‘Dawn over Doomsday’ – Jaspre Bark (Abaddon Books)

I didn’t get a lot of reading done over the Bank Holiday weekend (hence all the competitions!) and I wanted to get some more reviews up quickly so Abaddon Books’ latest instalment in ‘The Afterblight Chronicles’ seemed like a safe bet for a quick read that would be entertaining at the same time. At least that’s what I thought…
America has been crippled by the ravages of ‘The Cull’, a plague that has spared only one tenth of the earth’s population (those of a certain blood type), and there are those who wish to rebuild the shattered country with their own aims in mind. Chief Hiamovi is one such man, he sees the aftermath of the plague as an opportunity for his United Tribal Nations to reclaim America for the Indian tribes. Samuel Colt is another such man but his aims are different The Neo-Clergy once ruled America and Colt wants them back in power again, if a few Native Americans have to die for this to happen then it’s no big deal. Matters are about to come to an explosive head at Little Big Horn but fate may yet have a surprise in the shape of Anna Bontraeger. Anna carries another virus that could either save what remains of humanity, or destroy it…
Previous books in the ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ have all been about the apocalyptic landscape and what people will do to survive in it. This has generally resulted in a lot of running battles, mutants and arch villains prepared to do anything to gain power and I’ve been more than happy with this as it means I get a fast paced read with lots happening to entertain me. ‘Dawn over Doomsday’ has the running battles and evil villains but takes a slightly different approach in that it talks a lot about themes of spirituality and redemption in the post-apocalyptic world. When I say ‘a lot’ that’s precisely what I mean and while it’s an interesting area to look at I got the feeling that all the other cool stuff (the stuff that makes Abaddon Books what they are) suffered as a result. Pretty much every character has their own spiritual journey to make with a lot of agonising and suchlike, some find a form of redemption while others crash and burn (literally in some cases) along the way. The thing is that I just wasn’t interested in pages and pages about why Hiamovi couldn’t hear the coyote anymore or Samuel Colt’s crisis of conscience. I wanted gun fights, tight spots to escape from and crazed biker gangs all of which were in short supply. There was just enough of that to keep me reading but not enough to keep me happy…
What redeemed the book for me (although not enough for me to give it a higher mark) was the character of Greaves, the scientist who rescues Anna at the beginning of the book. The author does a really good job of building up our preconceptions of Greaves only to knock them all down when we least expect it, showing the character in a brand new light and making me want to find out what happens to him next. The end scene, with Greaves, is particularly powerful in it’s depiction of the fine line between sanity and madness and I’m still not sure which way Greaves fell…
The explosive ending was just a little too late for me though, I’d been expecting the literary equivalent of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film (fun, popcorn reading) and got something that wanted me to get involved in a completely different way but just didn’t hook me in the way it should have. If you’re a fan of this series then I’m sure there’ll be something here for you but ‘Dawn over Doomsday’ hasn’t done nearly enough for ‘The Afterblight Chronicles’ to dislodge either ‘Pax Britannia’ or ‘Tomes of the Dead’ as my favourite series for Abaddon…

Five and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘The Devil’s Plague’ – Mark Beynon (Abaddon Books)

Christmas is with us once again and seeing as I have two weeks off work I feel like I’ve drunk far too much already… What I’m after then is a book where it doesn’t matter if I fall asleep halfway through. Something that I don’t have to think about too much, a little bit of fun that I can put down if called upon to do a last minute dash to the supermarket to pick up milk. Step forward Mark Beynon and Abaddon Books’ latest offering in the ‘Tomes of the Dead’ series…
‘The Devil’s Plague’ is an alternate history of the English Civil War but with a supernatural twist. Cromwell’s army is victorious but the devilish Kryfangan cavalry are bought at the cost of Cromwell’s soul. And it doesn’t stop there; every soldier that dies under the hellish onslaught comes back as a ravenous zombie! War is brewing between the two armies of the undead and only a King in exile and a troupe of actors stand any chance of stopping them...
‘The Devil’s Plague’ is another great offering from Abaddon and a good example of how much story you can pack into just over two hundred pages. Although there are some ‘flashbacks’ that repeat stuff the reader has already been told what you mostly get is a liberal dose of action, suspense and gore. The story is mostly linear in plot although there are a couple of twists here and there; certainly enough to keep me interested. There’s also a real ‘gothic’ feel to the horror that seems to be in keeping with that point in history. Talking of the history, it’s mentioned a few too many times that it’s the aftermath of the English Civil War (at least it was for me anyway). We only need telling once…
Despite these minor niggles though, ‘The Devil’s Plague’ is a very entertaining read and would probably do nicely as a stocking filler. It’s not one to generate hours of intense discussion but it is one for whiling away a few hours in between gaps in the Christmas TV schedule ;o) The teaser for ‘I, Zombie’ (due June 2008) look interesting as well…

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘School’s Out’ – Scott Andrews (Abaddon Books)

I’ll bet you were just like me and used to sit in the classroom thinking, “I wonder what would happen if the school burnt down?” As much as I used to think this (and wish for it) I never made the next mental step and thought, “I wonder what would happen if school was cancelled because of an apocalyptic plague and all the associated problems that brings? That’s ok, in the latest instalment of ‘The Afterblight Chronicles’ Scott Andrews gives his reader a pretty good idea of what would happen.
Lee Keegan returns to his old school to wait for his father who has promised to meet him there. In the meantime, plague has ravaged the countryside and what’s left over will prove very dangerous for the surviving boys at the school. There’s the inhabitants of a small town who want to teach the boys a ‘lesson’ and a blood crazed cult with it’s own plans in mind. Lee’s main problem though will be the return of an old prefect with a particularly sadistic streak…
While other books in the ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ series have concentrated on the situation in places like America ‘School’s Out’ takes a look closer to home, like Mad Max but set in the Home Counties. It’s an entertaining enough read with all the staple ingredients that you would expect from an Abaddon book; gunfights, madmen and graphic torture. The story itself is a fairly original idea, I haven’t read many (if any) post apocalyptic tales set in an English school and the premise alone was enough to keep me reading to find out how things went. The characters were well worth investing time in as well; Lee and Mac were pretty well fleshed out with lots of insight into what made them tick. Rowles, the psychotic ten-year-old, was a particular favourite of mine!
Like I’ve said, the mixture of ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ was a fairly unique approach that works well but at the same time served to hinder things as well. Whether the boys were taking lessons or drilling with firearms there was a lot of routine in their days and this seemed to be dealt with by starting a lot of sentences with lines like, “Things were to carry on like this for several months.” When you take these sentences out of the equation you’re left with about three big events in the story with a lot of filler to pad things out, ok if you’re after a light read but not so good if you want to really get stuck into something. Also, constantly bringing your main villain back from ‘certain death’ situations works a lot better on film than in a book (although I never saw the ending coming, actually I did but only because I skipped to the end just after I’d started!)
‘School’s Out’ is a good addition to the Abaddon Books ‘roster’ but you need to remember that it’s just a light read if you’ve got an hour to spare on the train. If you’re after something heavier, read something else.

Six and a Half out of Ten

‘A Kind of Peace’ – Andy Boot (Abaddon Books)

I’ve read a few books from Abaddon and have enjoyed all of them so far. They’re short, sharp slices of gutsy pulp fiction that are good for an hour or two’s read in the garden with a cold beer and can also make a sticky Tube journey a lot more bearable. It was with this in mind that I took Andy Boot’s ‘A Kind of Peace’ to work with me this morning, a nice quick read that I could have finished by the time I got back. While it was a quick read, unfortunately it wasn’t actually that good…
The planet of Inan has only just found peace after five hundred years of war. A world where magic and technology co-exist has realised that Mages aren’t just very old wizards, they’re the ultimate weapons and their use can only result in mutually assured destruction. If this were the case, why would anyone risk an already fragile peace by kidnapping the Mage of Bethel? Simeon 7, the bodyguard, must find out and clear his own name at the same time.
As I’ve said, Abaddon books are known for being fast paced, over the top affairs where the main focus is on action and huge explosions. ‘A Kind of Peace’ takes all these elements and decides that it can do perfectly well without them. What we’re left with is a decent story that pretty much collapses under the interminable slowness of it’s own pace. If a book is going to be under 300 pages long then it needs to know what it’s about and get on with the job in hand. Boot concentrates on giving the reader loads of background history and when I looked at what was supposed to be happening in the story my first thought was, ‘there isn’t enough time for this, things are meant to be happening right now!’ The uneven bias towards exposition leaves us with little room to get to know any of the characters and we’re left with a bunch of people who look like they’ve been given one distinctive characteristic each and left to get on with it. While the mixture of technology and magic is always an interesting concept, it sometimes looks as if not enough attention has been paid to what this actually means for the inhabitants of Inan. If you were looking for an escaped convict in an academy of magic but couldn’t find him, you’d probably assume that magic was being used to hide him wouldn’t you? Well, you might but it certainly doesn’t occur to the Inan security forces that are carrying out the search…
For me, this was a story with potential that could have been so much more. Give this one a miss and pick up one of the ‘Tomes of the Dead’ or ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ books instead.

Three out of Ten

‘El Sombra’ – Al Ewing (Abaddon Books)

I’ve had a few books from Abaddon and my favourite so far has to be ‘Unnatural History’, the first in the ‘Pax Brittania’ series. I really enjoyed the darker take on Colonial Britain so was very pleased when ‘El Sombra’ popped through the letterbox (more of the same, hopefully)…
‘Magna Brittania’ is still the ultimate world power but Germany’s ‘Ultimate Reich’ is snapping at it’s heels and has it’s own designs on world domination. Nazi robots are far inferior to the British kind so the sleepy Mexican village of Pasito is overrun, by the steam driven wings of the Luftwaffe, and it’s inhabitants used as test subjects in a vile experiment. Not everyone is captured though… Out of agony and the darkest humiliation is born a hero who will take the fight back to the Nazis with a flashing sword and a laugh in the night, El Sombra!
Did you like the first Zorro film (the one with Antonio Banderas)? I’ll bet you watched the second one and thought, “not as good as the first one…” Read ‘El Sombra’ and have your faith restored in simple tales of swashbuckling heroism. We know how the story’s going to end but that’s not the point, it’s the journey that’s important and it’s a journey filled with brash heroes, evil villains and sultry women. Oh yes, and lots of sword fights! The action doesn’t let up for a minute and you could see this either being made into a movie or (in true ‘pulp’ style) becoming one of those Saturday serials like Flash Gordon or (funnily enough) Zorro. I liked the ‘pop culture’ reference to Marvel comics and the introduction of Hitler himself hints that there will be more ‘El Sombra’ stories to follow. I hope so anyway.
I would have liked to have seen some dates mentioned so I could see how it matched up with the tale of Ulysses Quicksilver. I also found it odd that the supporting cast of Nazi soldiers had more attention paid to their background stories than El Sombra did (how did he spend all that time in the desert?) The ‘enigmatic hero’ thing was handled well but didn’t quite feel right when compared to a detailed biography of every single faceless soldier.
On the whole though, ‘El Sombra’ was an entertaining read that kept my interest the whole time. It’s a definite ‘holiday read’ and while it won’t make you think weighty thoughts it will make you think “he took out six soldiers at once!?!” and “serves you right, you evil Nazi…”

Eight out of Ten

‘The Culled’ – Simon Spurrier.

Abaddon Books are on a mission to deliver a new generation of pulp fiction to a new generation of readers. Any publisher that starts the blurb with the line ‘He made a stand against the end of the world’ is making their intent pretty clear! Just in case you were still in any doubt, the book throws you into a world where plague has killed everyone bar those with a certain blood type. The world that remains is one of feudal savagery, ruled by those with the most guns and access to cannibalized technology (very much a’ la Mad Max). Our hero (an MI6 operative, add another cliché to the mix!) begins the book in a festering London and travels to an apocalyptic New York where he takes on an ‘end time’ religion which is stealing the world’s children. This isn’t the reason why he’s in New York though, this isn’t made clear until the very end of the book.
I think it was the fact that this book threw every pulp cliché into the pot (and stirred it up with a livid mixture of gunfire and car chases), with no regard for how it would compare against more ‘serious’ sci-fi/fantasy fiction that made me enjoy it so much. There was no pretense at a ‘message’, ‘world building’ or hard science; just superhero agents and hard women with soft centres which was exactly what Abaddon have said they’ll deliver (and they deliver it with a gutsy style of no compromising).
I found my copy in a charity shop which may say something about the long term readability of these books but for a short, intense and satisfying read you can’t go too far wrong with one of these books. I’m looking forward to reading about jet powered nazis and dinosaurs invading London very soon!

Seven out of Ten