Ready Player One

For ages now Ready Player One has been appearing in my Recommendations on various online stores. When it comes to novels, I'm very cautious about trying out a new author so I'd ignored it.

I finally gave in this month and got myself a copy. It is always frustrating to find yourself coming late to an absolutely fantastic party, especially when it was just my stubbornness stopping me from attending earlier!

Ready Player One's only fault, just one, is it is extremely predictable. We all know how adventure stories end... with the protagonist winning. So we need a few surprises on the journey. Sadly I found myself always a few pages ahead of the story.

However if I put that little quibble to one side... this is a beguiling, beautifully realised tale of a dystopian near-future where everyone uses a shared virtual world called "The Oasis" to escape from their unpleasant existence. The creator of The Oasis, an eighties obsessed geek of the first order, dies but leaves an Easter Egg to end all Easter Eggs... whoever completes his quest will take control of The Oasis and all its income.

Our hero is Parzival who fights to win the prize before an evil mega-corporation manages to get its hands on it. On the way we're treated to a run-through of every geeky subject known to the 20th century... from Pac-Man through Wargames to Monty Python. For a nearly-80s kid (I was born in the 80s and grew up in a house of 80s teenagers) it was absolutely wonderful.

Think Willy Wonka set in Second Life with Black Tiger.

And, of course, being so far behind the times on this... there's a movie coming directed by Steven Spielberg! I can't wait.

Star Trek Legacies: Captain To Captain

The sadly late Majel Barrett had one of the longest and most involved roles in the Star Trek franchise outside of Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman.

Her first on-screen role (of several!) was as Number One in the unaired pilot episode. A strong, logical character who sadly we didn't really get to know. Now on the 50th anniversary of the first Star Trek broadcast a new trilogy of books is being released and the first one is out already.

Captain to Captain tells the story of an Enterprise away mission gone awry under Number One's watch whilst serving under the first captain of the USS Enterprise Robert April. And it tells the story of how she tried to put it all right years later.... but she had to do it whilst on the run from Captain Kirk and his crew.

There are Klingons. There are Romulans. There's a mysterious new alien threat with a weapon that could change the balance of power in the galaxy. And there's Captain Una (Number One) who makes Kirk look like a stickler for rules and decorum as she fights to save her friends and shipmates who've been lost for decades...

And it ends on a cliffhanger too...

It is actually one of the best Star Trek novels I've ever read. Most have been poorly written and unimaginative (or too imaginative with crazy weird story moves that make little sense). This just kept the pace up, kept the story moving and had enough drama to draw you in. Don't read up on the next two instalments as the synopsis will give away one of the key twists of this tale! Sit back, relax and enjoy a good old fashion Star Trek story. There's not better tribute to the series than that!

Lost Stars - This Is The Star Wars Book You've Been Looking For

A forbidden romance. No lightsaber battles. Nice Imperial officers. "What is this rubbish?" is possibly something a Star Wars fan might be forgiven for exclaiming.

But this young adult book is one of the best Star Wars books I've ever read. Focussing on a boy (Thane) and a girl (Ciena) from a backwater Outer Rim planet, this book tells the story of their friendship, their time in the Imperial Academy on Coruscant and their parting of the ways as they begin to see the Empire in different ways.

I won't spoil who stays with the Empire and who leaves. And I won't spoil some of the plot points as we follow Thane and Ciena on their separate journeys. But their paths cross not just with each other but with many important parts of the original trilogy... the opening scenes of A New Hope, the destruction of Alderaan and then Yavin, Hoth, Bespin and Endor.

That is part of the magic of the book. It will refresh your next original trilogy marathon. Now there are two stories... the one you see on screen and the one happening just off camera. This isn't the first time that this has been done for certain scenes but this threads its way through all three movies.

And the other part of the magic is just how believable the relationship between Thane and Ciena is. Perfectly formed and just plain brilliant. It could school the likes of Twilight and the Hunger Games (though I did enjoy the Hunger Games I must admit) on romance in a fantasy setting.

Pick it up today and indulge in the best new Star Wars canon book since the Expanded Universe was washed away.

Review: A Meeting At Corvallis By S.M. Stirling

The final book in the first Emberverse trilogy, A Meeting At Corvallis is all about the long-awaited War of the Eye between the Bear Killers, Mackenzies and their allies and the Portland Protective Association.

This book is full of fights and battles which can sometimes be a bit hard going when faced with Stirling's habit of describing every minor detail of every minor character's battle dress and weaponry. But it also has plenty of political intrigue, character development and world-building which keeps it interesting.

It is a good read, but I found the ending a little predictable and a bit of a let down. After all these "minor" battles we are denied a final reckoning and instead have an ending that bears no small resemblance to the ending of Kevin Costner's "The Postman". *sigh*

And I wasn't a fan of the death of one of my favourite characters.

However I'm too far in to stop now. The Emberverse has me in its grip. Onwards to The Sunrise Lands.

The Leftovers

Ever wondered what might actually happened to the world is the Rapture occurred? The Leftovers is a far more interesting take on a post-Rapture world than Left Behind could ever be.

Set three years after the Great Disappearance, The Leftovers focuses on what happens to one family who survived it. Now I was expecting this to be at the very least "minor league" fantasy but really this isn't science fiction, fantasy or any other exotic genre... it's a book about emotions, relationships and family breakdown. Yet I still liked it.

Do not go into this book thinking it will explain the Great Disappearance/Rapture. That event is just all Alien Space Bats. The drama comes simply from the relationships between people and the never quite knowing where things are heading for the main characters.

Weird enough to be interesting, but well-written enough to be readable, The Leftovers will be fighting for top spot on my favourite books of 2013 list.

Great stuff.

Review: A Big Hand For The Doctor By Eoin Colfer

A Big Hand For The Doctor was a good opener for the 50th Anniversary series of Doctor Who e-books written by children's authors.

But it was marred by one annoying little thing... it had three or four pop culture references (all from the 21st century) that just seem so forced (Oooo... Hogwarts) that it was actually pretty jarring. Here's this nice little tale set in Victorian London featuring the First Doctor and Susan and suddenly BAM you are taken out of the story by an unnecessary reference.

Anyway, enough grumbling, it was a lovely little tale with some disturbing villains and a fantastic ending that I did not see coming (but once you know what it is, it is pretty obvious!).

Review: Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

I bought this in my post-Christmas Amazon spree based solely on Michael Crichton's name. Then I read the reviews and was a little taken aback. Harsh is not the word!

When I was 10 years old I read my first "adult" book; Jurassic Park. I have vivid memories of reading it whenever I could, barely able to put it down (even to the point of reading it in the dark on a long car journey trying desperately to read as we went past lampposts!). Ever since, even after I found our politics didn't quite match up, I've had very fond feelings about Michael Crichton's books. When he passed away I was deeply saddened. Micro was an unfinished work and Richard Preston took over the task of finishing after Crichton's death. With the nasty reviews on Amazon fresh in my mind I started reading with a little bit of trepidation.

I needn't have worried. It does have a little bit of "unpolished" feel and it does feature Crichton's rather typically OTT villain (Denis Nedry for example) but I like it. Not loved it, but very much enjoyed the journey.

It is very much Honey I Shrunk The Kids meets Jurassic Park, featuring people shrunken to a tiny size fighting their way through a forest and encountering ants, wasps, centipedes and murderous robots. I suppose that makes it a little Innerspace too really.

As his last work (that we know of currently) it fittingly had a very Jurassic Park feel. I look forward to the movie!

Review: The Protector's War By S. M. Stirling

I'm an Audible subscriber and, on top of the books I'm reading, usually fill my commuting time by listening to audiobooks. Having read S. M. Stirling's superb Nantucket trilogy (check out Island In The Sea Of Time as a starting point) it was only natural that last year I listened to the first in his connected "Emberverse" saga; "Dies The Fire".

Unfortunately I approached as if it was just another alternative history or post-apocalyptic story and thus didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. It took me a few months to try and get into the very popular saga once more but this time I approached it with more of an open mind.

The Protector's War is the follow-up and I enjoyed it far more than Dies The Fire (but that again is more to do with how I approached it rather than a reflection on Dies The Fire). Let us set the scene... 9 years ago something messed up the physics around our planet and gunpowder, electrics and a whole host of useful things simply stopped working. Chaos ensued and most of the world died as food ran out. By the end of Dies The Fire things had begun to reorganise but the world was a very different place. The Protector's War picks up where it left off 9 years ago revisiting our characters in the Willamette Valley in Oregon as they attempt to prepare themselves for a possible war with a warlord to their north. Battling bandits, setting up future dynastic clashes and introducing some unexpected visitors from afar it is a very entertaining read.

I won't pretend that S. M. Stirling's style of writing takes a bit of getting used to. He will go into intricate detail about EVERYTHING. Some people paint with words, S. M. Stirling takes a 10 megapixel digital picture. And the way his characters think can be somewhat jarring. The protagonists are all far too clever, far too brave and far too well-prepared to be truly believable. But that is where I went wrong before. This isn't a post-apocalyptic fiction book... it is fantasy. And if you approach it as you would Lord of the Rings, you'll enjoy it a great deal.

S. M. Stirling is a worldbuilder and I want to know more about this world he is building. This is definitely a 5 star book.

Review: Animal Kingdom: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel by Iain Rob Wright

Book 2 of 2013's reading list! Woo.... And today it is the turn of "Animal Kingdom: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel"

This review is going be a total downer and I wish it wasn't. It's competently written which is pretty good for a book in its price range and shows the hard work the author has put into this novel. But it doesn't work for me.

Set in a zoo on the day that every animal in the world turns against humans, it has a very interesting premise. I've seen this premise work out a little in Brian Keene's "The Rising", although in that book they were undead animals adding to an already pretty serious zombie apocalypse. However the first flaw in the book is the way that premise works out. These now, at the very least semi-intelligent, animals with a bloodlust don't really try very hard to get at the humans. It isn't just mammals affected but reptiles and even anthropods. I just couldn't see how the timing worked. This premise might have worked played out over a day, maybe two. But over a few days? By then the spiders could've slipped into ears, noses and mouths of the people and down untold amounts of damage. Monkeys could've destroyed the window and torn apart doors.

I know, I'm an animal obsessive, but just the presentation of a group of chimps being fairly easily avoided (and luckily killing one of the antagonists) seemed totally unreal. The way the premise played out seemed to defy belief and given with these type of books one has already suspended ones belief that takes some doing.

And I can't decide if the characters were just paper thin or if I just didn't like any of them. They acted in unbelievable ways. Take Bill, whose boyfriend is killed during the opening events of the novel, he doesn't spend a moment (not a single moment) grieving. Now of them seem all that fazed by events. The only person who has anything approaching a breakdown is already on tablets for OCD. And the lead character, Joe, is just unlikeable. The villains are 1) selfish, power hungry businessman, 2) aggressive yobbish former soldier and 3) God-botherer.

I couldn't bring myself to read the short stories that come with this book. I read it to the end simply because I felt I owed it to myself not to give up on my plan to read all the books on my reading list so early on.

I was looking forward to this book (hence it being 2nd on the list!) but I'm greatly disappointed.

Review: Island Life By William Meikle

After a particularly big Amazon binge following some unexpectedly large gifts of Amazon vouchers, my Kindle is overflowing with books. I'm a terrible hoarder and already had a backlog of books anyway. Now something must be done so I'm dedicated to reading as many of the unread books I own as possible this year.

First up was Island Life by William Meikle. The Kindle edition was under £2 and I wasn't expecting much but bought it as it had quite a good rating. I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Set on a Scottish island, it details a scary couple of days as supernatural horrors burst forth from a recently begun archaeological dig. It is a very simple story, and Meikle does not waste time on unnecessary intricate details, so the pacing of the book makes for an easy read.

Meikle writes characters well enough that you do worry about what might happen to them. There are a few chilling scenes (especially the main character Duncan's flashback to a time he ended up trapped in caves in his youth), and enough realistic interactions to keep the supernatural aspects grounded.

This is no masterpiece, but it is well-written, genuinely creepy and was a great antidote to Stephen King's (also awesome) 11/22/63 that I had just managed to get through. Stephen King writes masterpieces but they aren't easy reading! Island Life was a pleasure compared to that.

I'd rate it 4/5 and, once I'm through my backlog, I'll be looking up more of Meikle's work.

11.22.63 - Stephen King Still Has It!

I've just finished reading Stephen King's 11.22.63. It is the story of a man who is shown a way to travel into the past and, on the way to stopping the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, begins to discover time  doesn't want to be changed.

I'm a huge Stephen King fan. This does mean I'm more able to put up with the "extra padding" he tends to put in his books. It exists here, I won't deny it, and there is a great deal that could've been left out. But then again that is a bit like being unhappy that someone would do a painting when they could just do a line drawing. 

The story is good, the pacing is up there with the better Stephen King novels, and you do start to care about the mission. Will he stop the assassination? What will happen if he does? Those questions are answered and the ending of the book is far more satisfying that you'd think given we know JFK really was assassinated.

The usual King touches are there. He has brief snippets of what I'd call "Kingese" (Jimla!). We have references to his other works, with an extended stay for Jake Epping (the main character) in Derry where he interacts with characters from IT not long after the 50s segment of that book. I'm a huge IT fan and I was so pleased to read Bev and Richie once again! And yes, the protagonist is an English teacher...  

This is certainly one of his better books, coming somewhere just below IT and The Stand on my personal favourites list. Check it out!

Stephen King's 11.22.63 - Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

Night Of The Living Trekkies

As a zombie apocalypse fan and a (recovering) Star Trek obsessive, Night of the Living Trekkies has been on my radar for a few months. But I put off getting it as I just didn't see it being all that good. How wrong could I have been?! 

Basic plot outline in one sentence: a zombie outbreak occurs during a Star Trek convention in Houston. As diehard geek, that sentence is enough to get me extremely excited indeed. But I understand it might not appeal to everyone. I say, give it a go.

The book is superbly, tightly written, with humour woven into the dialogue so well that it feels totally natural. The characters are believable and likeable. It's a short, easy read and I will say it's definitely the best book I've read this year. My only criticism would be that, for those who aren't total nerds, some of the jokes might go over the reader's head. But hey, I am a total nerd so I laughed at every one.

A must buy.


Further Reading


Night of the Living Trekkies - Kevin David Anderson (UK Book, UK Kindle, US Book, US Kindle)

Zombie Apocalypse by Stephen Jones

Full disclosure: I'm a Zombie-aholic. I've seen the movies, read the books, adored the comics and just this last two weeks raved about TV series. So when, whilst wandering through my local bookstore the other day desperate for inspiration, I saw a book entitled "Zombie Apocalypse I could not walk past. 


In retrospect, picking it up and taking it home was an excellent decision. The story is told via the medium of letters, emails, diary entries, blogposts and Twitter feeds which makes it quite disjointed but not unduly so, and is very reminiscent of World War Z by Max Brooks (not a bad thing at all). It helps create a picture of the world far more easily and quickly than a normal narrative story. 


Mixing humour, recent political and news events, horror and an underlying bleakness, the story rolls on quickly to a humourous if despairing end. I got through it in a matter of hours, which shows just how easily it grabs your attention.


You do care about the characters, you do get taken in by the story (I stopped reading half way through and was surprised to find there were no zombies trying to break down my door!) and it will leave any horror or zombie fan very satisfied indeed. 


An excellent book and one I wholeheartedly recommend. 


Further Reading 


Zombie Apocalypse! US Amazon UK Amazon

If you feel benevolent and particularly generous, this writer always appreciates things bought for him from his wishlist

Stephen King's Under The Dome

So... this week I have been mainly reading Under The Dome by Stephen King. Full disclosure: I am an unreformed Stephen King fan. So take my review with a pinch of salt!

This book is no quick read. It's over 800 pages long. Now some reviewers have moaned about this as if length is an indication of quality. Well it's not. You can't moan about the length of a book unless it's bad. And this is certainly not a bad book.

I'm going to put Under The Dome up there with It and The Stand, as an example of Stephen King at is best. Now, although I think what I'm about to say might be sacrilegious, I believe this book is better paced than either of those two with much tighter, neater writing and a clearer story. I don't want to diminish the other two books, whose charms are obvious, but Under The Dome involves far less "Oh get to the point" and more "What the hell is coming next???"

The characters are Stephen King archetypes... strong women, trailer trash, truly evil bastards who don't even know they are evil, and the ever present strong but loving good guy. Again there has been some complaints about that from a few reviewers but I have to say I find it... cosy. As a seasoned Stephen King reader I feel like I'm settling in with welcoming relatives of well loved friends.

The story is compelling (putting me in mind a little of a post-September 11th The Tommyknockers) and keeps you  reading in order to see where it goes next. Even though that tends not to be a happy place, the book isn't totally grim with enough hope and humour to keep you going.

Pick it up, this is one of his classics.