI?), aber es hat mich doch etwas überrascht, wie sehr die Sprache sich in den paar Jahren schon verändert hat.

PPS: Es freut mich, daß deutsche Buchcovers inzwischen teilweise um einiger schöner sind, als noch vor ein paar Jahren. Britische Covers sind weltklasse - da war es eher enttäuschend, wenn man in einen deutschen Buchladen ging, und die vergleichsweise anspruchslosen Covers dort sah... endlich mal etwas Farbe und Style!

Final Approach by John J Nance

It's been years since I last read a thriller by John J Nance. Specialising on aviation thrillers, this former pilot has written quite a few cockpit-based novels that could serve as wish fulfilment literature for plane spotters and aviation enthusiasts. So, of course, as teenager I devoured them. His biggest success is Pandora's Clock, which even got turned into a TV movie. (The main difference between adaptation and book was that they gender swapped the FBI agents: in the book, the naive rookie was male and the experienced, highly competent agent female)

Final Approach, however, takes us into a slightly different world. This time, it's not about a pilot hijacking his plane or brave pilots with a deadly load in their airliner, nor about landing a passenger jet on an aircraft carrier in a hurricane, nor about a teenaged flight sim fan taking control of a jet when the pilots get incapacitated (told you they are wish fulfilment books for aero-geeks). This time, we're following the investigation into a crash, and our heroes are the Go-Team of the NTSB. Not since Michael Crighton's Airframe have I a read a novel set in this most exciting and unique of professions.

Fortunately, John J Nance doesn't disappoint on this occasion. After taking the action antics and machismo way too far in some of his novels (cough, Blackout, cough), it's a relief to find this one on credible and authentic form. Final Approach was one of his first novels, and as such, turns out to be much more well-grounded than his later efforts. The techy side of things is entirely realistic. OK, so the story throws quite a few red herrings our way, but actually, that isn't unrealistic: every crash is such a rare and unlikely event these days that there is almost always a huge mystery about its cause.

Now, this is a thriller written primarily for boys. As such, the writing is a little by-the-numbers, and every single character gets described in physical detail as soon as they appear on stage. Every heroic male is athletic. Every female is sensual and attractive and lusted over. Characters don't grow or change or any of that mamby-pamby stuff: they walk on, they establish their role in the plot, and they stick to it. Don't expect the human elements of the story to surprise or enchant you: this is a technological thriller for people who are interested in aviation. Human characters exist mainly to be "human factors", not to be people.

That said, if you like techy thrillers and aeroplanes, this book is ace.

Rating: 4/5

Grave of Hummingbirds by Jennifer Skutelsky - Book Review

Grave of the Hummingbirds starts out with a gruesome discovery: a dead body. To the young man who discovers it, it looks like an angel. The dead woman has huge black wings on her back...

Set in a fictitious Latin American country, recovering from a fictitious dictatorship, with fictitious heritage and native tribal rites, the novel is not quite like other crime thrillers. A serial killer is on the loose, dark secrets haunt the place, but the plot isn't for the most part a chase. Instead, our main characters live and reminisce. Only when, a year later, history looks set to repeat itself, does violence and a race to prevent further killings flare up again.

An atmospheric start is followed by quite a bit of moping. Then, as the book changes gears and becomes a thriller, the plot starts to rely very heavily on ghosts and spirits, on omens and dreams. Without the supernatural (and some massive coincidences), the plot would not resolve itself at all. This does not make the book comparable to Neil Gaiman (which the blurb implies). I have not read Gabriel Garcia Masquez or Isabella Allende, but I doubt their stories work like Grave of Hummingbirds. There is a massive difference between magical realism and cheating. Grave of the Hummingbirds, unfortunately, cheats.

There is another source of reader frustration. One particular character is "simple" in some scenes, but clever and well-educated in others. There is absolutely no consistency at all.

Grave of Hummingbirds showed a lot of promise at the start, but sadly it collapsed in on itself with inconsistent characterisation of a main character and a plot which used a lot of cheating devices to resolve itself. However, it's a quick read and quite entertaining.

Rating: 2.5/5

Planetfall by Emma Newman

I'd never heard of Emma Newman until I attended Worldcon in London last year. There, on the first day, an American lady started a conversation with me. Top topic, of course, was "which authors are you most excited about", and her instant answer was Emma Newman. She couldn't wait to sign up for a Kaffeeklatsch (small group chat with the author). She described the books and the podcast, and I was instantly intrigued.

As a result of that conversation, I attended Emma Newman's reading at that convention. She came across a little nervous and like an immensely likable, warm and quite intelligent person. The opening of Between Two Thorns was funny, intriguing and I bought it instantly. As it turned out, much as I loved the start, I did not love the book entirely. It mixed fun and magic and excitement with an undercurrent of psychological abuse, which made it hard for me to enjoy it. To put it differently, of the recent Disney movies, Tangled is the best, but its manipulative, passive aggressive villain is genuinely uncomfortable for me to watch - and Between Two Thorns had rather more of that sort of stuff than I can digest while still having a good time. (That said, if you enjoyed the second book in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, then you're probably thick skinned enough to enjoy The Split Worlds novels)

Since then, I've seen Emma Newman at two other conventions: I attended a useful small group workshop on fear and writing which she ran, and which again showed her as a caring and intelligent woman, dealing with anxieties and trying hard to help others who are in the same boat - basically, she came across a little bit like a British Jenny Lawson, only less manic. And I also watched a live recording of the Tea & Jeopardy podcast.

So I was really hoping to love her new standalone novel Planetfall. A departure into science fiction, a different setting entirely, and perhaps, I hoped, a novel that would be more easy for me to enjoy.

Planetfall is the story of Renata, a woman living in a small colony on a new planet. The colony lives very long, easy lives: they are almost post-scarcity, careful to live entirely sustainably but assisted by biotechnology which makes this easy, and which lets them still be in their early middle age at age 70. She is different from the others - privacy is important to her, she keeps herself to herself, and as an engineer and a maker, she treasures and fixes things that other people don't bother thinking about. The rest of the colony live open lives, with a constant presence on social media and a very gossipy, nosy attitude, and not very much to do.

Renata's entire world begins to shake when a newcomer arrives at their colony: a young man who must have been born after Planetfall, the arrival of these settlers. He must be a descendant of the other people, those who arrived with them, but who had all been killed. Renata is one of only two settlers who know the terrible secrets of that disaster. The other is Mack, the inofficial leader of their colony.

Dark secrets, life on a different planet, a future that includes social media and cloud computing and 3D printing? It's a promising, well thought through, excitingly different setting for a novel. I got entirely absorbed by Planetfall. It's engrossing and tense. It's also intelligent, featuring a complex protagonist and various interesting ideas. Characterisation is excellent when it comes to Renata, Mack and several other key characters, but perhaps a little thinner for the rest of the colony.

As a literary achievement and as a scifi thriller, the book is no disappointment at all. The problem for me is that it turned me into a nervous wreck as I read it. One of its themes is mental illness, and this was handled realistically, convincingly, and, for me, gut-wrenchingly. A lot of it hit very close to home, and much of the final act was utterly devastating for me as a reader. I suspect the same may not be true for most, or even many, readers, but yeah: this book made me feel bad inside. That's not what I was hoping for, and not what I read for. If I believed in 'trigger warnings' (which I don't), then this book would need a fairly substantial one for my personal issues.

That said, as a thoughtful, clever, complex, authentic and well-written thriller, this book is an excellent achievement. It just isn't the book for me at this time.

Rating: 4.5/5

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

The Severed Streets is the second book in a new series which began with London Falling. You could describe this series as a darker, grittier sibling to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant novels: Paul Cornell's London is also full of magic, but bereft of humour and warmth.

Our four police officers who have been blessed / cursed with The Sight, which lets them perceive the supernatural, have just about recovered from the traumatic events of the previous novel. They work from their little portakabin and wait for a new case to arise which requires their expertise. Lo and behold, a LibDem MP gets brutally eviscerated in his locked limousine. There's no weapon in the car, the driver insists he didn't do it, and CCTV shows no one getting in or out...

Paul Cornell makes some interesting choices in the writing of this novel. For one, he instantly dates it by setting it during the Con-Dem-Nation coalition government. He creates thinly veiled replicas of real people and events: a media baron who is a thinly disguised Viscount Rothermere (called Russel Vincent in the novel), protests based on the London Riots but set in post-Olympic-Games-London, masks based on the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks made popular by Anonymous, but consistently and irritatingly described as 'Toff masks'... but then real people also appear in his book. Frankie Boyle makes a cameo. Neil Gaiman makes an appearance that seemingly starts out as cameo and then develops into a full blown story arc. I thought it's more common for age-defining authors to get fictionalised posthumously (Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen etc.), so the appearance of Neil Gaiman was a bit of a surprise, and when he got involved in the plot, well, let's just say Paul Cornell had better be a good friend of Neil Gaiman...

There is something mischievous and a little transgressive about this aspect of the book, but also just a tiny bit frustrating. Paul Cornell's Neil Gaiman talks about similar sorts of things as the real one (stories, Neverwhere, bees), but he does not quite sound like real Neil, or perhaps the opposite - perhaps he sounded a bit too matter-of-fact and authentic, and I sort of expected something a little grander.

OK, Neil Gaiman out of the way, the Severed Streets is a grim dark, horror-filled urban fantasy. The Smiling Man continues to be behind things, and the attacker eviscerates quite a few people using the riots for cover (wearing a protester's mask, rising from crowds & flying off, invisible to those without The Sight), while two of our police officers are obsessed with their own problems - getting a father out of hell, and trying to avoid going to hell, respectively. There are some betrayals, some schemes, a lot of individual actions - basically, if our team finally learnt to work as a team in book one, they are now again working quite independently and with serious obstacles to fully trusting and sharing information with each other. They keep running off without telling any of the others what they're up to.

The book may spill more blood than the first, but is a less gruelling read: this time, no children get boiled alive, and while there's plenty castrations, the horror is less emotional than it was in London Falling. There's a lot of work in creating something uncanny, but it feels a little uncanny-by-the-numbers. If it's ever turned into a movie, I think Terry Gilliam should direct it.

The Severed Streets is an engrossing read, relentlessly grim, with a few emotional gut-punches, but none that equal those surprises that made the first book so harrowing towards its finale. The series is definitely worth a look for people who like urban fantasy, but not perhaps the series of choice if you're in the mood for something cheery and light. While The Severed Streets does explain and sum up some of the key events from the first book, I doubt it works very well as a standalone - start with London Falling if you have not read that yet.

Rating: 3.5/5

London Falling by Paul Cornell

London Falling is an urban fantasy novel set in the most fantastical city in the world - London. There is really no other city as suitable and rich for urban fantasy as London.

London Falling is also a police story, with a small squad of police at its heart. Our protagonists are two undercover agents, their supervisor and a backroom techie. The novel starts as a multi-month operation is about to come to its end, on New Year's Eve. The mob boss they've been trailing is frantically taking his crew around different houses, while the higher ups in the police have scrapped their operation's budget, so they need to make their arrest that night, irrespective of whether they have enough evidence to make prosecution viable or not. The pressure is on.

There are tensions in the team - or rather, they are really not a team at all yet. Instead, they are four people who work on the same project, but rarely together and each laden with resentments towards some or all of the others.

The mob boss, meanwhile, is coming to the end of a ten year reign of unimpeachable crimes, having taken over every other gang in his territory without ever getting into a bloody war. He's used his private room to do so, and there is an air of secrecy around his working methods. No one, not his closest allies, have any idea how he did what he did.

As it's an urban fantasy, you might guess that the supernatural is involved. Things very quickly spiral out of hand, and our crew of coppers spend the rest of the book trying to adjust to a new perspective on the world, trying to become a well-functioning team, but, most of all, trying to catch and eliminate a major baddie.

London Falling differs from Ben Aaronovitch's magical London police procedural in tone (it does not go for 'funny') and in approach (there is no wise magical mentor, just four police officers trying to learn as they go). It's very much a thriller, with heavy doses of peril, gruesome crimes, and gut-wrenching plot developments that damn near made me tear up at one point.

It does take a while to find its feet, and some of the personal histories / demons of the characters felt a smidgen by-the-numbers. The supernatural London also differed from that in other books in being almost entirely sinister - a thing to be feared. While this worked well in terms of creating an atmosphere or peril, it deprived this London of complexity. To draw comparisons: Hellboy 2 is a much superior movie to Hellboy for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that in the sequel, a very richly drawn supernatural coexists with the mundane, and we get glimpses of an otherworld that is not just full of monsters, but filled with the magical everyday, with non-human characters living independent lives, especially in the Faerie Market. It is that sort of perspective which is missing in London Falling (as it was also largely missing in the first Hellboy movie).

London Falling is a good, entertaining, thrilling read. It's a lot darker than other recent offerings of urban fantasy, with heavy elements of horror. I have high hopes for the series as it develops, but this is definitely a satisfying start.

Rating: 4/5

The Killing Kind by Chris Holm

I'm a fan of The Collector - a series / trilogy of urban fantasy novels about a soul collector working for hell by Chris Holm. So I'd been looking forward to his newest novel, even though it's a more mundane thriller.

The Killing Kind is a novel about contract killers. Our hero Michael Hendricks is a hitman with a gimmick: he only kills other hitmen. He contacts the intended victim and offers to take out the killer sent after them, for ten times the price on their head. Then he fulfills his side of the bargain.

Unfortunately for Hendricks, the organisations whose hitters he's been eliminating have realised what's going on, even if they are unable to identify and find him. So they hire the world's most expensive assassin to take care of whoever's been taking out their killers.

Also, an FBI agent has built up a collection of cases credited to 'the ghost' - their nickname for the mysterious killer of killers.

Mostly, The Killing Kind is a solidly written thriller. If you've watched any cat and mouse game between assassins on screen, there is little here that's new or different. (If that's a subgenre you enjoy, by the way, the movie Killer Elite is good fun). Unfortunately, fitting so neatly into a subgenre, the book lacks the originality and zest that made the Collector novels so much fun.

In the final act, things fall apart because of a massive, massive plothole. Semi-SPOILER WARNING: our hero gets a distress signal. Does he contact the police / get help to where the trouble is? No, he gets frustrated at his impotence to do anything and gets into his car for a five-hour-drive to the trouble. This makes about as much sense as unleashing a T-Rex while wearing high heels.

Without the plothole, the book would have deserved an extra half-star, but as it is, it's sadly a novel that doesn't rise above average.

Rating: 3/5

The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

The Quality of Silence starts with bad news. Yasmin and Ruby have just landed in Alaska, after an exhausting transatlantic flight. At the airport, they are funnelled away from the other passengers by security staff and brought to a police officer, who tells Yasmin that her husband (and Ruby’s father), Matt, has died in a catastrophic fire.

It’s a nightmare for any traveller. For Yasmin, it’s even harder news to take than it would be for anyone else. Her young daughter Ruby is completely deaf. They’d travelled to Alaska a few weeks earlier than planned because of a marital crisis. The last exchanges between Yasmin and Matt had been… difficult, to say the least.

The circumstances of Matt’s death are odd enough that Yasmin convinces herself that he can’t be dead: an entire Inuit village has burnt down, with every single resident dead. Bodies are burnt beyond all recognition. The police identified Matt by the fact that there was one more body than they expected to find, and, after a little research, they heard that a nature photographer had been staying at the village and assumed it’s Matt. That’s not enough to convince Yasmin: she becomes convinced that Matt may now be in danger, caught out in the Alaskan winter, thousands of miles from civilisation, with no one looking for him.

The rest of the novel tells of Yasmin’s and Ruby’s quest to find Matt. It’s an enchanting and gripping read, not so much for its thrills and cliffhangers, but because Yasmin and Ruby are wonderful characters easy to identify with and feel for. The mother-daughter relationship is completely convincing. Reading about a deaf little girl has lots of potential to pull at heart strings, but this is not a novel that ‘plays the deaf angle’ for tearjerking / inspirational tosh. Instead, it’s a novel about a very convincing, intelligent, young, deaf girl, and her mother, who struggles with wanting the best for her child even if that isn’t always the easiest path at the moment.

The Alaskan setting provides a grand canvas for their quest and conflicts, with plenty of natural peril. It enriches the story and serves to isolate Ruby and Yasmin in a way that few places on Earth could match. It’s impossible not to get heavily invested in their story as they try to make their way from Anchorage to Anaktakue (the destroyed Inuit hamlet).

Some things in the book are utterly authentic: Alaska, the ice highway, the relationships between Yasmin and Ruby and Matt – it all feels almost as if the story were biographical. But, at the end of the day, it’s a thriller. Certain plot developments are… cinematic. They don’t feel entirely authentic.

That said, the book is a pleasure to read. It’s gripping, engrossing, and heartwarming at times. I’d recommended it for pretty  much every one who likes to read, and anyone who likes their books to put them in different shoes, in faraway places.

Rating: 5/5

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian was recommended to me by Sarah and Michael during the last meeting of the Cardiff Scifi & Fantasy Book Club. I'm hugely grateful for the recommendation - it was a superb read! The book came up because we were discussing Ringworld, and hard / credible SF. The Martian was given ass an example of current / recent hard SF.

The book starts as Mark Watney, our hero, regains consciousness and discovers that his crew mates have abandoned him and flown back to earth without him. It's unintentional: there was a storm, he had an accident and they were convinced he was dead, while their own lives were in danger, so they took off. Alone on Mars, with only the limited resources left behind by their abandoned mission, he has to find a way to survive.

What makes the Martian so readable is that it is completely and utterly convincing. It's a tale of overcoming one crisis after another by limited means that would be available on this kind of mission. Comparable to the movie Apollo 13  in some regards, only with a much larger scope and a much heavier reliance on one man's ingenuity rather than the thinking power of huge teams on Earth.

It really helps that Mark Watney has a sense of humour and an indomitable disposition. He might curse and (briefly) panic, but whenever disasters strike, he always finds a way to break down the problem into steps and smaller tasks, until he can solve each task in turn. Retaining his sense of humour throughout is a massive help - this could just as easily have been a novel of utmost seriousness and grim determination. Instead, it is a fun novel about a man stranded on Mars.

Other characters by and large also have a sense of humour and mischief. Basically, they're all hugely intelligent and most can be quite witty. It's easy to like and identify with everyone, because everyone is united in common purpose and almost everyone is funny: like the Scooby Gang in the heydays of Buffy.

That said, if you're after complex character studies and a new perspective on the human condition and deep and meaningful literature, this is not the book for you. It's a superb, fun, thrilling read, but it does not go out of its way to chase literary merit. Characters don't learn valuable lessons about life. There might be some gazing out of windows forlornly going on, but it happens off-stage.

There were a few times when I was a little perplexed - Mark talks about liters of gases when calculating chemical reactions, but surely they have different densities and it's mols of gases he should be calculating with? That aside, the book is superbly believable. It is full of spirit and many a "hooray!" moment, and a good few "OMG!! Noooooo!!!!" moments.

I can't wait for mankind to shoot someone to Mars, and I'd be mighty curious what would happen if someone got abandoned there by accident...

Rating: 5/5

Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout starts where Feed and Deadline left off. It's the third novel in the Newsflesh Trilogy / universe (there are other stories out there - novellas, and there is a new novel in the works). And I'm glad to say, it's as good as the first.

Fair warning: you really need to read these books in the correct order. Even the slightest description of Blackout's plot will include massive SPOILERS for Feed and Deadline, so if you haven't read those, don't read this review. Read my review of Feed instead, and then buy that book and become addicted. I'll just say that the conclusion will not let you down.

===========
SPOILER ALERT (for Feed and Deadline)
===========

So, Shaun Mason and the surviving journos have survived the second, mosquito-carried rising, and they're out in the sticks of the West Coast, trying to figure out what to do about the CDC, which has turned out to be evil.

Meanwhile, in a sterile white CDC lab somewhere, a young woman wakes up. She's confused: her last memory is of her own death, as she was turning into a zombie. She remembers the sensations of her adopted brother, Shaun, shooting her at the top of the spine to kill her. Pretty soon, she realises that she is a clone of Georgia Mason, with implanted memories. And there's something a little off about the CDC doctor who soon presents himself to oversee her recuperation and examinations...

Ahem. George is back! Woohoo! (And suddenly the first person narration of the first book falls into place and makes perfect sense).

Better yet, as this is not the middle volume of a trilogy, the plot moves briskly on, with discoveries, conspiracies, chases, zombies, battles and good-natured banter aplenty. All the things that made Feed great are back in play. (Deadline isn't a bad book, but it suffers from not really having a decent ending, and from middle-book-syndrome). Blackout neatly ties everything together - it seems very likely that the entire trilogy was planned out in quite a lot of detail before the first book was written.

I never thought I'd actually love a series of zombie novels. There are a few zombie movies I vaguely enjoy, but I'm hardly a fan of the genre. The Newsflesh series is superbly entertaining and great fun, even for people who are not fanatical about zombies to begin with. I'd love for it to be turned into a TV series.

If you have read the firs two books, read Blackout, too. If you haven't read the first two books, D'Oh! Why did you read this review?!?

Rating: 5/5

Lock In by John Scalzi

Lock In is a science fiction novel set in a near-future. Cars drive themselves, but other than that, the world is very similar to our own. One key difference: after a devastating side effect of a global flu pandemic, a significant number of people suffer from lock in syndrome. They are unable to control any aspect of their bodies, but their minds are fully functioning. So a huge programme of funding has created three solutions to give them fuller lives:

1. They can link up remotely with a robot avatar, which interacts with the world on their behalf. The robot feeds them sensory input, and they control it, to a point where their experience of the world is similar to that of a human - except they have the internet more or less built-in, so they can access information internally, make voice calls to others without making a sound, and control how much pain they actually want to feel if the robot gets damaged. These avatars are called Threeps (after C-3PO), or, derogatory, clanks.
2. A tiny number of people had a different side effect from the flu: their minds have become open to let others in. So the locked-in can, if they have the cash, download their own minds into a real human body, and experience the world through a human avatar. However, the owner of the body is never entirely gone, and can take control back, and this is much more expensive than using a threep.
3. There is a virtual reality just for Locked In people, called The Agora, where they can meet, interact, and have their own personal space.

Our hero, Chris Shane, is one of those locked-in people. (They're called Hadens in the book, as their condition is called Haden Syndrome, after the US president whose wife got the condition while he was in office). We start the story on his first day working for the FBI, joining another agent to form a team of two focused on Haden-related cases. It's also a day of a Haden strike, as the government is changing the subsidies and funding for Haden sufferers (threeps are, after all, not cheap).

Of course, his (or her?) very first case is a murder. (While reading, I was sure that Chris is a guy. I'd swear that it was explicit at some point. Except, a review by Pat Rothfuss suggests the audio book exists in two version, one with a female narrator, one with a male one. This makes me wonder whether our narrator's sex might have been left more ambivalent than I thought... after all, "Chris" could be short for Christine.)

The world is introduced in a clear, concise infodump, right at the start. Basically, before the story starts, we get a school text book revision notes of the history of Haden's Syndrome, and within two pages or so, we know pretty much all the background that's needed. The rest is revealed casually and deftly, but easily accessible. It's not the sort of scifi novel that throws you in at the deep and and enjoys your disorientation.

The story is, of course, a whodunnit. Along the way, we learn more about the world, more about the different perspectives (of Hadens about others, and of others about Hadens). Characters occasionally discuss politics and change and what should or should not be done for Hadens. Should there be work to 'cure' the condition, or should all efforts be about enabling people who have it to function without physically altering them? It's a debate that reflects one about deaf culture (should there be more work aimed at enabling deaf people to hear, or more recognition of sign language, lip reading and deaf culture as just one different culture living in a multicultural society, with efforts to enable deaf people to live independently and successfully among us, but no efforts to make them hear the rest of us?). 

Lock In is a novel with simple, straightforward prose, clear dialogue, people discussing things - it is not a book that dazzles you with style, but it is a book that draws you in with ideas. One very obvious thing is that it doesn't present the locked in characters as victims. They may have some vulnerabilities, and they may have been badly afflicted when the condition first arose, but by the time of the story, they have successfully become fully functioning citizens.

Our hero is rich, his threeps are ultra-modern models, and he isn't shy to download himself at a moment's notice into a borrowed threep in a different part of the country, or use his internal gadgets to record video and audio and 3D scans. He is living in his parents' mansion, but looking to move his threep into a flat share with other threeps. Some Hadens might have to survive with unreliable threeps, parked in depressing wardrobe-like boxes to recharge, but that's a rich/poor divide, not an inherent victimhood. And just as the Hadens aren't victims, but highly capable individuals who can be very empowered by technology, they are also mixed people. Our hero is smart, brave and good, of course, but we also encounter firebrand campaigners, selfish egomaniacs, and at the very heart of the murder case, a cold-blooded murderer. Hadens, in short, are people. Good people, bad people, rich people, poor people. Some aspects of their lives are quite different from the rest of us, but in a way those are mere logistical matters. (Perhaps that is all 'culture' boils down to: the logistics of interaction - the rest is just humanity).

I enjoyed reading Lock In. It's thoughtful, engaging, and entertaining. Some things are never really expanded upon to the extent I had expected (I had expected more things about / in the Agora), and there are never really enough suspects in the story (it's not like those TV crime shows, where every character would have a motive), but it's a thoughtful book packing complex ideas into an entertaining whodunnit (without telling us what to think).

Rating: 4/5

Horns by Joe Hill

I’ve been noticing movie posters for Horns recently. Daniel Radcliffe with Horns, in posters that look more or less like Twilight-clones. But then the tweets and Facebook posts of publishers and scifi fans & writers seemed to suggest that a) the movie is quite good and b) the book, somewhat different from the movie, might be worth reading.

So I bought it, read it, and… found myself wondering what all the fuss is about.

Horns starts with Ig, the protagonist, waking up after a night of drunkenness. There are horns on his head. Pretty quickly, he learns that other people enter a sort of hypnotic state when they see the horns, and start revealing their guiltiest thoughts to him – which, quite often, are hateful thoughts. Ig, after all, is the only suspect the police ever linked to the rape and murder of his girlfriend, one year ago. There are some other magical powers, too: when Ig touches anyone, he suddenly knows all the darkness within them. Oh, and snakes are rather fond of him now...

I read Horns wondering what contemporary horror novels are like. The answer, apparently, is not particularly scary. The premise is executed well enough, but it reads like a thriller with a strong fantastical element and religious themes. There is a good dose of hatefulness and unpleasantness, but the horns are really just a tool to unravel a murder mystery – and to arm their bearer in the conflict this causes. There is some sense of humour, too, as it's hard to take things entirely seriously once Ig starts carrying around a pitchfork...

It’s not a boring novel. The pace is good in the present but not so much in the lengthy flashbacks: the oh-so-perfect coming-of-age-with-romance Americanah back story is hardly groundbreaking, and the turning-into-a-psycho flashback has little new to offer, either. There is at least one scene along the way that very effectively pulls at reader heart-strings, so the novel packs some emotional punch, too. But it never terrifies or scares the reader - I can honestly say that the end of the first quarter of An Instance of the Fingerpost left me much more horrified and traumatised than anything Horns had to offer. And the latter is a historical novel, rather than horror...

A half-decent read, but I had hoped for something more unsettling.

Rating: 3.5/5

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

You can look at / read an excerpt of Horrorstör on Tor.com.

Horrorstör is a beautifully designed object. This square-shaped book comes in a glossy cover, with a very IKEA-style appearance. The book has authentic catalogue inlays and introductory copywritten text content, uses catalogue-style fonts, and each chapter is named in a pseudo-Scandinavian way after a minimalist piece of furniture. It evokes the look and feel of an IKEA catalogue beautifully.

I have a weakness for quirky gimmicks, so when I saw it, I had to buy it. Once it was in my hands, it did not disappoint. It really does ooze with IKEA-ambience, and if there are awards for book design and presentation, the publishers (and designers) of Horrorstör deserve accolades.

But what about the story?

Amy, our protagonist, is a demotivated worker bee, young, cynical and sarcastic and not trying very hard. She could just as easily be one of the slackers in a Kevin Smith movie. She's trying to avoid her manager, Basil, who is altogether a bit too earnest and a devout follower of the Orsk way (Orsk being this novel's imaginary IKEA knock-off brand). As annoyed as Amy is with Basil's sincerity and officiousness, he was instantly my favourite character.

Her other colleagues are less memorable - there's the checkout lady who is ultra-nice and liked by everyone because she has no rough edges at all. There's the promiscuous girl, and a young man trying to get in her good book / pants. Everyone else might just about warrant a name, but they're soon forgotten anyway.

Our motley crew of mall staff has a problem: every night, things are getting vandalised in the store. Every morning, things are missing, or stained, or corrupted in some way. And tomorrow, there will be an inspection from the corporate headquarters, so Basil decides that a few people have to stay overnight and patrol the shop, to catch the pranksters and thieves in the act. It's him, the checkout lady, and Amy (because the strong men he originally picked managed to get out of it somehow, and because he can bribe/blackmail Amy by promising not to make her redundant & to instead sign off on a transfer to a different store that she has requested)

Once the shop closes its doors, the story follows the well-trodden path of a haunted house slasher. For a while, there is a gradual build-up of ominous and sinister events, and then there's a pivotal moment, after which we're into horror territory.

With a book as neatly presented as this, there is a risk that style might trump substance. Fortunately, Horrorstör's interior matches its exterior in tone. Starting out with a cheerful description of employees turning up to work (zombies, until they consume megadoses of Starbucks), the writing voice is slightly irreverent, light-hearted, not trying anything too clever but perfectly slick and inoffensive. The flair of the presentation and the tone of the story inside are in tune with each other.  If it were a wine, this'd be a Gallo / Blossom Hill Zinfandel / Grenache. We're firmly in light-entertainment territory.

The book has a sense of humour which fits perfectly with its exterior (or vice versa). There are plenty of wink-wink, nod-nod Easter eggs in the text, ranging from mock-Scandinavian words that sound rude in English, via real foreign words that English speakers tend to find amusing if they transliterate them (e.g. Kummerspeck), all the way to Nazi concentration camp slogans appearing in translation. It's tongue-in-cheek satire, comparable to the tone of movies like Josie and the Pussycats, or the corporate-world-mocking jibes of the TV series 30 Rock.

Once our gang are locked in for the night, the novel most reminded me of the movie House on Haunted Hill. That film is a guilty pleasure for me. It's not really all that scary because the build-up is quite short, and the horror, when it starts, is quite over the top, but it has its moments. Horrorstör does more or less the same. Short build-up and rapid escalation, with a few neat observations (never again will I look at the giant, windowless, artificially lit, retail-optimised labyrinth of IKEA without a sense that it is rather cynical and sinister).

The pace and rapid escalation makes it quite a 'safe' horror story - it never builds up bone-chilling terror, the way, say, The Orphanage, does. My problem is that I rather wanted it to do just that.

I definitely expect more from books than I do from movies. Horrorstör may one day make a perfectly decent teen slasher movie, like aforementioned House on Haunted Hill, or the Final Destination Series, or a zombie movie. But, at book length, I hoped for something a bit more gradual and suspenseful and scary. This isn't a suspense horror story, it's a horror-themed action story. It toys with the reader's sense of humour, not with his/her adrenaline.

All in all, it's a bit shallow, but readable, and beautifully presented: worth getting if you like light entertainment horror, but don't expect to be frightened.

Rating: 3.5/5

My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni

Tracy's sister Sarah has been missing & assumed dead for twenty years. In that time, Tracy has left her small home town and become a detective working in Seattle. Then, one day, Sarah's remains are found, and Tracy returns to her former home town, seeking closure.

My Sister's Grave is a thriller told in parallel timelines. We get the aftermath of Sarah's remains being discovered, but we also get the aftermath of her disappearance. Chapters are very short - scenes, really - and the story is engaging and entertaining all the way through.

Pretty soon, we learn that Sarah's disappearance has not been an unsolved mystery as far as everyone else was concerned: someone has been prosecuted and imprisoned for her murder. The aftermath of Sarah's death has been devastating for Tracy's family, and there is a sense that, more than the collapse of the town's main industry and employers, it's Sarah's disappearance that has killed the sense of community.

For all the years since Sarah's disappearance, Tracy had doubts about the trial, and it looks as if the local sheriff had some secrets...

The thriller is competently told and engaging when it comes to the central plot - a teenage girl's disappearance and the mystery of her murder. Where the story felt less than great is the romantic sub plot, which felt out of place to me. It felt like reading Mills & Boon: everything is too easy, too simple, too smooth.

If what you're looking for is a quick, entertaining thriller, briskly told and pleasantly entertaining, then this book is great. If you're hoping for something a bit richer, deeper, and likely to stick in your memory, then this isn't the novel for you at this time.

A perfectly satisfying airport paperback - great for whiling away a plane ride. And thanks to Amazon Prime's "Kindle First" programme, it's free for every member this month (October 2014).

Rating: 3.5/5

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The Hive Construct by Alexander Maskill

New Cairo is an underground city inside a giant crater, surrounded, like a crown, by waytowers / elevator exits & structural supports for the roof hanging over the city. The roof of the city is covered in solar panels; an artificial sun lights the inside. Inside the city, many people are effectively cyborgs, augmented with artificial limbs and organs. Unrest is stirring: an affliction has been shutting down the augmentations, leaving people disabled, and even dead. A curfew has been put in place. People from the areas where the infection is common are not allowed to leave the city, supposedly to keep the outside world safe. But it does not seem like a coincidence that those are also the poorer areas of the city - augmentations being pivotal to hard physical labour and industrial work. The rich, meanwhile, are not so restricted.

Then, a hooded stranger walks up to the waytower, seeking to return secretly into the city...

The Hive Construct won the 2013 Terry Pratchett Prize (for first novels). Despite the patron of this prize, this is not a comedy novel (nor a prize for humorous works). It's a thriller set in a future of CCTV-ridden, highly networked cities, full of bio-augmentations and contact lenses that work much like Google Glasses. In terms of technology, there is nothing in the book that seems inconceivable - and nothing you haven't encountered before in other science fiction. But the story isn't really interested in technology: it's interested in the politics and mechanisms of resistance and uprising.

The main characters are a computer hacker with a past, a city councillor who is part of a dynasty of super-wealthy businessmen politicians, and a mother who just lost her husband (a revolutionary) and who wishes to escape the city with her children. They all have different problems at the start: one wants to find and solve the virus problem, the second has been kidnapped, and the third finds herself drawn into directing operations due to her experience of running police ops from her computer, while waiting for a people smuggling opportunity to arise.

The Hive Construct has several admirable qualities: it never gets boring, it builds up some degree of credibility in its characters and their actions, and everyone has their own problems to deal with. No one is a square-jawed selfless hero, and no one is an evil villain.

Set against that is a series of flaws. While the setting may be called New Cairo, it does not feel authentically Egyptian. Where Ian MacDonald creates immersive futures set in emerging nations, this novel just picks up a few vaguely Egyptian-sounding character names, but could otherwise be just as easily set in America or Britain. And while the characters seem more or less believable (if not particularly Egyptian), the story still treats the wider population - crowds especially - as a malleable mass, easily manipulated, directed, a liquid flow, rather than anything feeling realistically like people. This gives the book a strangely detached feel, especially in the later chapters. These come across like a strategy game or a Roland Emmerich movie: lots of action, but not much punch.

In the end, it's a novel experimenting around with politics. Inspired by the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the London Riots, and every other recent instance of unrest and the wider problem of economic disparity, it's really a novel wondering about the rich and the poor, about politicians and corporations, about ends justifying means and how the means might affect the ends. It's a thought experiment, dressed as a scifi thriller. It's not stupid, but, like other novels which toy around with such themes, it feels a bit too calculated, a bit too concerned with its points to really connect. It's like reading China Mieville's more political novels (e.g. Iron Council), but without the linguistic distractions.

As thrillers go, it's not bad, and on a par with Michael Crighton's work. I had hoped for something a bit more ambitious, though.

Rating: 3.5/5