‘The Hunger Games’ – Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)

If you’re looking for a decent read (or to find out which books to stay well away from) then this blog, amongst many others, is a good place to start looking :o) One of the other places where I go to pick up tips is the Westeros forum where people are incredibly well read and really know what they are talking about. If they like a book then you can bet it will be a good one!
It was this that made my decision, whether to read ‘The Hunger Games’ or not, a lot easier. I’m trying to include more YA fiction here but am really picky about what I read. After all, there’s a whole load of adult genre fiction that I want to get to first! I saw the recommendation on Westeros and decided to give it a try. I’m glad that I did!

In an America of the future, the downtrodden districts are kept in line (by the affluent Capitol) by having to send their children to compete in ‘The Hunger Games’; a reality TV event where the only rule is kill or be killed. When sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen steps forward, to take her sister’s place, she has no idea what the Games will hold other than that her death in the arena is a near certainty. However, Katniss has a few tricks up her sleeve that even she is unaware of. Living in one of the most impoverished districts can set someone up to be a real competitor in the Hunger Games. Game on...

‘The Hunger Games’ is one of those books where I ended up staying awake long into the night to finish it and find out what happened to Katniss. I felt like death warmed up the next day but it was worth it. Once it hit its stride (the build up to the Games themselves is a bit slow) ‘The Hunger Games’ was in no mood to let me go and I was in no mood to put it down.

The first part of the book sets the scene for this America of the future and there’s not really a lot to set it apart from any other post apocalyptic vision you might come across. The masses are downtrodden while the elite live it up without a care in the world. Collins makes up for this by laying it on thick with her portrayal of this world, I was left in no doubt as to what it meant to be oppressed and live on that fine line where one mistake could lead to starvation. Hunger is what this book is all about and the contrast between the Districts and the Capitol is made through the food that people can lay their hands on and how easy it is (or isn’t) to do this. Collins makes this difference very clear although (going off on a slight tangent) I was left wondering why food seems to be such a big deal in the YA fiction that I’ve read. Seriously, think about the YA books that you’ve read and how much the authors make of the food on offer at tea parties, banquets etc.

Anyway, back on topic...

The opening chapters are slow going but necessarily so in terms of setting things up and setting them against a well painted backdrop. Once the games begin, the pace ramps up a gear and stays there... Collins is very good at laying things on the line and showing the reader just how important they are. The arena is all about survival, even if you’re not fighting another contestant. You’re not just at the mercy of capricious games masters either, if you can’t find anything to eat or drink then you’re in real trouble... Katniss goes through this ordeal and her character shines through as she negotiates the pitfalls. Here is a person with huge reservoirs of mental strength that propel her through the physical and mental challenges. Collins does a fine job of maintaining the tension throughout the book. Not only does Katniss not know what is round the next corner but she also doesn’t know who she can trust; winning is the most important thing and people will do anything to be the last one standing...

It’s kill or be killed in the arena and it was here that I thought Collins dropped the ball a little, at least as far as I was concerned. Although Collins isn’t afraid to have death make an appearance, she isolates Katniss from this reality by having her either hide from the other contestants (a lot of the deaths take place off the page) or have other people do the job for her. Katniss is witness to death, and kills one person, but I ended up feeling that Collins didn’t want to take the risk and explore the notion of killing to survive any further. This robbed Katniss’ progression of any sense that it had been earned. To be fair though, ‘The Hunger Games’ is a book for people who are eleven years old (plus) so I can’t really blame Collins for wanting to tone things down a bit! As far as my reading went though, it felt like a trick was missed to make the book a lot more than it ended up being...

Despite this though, I enjoyed ‘The Hunger Games’ immensely and am looking forward to seeing what happens next. The Games may be over but the story definitely isn’t...

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

Robert Dunbar - Featured Author on 'Horror Bound Online'

Ok, I caught this a couple of days late but it's still cool :o) Having really enjoyed Robert Dunbar's 'The Shore' it was very interesting to see what Robert had to say about the book itself as well as the Jersey Devil, folklore in general and the horror genre itself. Check it out!

‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’ – Max Allan Collins (Del Rey)

As a kid I used to love movie novelizations, I couldn’t get to the cinema that much and ‘the book of the film’ was a great way to make up for what I was missing out on. In some ways, reading the book was even better than seeing the film; especially during the long wait for the film to show up on TV so you could videotape it for future viewing. In the hands of a decent writer the movie tie-in could become so much more than what you saw on the big screen, giving you a better look at the world in question and the characters in it (I’m thinking ‘Return of the Jedi’ here, I’d include ‘Ladyhawke’ as well but I’m not sure of the book or the film came first...)
I’ve got a real soft spot for movie novelizations but have refrained from including them here simply because I didn’t want to give too much away for people who were planning on seeing the film. ‘The Rise of Cobra’ proved to be the exception though. We didn’t have G.I Joe over here in the UK (we got ‘Action Force’ instead which doesn’t sound quite as good...) but I’d read a couple of the comics which was enough to intrigue me. It’s a shame that the book didn’t live up to that promise...

I’m not going to give too much away; suffice it to say that ‘The Rise of Cobra’ deals with Duke’s induction into the G.I Joe team and their ongoing struggle against the plans of a ruthless arms dealer who is unaware that a nascent terrorist organisation is growing right before his eyes. Cue lots of gunfights, high speed pursuit and last minute confrontations where nothing less than the fate of the world is at stake...

There is plenty going on in ‘The Rise of Cobra’ and the constant action moves things forwards at a very fast pace. The resulting confrontations are full of spectacle and promise good things for the film if you like explosions, gunfights, high speed pursuit and so on.

The only problem was that there wasn’t anything more to the book than that, not that I could see anyway...

This is going to sound odd (seeing as I haven’t seen the film) but here goes...
To me, ‘The Rise of Cobra’ reads like a straight retelling of the events on film. On one level this is a good thing as it’s doing its job. That’s all it does though. I got the impression that if it wasn’t in the screenplay then it wasn’t going in the book. This is all well and good but it felt to me that there was a lot of room for expanding the story that was never exploited. The relationships between G.I Joe members (who weren’t main characters) were glossed over and you never really got a sense of why McCullen was doing what he was doing (other than being a stereotypical villain). When Collins decided that things did need explaining I was left wondering why he had felt the need...

‘In days to come, the craft would be known as a Typhoon gunship...’

Was there any need to tell the reader what the craft would be known as in ‘days to come’? Surely all that mattered was what it was doing right now? This wasn’t the only time Collins’ pulled this trick and it really jarred the flow of the story for me...

I could really see this working on screen but explosions and spectacle in a book just aren’t enough to cover up what is essentially half a story. I haven’t read the prequel yet so I’m open to the fact that it may provide more background detail to the story as a whole. ‘The Rise of Cobra’ doesn’t do it though and I was left wondering why Collins didn’t bother... Surely he had the scope to do that?

Five out of Ten

‘Through Violet Eyes’ – Stephen Woodworth (Piatkus)

Something I’ve realised recently, after reading Diana Rowland’s ‘Mark of the Demon’, is that I’m a bit of a fan of urban fantasy with a police procedural edge to it. This is quite strange as I’ve never felt the urge to pick up a straight police procedural novel (the closest I’ve come is Raymond Chandler’s ‘Phillip Marlowe’ books) but found myself wanting ‘Mark of the Demons’ to downplay its urban fantasy element and concentrate on the detective work. Is this a sign of a new direction that the blog will be taking? Erm... no :o) It’s more of a sign of how I like urban fantasy to read, an emphasis on the ordinary but with just enough ‘other worldliness’ to provide the spark. Anyway...
The blurb for ‘Through Violet Eyes’ sounded like it could be just my thing so I bumped it up the reading list accordingly. It wasn’t a bad read; not amazingly great either but certainly one that kept me reading all the way through to the end.

If you’re born with violet coloured eyes then you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to be able to channel the dead and have them speak through you. The flip side is that your life can never truly be your own in a world where violet eyes are a rare commodity and those people with them are destined to be strictly controlled by a society that wants to communicate with the dead.
But now the ‘Violets’ themselves are being targeted by a serial killer who has learned how to keep his identity a secret (this is a world where the dead can testify in court). FBI agent Dan Atwater is on the case with the aid of ‘Violet’ Natalie Lindstrom but can they track the killer down before he strikes again?

The thing that I love about this book, before I even got to the ins and outs of the plot, is that although ‘Through Violet Eyes’ is a police procedural it doesn’t limit itself to that in terms of describing the world in which the ‘Violet’ phenomena occurs. Violets’ aren’t just there to help in police cases; they also perform a range of other tasks as well as allowing the dead to carry on doing what they were doing when they were alive (in certain cases). Certain composers are still writing music two hundred years after they died... The afterlife is also intriguing to read about with its hints (of more to follow) that are never expanded upon which give the reader tantalising glimpses of a strange New World. The net result is a world that’s familiar but, at the same time, has enough of the strange going on to keep people reading. It certainly kept me reading!
I found this world to be the ideal backdrop for the plot and characters to hang off. It was a shame then that they didn’t hang quite as well as they could have...

I as engrossed by the plot but although I had fun with it I couldn’t help feeling that I’d read it before. The concept of a killer who can hide from the dead is a good one and the resulting twists and turns of the plot kept me guessing although I found that the ‘red herring’ sub plot was sign posted a little too obviously to fool me. I was interested to see what it was all about but at no point was I left thinking that this guy was the killer. Because it was sign posted so clearly I was left watching Atwater and Lindstrom work towards an obvious conclusion rather than getting in there with them. The issue of ‘sign posting’ sums up the problem I had reading ‘Through Violet Eyes’. Although the flesh of the story was tasty enough, there was a very rhythmic feel to the plot that robbed certain climatic scenes of their potential to truly stir the blood. After a couple of chapters I could see the red herrings and blind alleys coming a mile off…

While I had fun getting to know the characters, in terms of how they reacted to what the plot threw up, I was again left feeling that I’d come across them far too many times before. Atwater is a typical FBI agent with a tortured past while Lindstrom is the gifted psychic who cannot afford to let people get too close to her. When a book features two main characters like this… well… you know what’s going to happen next. And it does. This isn’t a bad thing in itself but I found that time spent waiting for this to happen was time not spent wondering how their relationship would work out. Sometimes I want to find out what happens next, not have it made so clear…

Despite all this though, ‘Through Violet Eyes’ was one of those books where I found myself skipping to the end to find out what happened. When I find myself doing this then it’s clear that the book has got me hooked in the right way. ‘Through Violet Eyes’ certainly did this. It may be lightweight and predictable but it was one hell of a lot of fun to read.

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘Complete Zombies vs. Robots’ – Chris Ryall & Ashley Wood (IDW)

Sometimes a comic book comes along that I just have to get my hands on. Anything with zombies in it will at least be picked up, off the shelf, for a read but this book pretty much got my cash card out of my pocket and bought itself! Why? Just read the title... Are you done? Read it again. Cool isn’t it? Zombies are cool enough on their own but facing them off against robots... Can it get any better than this? Yes, yes it can...

At some point in the near future, government research into dimensional technology has the unwelcome result of flooding the earth with the living dead. If this wasn’t bad enough for humanity, government research into robotics is also having some unwelcome side effects... The upshot is a planet inhabited by zombies, robots... and one human baby. Can the robots help the human race begin again or will the zombies get to eat the last human on the planet? All this is before the Amazons appear with a zombie Minotaur in hot pursuit...

Now you might think that a fight between a zombie and a robot would be fairly short and fairly one sided. You’d be right but, in the case of ‘Zombies vs. Robots’, only to a certain extent. Not only do the zombies far outnumber the robots but their infected blood is just as dangerous to robots as it is to humans. If that wasn’t bad enough, robots are slaves to their programming and liable to really screw things up as a result (with no humans to look out for them). All this opens the book up to be a lot more interesting than you would think. Anything can happen and it will always happen at the most inopportune moment! This never failed to make me laugh out loud but there was always an underlying pathos to the story. There’s something about these robots trying to reboot humanity (as they don’t know what else to do) that made me feel really sad. There’s only one way out of this mess and it’s a surprise that anything is left standing afterwards! This is where the Amazons come in...

You never really find out how a tribe of Amazons managed to survive the nuclear apocalypse so don’t bother thinking about it, just go along for the ride! Some people might see this as an enormous plot hole, I prefer to see it as the writer not taking things too seriously and going for a ‘throw everything at the zombies’ pulp style affair. It works for me and if you’re after something light hearted and irreverent then I reckon that this will be for you too.

The only problem I really had with the book was the artwork, not good when you’re reading a comic book! Ashley Wood’s art is all over the place, only stopping before it falls off the page. Also, on some pages it was very much a case of lightly coloured characters on a lightly coloured background which made it really difficult, sometimes, to work out what was going on. To be fair though, once I got used to it I found that the ‘mad artwork’ really complemented the writing itself.

Despite some misgivings about the art I ended up having a lot of fun with ‘Zombies vs. Robots’. The ending hints at more to come (mermaids!) and I’m definitely going to have to check it out...

Competition Winners! 'Midnight Never Come' and 'In Ashes Lie'

Thanks to everyone who entered this competition, there could only be two winners though and these lucky folks were...

Erin Hartshorn, Pennsylvania, US
Joakim Elovsson, Sweden

Well done guys, your copies of 'Midnight Never Come' and 'In Ashes Lie' will be heading your way very soon! :o)

Better luck next time everyone else...

July Reading...

Here's a quick look at some of the books that I hope to get round to reading this month (courtesy of the Mos Eisley Cantina Band!) Notice that I said 'hope', there's a few books here that have been waiting to be read for a long time now... (apologies for the slightly dodgy photo, my camera phone isn't great...)

'Viriconium' and 'The Best of Michael Moorcock' are books that I've been dipping in and out of for a few weeks now, they may not be finished this month. I could say the same about 'Toll the Hounds' and 'Return of the Crimson Guard', the plan is to read at least one (hopefully both) of these when I go on holiday in a couple of week's time...

Are there any books on the July pile (which may be added to depending on what else arrives) that you'd like to see me bump up for an early read? I've never read anything by Storm Constantine so 'The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence' could be read sooner rather than later... Or are you just appalled that I still haven't managed to catch up with Erikson (especially as Pat is working his way through the page proofs for 'Dust of Dreams'...) Comments please! :o)

Giveaway! 'Claudius' (Douglas Jackson)

Although Douglas Jackson's 'Caligula' was sometimes a 'stop/start' affair I still had a good time reading it and will be looking to read the follow up, 'Claudius', sooner rather than later. Do you guys fancy reading 'Claudius' too? Here's the blurb from Amazon...

The year is 43AD ...In Southern England, Caratacus, war chief of the Britons, watches from a hilltop as the scarlet cloaks of the Roman legions spread across his lands like blood. In Rome, Emperor Claudius, newly risen to the imperial throne, dreams of taking his place in history alongside his illustrious forebears Caesar and Augustus. Among the legions marches Rufus, keeper of the Emperor's elephant. War is coming and the united tribes of Britain will make a desperate stand against the might of Rome. The Emperor has a very special place for Rufus and his elephant in the midst of the battle - as a secret weapon to cow the Britons with the visible manifestation of Rome's power...

Sound good to you? Thanks to Transworld Books I have three copies of 'Claudius' to give away to three lucky winners. Anyone can enter this competition, it doesn't matter where you live!

Entering is as easy as ever. Simply drop me an email telling me who you are and what your mailing address is, I'll do the rest :o)

I'll let this one run until the 12th of July and announce the winners on the 13th.

Good Luck!

‘Way of the Barefoot Zombie’ – Jasper Bark (Abaddon Books)

As much as I love zombie fiction, I wasn’t sure whether to pick this book up or not... I really didn’t enjoy Jasper Bark’s ‘Dawn over Doomsday’, it barely worked for me and I have to admit to being a little apprehensive over his latest offering. I went for it in the end though. It’s not as if I had a lot of choice in the matter; there were zombies in the book so I pretty much had to read it!
After finishing the book I can confidently say that the good news is that Jasper Bark tells a story superior to the one he told in ‘Dawn over Doomsday’. The bad news though...

What do you do when you’re a successful businessman who wants to take their success to the next level? The answer is simple; you transcend your humanity, becoming more ruthless and able to kill off your opponents in the marketplace. Doc Papa’s new residential course (on his own private Caribbean Island) offers entrepreneurs the chance to do just this by living amongst a captive zombie colony and learning how to harness the single minded bloody determination of their ‘inner zombie’. Papa Doc has plans beyond taking money off the rich elite but little does he realise that agents of the Zombie Liberation Front, who have infiltrated the island, are working to another agenda entirely. If this wasn’t enough, the presence of a rogue voodoo priestess on the island hints at the fruition of a curse that’s over a hundred years old...
These three groups will come together in a confrontation where the winner will take it all and zombies will feast on whatever is left of the losers...

Before people like George Romero set zombies loose on the world they were generally only to be found on islands in the Caribbean, the servants of cruel voodoo priests. This is the zombie tale that you’re getting for your money, soulless automatons haunting thick jungle (although still having a taste for flesh) rather than swarming across cities looking to eat people. And it’s not a bad one either...

Apart from one notable exception (notable enough that it’s getting time all to itself in a short while); ‘Way of the Barefoot Zombie’ rockets along at a pace far faster than the zombies that it takes as it’s subject matter. Everyone is in some kind of trouble or other, with a clear way in which they can get free of it, and the story wastes no time in getting them towards an ultimate conclusion. Cue plenty of voodoo magic and zombies! As with any zombie book or film the emphasis is on gore and Bark doesn’t stint on this, especially in one particularly shocking scene where the course attendants are forced into unleashing their inner zombie in the most graphic way possible! Not a scene for the faint hearted...

While the ‘arch villains’ are nothing but bad to the bone (verging on the one dimensional and cartoonish actually although they are still fun to follow) the other main characters have a lot more scope for development, over the course of the book, and this made me want to keep reading and find out how they end up. Benjamin and Tatyana aren’t particularly likeable, to begin with, although their motives for being on the island were mysterious enough for me to want to find out more. As their eyes are opened, to what is going on around them, their attitudes change slowly but surely and in a way that seemed realistic as far as I was concerned. I was also impressed at the way everything is neatly tied off at the end; an island can only hold so many stories and Bark takes the sensible route of going for closure rather than contriving to move things out into the wider world.

It’s a shame then that Bark falls foul of the same problem that dragged down ‘Dawn over Doomsday’... Where ‘Dawn’ suffered from a surfeit of spirituality, ‘Way of the Barefoot Zombie’ has simply far too many explanatory pieces about the nature of capitalism (and how it compares to the behaviour of zombies) and the inner workings of voodoo. The blurb describes this book as satire but it’s far too heavy handed and obvious to succeed in this manner. If Bark had decided to ‘show’ us the satire, instead of tell us over and over again that it’s there, then maybe things would have been different...
This overindulgence also has the unwelcome affect of slowing the plot down just at the moment that it needs to either maintain it’s pace or speed things up a little. This can make reading ‘Barefoot Zombie’ a stop/start affair which I personally found infuriating at times.

While ‘Way of the Barefoot Zombie’ is an improvement on Bark’s last book from Abaddon I came away with the feeling that it could have been so much more. This book is a step in the right direction though and has got me interested in seeing what Bark comes out with next.

Seven and a Quarter out of Ten