Did not finish… 'The Wolves of London' - Mark Morris (Titan Books)

Alex Locke is a reformed ex-con forced into London's criminal underworld for one more job. He agrees to steal a priceless artefact - a human heart carved from the blackest obsidian - but when the burglary goes horribly wrong, Alex is plunged into the nightmarish world of the Wolves of London, unearthly assassins who will stop at nothing to reclaim the heart. As he races to unlock the secrets of the mysterious object, Alex must learn to wield its dark power - or be destroyed by it.

So, the first post for October is a 'did not finish'… If I'd got my act together this post would have probably featured around the middle of last month but a heck of a lot has been happening and the blog has suffered the most in terms of what has my attention (probably because, out of everything, the blog really doesn't care if I ignore it for a few days and that's the way it should be). I'm also finding it really difficult to focus on more than a few pages at a time (which is killing me, I love reading) which isn't really conducive to blog posting either. I keep plugging away though :o)

But the book, the book… I picked up 'The Wolves of London' with high hopes that eventually came to nothing and resulted in a 'did not finish'.

I live in London and it's a place that was made to be an Urban Fantasy/Horror setting with its haphazard sprawl and attendant myths and legends all helping to provide a setting full of inspiration. Hence the high hopes then and, to begin with, 'Wolves' looked like it was going to deliver with an engaging lead and a set of intriguing questions punctuated with otherworldly violence. All good, right? 

Well, it would have been all good if Morris could have kept up that early promise of fast paced action with his own slightly weird (but very unsettling) take on Urban Fantasy. If he had, this would be an entirely different post. This is the post it is though and some moments of really intense and creepy fear were cancelled out, for me, by a tendency for the prose to linger (where it needed to keep that frantic pace) and an inescapable feeling that 'Wolves' was treading overly familiar ground in terms of this particular sub-genre. I try to be forgiving of things like that but that forgiveness only goes so far when I want a book to hold my attention (instead of feeling like I'm reading the same book over and over again...) 

I read the first couple of hundred pages (well, more like the first hundred and then skimmed the next hundred...) and there is evidence of a read that will suit fans of Urban Fantasy mixed with a hint of horror. Just not me though; the days are long gone where I would have torn through this and had a review up the next day. I need a little more from my reading and 'The Wolves of London' didn't quite make that leap into 'must finish' territory.

Oh well, onto the next book (which is Brian Ruckley's 'The Free' in case you were wondering)...

'No Hero' - Jonathan Wood (Titan Books)

I’ve never really been one for Urban Fantasy Police Procedurals; gave the whole thing a go but couldn’t escape the feeling that it was the same story being told with different characters – ‘copper finds out there’s supernatural stuff going on, does a bit of old fashioned police work, job done and off down the boozer for a pint with the lads’. And hasn’t Ben Aaronovitch cornered the market here already? Is there really room for another one?
Jonathan Wood seems to think so and, more tellingly for me, so do a lot of bloggers who know their stuff. I was after a little change in my reading (‘Blood Song’ and ‘Half a King’ is enough to keep me going for a little while I think…) so figured I would see how ‘No Hero’ and my daily commute got on together. The answer was ‘not perfectly by any means but not too badly thank you very much…’

What would Kurt Russell do? Oxford police detective Arthur Wallace asks himself that question a lot. While he s a good cop, he prefers his action on the big screen. But when he sees tentacles sprouting from the neck of a fresh corpse, the secretive government agency MI37 comes to recruit Arthur in its struggle against a threat from another dimension known as the Progeny. But Arthur is NO HERO! Can an everyman stand against sanity-ripping cosmic horrors?

‘No Hero’ is the first in a trilogy (according to the ‘also available’ bit at the back of the book anyway, there might be more to come) and so it falls to the book to introduce the players, set the ground rules for this new setting and so on. Wood also gives us one hell of a ride through a plot featuring Lovecraftesque parasites trying to bring about the end of the world. It’s all awesome stuff, and more on that in a moment, but I couldn’t help but feel that certain elements of the book were trying to race each other rather than give the reader something a little more coherent.
The plot runs at such a breakneck pace that it gets away from all the important stuff about setting the rules and saying what can and cannot happen. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Wood has a tendency to let certain characters ‘info-dump’ a little too much, but the result for me was that I kept having to stop and ask myself why certain things were happening and if they could actually happen or not. Not at all good for the flow of the book.

That was about the only thing wrong with ‘No Hero’ though; Jonathan Wood has a story to tell and does it with gusto. While the end result may not be polished you can’t deny the urgency of the plot and the unexpected directions that it takes the book in. Nothing is certain with the characters and the reader kept on their toes throughout; you wouldn’t have thought that Wood could maintain that tension for so long but he does it and makes it all look very easy.

The highlight for me though was Arthur Wallace, a regular copper who would rather watch stuff blowing up on telly than be the guy lighting the fuse. Sometimes life doesn’t give you that choice though and Wallace will have to stand or fall on his police instincts and ‘What would Kurt Russell do?’
Wood nails it dead on with Wallace whose dry humour helps him to cope with the mind numbing fear of monstrosities from beyond time and space. It’s not only an interesting examination of what actually makes a hero but it also made for the only urban fantasy novel I’ve ever read that made me laugh out loud. ‘No Hero’ is a very funny read in places and I’m hoping for more of the same in the next book (which I will be reading, just to see the zombie dinosaur).

‘No Hero’ could do with a little more polish around the edges but it’s an entertaining read nonetheless and I’m pretty sure this blog will be featuring the next two books in the very near future.

‘The Cormorant’ – Chuck Wendig (Angry Robot)

I’ve still got a little way to go before I’ve read everything that Chuck Wendig has ever written but if he has written a bad book, I haven’t read it yet. I don’t think I will either; Wendig’s ability to strip humanity down to its most raw state (and then wrap that up in a compelling plot) seems to neatly sidestep the possibility of him ever writing a bad book. And long may that continue as far as I’m concerned, I love having authors that I can rely on (and trust) to take me away from the commute and give me a good read.

‘The Miriam Black’ books are, for me, the best thing that Wendig is writing at the moment. This is for a whole load of reasons that I’ve already written about on my old blog and will proceed to revisit here. That’s right, I’ve spent the last couple of days getting really quite annoyed when my train journeys came to an end and I had to put ‘The Cormorant’ down to interact with the real world. Today I just didn’t bother interacting; reading the book as I walked along just so I could finish the last few pages before I got into work.

If you’re new to these books, and are thinking about giving them a go, you need to go off and read ‘Blackbirds’ and ‘Mockingbird’ before you pick up ‘The Cormorant’. Don’t worry, they’re both excellent books and this review will still be here when you get back.

For everyone else, here goes…

Miriam is on the road again, having transitioned from "thief" - to "killer". Hired by a wealthy businessman, she heads down to Florida to practice the one thing she's good at, but in her vision she sees him die by another's hand and on the wall written in blood is a message just for Miriam. She's expected… Now Miriam must find out who is stalking her from the future before they kill again.

My immediate urge here is to just go on at length about how great this book was. And it was, I absolutely loved the hell out of ‘The Cormorant’ and the thought of another Miriam Black novel to come (‘Thunderbird’) has left me all impatient and wishing that the publication date would just hurry up and get here. There is a lot in ‘The Cormorant’ that a reader can really get their teeth into but, for me, it felt that it was all over far too quickly. That’s the mark of a great entertainer although you would be hard pressed to call the subject matter ‘entertaining’; lets just say that it is ‘thoroughly compelling’ and leave it at that.

Chuck Wendig’s America is a dark place where messed up people tread lonely paths and death is everywhere you turn. Well, it is if you’re Miriam Black; that’s kind of the whole point of the series really. Miriam is as spiky and in your face as ever but there’s a real sense now that she is moving on, from previous books, and trying to make her ‘talent’ either work for her or, at the very least, be something that she can just about live with. It’s really sad then that, despite her intentions, the way Miriam protects herself means that she will never find the place that she wants in her world. Or maybe she has already found it but doesn’t want to admit it just yet. There’s at least one more book to go before we can see those answers but in the meantime, it was good for me (as a reader) to spend time with a character who wants to move forwards rather than have Wendig just be content to have Miriam stay as she is and live off that ‘one trick’.

It’s even more sad then to see Miriam want to move forwards but spend most of this book trapped by faces from her past. There is some kind of redemption to be found but Miriam must also face up to her past mistakes and settle them once and for all. Wendig does a lot of good things here by the way, not least opening up the possibility of a world where Miriam’s power isn’t as unique as she thinks it is. Others have come into something similar through similar trauma, there’s a world opening up here and the background just got a little more interesting. Wendig also poses questions that make the plot one that absolutely has to be followed. How can Miriam track down her stalker from the future and, once she does, how can she kill someone who knows her every move before she does? I’m trying hard not to give away the villain’s identity here but it is worth sticking around for, as is the resolution.

And just how much death is in this book? People dying and people who are going to die one day (which is everyone else). All those grimdark and epic fantasy writers who think they have a high body count should visit Mr Wendig for a lesson in how to really do it. Once again, Wendig appeals to the dark bit in all of us that likes to know how everyone else dies (whilst secretly feeling glad that we don’t know the details of our own demise). It’s the ultimate form of gossip isn’t it? Especially when the person concerned doesn’t know how they’re going to go… You feel a bit bad for reading these moments but it’s another connection to Miriam and a way to empathise with her situation; Wendig has all the bases covered and the result is a book that you can’t put down until it’s done.

‘The Cormorant’ is another superb addition to the Miriam Black series and promises amazing things for the next book to come; you can’t ask for anything more than that really. Fans of the series will love it, newcomers have a bit of a treat in store.

Short Story Sunday, ‘Carniepunk: Parlor Tricks’ – Jennifer Estep

Ever since I downloaded the Kindle app onto my phone I’ve become a bit of sucker for anything on Amazon that’s a free download (and a lot of stuff that isn’t although not so much these days). A couple of hours ago, in fact, I downloaded Jonathan Green’s ‘Dark Heart’ (free download for the rest of today) and I’m actually downloading ‘Pandemonium: 1853’ as we speak. I told you I was a bit of a sucker for anything with ‘£0.00’ next to it :o)

I’d heard about the ‘Carniepunk’ anthology, via Twitter, and it does sound like a more refreshing take on the old Urban Fantasy tropes (don’t get me started again…). When I heard that ‘Parlor Tricks’ was a free download (thanks again Twitter!) it seemed like a great way to score some free reading and get a little taste for the anthology as well (‘Parlor Tricks’ comes with samples of all the other stories). Can’t lose, right? Well, kind of…

Readers who are familiar with Jennifer Estep’s ‘Elemental Assassin’ series will already know all about the exploits of Gin Blanco and her sister Bria. For those who don’t, Gin Blanco kicks all sorts of ass as ‘The Spider’; an elemental assassin in the city of Ashland. That’s all you need to know really as that’s all Gin does here. Another layer of story for long term fans then and a short sharp dose of action for newcomers like me. That’s about all it was though for me. If Estep is looking for new readers then I won’t be one of them.

That’s not to say ‘Parlor Tricks’ isn’t fun to read as it is. Gin and Bria have a missing girl to find in the midst of a carnival that is drawn very well in such a relatively short space. There’s also a nice bit of action, at the end, to round things off with a bang. This one just felt a little too lightweight for me. Not only is the plot very straightforward but it also seemed to feel like there wasn’t enough plot to go round; like it was being stretched to fit with all the atmospheric ‘carnival prose’. I was left in the position where I wouldn’t have minded finding out more about Gin and Ashland but ‘Parlor Tricks’ didn’t quite sell itself well enough to make me actually want to get up and do it. Are there any fans of Jennifer Estep reading? Maybe you could let me know what you think of her books.

As it stands. ‘Parlor Tricks’ was an entertaining twenty minute read but that was about it. If the publisher was looking to stir up some interest in the anthology maybe they would have been better off picking another tale for a freebie…