Book Review – The Girl With All the Gifts by MR Carey

Do yourself a favour and don’t read the back cover of The Girl With All The Gifts.  It won’t ruin the story for you but to my mind, when an author goes to the trouble to set up a clever opening to a well ploughed genre and then marketing decides to undercut that by telling you exactly what the book is like, because hey the point is shifting books… well…

If you like post apocalyptic thrillers with a decent scientific conceit underpinning it and an engaging read, go out and buy this book.  Go, do it now.

But if you if you don’t really care or if you are one of those folk who like to know what the story is about before you go and make your investment, read on.  But I am going to spoil it.  Well, spoil it as much as the back cover does anyway.

All Melanie has ever known, all that she can remember is her room, the classroom, the showers and the corridor.  Each day men in uniform come and collect her and take her to the classroom.  She has a few different teachers, but her favourite is Miss Justineau.  Miss Justineau teaches them about poetry, and Greek myth.  The other teachers tell them about the time before the Breakdown, before the Hungries and the wild Junkers.

The back cover of my edition  of The Girl With All The Gifts quotes Jenny Colgan of the Sunday Times as labelling it “Kazuo Ishiguro meets The Walking Dead”.  I haven’t read any Ishiguro but the link to The Walking Dead sits uncomfortably with me (but I understand it’s shorthand for “this book has Zombies, shambling fans of the Walking Dead will love it”) or certainly not the most apt genre comparison one could make.  I’d say it shares a family resemblance to certain works by Richard Matheson.

So yes it has Zombies. It has survivor tension and there is a race on to find a cure for the Hungry pathogen. As much as I like The Walking Dead, The Girl With All The Gifts is a much tighter and tense piece of work(maybe this is where the Ishiguro reference exerts itself) .  The action set pieces are limited and brutal but this book earns praise for the maintaining the tension between the Survivors and drip feeding information about the Breakdown and the work towards a cure. This is no endless trudge, this book has a resolution, it has a finishing point and if you are very clued in to the hints Carey drops you might anticipate it.  Looking back it’s a wonderful structured book with characters that we want to succeed against the worst Hungries and Humanity can throw up.  It’s that hope I think that in the end masks the clues that Carey has dropped.

From a gender perspective The Girl With All The Gifts was good.  The lead character is a young girl.  The two scientists at the base where the story begins are female, two of the named teachers are female.  Of the main cast three out of the five are women. Plenty of women talking to women about things other than men, sometimes not nice things but…

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw it movie form.  I am not sure that it would survive the Hollywood concept of what makes for a good movie though.  The Girl With All The Gifts is intelligent and well crafted genre fiction, and while I could put it down, it was very compelling and a joy to return to.

Australian readers can purchase it from Booktopia, it’s released tomorrow.

This copy was provided by the publisher.

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Booktopia Free Shipping - Twilight Zone DVD’s, Frazetta Doco

Booktopia have another free shipping deal running until Friday midnight so I have trawled through some of the bargains in Science Fiction and Fantasy  DVD’s to save you the trouble, though the free shipping deal applies to everything including pre-orders.  You might for instance want to check out JK Rowling’s Crime novel for yourself.  You can read my review here.

But on to the deals:

DVD’s

 The New Twilight Zone Season One and Two are at 37% and 42% off respectfully.  If classic horror is more your thing The Haunted Palace ( a movie adaptation of a HP Lovecraft’s The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward) starring Vincent Price can be snapped up for under $10.  In a similar price range is A Vampire’s Kiss starring Nicholas Cage if you like a bit of romcom horror.

There’s also a documentary on the Fantasy Artist Frank Frazetta called Frazetta : Painting With Fire that looks interesting for those of us who discovered fantasy before Harry Potter.

For hardcore fans of science fiction the original Solaris – Solaris (Distinction Series : 2 Disc Set) starring Natalya Bondarchuk and  Donatas Banionis is good value at $13.95.

 

 

 

But by all means checkout their books as well.  The code you will need for free shipping is GIFTS.

 

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Neglected Night Creatures

Lisa L Hannet has released her second column over at This is Horror.  If you missed her first it can be found here. That was an excellent article lifting the lid in Australian Gothic. 

This article called On Behalf of Neglected Night Creatures briefly discusses the possibility of including less well known or well used night creatures in fiction.

 

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Ellen Datlow’s Fearful Symetries is a go

Ellen Datlow and Canadian publisher Chizine teamed up to produce a top notch horror anthology Fearful Symmetries.  For a while there it  looked like the project wasn't going to make to hit the funding target.  And well if Ellen Datlow and Chizine couldn’t pull of that kind of project then what hope for the rest of us.

It seems,however, it was a matter of just casting the call  for support a little wider.  Neil Gaiman and some other industry heavyweights kicked in some support in the form of tweets and posts and with 33 hours to go we have an anthology fully funded.

Check it out.

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eBook Review–Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott

Perfections is McDermott’s second novel, released in digital format through Xoum publications.

I reviewed Kirstyn’s first novel Madigan Mine, released in both pbook and ebook fromm by Picador - here.

If you liked Madigan Mine, you’ll still like Perfections but they don’t occupy quite the same space. 

Ian Mond, Kirstyn’s co-host on the Writer and the Critic described it as more of a character piece.    Kirstyn herself has tentatively called it modern urban gothic, situating it at the subtler end of the horror continuum.

And I think Perfections is a subtler piece of work than Madigan Mine. I always had suspicions with what was going on with Kirstyn’s first novel, it had a stronger affinity with well known Horror tropes.

Don’t get me wrong though, Perfections is still gut wrenchingly nasty at times, enough to really unsettle you but I was hard pressed to figure out where the horror was going to emerge - which of course kept me slightly on edge.

Now you notice here I am avoiding telling you the story.  And I am not going to reveal anything about the plot, aside from the blurb:

Two sisters. One wish. Unimaginable consequences.

Not all fairytales are for children.

It’s best to dive into this one blind, trust the author to entertain you. It’s not one to give you nightmares but Kirstyn will make you love the characters and then let things unravel so that the horror, the tragedy hits you unawares.

If you enjoy King when he does well crafted characters in slightly off kilter realities then I think you’ll enjoy Kirstyn’s work here.  The horror, the suspense comes from or empathy with the characters she has crafted, and what she does to them.

The writing is smooth flowing prose that seems effortless but that I suspect was agonising to refine.

Even cushioned with anger it hurts to say the words, to hear them, and Antoinette knows with gut-sinking certainty that if Paul was standing here before her, if he had the balls to stay and plead his own case instead of sending Greta as proxy, then she would have little hope of resistance. Poised on the edge of her life here, Paul and their flat and the history that seeps from every wall, every photograph stuck careless to the fridge, every half-burned candle and guilty wine stain on the carpet, how easy it would be to close her eyes and jump, to allow herself the exhilaration of free-fall.

There is so much more I would love to talk about but it would give the game away.– the cover for instance and how well it suits the work. What makes it a smart bit of art amongst all the other “male gaze” cover art out there.

Horror has a bad reputation, possibly well deserved in some areas within the genre, where the grotesque comes to the fore, where violence and blood are thrown at the reader to make up for a lack of real substance.

McDermott, however, combines literary skill and a horror that focuses on the personal, on human desires and interactions, to give us a work of quality that should appeal to a broad audience.

Perfections was provided to me by the author.

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.

 

 

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Book Release–Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott

Kirstyn McDermott has released her long anticipated second novel Perfections, from Xoum.

I reviewed Kirstyn’s award winning first novel Madigan Mine here.

So without having read Perfections I will give you a warning, Kirstyn is crafty, she sucks you in, gets you to love the characters and then rips their hearts out.

Expect something special, some thing especially nasty.

Two sisters. One wish. Unimaginable consequences.

Not all fairytales are for children.

Perfections is the chilling new novel from the author of Madigan Mine.

You can purchase it through Xoum or through Amazon (and other sites shortly).

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Book Release–Blood and Dust by Jason Nahrung

I was scooped on this release by Jason himself (helps when you are the author),but it’s here folks, in time for Christmas or just after,  when your previously luddite book reading relatives are looking to fill up their kobo/kindle/tablet/iphone with good fiction.

Kevin Matheson works at his family’s service station in the Queensland outback. Life is all about cricket, fishing, the pub, his girlfriend. Then it all gets blown to hell – he’s caught up in a hideous, unbelievable world of cops and monsters in which two rival gangs of vampires vie for control, all while maintaining a charade of humanity.

Kevin has to cope with his new existence as a vampire, adapt to the destruction of his family and play the politics of the supernatural world. The biker Taipan and his lover Kala make for unlikely allies as they lead the nomadic Night Riders in their fight to be free of the control of the Brisbane-based Von Schiller group, led by the ruthless Mira and her pack of blood-addicted human servants.

I like Mr Nahrung’s vampires, none of that sparkly, vegetarian stare fest crap from Twilight, yeah you heard me Twilight.

You can buy it at all good digital outlets but start at Xoum and check out there other titles.

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South of Sanity–Horror in the Antarctic

I was listening to Radio National earlier this week and Richard Fidler was talking to Melissa Langridge an Australian marine biologist who recently worked in Antarctica. The conversation around her research - the diving into ice cold water, having to wory about aggressive fur seals and basically having to painfully thaw your extremities was great. (download audio here)

But there was a little twist to the story.  The team members,cooped up in the Antarctic base decided to pass their downtime by creating a horror film about a group of scientists being stalked by a deranged murderer in an Antarctic base.

Apparently the film itself has gone viral checkout the trailer below

As an odd bit of trivia, the writer’s mother, a freelance make-up artist who provided blood and gore recipes for special effects, previously worked on Dr Who.

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Speaking of Blood and Dust

Here’s the cover for Jason Nahrung’s Blood and Dust, from Xoum.  I presume the titles will be available through major digital publishers like Amazon, Kobo etc as their doesn’t appear to be a buy link on the site.

Here’s the jacket copy/blurb:

Kevin Matheson works at his family’s service station in the Queensland outback. Life is all about cricket, fishing, the pub, his girlfriend. Then it all gets blown to hell – he’s caught up in a hideous, unbelievable world of cops and monsters in which two rival gangs of vampires vie for control, all while maintaining a charade of humanity.

Kevin has to cope with his new existence as a vampire, adapt to the destruction of his family and play the politics of the supernatural world. The biker Taipan and his lover Kala make for unlikely allies as they lead the nomadic Night Riders in their fight to be free of the control of the Brisbane-based Von Schiller group, led by the ruthless Mira and her pack of blood-addicted human servants.

 

I like Jason’s Vampires.  None of this sparkly rubbish. It started with his short Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn which was undeniably Vampires in a sunburnt country.  Then he hit me with Salvaged.

So yeah I’m hanging out for this one.  Price on publication will be AUD$4.99.

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eBook Review–Ms Cellophane by Gillian Polack

Ms Cellophane, published by Momentum, is a digital reissuing of Polack’s previously titled Life through Cellophane published by Eneit Press in 2009.

It’s the tale of Elizabeth, a newly redundant public servant, who is finally free of an overbearing and underworking psychopath of a boss.  Or so she thinks.

It’s a inward looking tale of a woman's self discovery.  Redundancy gives her the time and space to find the person buried by life and work traumas.

It’s a tale of a mirror with its own unnerving and at times unpleasant agenda.

Kaaron Warren described it as “part gentle love story and part bizarre horror tale”.  I think if forced, I’d be inclined to categorize it under general fiction as opposed to genre fiction.

There were elements of romance and a blossoming relationship but it’s not a central focus for me and so I’ll respectfully disagree with Kaaron.  For me its more a drama than a romance.  On the charge of bizarre horror tale I’ll quote one of the characters on the situation surrounding the mirror:

”if this were a horror tale we would know its[the mirror’s] parameters”

So for me the horror elements of the book are a little too nebulous and understated for it to fit wholly under horror.  It sits on the boundary, perhaps unnerving magical realism might be worth chucking in here.  Personally the more horrific part of the tale is the treatment of Elizabeth by her boss, all the more horrific because situations like this do occur.

Ultimately it’s a good read.  I think Polack’s mix of perspectives; first person diarised accounts, juxtaposed with third person narrative gives us a very real sense of Elizabeth’s inner thoughts while not becoming overbearing.  The novel takes awhile to pick up pace as we get to know Elizabeth but by the end we are treated to an edge of your seat mystery.

You’ll appreciate the work if you have ever had the fortune(misfortune?) to work for a government department and you enjoy a work that is focussed on a personal journey.  The fantastical elements straddle that border between genre and literature so that if you are coming from either camp you won’t have an issue.

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.

 

 

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The Undeading

A very clever and that incorporates the pop culture Zombie ccraze and a very simple health message. Enjoy.

 

H/T @Cacotopos

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Book Review– Lady of the Shades by Darren Shan.

Lady of the Shades is Darren Shan’s return to writing for adults. Shan is more well known for his children's  series Cirque Du Freak and Demonata, but has previously written The City trilogy for adults and mature teens.

Lady of the Shades is a standalone title and skirts the edges of a number of genres, making it an interesting and enjoyable piece with wide appeal.
The Times lauded it as “Utterly unputdownble”, an appellation or sentiment much overused in the marketing of books. It was, however, a very quick and enjoyable read for me.

Ed, an American author on the hunt for a story for his next book, arrives in London looking for inspiration. A stranger in a strange city, he's haunted by a deadly secret that refuses to stay buried and no matter how hard he tries he cannot escape the manifest sins of his past.

What Ed wants is answers, what he finds is something he definitely didn't bargain for: the beautiful and untouchable Andeanna Menderes. Andeanna is a woman who is dangerously bound to one of London's most notorious crime lords and if they are caught together it could mean death for them both.
Ensnared in an illicit affair that can only be conducted in the shadows, Ed's world is turned upside down as a series of shattering revelations blurs the line between what's real and what's not...[source: paperback blurb]

Apart from the prologue, the novel is delivered in the first person.  It’s a choice that I think works well if the author is trying to play on the possibility that the ghosts are just a figment of the protagonist’s imagination or an indicator of their state of mind.

I like stories that leave the reader unsure of the reality of ghosts and Shan performs a great balancing act with between the mundane and paranormal elements, to keep the reader on edge and guessing right until the last chapter. 

I thought I had the mystery figured out about three quarters of the way through the novel but Shan was practised enough to make me doubt myself and keep reading with a keen desire to know the ending.

The action is fast paced and brutal the mystery elements well constructed. Whether you are a fan of crime, mystery or ghost stories it will be a compelling read. On the strength of this work I am inclined to check out Darren’s other novels.

This book was provided by the publisher at no cost to myself.

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Last Call for Submissions–Blood Stones by Ticonderoga

Ticonderoga is putting out an Urban Fantasy collection called Blood Stones, submissions close on the 15th of May.

This is the first in a series of anthologies from Ticonderoga Publications that will focus on non-traditional horror. I want stories that are horrific, but that also fit within other genres—let’s look beyond the borders. This year’s anthology will focus on non-traditional urban fantasy. This means that I don’t want stories that feature vampires, witches or werewolves; if you send one, it probably won’t make it through to the final cut….[read on if you're interested]

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20% Off–Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker

Ticonderoga Press has announced that eager readers can pre-order Felicity Dowker’s Bread and Circuses from Indie Books Online.

Bread and Circuses is Felicity’s debut collection. The Writer and The Critic did an interview with Felicity in which talk of this collection came up. The interview can be found here.

Felicity won the 2009 Ditmar for Best New Talent and has been an Aurealis and Australian Shadows Award finalist.

Felicity is contributing editor to the excellent Dark Fantasy weblog Thirteen O’Clock.

It’s wonderful to see Bread and Circuses nearing publication.  Congrats to Russell and Felicity.

The link for pre-order is here.

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Book Review–The Return Man by V.M. Zito

The Return Man is V.M.Zito’s debut novel.  It’s a curious, entertaining mix of zombie apocalyptic fiction and military thriller.

The story
A contagion  has rendered half the US a dead zone where zombies roam free.

Our protagonist Henry Marco is the Return Man. He’s paid by relatives or friends of the “zombified”, living in the safe states of the US, to “return” them or kill their zombie form.

Zombies retain some memory of their previous lives, “emotional geography” Marco calls it and it enables him to track zombies with a few clues about their former lives.

So Marco kills the dead, “again” and collects personal affects to send to the relatives as proof of job done.  His brother in law runs the operation from safe side while Marco also searches for the one zombie he can’t locate, his wife.

The catalyst for the book’s plot is the discovery by politicians in the Safe States, that there was a scientist working on a cure for the contagion.  Unfortunately he was working at a medical corrections facility in the heart of zombie territory.  Marco is the man chosen to lead a special forces team into the facility and retrieve what information they can, written or biological. 

Of course,  all is not what it seems.

Fresh Zombies
Zombies are effectively mainstream; possibly not as mainstream as Vampires, but they are no longer just the fare of B grade horror theatres or cult followings.  That V.M. Zito has given us a fresh story and a compelling take on the zombie says something about his skill. It will be interesting to see what he tackles next.

I like that he’s chosen to go with the slow zombie, rather than the steroid infused super zombies that are featured in the Resident Evil franchise.  To me, a slow and relentless walking dead is far more horrific and helps set the tone of the book.  Marco is a survivor, but he’s being stretched thin, he can out run and outthink his zombie adversaries but he’s just one man and the dead are relentless.

The Return Man is equal parts gruesome zombie horror and thriller.  As soon as we have a good grounding in who Marco is and what his life entails, the book sets off at a blistering pace, never giving the reader a chance to catch their breath.  There are plenty of explosions and gruesome scenes that would delight a movie art department.

It finishes with some nice and unexpected twists at the end, some good misdirection on Zito’s behalf.
The only issue I had was with some of Zito’s characterisation, and then it was only some of the supporting cast.  The most army sergeant who assists Marco, Ken Wu, struck me as a little two dimensional, a little stereotypical but not enough to disrupt my enjoyment.

Oh and if your looking for strong female characters, you’d best look elsewhere, this is a boys own adventure.

Staggering relentlessly to a movie screen near you.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a version of The Return Man on the big screen. It has the right balance of horror and action.  It  appeals to the sense that American is in decline, once again an underdog.  It’s a tale of the individual against the many, dead or alive.

If you like intelligent Zombie fiction, of the 28 Days Later variety I think you’ll enjoy The Return Man.

This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.

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eBook Review–Creeping in Reptile Flesh by Robert Hood

Creeping in Reptile Flesh is a collection of 15 stories by a Robert Hood, dubbed as “Australia’s Master of the Macabre”. 
I have a little confession to make - prior to getting this review copy I really didn’t know who Robert Hood was.

Which I hope means that my review of it isn’t affected by any sort of in-group bias( the in-group being the Australian SpecFic community which I participate in /support) rather than just underlining my ignorance.

Given the digital treatment
The collection was originally published in 2008 by Altair-Australia and has been reprinted/reissued by Morrigan Books as of July 2011 in digital form.
The collection, when it was first released, made available a number of stories that were hard to find after their initial publication run in overseas magazines.  Now with the eBook age finally upon us Robert has his work preserved for posterity or at least until our advanced civilisation is wiped out by an EMP.

A Definitive Collection?
Robert thankfully, is still with us.  There is a common wisdom that suggests that there’s a right time that a collection should be put out – writers are supposed to get better with time and experience and well, putting out a collection of works too early in one’s career could be damaging. Too early and you risk turning readers off I suppose.

But not having followed Rob’s career at all its really hard for me to judge.  What I can say is that Creeping in Reptile Flesh is consistently good.  There’s consistent tone and quality in the writing mixed with enough variation to make it an enjoyable and refreshing read.

So is it the definitive Robert Hood collection?  No, but it’s a fine snapshot of a good writer’s career(and I’d like to think Robert’s going to be around a little longer).

My picks
The Collection was a finalist in the 2009 Aurealis & Ditmar Awards, the title story  was also a finalist in the best Novella category for the 2009 Ditmar Awards.  That being said my favourites were to be found further  in the work.

They are:

Getting rid of mother, which I found to be charmingly disturbing.  A couple who can’t seem to look after themselves buy a house that comes with its own escapee from a nursing home.  The poor old …well I should let you read it for yourself.

Heartless definitely fell on the weird end of the horror spectrum.  Though this is one tory that features a bit of gore, there was a sort of Dexter-ish glee in in the outcome .  A sense of justice achieved though by rather less than ok means.

Rotten times – decay and corruption in modern times taken to a literal end.  I like this story for its non lineal arrangement as well.

And while all of the antagonists in the above shorts meet the deserved ends, as with all good horror there’s a lingering unease felt by the survivors (If there are any) and the reader.

Recommendations
I’d recommend it even if you are not that big on horror.  It tends more towards the weird than than the gory.  If you are a horror fan, well I’d hope you’d already have it, but then there's a lot of good reading out there.

(Note: You can now purchase a hard copy from Booktopia.)

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The Raven, starring John Cusack

An interesting take on Edgar Allen Poe and his stories

H/T – Tor.com

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