Wolf's Head 1: Oath of Blood by Arthur Frazier (NEL, 1973)

Among the many and varies things I like are dog-eared New English Library paperbacks like 'Wolfs Head 1: Oath of Blood', apparently by Arthur Frazier.

I say apparently because this first book in a six book series is actually the work of prolific NEL author Kenneth Bulmer, a man second only to Wilfred McNeilly in my personal pantheon of forgotten heroes of pulp. Bulmer is better known for science fiction than this sort of Saxons vs Normans throwaway, but even so it's 108 pages of small text which never flags for a second, even while it sets up the premise for the remaining five books in the series.  This is a book that fills every page with incident and action, like an Alan Moore comic strip or a  big summer blockbuster novel, never stopping for breath or reflection, and making sure that every inch of available canvas is in play.

Attempted rape, mutilation, revenge, death and pitched battle combine with beautiful women, saxon art, good fellowship and self-sacrifice to make a book which is never dull.  That may not seem like the greatest compliment ever paid a book but there are times when incident packed is all you really want...

Mr Hudson's Diaries - Michael Hardwick (Sphere, 1973)

For all my pretentions to literary fiction and for all the nice things I might say about Umberto Eco and Ian McEwan (well, not McEwan - he bores the arse off me), my real first love are tv tie-ins.  Some of that is down to nostalgia, obviously - the Target Dr Who books for me, as for lots of people my age, were the reading materials of my youth after all - but sometimes it's because a tie-in novel seems able to do things which I can't believe the parent show would ever touch.

Books like the BBC Doctor Who novels The Blue Angel or Interference go well beyond what their parent show is even capable of imagining, let alone presenting on screen, but that's possibly to be expected.  The Virgin and first set of BBC Doctor Who spin-offs are acknowleged by all but partisan fools to be amongst the best tie-ins every created and the show is one which cries out for limitless imagination.

Other series, however, seem as though they'd be far less interesting when committed to paper - but that's an equally foolish assumption.  As I mentioned somewhere else on here (I'm sure my reader can get off his chair and go and look) the Crossroads book 'A Warm Breeze' features a Lost Horizon-style hidden valley, a boy who talks backwards and ends with actual magic taking place, but that's a genuine novelisation of several bonkers (and now tragically lost) episodes of the soap opera, so the madness lies with the script-writer not the novelist.

I've just finished one of the Upstairs Downstairs back-story novels, Mr Hudson's Diaries however, and Michael Hardwick and his wife Mollie have done as solid a job with the story of Angus Hudson's life prior to coming to 165 Eaton Place as anyone could possibly expect.  But added to the tales of Hudson's crippled father, first dalliances with women, tragic loss and eventual rise, is a chapter in which an actual poltergeist haunts the Bellamy family home until the bones of a murdered baby are found buried nearby.  Like the apparently genuine Ouija board in the Christmas 2011 edition of Downton Abbey it's this brilliant implausability which raises the book above the ordinary.  There's no need for anything so mental, but it's entertaining and interesting and improves a solid book into a memorable one.

You don't get great stuff like that in bloody Atonement, I can tell you.

Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow - Richard Wright (Shroud, 2010)

You need, I think, to have a minimum of two strings to your bow to be a really good writer.  A great sense of character allied with an ear for dialogue, say, or a strong plot element combined with a vivid imagination.  Richard Wright, thankfully, has all four of those plus a couple more besides.  He's done a couple of excellent stories for Obverse Books and, as the back cover blurb by Steven Saville says, he is a bit of a hidden gem.

The Nymphs of Krakow (from Shroud Publishing) needs all his skills, not because it's a poor idea but because it's the final book in a five novella series and if there's one thing I really can't be doing with it's clunky and intrusive exposition (that - and the fact it seemed to have been written as a joke by an idiot in crayons - killed Hawaii 5-0 for me just last week, for example - but I digress).  Instead of that, all the information the reader needs bleeds into the book - almost literally, at times - and the story is left to run at its own natural and enjoyable pace.  The dialogie is snappy, the various Big Bads intriguing and unexpected, even when they seem to be fantasy cliches, and the finale has a nicely ambiguous feel to it.

Don't get me wrong - this isn't War and Peace.  It's an 80 page adventure novella in what fans call 'dark fantasy' or 'urban fantasy' or something like that.  But instead of being the usual teenage wibbling about torture and eating babies and a guy working down the chip shop who swears he's Cthulhu, this is a driven narrative in which sundry plot strands are tied together, various characters get their comeuppance or otherwise, interspersed with some exciting and very well written set pieces.  There's a darkness at times - the fate of one errant river God gave me a chill, for a start - and Hiram Grange himself is an interesting soul, even if he has rather too many little quirks for comfort for me (using only a Webley revolver is fine, but all the stuff with the absinthe?  As bad as Morse and his real ale - chracter created by check list).  But Grange isn't Wright's character, so he can hardly be blamed for that.

In the end, this last story was good enough to make me seek out the first four.  Can't say fairer than that.

(In other news I listened to the Doctor Who audio 'Curse of Davros' in the car on the way to and from work over the last few days.  Let's just say - to use a phrase currnetly much in fashion - it's not my favourite Big Finish release).

In Deepest Darkest Derbyshire (or could be Cheshire)

I meant to mention this at at the time, but I spent a great few days in darkest Derbyshire (or possibly Cheshire; it was never entirely clear) on a writer's retreat, with the likes of George Mann and his brother Scott, Paul Magrs, Cav Scott, Mark Wright and several excellent, friendly and very industrious Black Library guys.  With my customary terror of the new, I half expected it to be horrible, full of people talking about tossers I didn't know getting seven figure publishing deals, and what a shit some editor I'd never heard of can be, but instead it was wonderfully restful and fun, from the moment Paul and I bagsied the warmest bedroom in the house, right at the very top of the winding, low beamed stairs all the way to saying goodbye to Mark in Manchester Piccadilly Station, seconds before I realised I'd missed my train!  I spent the days sitting cross-legged on one bed, with Paul using the other bed as a desk and tapped out an entire Zenith short story, which I'm quite pleased with, and a detailed breakdown of the first few chapters of My Great Novel.  An hour writing, then wander downstairs for a cuppa, always to find one of the guys or other had had the same idea and was therefore available for a natter, then back upstairs for another hour.  Knock off at tea time for big glasses of wine and pizza, and screeds of old telly and movies on George's big HD projector.  Sheer heaven.

It was great to get home though - that was the longest I've been away from J since we got married, after all, and I missed the family quite a bit.  It's great to get away and do something, especially in such fantastic company, but even Cam gave me a big cuddle when I got in (incidentally, I read Graham McCann's excellent biography of Terry-Thomas on the train home - highly recommended) and it always makes me happy to be sitting somewhere in the house, hearing the sound of my lot getting up to all sorts of shenanigans somewhere upstairs or down.

Deadline - Mira Grant (Orbit, 2011)

When I read Feed, the first book in this trilogy late last year I wondered what came first - the story or the title.  Because as the title of a book about zombies and bloggers it seemed too perfect and, besides, blogs are so very 2006.  I wondered if the author had enough plot to last three thick novels, or whether she’d be either winging it or scraping the bottom of the barrel soon enough.

Not that it really mattered.  Feed was a damn fine book, and in playing out a genuine political thriller against a backdrop of everyday zombie infestation, Mira Grant created something new in a sub-genre which too often lately has felt a little bit desperate and more than a little prone to novelty for the sake of novelty.

Deadline, the second book in the series, continues the adventures of a small group of bloggers almost where book one left off, and for the first several hundred pages doesn’t flinch in facing up to the challenges engendered by the finale of Feed.  Pleasingly, as the reader moves through the early stages of the book that stunningly unexpected ending isn’t immediately reset or glossed over, for one thing. No miracle occurs (though, in this zombie filled America, any miraculous rising is just asking for a bullet in the forehead).  Instead Grant demonstrates that she does indeed have a plan and that there’s plenty more of this story still to tell.

The new characters in the End of the World Times crew manage adequately to fill the shoes of those left behind, though in a couple of cases they do so by being very like the people they’re replacing.  The appearance, in the flesh, of English Indian Mahir was another real highlight, with Grant getting the restrained personality I’d imagined him having in the first book onto the page to great effect.

Additionally, Grant continues successfully to build up the background to her zombie ravaged world.  We learn that not only has Alaska been lost to the zombies, but the entirety of India has been surrendered, with Indians now scattered across the globe.  Pleasingly, Grant also shows real confidence in her story in not feeling obliged to drag the politicos from the first novel into this one – not only does Senator (now President) Ryman not star in Deadline, but he barely warrants a mention.  It would have been very easy for the author to tag he and his wife onto the plot, but the novel would have suffered as a result and I’m glad she resisted the temptation.
Less pleasingly, Grant appears not to have learned from problems raised by critics of the first novel. 

For one thing, the main character is in many ways totally unlikeable,  which can be a bit of an issue in a first person narrative.  One reviewer of Feed said she’d almost given up on the book after a scene in which George, the narrator, shows herself to be a wholly callous and selfish individual. While I agreed with another reviewer that this was a sign of good characterisation rather than an unacceptably unpleasant narrator, in this sequel the new narrator, Shaun, proves himself equally disturbing once we get our heads inside his.  One line is repeated about him until it becomes almost a mantra - Shaun has no compunction about hitting women.  It’s presumably intended to lend credence to the idea that Shaun is a man getting near the end of his tether, suffering hugely (indeed, to the point of insanity) from grief, and channelling all his emotions into what he knows best, physical action.  But even so, it’s very, very difficult to build up any feeling of identification with a man who all but boasts about bullying people weaker than he and who has such a casual attitude to violence against women.  It jars, to say the least, and continuously does so, even as I was building up some feeling for Shaun as a character.  

            Perhaps this is a deliberate ploy by the author, designed to keep the reader edgy, to reflect the edgy nature of the story, but if so (and for all its obvious success) I would prefer not to be so manipulated.

A far bigger issue, though, are the latter stages of  the book where the promise of the first three quarters, that this is not another genre series content to reset, reuse and revive, are  thrown away.  After four hundred  taut, well written and tightly plotted pages, suddenly one cliché follows another as the end of the book heaves into sight.  A character who was obviously marked for a self-sacrificing death from her first appearance suffers a predictably self-sacrificing death; the adoptive brother and sister heroes of the series turn out, not at all unexpectedly, to be the exact two people with the special physical qualities required to defeat the virus; and then - worst of all – the brilliantly stark ending to the first novel is made pointless in a coda which makes me fear for the quality of the final book in the trilogy.

All of which is a real shame.  This is a near 600 page thriller that I rattled through in one train journey, but for all that I’ll think twice about buying the third book after the wheels came off so spectacularly towards the end of this book.

An Obverse Year

* 
Having been reminded of the date both by the fact I shaved my Movember moustache off this morning and Paul's blog post about stories he's written this year, December 1st seems as good a time as any to reflects on the various bits and pieces Obverse Books, mine own tiny book imprint, have pushed out into the wild this year.

First up was the initial volume in the inaugral Obverse Quarterly, the Johnny Mains edited Horror anthology, Bite Sized Horror.  I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that year one of the Quarterly has exactly been a commercial triumph, but I'd be equally mendacious if I said that I was anything other than delighted with the quality of the books themselves.  And Johnny got us off to a great start, with six scary as hell stories from a pretty impressive line-up of modern horror writers, including himself.  The description by the Short Review reviewer of this as 'top notch dark fiction' wasn't far off the mark, if you ask me.


 We'd put out a couple of books just before the turn of the year, so the first month or two was pretty quiet, but come March and there was a flurry of books either being published or being put together.

In May, a long sought desire for Obverse was fulfilled when I edited and published a collection of Faction Paradox short stories.  The quality of the writers was such that I can make little claim to the credit which poured in the direction of A Romance in Twelve Parts, but I think I'm right in saying that this was the most critically acclaimed book Obverse have done so far, with more incredibly positive reviews than even the Iris books.  Looking ahead to next year, we definitely hope to build on this first collection in several different ways...watch this space!


 Next up on what increasingly looks like the Obverse Conveyor Belt was book two in the Quarterly - Senor 105 and the Elements of Danger.  Edited by the incomparable (and newly married!) Cody Quijano-Schell with stories from several entirely new to Obverse authors - and one by one of the mysterious Petit sisters - I thought this was perfect little book, from brilliant cover art by Paul Hanley to the little image of a jukebox which ended the book.  If you haven't read it, this is the book from this year that I'd recommend you go out and buy right now!

Book four this year was a bit of an oddity - but a very, very enjoyable oddity indeed, and one which turned out to be the book which got us some national publicity, no less!  Basically, Paul Magrs and George Mann, two of my favourite writers and people, were looking for something to have to hand at conventions, readings and other publicity related gee-gaws, and between us we came up with the idea of doing one of those tete-beche books (where two books are presented in one binding, with one book flipped 180 degrees in relation to the other).  In the aptly named Team Up, Paul had one side for The Dreadful Flap and other Stories and George had the other for his Newbury and Hobbes collection, The Sacrificial Pawn.  The book was a big success, possibly because - in spite of enquiries from Waterstones, Forbidden Planet and several other big chains, we decided to stick to our original decision to sell the book at just about cost, and only via our website or form the authors directly at conventions.  This is one experiment I'd like to repeat next year, actually.

Finally, for 2011, there are three books out in the next month.  First up is book three in the Quarterly, featuring the science fiction short stories of US Civil War veteran, Fitz-James O'Brien.  Then we have a limited edition small Christmas collection from George Mann, and - somewhat delayed for reasons beyond anyone's control - Wildthyme in Purple, which I personally think is amongst the best Iris collections to date!

And that's that for this year (though we have a very special release scheduled for January 2012 which I'm really excited about).  Which might be a good point to thank Cody, without whom this entire enterprise wouldn't be possible; Paul, who started it all with me back in 2008 and has remained supportive throughout; and George, who is just the nicest, most encouraging person ever.


And of course all the authors and artists, old and new, who were in our books this year...

* Dave Hoskin 
* Philip Purser-Hallard 
* Niamh Petit
* Matt Kimpton 
* Jon Dennis 
* Jay Eales 
* Ian Potter 
* Daniel O’Mahony
* David N Smith
* Violet Addison 
* Scott Harrison
* James Milton 
* Blair Bidmead
* Reggie Oliver
* Johnny Mains
* Conrad Williams
* Paul Kane
* David A. Riley
* Marie O’ Regan

* George Mann

* Paul Magrs

* Cody Quijano-Schell

* Julio Angel Ortiz

* Joe Curreri

* Lawrence Burton 

* Steve Mollmann
* David McIntee
* Paul Ebbs
* Simon Bucher-Jones
* Geoffrey Hammell
* Steffan Alun
* Dale Smith
* Richard Salter
* Iain McLaughlin
* Richard Wright
* Nick Campbell
* Paul Hanley
* Mark Manley
* Bret Herholz

The Prison in Space (Nothing at the End of the Lane, 2011)

It's an odd mix, this second script book from the team behind "Nothing at the End of the Lane", the excellent, if occasional, Doctor Who history/restoration/archive magazine.

On the one hand, the scripts for the failed Troughton story, 'Prison in Space', is presented over hundreds of pages, with every page lovingly scanned in, as is, at the rate of one page to...well, one page.  Presumably this is for reasons for verisimilitude, and archive telly fans are notoriously anal about exactitude.  

Speaking personally, I would much rather see each page typed out on a PC and everything run together (in the style of pretty much every other script book ever) possibly with annotations running alongside.  That would lessen the unnecessarily huge page count, allow the cost to drop (from its current, steep £17 for a Lulu paperback) and make it considerably more readable.

But I digress.  Alongside this very precise exactitude, and unwillingness to make any allowances for the 21st century, the publishers have decided to go down the same path as early Big Finish audio releases and pretend that, in some way, this discarded script was in fact never discarded but, rather, is a part of Doctor Who in the exact same way as, for instance, The Dominators.  As a result, the script gets the Time Team treatment, which is pointless but harmless and occasionally amusing, as the four - generally interesting - participants act as though 'Prison in Space' is something they can see on screen together and not just something they've all read separately.

Of far more interest, though, is the wonderful Andrew Pixley's piece on a year in Doctor Who, which serves both to frame the circumstances surrounding the abortive attempt to bring 'Prison' to screen and to show that the eventual breakdown in communications stemmed - as it tends to in real life - from a series of stubbornnesses (sic) and misunderstandings on both sides.

Other than that, the book contains a reasonable review of the script by Jonny Morris, a somewhat erratically proofed article by Richard Bignall, and an excellent, if necessarily brief, look at two other rejected scripts (both in a far less advanced state than 'Prison' when cancelled).

All in all, this - like 'Farewell Great Macedon' which preceded it in this script book series - is an intriguing look at a lost story though, unlike that earlier Hartnell script, I very much doubt anyone is ever likely to describe this as a 'lost classic'. 

Away from the content of the main script, though, there's a mixed bag of supporting articles and the book in general is somewhat over-priced for what it contains.  Still, all fans of the show should thank Richard Bignall et al for taking the time to bring this to print - I very much prefer that it exists than if it did not.

Now if they could turn to some more modern scripts - Chris Bidmead has at least one which I'd love to see in print...