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Tuesday, 11 February 2020

The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne - Book Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

'Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie “Leo” Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, only has one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin?

'But when Leo’s childhood friend and first love Elliot returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one that got away, the boy Leo’s family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now, he’s the biggest catch of the season and he seems determined to make Leo’s life miserable. But old habits die hard, and as Leo navigates the glittering balls of the Valg Season, she finds herself falling for her first love in a game of love, lies, and past regrets.'

The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne is something of a strange book to try to pin down. It's a sci-fi story for sure, it takes place on-board ships that are part of a fleet orbiting a frozen earth, waiting for an ice-age to end (it reminds me a lot of Battlestar Galactica in a few ways); however, quite a bit of it also feels very old, kind of like a drama set in high society during the 1900's, it's even very similar to Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's a strange mixture of futuristic and old worldy that shouldn't work, but does really well.

The Stars We Steal follows Princess Leonie Kolburg, Leo to her friends, a member of a royal house that has fallen on hard times. Her family is running out of money, their ship is falling apart, and they desperately need to do something to help change their fortunes. Whilst Leonie has designed a new water purification system that could help improve conditions across the fleet and make them rich, her father is banking on her meeting a rich man to marry during the Valg, an event where royals and rich people enter into a Bachelor like event to pair off and get engaged.

Not only is Leo fighting against this expectation to go off and marry some rich man in order to save her family, she's confronted by a ghost from her past when Elliot arrives at the event. A childhood friend and her former fiance, their relationship fell apart when she was ordered not to marry him because he was poor. Now back, and stinking rich, Leo finds everything thrown on its head when Elliot seems determined to make her life a nightmare.

The science fiction elements of The Stars We Steal are really very subtle, and you can end up forgetting that it's actually set in space a lot of the time. The focus is instead given over to the people, with the human drama being the driving force behind the story. I have to be honest, I'm not normally one for overly romantic stories, and can find them to be a little mushy at times, but Alexa Donne manages to make Leo and Elliot's story engaging and interesting rather than over the top.

Leo isn't head over heels in love for the whole book, wanting to get together with her crush. Instead, she's a determined young woman, one with dreams and aspirations of her own that don't rely on having to get married. Thanks to this, the moments of romance between her and Elliot feel a lot more natural and nuanced, evolving due to the story rather than being the direct force behind the narrative.

The book doesn't just focus on the romance story, however, but exposes the somewhat sheltered Leo to the injustices in the rest of the fleet. Whilst living a life of luxury and pleasure there are people in the fleet struggling to survive, on ships that are falling apart, fighting to get enough food to get by. This plot is probably one of the most interesting parts of the book, and the hints at a criminal underside of this new society, and possible uprisings from the 'poorer' classes was something that I definitely wanted to see more of.

Whilst these ideas ended up playing a part in Leo's story they stayed as background details, concepts that she's aware of but doesn't really get exposed to. Because of this, it felt like there was something missing to the story. I loved the book, and found the character journeys to be engaging and interesting, but if there had been more focus given over to the rest of the fleet it would have become a perfect score.

The Stars We Steal is an engaging and enjoyable character driven story that uses its science fiction setting in fun and interesting ways. It's full of old fashioned interpersonal drama, queer representation, and big stakes. A great mashing of themes and genres that works brilliantly.

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Monday, 10 February 2020

All The Best Lies by Joanna Schaffhausen - Book Review

'The highly anticipated third novel in the award-winning Ellery Hathaway mystery series.

'FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than forty years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother's killer is uncomfortably close to home.

'Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Ellery has experience with both troubled families and diabolical murderers, having narrowly escaped from each of them.

'Far from home and relying only on each other, Reed and Ellery discover young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They start tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer—one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn't about to give up now.'

It's been a few years since I picked up a crime book. I used to read them a lot, and really enjoyed them, loving trying to see if I could figure out who the killer was before the characters in the book did. Because I'd not read anything in the genre for a while, outside of Sherlock Holmes books at least, I was nervous to get back into it, especially with the third boon in a series. I couldn't have been in better hands, however, as All The Best Lies proved to be not only one of the best crime stories I've read, but one of the most engaging character driven ones too.

The plot of All The Best Lies focuses on FBI investigator Reed Markham, who has taken on a forty year old cold case, that of the murder of his own mother. Having been raised with an adoptive family all his life, Reed's shocked when a recent DNA test reveals that his adoptive father is actually his biological father. Suddenly worried that their might be more undisclosed mysteries hidden in his past, and afraid that his dad might have had a part to play in his mothers death, he chooses to investigate.

I loved that the main story of the book is a cold case. So many times with crime novels it's about current killings, often serial killers, or cold cases where the killer suddenly reappears after years. The fact that there's nothing new going on here, that it's a crime well in the past instantly leapt out at me as so much more interesting. There's not a slew of witnesses, masses of evidence, or a race against the clock, instead Reed and Ellery have to fight for any scrap of evidence that they can find.

The people that the two of them had to interview had to remember back over forty years, struggling to help the investigators set up a timeline, and making proving alibis near impossible. Half the officers who originally investigated the case are either retired or dead.

If it wasn't for the personal stakes involved in the investigation I'm sure that the two of them would have given up. Thankfully, this personal involvement didn't just mean that there was incentive to keep the case going, but meant that I got a huge insight into both Reed and Ellery. Even though this is the third book in the series these insights meant that I never felt like I had missed out on anything. There was always a strong sense of who the characters were, their motivations and driving force.

The strong character development also meant that I found myself being dragged into the emotional story way more than I expected to be. I didn't know about the past adventures between Reed and Ellery, and whilst some of this was filled in for me I'd missed out on two books of the two of them together. Despite this, I became invested in their relationship, wanting the two of them to be able to get together, despite the huge hurdles that they would have to make it over to do so.

All The Best Lies didn't just rely on the romance between the two leads, however, but made family a hugely important part of the story, and not just Reed trying to find answers about his mothers death. His adoptive family played a big part, and there were moments of interaction between them that nearly broke me. There was one moment between Reed and his adoptive mother that actually make me cry a little. The fact that I found myself tearing up more than once during the story took me completely by surprise if I'm being honest.

I'd seen reviews about the rest of this series of books that described them as being hard to put down, and I find myself having to agree with that. I read the entirety of the book in a single day, something that I rarely do. Whilst this was helped that I was awake half the night with chronic pain, that was only a small factor as to why I didn't put the book down; desperately wanting to know what happened next was a much bigger factor.

All The Best Lies drew me in in ways that I wasn't expecting. It had a mystery that kept me engaged throughout whilst I tired to figure out who did it, with a satisfying conclusion that made sense and lived up to the mystery. The characters felt real, alive, and the character moments were some of the best bits of the book. This might have been the first entry in Joanna Schaffhausen's series that I read, but it's not going to be the last; I'm one hundred percent going to read the first two books, and can't wait for more to come out soon.

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Tuesday, 4 February 2020

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland - Book Review

'The sequel to Dread Nation is a journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

'After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother. But nothing is easy when you're a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodermus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880's America.

'What's more, this safe haven is not what it appears - as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her. But she won't be in it alone.

'Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by - and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not. Watching Jane's back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it's up to Katherine to keep hope alive - even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.'

A follow up to last year's Dread Nation was always going to be a hard book to do well. I was massively impressed with not just the fun zombie apocalypse alternate history presented in Justina Ireland's novel, but the social commentary that it made and the focus on racism and intolerance that was at its core. Any book that came next in the series would have a challenge in trying to meet the standards that book set. Thankfully, Deathless Divide seems to be the perfect sequel.

Picking up immediately after the events of the first book, we're thrown into a fight for survival straight away as Jane and Katherine try to save a small band of survivors from the massacre at Summerland. These early chapters, where the group race against an oncoming horde of the undead, trying to find a safe haven, immediately sets the tone for the book. It's a story where survival is the main drive for these characters, where they're constantly on edge, where attack can come at any time, and death can come for any character.

The first half of the book feels a lot like this, full of tension and an increasing sense of dread as you're waiting for things to go wrong constantly. And as invariably happens in stories like this, they do. There are some truly horrible moments during the story, moments that manage to pack more of an emotional impact that the first book managed, where characters that you've come to care about really suffer. It's hugely impressive that not only is Ireland able to continue on this story in a wonderfully satisfying way, but is able to make it feel more engaging and impactful.

The book takes something of a leap half way through, where events jump forward a year and a half, and we get to see how the characters evolve over a longer period. Honestly, at first I was a bit annoyed by this. I wanted to see what happened to the characters in these intervening months, and felt a little cheated that I didn't get to see this. Even the small hints we get at these events failed to fill that itch. Why would I just want to hear that Katherine travelled through the zombie infested forests of South America when I could read that adventure?

Despite this, it does feel like the more important, character driven story takes place after this time jump, and if I had to choose which I'd have I'd go for the characters stories first every time. The changes that they've been through during this time jump feel completely natural and create even better versions of them. Jane is damaged, completely broken by the world she's living in and the things that she's been through. She's skirting close to losing herself completely and needs the friendship she has with Katherine to bring her back. Katherine, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength, and getting to see a character that was always capable, but perhaps a little naive in the first book go on to be so strong and confident is a genuine treat.

Many of the themes that Ireland had front and centre in the first novel continue here, especially the role that racism played in America at this time period. That being said, it feels less a focus than in the first book, with the characters taking more of the limelight than the social trials that they face. One of the things that was only briefly touche upon in the first book, but is given a lot more focus here, however, is sexuality. It was briefly mentioned in Dread Nation that Jane was bisexual, but here we actually get to see her in a romantic relationship with another woman. There's quite a few same sex relationships that are either obvious or hinted at in the book, all of which are treated quite casually.

I love the fact that in a world where people are having to fight just to survive against the undead that relationships and sexuality aren't considered a big thing. Who cares who someone sleeps with then you have to worry about zombies ripping you to pieces? The same sex relationships are never made out to be anything more unusual that heterosexual ones, and I absolutely adored that.

Katherine's asexuality is also given more of a focus here, and the chapters that are written from her point of view make mention of it more than once, and she takes some time to explain how it feels for her; how she's never had the inclination to settle down into a romantic relationship with someone. With asexuality often being misunderstood and underrepresented it's wonderful that Katherine and her sexuality are given an opportunity to take centre stage, without a big drama being made about it.

Deathess Divide manages to bring many of the plot threads and story elements left open by the first book to a satisfying conclusion, and feels like it could be the last time we have with these characters and this world. If it is, it feels like an appropriate ending for them. However, I adore Jane and Katherine, they're wonderful, strong women, and I kind of want more of them. Thankfully, Justina Ireland ends the book in such a way that it's totally left open for more. And I really hope she does do more with them.

Buy Now On Amazon

Monday, 3 February 2020

New Starbucks Ad Features Trans Positive Message

Starbucks UK has revealed a new advert that features a trans man, and a positive transgender message.

The #WhatsYourName advert has been released as part of the companies new partnership with trans charity Mermaids. Starbucks has pledged a minimum of £100,000 to the children's charity, with more donations being raised from sales form their new mermaid cookies.

The advert features a young trans man named James, and show him going through life struggling with situations where he is called by his deadname. When visiting a Starbucks he's asked what his name is, and James is written on his cup before being called out to him.

Whilst this ad might seem somewhat unusual to some people, this is a situation that many trans and non-binary people have been through over the years. Choosing your new name can be a daunting and difficult task. Some people will go through number of names before they find one that fits, and being called by your name is a big part of seeing if it works for you. Having a stranger call out a name that you're trying is an easy way to see what feels right to you without facing issues of people calling you out on it.

With so many trans and non-binary people having either experienced this themselves, or knowing someone who has, it's not a surprise that it has resonated well with the community.

People have taken to social media to praise the advert, thanking the company for their positive representation.

Follow Him by Craig Stewart - Book Tour

'True love doesn't die – it devours. Just outside the sleepy town of Dreury, a mysterious cult known as The Shared Heart has planted its stakes. Its followers are numerous. More join every day. Those who are lost and suffering seem to be drawn to it; a home for the broken. When Jacob finds himself in need of such a home, he abandons his dead name and gives himself over to the will of The Great Collector.

'However, love refuses to let Jacob go so easily; his ex-fiancé, Nina, kidnaps him in the hopes that he can be deprogramed. As she attempts to return Jacob to the life they once had, a terrible fear creeps in: what if there isn't enough of her Jacob left? When The Great Collector learns of his missing follower, the true nature of The Shared Heart is unleashed. Nina discovers what Jacob already knows: that hidden behind the warm songs and soaring bonfires is a terrifying and ancient secret; one that lives and breathes… and hungers. And it's coming for them.'

I have to admit, I thought I knew what to expect of Follow Him for most of the book. Jacob has been taken in by a clearly brutal cult that's not afraid to torture and kill people, and his ex-fiance has to try to get him back from them without getting killed by them in the process. I thought it was going to be a psychological horror with a bit of an 'on-the-run' side to it, with very real human antagonists and threats to deal with. But over the course of the book I began to question some of this, beginning to think that maybe there's something a little more there than meets the eye, but never one hundred percent sure; and this kept my on my toes throughout, never knowing what to expect next.

The horrors of The Shared Heart are subtle to begin with, and at first it seems like most cults that people would be aware of, where a central figure has manipulated people into giving up everything to come and live and work together in a community tucked away from the outside world. Whilst this in itself is a quite disturbing situation to find yourself in, it's not until we begin to see the darkness just below the surface that we realise how dangerous and twisted the group is.

Once Nina has kidnapped Jacob from the cult it's very clear that this isn't a group that's just going to allow him to go, or one that will simply appeal to her good senses or the law to get her to release her prisoner; no, this is a group that will hurt her. Added into the tension of The True Heart finding her is the fact that Jacob is battling her as much as she's trying to break through his brainwashing. She's a woman that doesn't really know what she's doing, fighting desperately to get back the man she loved, and he's torturing her every step of the way.

Jacob, quite clearly, doesn't want to be saved from The True Heart. He doesn't want his old life back, and he doesn't want Nina. Whilst she's using their history together to try and help the man he once was, he's using that same history to hurt her. He brings up old wounds and tears them open, making past pain new and raw. The fact that Jacob is so vicious in his response to Nina and what she's doing is one of the most heart breaking parts of the book. She's trying to save someone she loves, and he's trying to destroy her.

The way in which Jacob fights against her the whole way, and steadfastly stands by The True Heart does make you begin to question whether Nina is really the hero of the story. She's fallen into what one would see as a more classically heroic role, saving a loved one from evil forces, but is she really a good person? She's kidnapped someone who left her when their relationship ended. She attacks him, tortures him, and tries to impose her will on him. If it wasn't for the fact that The True Heart is actually evil and kills people you'd have to question if she was the real villain. If Jacob had ran away and joined an Amish community to get away from the outside world would she still be the good guy for kidnapping him and keeping him tied up? I didn't expect Follow Him to make me think these kinds of questions, but very soon into the book I began to believe that perhaps there were no 'good guys' in this story.

I want to talk about what happens towards the end of the book now, so there will be some major spoilers, so if you don't want to know more but are intrigued I'd definitely say to go and grab a copy, as I've barely covered how good the book is. However, if you've already read it, or don't mind knowing how things end, please carry on, because there's some interesting things to discuss.

So, The True Heart are kind of onto something it seems. They're not just like every other crazy religion or cult that claims to know the truth, but seem to actually be onto things. I say seem to, because despite how the book ends I do have some very slight doubts. You see, when the mass suicides begin to take place and The Great Collector eats the cut out hearts, transforming into a monster this seems to make it quite clear that yes, their belief system was bang on and there is a supernatural entity at work here. However, we only ever see this through Nina, who has already displayed that she has been suffering from nightmarish hallucinations; so perhaps watching dozens of people slaughtering each other has tipped her over the edge into madness?

The fact that I don't know if the end is real or not both infuriates me and leaves me loving it. I want to know if the monster is real, but don't know if I'd be satisfied with knowing. Leaving it the way it does means that those who wanted the cult to be right are happy because there's a huge monster at the end of the book, and those who want a more subtle, psychological horror have an ending where Nina is left broken and mad by the events she's been through.

However you choose to take the ending, I think you'll be like me and be left shocked by the conclusion. I was in no way expecting the brutal and bloody conclusion that Craig Stewart gave us, and was left in a sense of shock from it. I didn't know what to think or feel once I'd finished that final page; and that meant that the book stuck with me. Because of this ending Follow Him will definitely be one of the more memorable books I've read this year, and I'm certainly looking forward to reading it again knowing the conclusion, to see if I can possibly make my mind up about if I believe what Nina's seeing or not.

Follow Him is a book that piles the tension on from the first few pages and doesn't let up once. There's a genuine sense of dread throughout as Nina is hunted by The True Heart. We get to see a character trying desperately to do what they think is right in a scenario that gets ever more and more frightening and out of hand, one that is sure to leave the reader shuddering. I cannot wait to see what more people think of this title, and will certainly be putting more of Craig Stewart's work on my to be read list in the future.

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Wednesday, 29 January 2020

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland - Book Review

The second volume of Justina Ireland's Dread Nation series, Deathless Divide, hits shelves next week. As such, it's probably a good time to go back and revisit my review for the first book in the amazing alternate history zombie horror series.

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‘Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.’

Whilst on the surface Dread Nation seems like a fairly straightforward alternate history story there’s a lot more to the world of the zombie-filled reconstruction-era America that Justina Ireland has created than it would at first appear.

Set within a world where the undead brought the American Civil War to an abrupt end, readers follow Jane, the black daughter of a wealthy white plantation owner, as she trains to become an Attendant, a bodyguard for a wealthy white woman.

‘An Attendant’s job is simple: keep her charge from being killed by the dead, and her virtue from being compromised by potential suitors. It is a task easier said than done.’

Following the end of the war the government established the Native and Negro Reeducation Act: an initiative that would train First Nation children and children of colour to fight zombies. This is one of the first places that it becomes apparent that there’s more to Dread Nation than just kick-arse women of colour fighting the undead. The combat schools created by the NNRA are based a lot more within reality than you would expect. For decades in the history of the United States native children were ripped from their families and sent to schools where they would be taught to be ‘civilised’ – to act like white people. This was often presented as something that would benefit these children, a way of bringing them into society and bettering them, where in reality it was often brutal and incredibly damaging. The combat schools are no different.

In the early parts of the book Jane is often worried about getting kicked out of Miss Preston’s. This isn’t because she wants the social advantage that graduating from the school would bring (think the Attendant version of Harvard or Princeton), but rather because many of the other schools are lacking. They train only a fraction as hard and over a shorter period, which often means that those graduating don’t last long. A background element to the story, this is a surprising commentary on how many systems in the United States are structured against people of colour, offering just enough that white people feel that they’ve done something good to help, yet failing to actually provide POC with anything that actually gives them any real advantages or advancements.

As the book goes on the commentary on life in America for POC only gets stronger, as more and more overt racism moves to the fore. This mainly comes from the antagonists of the book, rich white men who belong to the Survivalists, a political group that wants to ‘take back America’ and make things like they were before. Whilst slavery is now illegal in this world these people make it their mission to find workarounds for these laws, using black people as front line defenders against the undead, yet failing to provide them with real weaponry, keeping them shut away behind the scenes, giving them barely enough food to live, and brutally torturing them when they break the rules. Slavery in everything but name.

We get to see Jane, a young black woman who grew up treated well and sheltered from the horrors of slavery, have to face the harsh reality of life before the undead, and those who want to bring that world back. She’s not a fool, she’s faced prejudice countless times herself, but the events of the book push her to her physical and emotional limits. Accompanying her throughout most of the events of the novel is Katherine, a fellow student from Miss Preston’s. Katherine, however, is fair enough to pass as white, and has to play this role for a portion of the story.

This allows us to observe a new and mostly unexplored approach to racism: a black woman who everyone thinks is white having to see and hear awful racist things and not only not say anything, but to play along with it. Katherine begins the book as an annoying character, and something of an enemy for Jane, but by the final pages she’s an incredibly well rounded person, and one who has more than earned both ours and Jane’s affection.

One of the more surprising elements of the book is the lack of any romantic subplot, something that most books shoehorn in. These are strong and independent young women who not only don’t need men in their lives, but frankly don’t have the time to worry about romance whilst fighting to survive.

As well as representing people of colour, Dread Nation features LGBT+ leads. In a scene towards the end of the book it’s revealed that not only is Jane bisexual, but that Katherine is asexual. There’s isn’t a huge amount made of this, and it doesn’t hugely impact the story, yet it’s still great to see such positive representation. The characters aren’t defined by their sexuality, nor does it dictate events.

Dread Nation is a book with surprising layers, a story that on the surface is an action adventure story with women of colour fighting zombies in an alternate history. But beneath this is a look at racism and slavery in America, a story that shows that even though laws change and politics alter, people are still judged solely on the colour of their skin. Though never having been treated poorly due to the colour of my skin, as a transgender woman it’s easy to understand what it’s like to be judged as soon as someone sees you, because of who you are. Dread Nation captures these feelings perfectly: it puts you in the shoes of someone who is trapped in this life of hate and prejudice but can’t escape from it, even when they prove to be a more competent, kinder, and braver person than those in power.

A book with something important to say, Dread Nation is sure to stick with you long after you finish reading.

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Monday, 27 January 2020

The X-Men and The Avengers: Gamma Quest by Greg Cox - Book Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

'TWO MISSING TEAMMATES. ONE DEADLY ENEMY...

'The X-Men - mutant protectors of a world that fears and hates them. The Avengers - Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the greatest super-team ever assembled.

'When the Scarlet Witch of the Avengers and Rogue of the X-Men both disappear under mysterious circumstances, each team's search leads them to more questions than answers. Desperate to recover their missing teammates, they must join forces to uncover the truth. But their efforts will bring them up against a foe with the deadliest power of all: to make them turn on each other!'

Team-up stories are often one of the best parts in comics. It’s an exciting moment when characters that don’t normally get to share the page team up, especially when two teams of heroes have to work together. The X-Men and The Avengers: Gamma Quest brings together the two biggest Marvel teams as the groups have to work together to track down missing teammates Scarlet Witch and Rogue.

Originally printed as three separate volumes, Lost and Found, Search and Rescue, and Friend or Foe?, across 1999 and 2000, this new release brings the entire story together into one collected edition. Much like previous omnibus editions that Titan have produced, this is a chunky book, totaling nearly 600 pages of small text. I know 600 pages isn’t huge but the individual books clocked in at 800 pages, so that should indicate how small the text in this edition is.

Despite the almost imposing size of the book the story reads a lot better in this format, as the trilogy feels like one story broken into three pieces. However, it does at times feel as if it has been padded out slightly to make up three individual books, rather than being one well thought out story.

Sometimes this is because of the large number of fights in the book, with the heroes having to not only fight villains and their minions, but each other too. These fights are something that’s to be expected from superhero stories, but these scenes often go on for so long that they end up feeling boring more than entertaining. Added to this, there are points where it feels that sentences are being padded out, adding descriptors that feel unnecessary; some parts of the book come across as though every other word has been replaced using a thesaurus, just to include bigger words and lengthen the narrative.

Greg Cox has written dozens of great books over the years, with novels that tie into popular franchises such as Star Trek and Alias, as well as writing adaptations of films and other comic book stories. His recent Batman novel, Batman: Court of Owls, was a great read and one of my favourites of 2019. Cox is a good writer, so the general lack of interest I felt whilst reading this new collection took me by surprise. Perhaps this is due to this it being some of his earlier work. Then again, it might just be my own experience of the book and others will enjoy it.

There is some good stuff here, despite my previous complaints. The book has a good selection of characters from both teams involved, and contains enough references to previous stories and other characters being off doing other things that it feels like it fits into the Marvel Universe well. Cox clearly knows these characters and this universe well, and it comes across like he’s a big fan. This helps make parts of the book a lot of fun, and recreates some of what makes the source material great.

The X-Men and The Avengers: Gamma Quest is a good book, but it didn’t set my world on fire. If the story was a two volume collection rather than three perhaps it would have flowed better for me, and felt better paced. As it is, it’s a decent story that perhaps overstays its welcome due to its length.

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Saturday, 25 January 2020

The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes by James Lovegrove - Book Review

'Tales of treachery, intrigue and evil… Maverick detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful chronicler Dr John Watson return in twelve thrilling short stories.

'The iconic duo find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events: an otherworldly stone whose touch inflicts fatal bleeding; a hellish potion unlocks a person’s devilish psyche; Holmes’s most hated rival detective tells his story; a fiendishly clever, almost undetectable method of revenge; Watson finally has his chance to shine; and many more – including a brand-new Cthulhu Casebooks story.'

The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes is the latest Sherlock Holmes release from Titan Books, bringing together a dozen short stories by the acclaimed James Lovegrove. Having written many full length novels, and short stories about the world's greatest detective and his faithful partner, John Watson, Lovegrove is one of those rare writers that can not only tell a great mystery story, but captures the essence of the characters wonderfully.

This collection seems to aim to offer a little of everything, with some stories that could have very easily fit into the original tales as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whilst others show the characters in some very different, and far removed scenarios.

The Adventure of the Marchindale Stiletto, the first story in this collection, feels like a very early adventure in the Sherlock Holmes canon, one where Holmes is presented with a relatively simple puzzle (for him at least), and there's no real criminal element at work. The story revolves around a missing family heirloom that Holmes is asked to find. The story doesn't go out of its way to give you the solution to the puzzle, but gives enough clues that even if you don't work out every single detail you end up figuring out the broader strokes.

This is also true for The Problem of the Emperor's Netsuke, which sees Holmes called in to investigate the theft of dozens of priceless artifacts on loan from the Emperor of Japan, thefts that have been cunningly hidden by well crafted duplicates. As with the first story, it's a fairly harmless case where no one is hurt and the 'criminal' is actually a really nice person, and you'll find yourself figuring out who's responsible before Holmes reveals it.

These are nice little stories that show the almost fiendish simplicity that often accompanied some of Sherlock Holmes' stories, where just enough information is given to the reader to allow you to feel like you're there working it out alongside Holmes. Some of these stories, however, are decidedly different.

The Affair of the Yithian Stone is set within the world of Lovegrove's Cthulhu Casebook trilogy, where Holmes and Watson battle against the otherworldly forces of Cthulhu and other denizens from Lovecraft's world. Here the two detectives are having to deal with a deadly ancient artifact imbued with technology and magic far beyond our understanding. Whilst it's not the usual kind of Sherlock Holmes story it still feels like the same characters, and getting to see them interacting with the world of the Cthulhu mythos is brilliant.

Another story that takes inspiration from other literary works is The Strange Case of Dr Sacker and Mr Hope. Taking a cue from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this story sees Holmes being transformed into a terrifying murderer by a potion made up by Dr Jekyll. Targeting those criminals he was investigating this new Mr Sherringford Hope begins a murder spree before transforming his old partner Dr Watson into Dr Ormond Sacker. A chilling and horrific tale that shows how deadly a person Holmes would be if he ever turned to evil, the story is also a good bit of fun Sherlock Holmes history, as the two names Lovegrove gives these new personalities are the original names given to them when Conan Doyle firs started developing the characters.

Whether you're interested in these new and strange versions of the characters, or want stories that feel true to the original works, The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes can provide readers with brilliant stories that are sure to entertain. Not only is Lovegrove able to tell interesting and engaging mysteries, but he's able to write versions of Holmes and Watson that feel right, that capture that magic that made them such a success when written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Wednesday, 22 January 2020

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Book Review

'The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.'

I have to be honest, I'd not read the blurb for Gods of Jade and Shadow before I started to read it. I'd been given a copy to read and thought the cover looked great so just picked it at random from my to be read pile. At first I thought that it might end up being the kind of book that I wouldn't usually enjoy, as the first few chapters were centred on Casiopea and her life in her grandfather's home. She is presented as a young woman that has become stuck into a poor situation thanks to events outside of her control. She's barely better than a servant to her family, just because of decisions her mother made in her youth.

These first few chapters play out like many 'normal' novels, where there's nothing that happens in the book that's outside the realms of everyday life. I thought this was going to be a story about a young woman breaking free of her family and finding her own place in the world. And it was, to be fair; except for she's doing it whilst on a road trip with an ancient god. The sudden introduction of Hun-Kame, the deposed lord of the underworld was a surprise twist that I honestly didn't see coming. But it was something that the book desperately needed.

The road trip that Casiopea and Hun-Kame go on, crossing Mexico and meeting various magic users, gods, and demons, plays out well, and doesn't rush in its pacing. The two lead characters get to spend a great deal of time together, and their relationship feels pretty real. It's nice to see Casiopea get to break free of the negative thoughts and feelings that her family have worked into her and become her own person, whilst seeing Hun-Kame gradually begin to become more human is fascinating and engaging.

The story of Casiopea itself, and her issues with her family are the weakest parts of the book, and the story only really seems to come to life when she's journeying with Hun-Kame in order to find the missing pieces of his body so that he can return to his former godhood. Whenever Casiopea's familial struggles took centre stage the book would lag, and because of this I found that I'd occasionally get bored with the narrative.

In contrast, the more that the author delved into this world of Mayan mythology and magic the more I was drawn in. The setting and the mythology of the book is one that I've not read before. I've seen stories use christian mythology a lot, and things like Norse and Egyptian mythology are pretty well known and well used in sci-fi and fantasy. Mayan mythology, on the other hand, felt new and exciting because it was something that I'd not seen used before. In some ways the book made me think of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, which drew on other underutilised mythology and cultures as inspiration.

Gods of Jade and Shadow is a fun road-trip coming-of-age style story where a young woman gets to forge her own future. The mystical elements are definitely the draw though, and actually make her personal story feel all the more real. It's a shame the book ended the way it did, as I'd want to see more from these characters and this world, but don't get the impression that Silvia Moreno-Garcia will return to it. If she does, I'm definitely interested to see what would come next.

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