Sunday 25 September 2011

Wrecker by Dave Conifer






Wrecker was a foray outside my usual reading genre, but I decided to give it a go based on the reviews and the striking cover.
The writing style was fluid and the word choice economical. This made it easy to get straight into the story. The principle characters, Steve and Jane, were well sketched (Jane in particular in the early stages of the book). Their dialogue was naturalistic and revealed heaps about their personalities.
Steve came across as self-absorbed and rather loathsome, which was key to some of the events that take place later on in the story. He’s also something of an unconscionable opportunist, which is why he sees no problem employing handyman Rob Manteo for a pittance after running into him in a store. Not only does he have no issue with underpaying the guy, but he leaves this total stranger, clearly a steroid abuser, alone with his wife and child.
Jane is the character easiest to sympathize with. She shows some empathy for Manteo and heroic levels of self-restraint when she starts to receive unwanted information about her husband. 
Manteo is also easy to empathize with early on, but this changed for me towards the end of the book.
The opening 60% of Wrecker was extremely well-written. Yes, there were some errors dotted around (mostly word omissions rather than actual typos), but never enough to get in the way of the story. These early scenes were subtly drawn and told from different POVs (principally Jane and Steve, but later Rockingham, a cop with rather an unhealthy interest in Manteo).
What I liked most of all about the first half of the book was the mystery. Events (seemingly unrelated) begin to unfold, but there is just enough information for the reader to hypothesize. Even though I’d worked out much of the central mystery early on, it was never definite in my mind (just extremely likely). It was utterly engaging following the characters as they tried to piece together what was going on. Steve’s rapid decline was excruciating at times; it would have been more so had he been likable.
In these scenes, Conifer showed a mastery of his material. I was hooked from the start and already composing a review in which I extolled his virtues as an author. This guy can write, and write well.
The last 40% of the book took a slight downturn, as far as I’m concerned. It shifted from the earlier subtlety to a cliched and, at times, unbelievable pastiche of Hollywood thrillers. To a large extent, the characters remained consistent, but the action starts to become a bit over-the-top. The build towards the climactic ending was perhaps a little too drawn out and had me feeling impatient.
Probably the weakest moment, for me, was when the principle antagonist explains everything that’s happened, along with motives, in what is virtually an info dump disguised as a conversation. Not only that, but the information was somewhat redundant as the reader should have already worked much of this out at that point. I felt Conifer had done a great job of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, but then he either doubted the reader’s ability to follow it, or he doubted his own ability to have communicated the key elements of the story effectively. The editor in me wanted to bash him over the head with my Kindle and shout “Cut! Cut! Cut!”. One slip, that’s all it took, and the hard work of the first 60% was undermined.
The only other gripe I have is with the abrupt ending. I guess, after all that had happened, I wanted the opportunity to unwind with the characters. That’s an indication that so much worked with this book. 
Character identification was one of the great strengths of Wrecker. Use of POV was excellent throughout. Whenever there is a change of POV, Conifer marks it clearly with a scene break. He builds tension very well by flipping between characters in this way, and also uses shorter POV sequences to pick up pace. 
In some ways, the structure of Wrecker reminded me of The Butcher’s Boy (M.R. Mathias), although Wrecker is subtler (at first) and lacks the terror of Butcher’s. 
Overall it was an enjoyable read that started brilliantly, but fell away a little later on. The writing is good, but there were a few too many errors (more in the second half). Nothing major, but the accumulation of missed words did start to detract towards the end. 
Wrecker has shown me enough to realize that Dave Conifer is an excellent writer. Anyone who can hook me early on and get me to identify with their characters has already succeeded in the primary tasks of an author. The only reason I can’t give this the five stars I thought it deserved early on is the change that occurs just past the midway point. Once the mystery is solved and the consequences start to play out, it devolves into a slightly hackneyed formula that does not fully showcase the author’s true strengths, which were on display very effectively at the beginning.
Writing style: 9/10
Characterization: 9/10
Editing: 7/10
Plot: 8/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
Rating: 4.2/5

Saturday 17 September 2011

The Forging by M.S. Verish

Review of The Forging by M.S. Verish.
This is an epic fantasy in the old style, by which I mean there is no adherence to strict point of view, there is a wealth of fantastical happenings and beings, a lack of gritty “realistic” violence, and an absence of bad language.
In many ways, that was extremely refreshing. It’s a book in which to immerse yourself and breath in the aroma of the world of Secramore without a mirror being held up to your face showing you how terrible the real world is (which seems to happen a lot in popular modern fantasy).
The characters are distinctive and fairly easy to empathize with. Arcturus, the scholarly pariah, is a tetchy old Gandalf type, right down to his penchant for pipe smoking. Like most academics, he gets a bit over-specialized and myopic, which leads to the somewhat selfish abandonment of his partner, Eribeth. This was certainly a brave move by the authors, as I never fully liked Arcturus as a person from that moment on. He’s entertaining, for sure, and an utter know-it-all, but he’s also flawed. Those flaws are revealed further during his interactions with the enigmatic Kariyayla and the delightful Jinx.
I loved some of the mundane things the characters do, especially early on with Eribeth, who was terrific, but at times the pacing suffered as a result. Pace was also hurt by the nature of the plot: the premise of Arcturus’s quest just wasn’t compelling enough for me. I didn’t believe in his motivation, nor in his willingness to leave Eribeth behind. It was a vague search for a tracker who could then lead Arcturus and Kariyayla to find a former mentor named William. I got the sense it was harder to find the tracker than the man they wanted him to track.
The events that triggered Arcturus’s decision to leave never really added up for me. There was little urgency to the journey, no sense of anything to be averted, anyone to save. At times it felt more like an aimless road-trip without much focus.
The book really came alive at about 40% through when Jinx appears. His POV was well-written, and given a bit more time, without another character’s POV intruding. The Forging is always best when there is consistent (and sustained) POV. The head-hopping became irritating at times—I’d just start to settle into a character only to find myself in someone else’s head. The few scenes where this doesn’t happen (Eribeth, Jinx, and Kariyayla’s were most memorable) the writing reached new levels. If each scene had been reserved to a single POV, I think reader identification would have been much easier.
There were some other POV issues that got in the way of my enjoyment of the book. In a couple of scenes, characters are described but not named. Their descriptors are then used as speech tags, even when we have access to their POV thoughts. This sort of thing destroys the illusion. The dramatic intention is to be enigmatic or mysterious, but it only served to frustrate this reader.
Language was mostly good, but there were occasional forays into fantasy-speak and verbosity. The style of some chapters was appreciably different to others in this respect, and that may indicate one of the pitfalls of co-writing. Whilst there were not very many spelling errors, there were some grammatical oddities and quite a few redundant words and phrases, word omissions, and borderline usages. 
Dialogue was mostly very good. I always knew when Arcturus was speaking (pompous git!) and Jinx’s dialect was subtle and easy to read. Not so for some of the other characters, including the White Demon, when the word contractions really drew too much attention and catapulted me out of the story. 
It’s a tough one to call as I really liked some of the characterization. There were also some spells of very good prose (always when the author was keeping it simple), and nice use of POV from time to time. It’s worth reading for these things alone, and it may be that my issues with the plot are simply a matter of expectation. Perhaps there doesn’t always have to be an urgent battle to save the world; maybe the protagonist doesn’t have to have his farm burned to the ground by evil raiders, forcing him to seek justice or revenge. There is something quite earthy and mundane about these characters, in spite of their undeniably exotic natures. In this sense, they are like Chesterton’s ideal protagonist—an ordinary person who explores an extraordinary world whilst we look on. 
Writing style: 4/5
Technically very competent, but occasional fluctuations in style and a tendency to be overly wordy. 
Characterization: 4/5
Good relationships with satisfying access to inner thoughts and motives. Weakened by the omniscient style (head-hopping).
Plot: 2/5
Not compelling enough for me. There were also a few lapses of focus (the introduction of peripheral characters for the odd scene). The stakes never felt high enough.
World building: 4/5
A great map, but very little sense of geography and distance came across in the writing. I didn’t get much of a feel for the politics politics, and there were a few cliched elements in the culture. That said, once or twice I felt transported. It’s a world I’d be interested in seeing more of.
My overall impression is that this is a well-written tale that should appeal to lovers of old-style high fantasy. This is not my preferred sub-genre (Gemmell, Moorcock, R.E. Howard etc are more to my taste; the style here reminded me more of Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, and Ursula LeGuinn).
If you prefer your fantasy to be intelligent, slower in pace, and devoid of graphic violence, swearing, and heroic machismo, you would do well to take a look at The Forging.
Rating: 3.5/5

(review by Derek Prior)

Saturday 3 September 2011

Review of The Fall by Robert J. Duperre


The Fall: An Undead Apocalypse.

Zombie apocalypse is not my usual genre, but I agreed to look at this book and was happy to receive a copy from the author.
I had mixed feelings when I began The Fall. I found the opening chapters difficult to engage with and tried to work out why. There was good writing and heaps of atmosphere, but something wasn’t working for me. After much deliberation, I realized it was the language. Not all the language, just bits here and there where the writing stretched and strained for a simile too far, a word too verbose, or a point of view thought that was redundant. Nothing that couldn’t be improved with a little more parsimony, and so I read on.
Glad I did.
After the prologue, and the opening chapter in which we are inducted into the point of view of a character only to have him dropped, the story proper begins. It was not at all what I had expected.
Whilst there is a very vivid and well-drawn backdrop of contagion, with a hint of something ancient, sinister, and hinting at a very long conflict, Duperre focuses our attention squarely on the characters. These are fully-fleshed out people, the kind of flawed but altogether human beings we might number among our friends and acquaintances. There are no saints and sinners here - merely people doing the best they can with a shitty lot; individuals struggling in the big, corporate, indifferent world. The only relationships that matter are the little ones, the close ties: family and friends, colleagues. Those in a particular locality/sphere of influence.
Keeping the focus here is one of the strengths of The Fall. We see what the principle characters see, feel with them, and get swept along on their respective journeys. It was always strongest for me when we were with the compelling Kyra, or with Joshua Benoit. It gets even stronger when we’re introduced to Josh’s long-time friend, Colin. The closeness of these friendships (which are never laboured - the dialogue between them is often playfully disrespectful and authentic) increases reader identification and makes one really care about their plight.
Bad things are happening around the world, and from time to time the characters are in the thick of it, but it’s the way these people deal with their immediate concerns that forms the bedrock of this tale.
Always, the zombies and wraiths close in (inexorably, as they must in this kind of story), until the point when a few survivors hit the road in the style of the first pioneers.
That leads me to the social commentary that is a feature of almost every zombie story. The collapse of society forces a return to basics, a reliance on each other, a zest for life born from the struggle simply to survive. There’s nothing like hordes of undead massacring their way through towns and cities to wake people up, to make them fully human again. It’s like holding up a mirror to society and then running from what you see.
I was pleasantly surprised to get some zombie perspective POV at one point - interesting that the host hadn’t been completely annihilated. It made me think of the use of zombies as a philosophical model looking at Cartesian dualism. I suspect, though, that it’s more bound up with the underlying cause of the apocalypse in this case, the strange beings who seem to be guiding events.
There’s enough other elements to this story to lift it above the norm for the genre. Hints are found in the prologue and dotted about in subsequent chapters. We even get some POV insight into the being known as Sam, and a female counterpart. There are forces at work other than a simple contagion released from a Mayan temple. There were one or two moments when I thought Duperre was going to give too much away, but sensibly he withheld information and makes me want to read on in the series to piece together what is happening.
The overall feeling of The Fall, for me, was closer to the golden age of Doctor Who than Resident Evil or Night of the Living Dead. By golden age, I mean Jon Pertwee as the Doctor when Earth was always being invaded. There were some great contagion stories, and often “higher/evil” beings speaking mind-to-mind with lead baddies and orchestrating the attack. The Fall is clearly more horrific than Who, but it’s breadth of ideas and focus on a small group of characters reminded me of those great old stories. There was also a hint of The Pyramids of Mars in Ken’s opening chapter in the Mayan temple.
I guess this is why I kept reading, and why I was drawn into the tale. I’m not a fan of gratuitous violence or contrived suspense, and you don’t get either of those here. The horror is always contextual in The Fall and the suspense is an effect of very tight point of view - something Duperre never deviates from throughout the main body of the story.
This is a tale of epic proportions - the sense of place and geography reminded me of the original Planet of the Apes movie. When the characters finally set out on their long journey, I know I’ll be right there along with them. Sometimes books and films just hop between set pieces with no real sense of time and place. Not so here. It’s a world to immerse yourself in, even if it’s not always a pleasant ride.
This is a very good book, beautifully illustrated (I like that the illustrations come after each chapter and serve as a visual reminder of what’s just happened).
Re my problems with the prologue and opening chapter, I feel they could have been cut and the book would have been even stronger. The prologue, in particular, is the only time there were any POV issues for me (“the girl” would presumably know her own name; there’s a use of omniscient narration here that is absent elsewhere). 
There was still a smattering (and only a smattering) of verbosity here and there, use of flowery words where simple ones would have been better. The overall standard is so good, though, that these deviations don’t really get in the way. Once more, with some judicious cutting, the story would be enhanced.
Ultimately, it comes down to engagement, and Duperre easily succeeded as far as this reader is concerned. The more we were in Kyra or Josh’s POV the more powerful the engagement was. From the halfway point onwards it was a very easy book to engage with and I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Ratings are utterly subjective, but for the genre, and personal enjoyment, I would give this a healthy 4.5 (which rounds up to 5 as the minor issues I had with language and the opening are rather small compared with all that is good here).