Review – Coldbrook

Note: This review first appeared on my Goodreads page.

Zombies. Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no getting away from them at the minute, especially with World War Z shuffling into cinemas soon. So after softening myself with David Wong’s not-really-a-zombie-story-honest-guv This Book Is Full Of Spiders, I thought I’d fling myself into Tim Lebbon’s hell-yeah-we’re-talking-zombies-baby Coldbrook.

This was my first Lebbon novel and, on this evidence, it won’t be my last. What we have here is a surprisingly quick read, for all of its 632 page length, courtesy of a seasoned and prolific writer who, by this stage, most definitely knows his way around a horror novel. You get the impression this is a story Lebbon has been looking forward to writing for a while, which, of course, is A Good Thing. What we also have is Lebbon’s attempt to trump the body count of not only every zombie book on the bookshelves, but perhaps every single book ever written combined! If you want to play Top Trumps with horror novels, this one has the “Body count” category sewn up, and in a very clever way too.

You see, in true Outer Limits style, it’s all the fault of them bloody scientists. No sooner do they rip a portal into the multiverse and connect to another Earth than a withered old zombie wanders in and takes lumps out of people. The infection it carries takes hold fast and soon most of the scientists in the Coldbrook complex are gadding about looking to bite people. When one of the engineers escapes the complex it doesn’t take long for one of the zombies to follow and thus the outbreak truly begins.

Lebbon doesn’t hang about. This all happens in the first 100 pages. The novel follows a number of story threads as it charts the downfall of mankind: Jonah, an ageing Welsh physician spearheading operations following the owner’s suicide, and his struggle to cleanse the complex of infection while being haunted by a mysterious figure calling itself The Inquisitor; Holly, a scientist that escapes through the portal to seek refuge on the other Earth, only to find it not quite as beautiful as it once seemed; Vic, the engineer that escapes Coldbrook to be with his family and thus dooming the planet to zombie domination; and Jayne, a young woman suffering a rare muscle disease that also grants her resistance to the infection.

No one character dominates the story, but neither are any of the main characters short-changed. The action comes thick and fast with at least somebody in dire straits at any one time. It all keeps the pages turning at a fair old pace. Lebbon’s account of mankind’s rapid deterioration is impressive and scary, but is leavened by the spirit of the survivors.

The book is not without its flaws. Apart from a few forgivable typos the exchanges between characters can sometimes seem a bit too chummy, especially between those who have only just met in strange and incredibly stressful circumstances. It doesn’t distract too much from the story, though. What did drive me batty, however, was the sheer number of hanging…

I mean it happens every other…

And not just for one character, either, it’s every one of…

Once you notice it, it starts to get on your…

You get the idea. Don’t play drinking games based on hanging sentences while reading this novel as you’ll be shitfaced by the end of part one. In truth it’s only another minor niggle and it shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment of the story.

To wrap this review up, in the end I liked Coldbrook. It was certainly worth a read. It didn’t blow my mind, but then that’s not what we’re here for. Fans of the inevitable zombie apocalypse will be well serviced by the novel, and I’m sure that fans of Lebbon’s work won’t be disappointed either. Kudos also to Hammer Books (via Arrow Books, itself via Random House… sigh) for getting this meaty book onto the shelves at the relatively cheap RRP of £6.99, when one would have assumed the page count would have edged it closer to £8.99.

Rating: 4/5

And finally… I’ll post a few reviews here while I plough through the second draft of The Floors. I’ll have a status update and more news on that whole thing shortly. When I’m not slaving over a hot keyboard, ploughing through a book, or (heaven forbid) at work, you’ll often find me haunting Goodreads. Do mosey on round to my place, why doncha: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6543771.Lucian_Poll

A View From The Second Draft

PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING
Those with strong to severe analogy allergies are advised to seek medical advice before attempting to read the following blog posting. Those suffering alliteration ailments should perhaps have avoided that first sentence just then. Sorry about that.

– Ministry of Weak Writing, April 2013.

On the outskirts of Norwich there is a pleasant unbroken stretch of road that curves gently downhill in a series of S-bends. It is a tree-lined gem of satisfying inward cambers, so short as to barely last half a minute, and yet it is a stretch of road that can still make one’s long-suffering better half say “wheeeeee!” as she drives down it. (I can’t drive. This, World, is A Good Thing, trust me.)

This unassuming stretch of road is a little oasis of driving pleasure in an otherwise shitty farrago of one-way systems, potholes, traffic lights and altogether terrible drivers that blight the majority of Norwich’s roads.

Why am I telling you this, particularly if I can’t even bloody drive? All in good time, or 400 words, whichever comes first.

Any road, welcome to my view from the second draft of The Floors. Frankly it’s all a bit bleak! I knew I needed to do some repair work following the bugger’s rush that was NaNoWriMo, but sheesh! I never expected to need rewrite virtually every one of the first 20,000 words! If Present Me ever catches up with Previous Me there’ll be hell to pay. Throw a “Beef this bit up in the 2nd draft” into a couple of chapters, would you, Previous Me? Why I oughta…

So, yeah, this second draft has been a tough cookie so far. The readthrough of the first draft was perhaps two-thirds a horror show of writing and one-third horror story, but overall it was an incredibly useful exercise. For example, while I want The Floors to be a quick, white-knuckle read, I found the first half of the book, believe it or not, to be too quick. The action came thick and fast but at the cost of leaving the reader behind.

A lot of the time these last three or so weeks has therefore been spent squeezing more from my characters and getting their essence onto the page. My bad guy has a more believable trigger-point for his actions, for example, making for a much more satisfying opening to the book. My protagonists now have an extra dimension to them after fleshing out their backgrounds, their hopes and their fears. (Thank you Previous Me.) The dialogue has also been improved to reveal more about each character – the infamous “show, don’t tell” maxim in action.

Other weaknesses have also been identified and fixed along the way. For example, I’ve turned a fairly large and annoying plot hole into a new scene that not only fits the story like a glove but also leaves a pretty cool image in the mind. (Two words: Droste effect.) Things that I threw into the mix around 1/3 into the story have been threaded back through the narrative to help it flow better.

In short, it’s been a hell of a lot of work, the beefing-up, the repairs, the rejigging of scenes. It isn’t the kind of thing I’d recommend after long, highly-strung days of non-stop Saving The Company’s Arse. Shit like that takes it out of a guy. As a result I’m way behind schedule so I’ll have to cut this post short soon and crack on.

But what of my tiresome analogy? Well, these last three weeks have not all been me screaming “Oh, my God, what fresh hell is this?!” In my editing travels I have come across the odd page in the first draft where I’ve thought “Yeah, you know what, this is really good!” It’s these little oases of writing that help drive me towards a better draft. I can accept a hefty rewrite of a chapter in exchange for a mighty fine page every now and then. Such things only compel me to make every other damn sentence in the story grab readers by the eyes and refuse them permission to blink. They make doing this whole shebang worthwhile.

Or, in other words, “wheeeeeeee”!

So back I go, my writing toolbox in hand, to make more repairs. I’ll post another review next week while I do further battle, and then I’ll come back with an update and, if you’re good, a spot of cover artwork.

TTFN!

Review – This Book Is Full Of Spiders

Note #1: This review first appeared on my Goodreads page.

Note #2: This review for This Book Is Full Of Spiders is full of spoilers for John Dies At The End. (You can probably guess what they might be.)

Ah, that most hoary of cliches: The Difficult Second Album. How often you come to the aid of lazy journalists across the world, and, hell, who am I to rock the boat?

Sometimes it’s caused by the spark of creativity waning the second time around. Sometimes the suits get too much of a say and piss over every square inch of what made the first effort so good. Either way someone loses out: oftentimes the very people that made that first effort a hit. The fans.

Yes, as you may have gathered, the follow-up to John Dies At The End (JDATE) didn’t quite set my world alight. (A pity as it’s STILL bastard cold outside.) I notice that this book, like its predecessor, divides opinion like few I have read over the years, and while I can certainly appreciate the points made by either side, ultimately I can’t help but think that This Book Is Full Of Spiders (TBIFOS) has been rush-released by the publisher.

My reasons:

1) The John in TBIFOS is a completely different character to that in JDATE. Seriously, it’s like having Jim Carrey in the first book and replacing him with Will Ferrell for the second. Maybe this was because Wong (or Pargin, if you prefer) intended to beef up John’s character in a further draft, or at least give him more than the handful of funny lines he gets in this book.

2) The book, sold as “another terrifying and hilarious tale of almost Armageddon”, has perhaps a third of the humour of JDATE. This could be a conscious decision by Wong to up the horror aspect; it could be due to the events of the book not lending themselves easily to humour (which they don’t), but could also be because Wong hadn’t had much of a chance to inject much of the slacker humour woven throughout much of the first book.

3) JDATE is told from Wong’s perspective. Around half of TBIFOS, however, is told from umpteen points of view, yet is still presented as Wong’s book. This is obviously caused by the demands of the plot, which sees John Cheese and David Wong separated for a large section of the story, but it frequently left me wondering how Wong could possibly have known the events of the novel happened in such a way. For me, this frequently bounced me out of the story. A spot of author intrusion highlights the fact that Wong is only too aware of this weakness, when he says “don’t ask me how I know this, but…” when presenting a couple of pages from Molly’s point of view. For those who have not read JDATE, Molly is a dog. A funny but ultimately weak epilogue also tries to address this deficiency, but only reinforces the notion that the book had not seen the scrutiny of a strong enough editor, or that the publisher didn’t really care about these weaknesses and was more eager to get the book into the shops.

4) Wong’s insistence of calling the town Undisclosed jars more and more the further into the book you see it. The device is presented as a means to protect the town from Wong’s fans, and his fans from the wrongness of the town. Fair enough. JDATE gets away with this because the events, as loopy as they were, were fairly self-contained. In TBIFOS, however, you have an outbreak that makes worldwide news and its events would ordinarily be etched into history books forever after. Why the hell would you bother continuing to hide the name of the town in light of that? Again, I can’t help thinking this really ought to have been picked up at an early stage.

5) Someone didn’t appear to check the quality of the book prior to release, or at least the edition I bought. Yes, there are typos in there, and the odd unusual formatting issue (“quar-antine” midway across one line). Those I can forgive. But to have the text of page 396 on page 395 and vice versa, well, I’m afraid that’s piss-poor.

The clincher for me, however, is the that the release of TBIFOS ties in too neatly with the movie release of JDATE. The deficiencies of TBIFOS, combined with the pagination error, reeks of a publisher that was too keen to get the second book out of the door while the movie was doing the rounds, when they were perhaps better advised to have tightened the story in time for the Blu-ray release.

That rather long-winded dissection rather paints the book in a bad light, yet there is still much in TBIFOS to enjoy for those willing to overlook the above weaknesses. The humour in the book is still very funny. Wong retains the ability to deliver a knockout gag when he wants to, and Amy’s use of the fur-gun towards the end had me chuckling for a good while. Just don’t expect the same level of laughs as JDATE, nor many killer lines from John.

The horror angle is well served too, with a wonderfully tense lead up to The Massacre At Ffirth Asylum. Those that judge books by their body count and ickyness won’t be disappointed either, as death befalls a good many townspeople in various bloodthirsty ways. The overarching outbreak-cum-zombie invasion story is also very good with several memorable scenes, and the incidental characters – a weak point of JDATE – are considerably better realised in this story.

Overall, This Book Is Full Of Spiders is still worth a read for those ready to forgive its apparent rush release. I would still read a third outing, but only if Wong was allowed to take his time about it.

Rating: 3/5

Review – John Dies At The End

Note: This review first appeared on my Goodreads page.

Comedy horror is a tricky thing to get right. Once the writer has set out their stall with a couple of rib-ticklers they will often reach a crossroads: to continue with the comedy, or to continue with the horror. Go along one route and they get something like Army of Darkness: an enormously entertaining romp, yes, but one that can hardly be called horror. Go along the other route and they get something like The Frighteners: still entertaining, but the rapid change in tone makes for an uneven experience.

John Dies At The End, for me, errs towards the latter of these. After a rollercoaster ride of ickyness and about a thousand Roswells’ worth of utterly barking scenes, Wong (or Pargin, if you prefer) tries to inject some heart into the story to give the ensuing drama more oomph and, in doing so, leaves the reader wondering where the laughs went. There are a few other niggles too, such as how some incidental characters drift out of the story leaving you to wonder why they were there in the first place, or are brought into the story and then criminally underused. Also, while not explaining everything is by no means A Bad Thing you are left mulling over some scenes and wondering if they were just thrown in there to keep the wackiness up.

So far, you may say, so negative. So why the four stars? Well, despite its faults, as it turns out I rather liked The Frighteners, and in John Dies At The End I can forgive much of the above in exchange for the genuine belly laughs, the excellent dialogue, the vivid imagery and effective metaphors the guy chucks onto the page, and that’s even before we get to the truckload of imagination that went into knitting together one of the most wilfully odd stories I’ve read in ages.

I’m keen to see the movie, partly because I loved Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep, but mostly to see if they can pull it off, and already have the follow-up beside me ready to crack open once I’ve posted this.

In short, I liked this a lot, but I can see how it may grate on others. This might be one to read the first however-many-pages on Amazon beforehand.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a book full of spiders to open…

Rating: 4/5

Review: Spin by Nina Allan

Disclosure: I received an advance review copy of this novella from TTA Press.

Review: It requires a degree of courage to take an existing story and to then create another based around it. Such endeavours are often met with the immediate prejudice of the reader, who will naturally wonder why the author didn’t create their own tale to begin with. (To all the lazy, execrable “mash-ups” currently clogging up bookshelves across the world, I’m looking straight at you at this point.) Yup, these days, if you’re going to step into that particular arena, it seems you’ll need a rocket-propelled grenade to accompany that trident and net of yours.

To then make your own story work regardless of the original, and when the original story itself is older than most every story in history… well, that requires a hell of a lot of skill too.

Which takes us to “Spin”, Nina Allan’s aptly-titled take on the story of Arachne, newly released by TTA Press as part of their novella series.

Set in a near-future alternate Greece we follow Layla as she leaves her father, Idmon, a successful dyer, and travels from her small coastal village to the big smoke where she begins to make her own way in the world as a weaver of considerable skill. Along the way she meets an old woman who informs her that she knew her mother, a sybil who died in tragic circumstances when Layla was a child. The old woman informs Layla that she too has the “gift” once possessed by her mother. What happens next… well, you’ll have to get hold of a copy to find out.

Of course, those versed in Arachne’s story may have an inkling where this all leads. As one who is not up on their Classics to the extent they perhaps ought to be, however, I’m happy to report that “Spin” stands up well on its own terms. You don’t need an intimate knowledge of the source material in order to understand and appreciate the story. There is much to enjoy here, particularly for those who like their fantasy and sci-fi stories with a literary bent.

For me, it is in describing and fleshing out her alternate Greece that Allan really shines. Layla’s expert eye allows Allan to fill her world with dazzling splashes of colour, from topaz sunsets to “the searing catamite yellow of the robes of choirboys” – a wonderfully barbed line that had me dashing for my Chambers (which is no bad thing). I’m fairly certain that the scorching heat described in the story upped the temperature in my house a couple of degrees, which was no mean feat given that it was close to Absolute Zero outside.

Even the parts of Allan’s alternate Greece that initially jarred began to make sense the morning after the read before. For example, the casual mention of drachmas and their relatively low exchange rate clicked once one took into account the technological advancements that the country (or at least the wealthier element) enjoyed. Allan’s Greece is a more economically sound country than the one we see today, and yet it is one that still carries chilling echoes of the very real racial intolerance and right-wing politics brewing there.

It is this attention to detail that should give you an idea of the skill and the care that has gone into writing this piece. Allan has an immense, poetic command of language and a vocabulary to die for. This is one for which you will want to pour a drink, pop your feet up on the sofa and to put your phone on silent before heading on in.

Ultimately “Spin” succeeds for me because Allan is not trying to compete or improve upon the Arachne myth, nor is she wilfully offering up a new and jaunty twist. (Meowmorphosis… please.) No, instead what we get is a highly personal piece that was written for and is dedicated to her father. No RPG’s were needed in the arena after all, folks. The fight wasn’t there to begin with.

In short, I’d heartily recommend “Spin” to fans of literary sci-fi and fantasy, and especially to those already familiar with Nina Allan’s work. If you tick any of those boxes then I doubt you’d be disappointed with this.

Rating: 5/5

And finally…
I’ll post a few reviews here while I plough through the second draft of The Floors. I’ll have a status update and more news on that whole thing shortly. When I’m not slaving over a hot keyboard, ploughing through a book, or (heaven forbid) at work, you’ll often find me haunting Goodreads. Do mosey on round to my place, why doncha: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6543771.Lucian_Poll