New Gaiman on its way...

All at Piper are eagerly awaiting this book, due in June from Headline.

New and forthcoming books

A J Dalton – Gateway of the Saviours. Gollancz £14.99

Raymond E Feist – Jimmy and the Crawler. Harper Voyager £12.99

Richard Ford – Herald of the Storm. Headline £16.99 (25 April)

Peter F Hamilton – Great North Road. Pan £9.99 (11 April)

Peter F Hamilton – Misspent Youth. Pan £8.99

Will Hill – Department 19: Battle Lines. Harper Collins £12.99

Jeff Noon – Pollen. Tor £8.99 (11 April)

Jeff Noon – Vurt. Tor £16.99 (11 April; 20th anniversary edition)

Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen – The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day. Ebury £18.99 (11 April)

Megan Shepherd – The Madman’s Daughter. Harper Voyager £7.99 (11 April)

Charles Stross – The Bloodline Feud. Tor £9.99 (11 April)

Chung Kuo volumes 4 & 5 by David Wingrove. Book review

Ice and Fire (Chung Kuo Book 4) and The Art of War (Chung Kuo Book 5) by David Wingrove. Corvus £14.99

Reviewed by John Howard

David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo originally appeared in eight large volumes between 1989 and 1997. Now Wingrove has started to ‘recast’ the entire series, spreading it across an epic twenty not so large volumes, adding completely new material in two prequel volumes and two more at the end. Ice and Fire originally formed the second part of the original first volume (The Middle Kingdom); The Art of War was the first part of the former book two, The Broken Wheel.

The vast majority of the Earth’s population of forty billion has come to live in the City: pre-fabricated stacked hives a mile or so high, linked to one another across entire continents. A privileged few are able to maintain estates outside the all-encompassing City. By the time Ice and Fire begins in 2201, the seven T’ang – the Han rulers of Chung Kuo (which to all effects and purposes is the entire planet Earth and a few dependencies off-world) – have allowed the creation of a House of Representatives at Weimar, and granted it a measure of devolved government. But the House and the Council of Seven maintain an uneasy relationship due to the natural desire of parliamentarians to increase the power of the elected body – which could only be done at the expense of the ruling Seven.

Many are resentful of the Edict of Technological Control – the law enacted by the Seven to prohibit change – and so the resulting stagnation due to free enquiry and scientific research virtually ceasing. The Dispersionists pin their hopes on The New Hope, a starship whose development and construction has been barely tolerated by the Seven. And to complicate matters some of the Dispersionists have formed an alliance with a group of former insiders who wish to overthrow the ruling order.

Stopping change, stopping the ‘wheel of history’ from turning, is the Seven’s whole raison d’etre; anything or anyone that challenges the Seven’s hold on Chung Kuo is liable to be crushed without mercy. Now, in Ice and Fire, the latest threat to their rule comes from outside the City, when an apparently insignificant incident close to one of the great Seals in the outer wall begins to reveal the extent of the discontent and the illicit experimentation taking place in breach of the Edict. War seems imminent – and a war not only for control of the Earth and the development of space travel, but also for human history itself.

The Art of War opens some three years after the end of Ice and Fire. The Seven have apparently won the War of Two Directions and reasserted their control. They have exacted a savage revenge, with the luckiest of the survivors from the losing side being thrust down to lower levels within the City. A few still survive in hidden fortresses secretly built in mountainous regions that the City has never covered. But the ‘winner takes all’ attitude among many of the ruling elite cannot hide the fact that discontent wasn’t eradicated, and is still growing. An out-and-out terrorist group, the Ping Tiao (‘levelling’) has been formed, and riots have become more frequent. For some among the Seven and their supporters the only answer is to make it impossible for people to wish for change, to wish to unbalance the utopia of peace and stability that their rulers wish to bestow on humanity – on their own terms.

As with the previous books in the series, Ice and Fire and The Art of War move along at an exhilarating pace. From the outset the reader is enmeshed in a complex world-wide political and dynastic drama in which threads of friendship, alliance and betrayal are continually being woven, severed, and woven again into new patterns. For Chung Kuo – the world – the possibilities are the enforced survival of its ‘utopia’ or its bloody downfall and replacement with – what? These are the highest possible stakes – and there are still fifteen more books to go!

Among Others by Jo Walton. Book review

Among Others by Jo Walton. Corsair/Constable Robinson. £7.99. Also available as an eBook

Reviewed by Jan Edwards

It would be very simple to slot Among Others neatly into the ‘rites of passage’ niche, but it really is so much more. It is an insightful look at a young teenage girl’s fight against her disability, her dysfunctional family and her lack of direction – and much more. 

Mori (Morwenna) Phelps is a runaway, escaping from an insane mother who caused the death of Mori’s twin sister in an apparent magical battle that also left Mori with a crippled leg and a broken heart. The courts place Mori in the care of her estranged father and his rich but very eccentric sisters, in Shropshire, who in turn promptly send her to a posh boarding school. She is miles away from everyone she knows. 

There is nothing manic or swooning about Mori; she takes all that life throws at her with stoic determination, and a wonderfully wry humour. The novel unfolds as a series of diary entries covering a few months over the period 1969/70. It holds her hopes and dreams, but also provides a window into her obsessive reading of fantasy and science fiction, with frequent acerbic judgements on books and their authors, which often had me laughing out loud. The diary entries, generally very short, also feature observations on the humdrum life she leads in a school she hates – with its strange politics concerning buns for tea and its obsession with house points. But these apparent low-key entries offer a fresh picture on who Mori is now and will be.

This novel deals with loss and yet Mori does not dwell on the darkness in her life. She has her fears and doubts, but she handles each as they arise with varying degrees of aplomb – and then moves on. We read of Mori’s casual, and occasionally frustrated, opinions on pain management, and of her logical analyses of emotional and physical turmoil caused by her completely dysfunctional family, especially her insane mother, still in South Wales, and apparently detached father. 

Among Others is also about magic. Mori describes her interaction with beings that she calls fairies; but which could be anything from ghosts to her own imagination. It is very much down to the reader and her boyfriend, whom she met at an SF readers’ group in the local library, to decide what is real and what isn’t. 

This is a compelling narrative, beautifully crafted, drawing you into a world that is often deceptively tranquil, and yet fraught. Among Others deservedly won the Hugo, the Nebula and the British Fantasy awards for Best Novel. Thoroughly recommended!

New books -- round up

The Shape Stealer by Lee Carroll. Bantam £12.99

The Devil’s Looking Glass by Mark Chadbourn. Bantam £7.99

The City by Stella Gemmell. Bantam £18.99 (April)

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins. Gollancz £14.99

The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones. Coming from Headline

Slaine: The Grail War by Pat Mills et al. 2000AD £17.99

Indigo Prime: Anthropocalypse by John Smith et al. 2000AD 14.99

Among Others by Jo Walton. Corsair £7.99

New books -- round up

• Julianna Bagott - Fuse - Headline £ 12.99
• C Robert Cargill - Dreams and Shadows - Gollancz £14.99
• Lauren DeStefano - Fever - Harper Voyager £7.99

• Justin Gustainis - Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis - Solaris £7.99 (April 11th)
• Philip Mann - The Disestablishment of Paradise - Gollancz £14.99
• Chris Priestley - Through Dead Eyes - Bloomsbury £10.99 (March 14th) 

• Robert Silverberg - Tales of Majipoor - Gollancz £14.99
• John Wagner, Alan Grant, et al - Mean Team - 2000AD £13.99 (graphic novel/ March 14th)
• Ian Whates (ed) - Solaris Rising 2 - Solaris £7.99 (April 11th)

Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan: review

Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan. Solaris Books £7.99

Reviewed by Jenny Barber

“Trouble didn’t follow me, so much as the other way around. I stalked it down dark and obviously untrustworthy alleyways, picked its pockets for the hell of it, tapped it on the shoulder and ran away like a kid playing games, led it inexorably into other people’s paths and let them face its fury.” (p.89)

Desdaemona’s on the run again. She ran once before, and found refuge and a new life – for a while at least. But she had a few issues with what she had to do to keep it, so she talked fast and hoped no-one would notice the lies. But trouble is never far away and now she’s harried from pillar to post, by way of old allies and enemies across a broad landscape that takes you from the forgotten stations of the Underground to the chalk lands where the White Horse is ready to ride ever onwards.

Then there’s the complication of two old boyfriends: Jordan, the new love she’s running from – freshly crowned somewhat-reluctant prince of hell; and Jacey, the old love from a previous life she’s running to – heir to an empire and best protection from the wild assortment of mercenaries set upon her. 

There’s a lot of running in this book – by foot and motorbike, by horse and rollerblade and some of it is fun, but at times it becomes too much and can be an exhausting thing to read as you go from monster attack to extended running scene, to monster attack to another extended running scene with scant places to stop and breathe in between. And yet, when those occasions for rest occur, they are often accompanied by the swelling of interesting background detail into just a little too much information that leaves you impatient for the action to start up again. In the author’s previous books this particular stylistic quirk has worked to great effect so perhaps the incongruity is because there’s a certain expected rhythm to urban fantasy, with pop beats you can nod your head to, and Pandaemonium reads more like a surprise jazz remix of a tune you sort of recognise.

“They were going to hang my boyfriend up by his heels and bleed all the life out of him, and they thought I’d want to watch.

“No. Almost all of that is true, but none of it is right.” (p.7)

The book hangs on its lead, and Desdaemona is an awkward character to like. You can sympathise with her plight, want her to shake free of the trouble dogging her, but liking her seems optional. She’s all sharp edges, the centre of everyone’s world and there is the persistent impression that all her sins are instantly forgiven so that everyone can flock to her assistance just when it’s needed. With Jacey, the forgiveness can be understood; there’s been plenty of adjustment time since they became exes, and the previous volume of the series offered a hashing out of their old business that allows for a certain degree of moving on; but there’s no apparent fallout for her betrayal of Jordan, save it creating the instigation for her to start running. 

At the very least you’d expect him to make a snippy comment at some later point, instead of quite happily shrugging off the fact that she forced him into something he’d clearly said he didn’t want to do. And at the very least you’d expect some sign of her own motivation for it, beyond the brushed aside excuse that she felt it needed doing and was hers to do. Perhaps they both felt it was some kind of subconscious payback for him forcing her to face a part of her own past in the last book, but if so that’s not clear in the text and so his switch from betrayed to helper creates a feeling of unfinished business.

There’s also a running obsession with power happening throughout as Desdaemona repeatedly dwells on both the power of her gifted Aspect and the power of those around her: an understandable habit given her necessary rise from powerlessness, and the need to measure the many potential threats against her own ability to respond, all of which make her choices at the end particularly effective.

“I’d told the story before, here and there, or parts of it: just often enough that the old ways of telling it, the old words came easily to my tongue.” (p.91)

And yet, despite pacing issues and odd character niggles, Pandaemonium is still a hypnotising read. Macallan, no matter what name he writes under, has always had a distinctive gift for language that catches you up and pulls you along, weaving decorous spells that don’t let go. The story is built slowly, layering piece upon piece until the whole emerges in a patchwork of glorious imagery and fun concepts that make you want to read the next one to see what he can come up with next.

Whitstable by Stephen Volk

“1971. A middle-aged man, racked with grief, walks along the beach at Whitstable, Kent. A boy approaches and, taking him for the famous vampire-hunter Doctor Van Helsing from the Hammer movies, asks for help. Because the boy believes his stepfather really is a vampire.

The actor, devastated after the recent death of his wife and soul mate Helen, is an inconsolable recluse. In that vulnerable state he is forced to face an evil far more real and terrifying than any of the make-believe monsters he tackled on the big screen…”

So begins the new novella, Whitstable, by Stephen Volk, to be published by the British Fantasy Award-nominated Spectral Press in May 2013 to coincide with the centenary of the celebrated Hammer star, Peter Cushing. To pre-order visit the Spectral Press webpage. 

Two Judge Dread titles

Day of Chaos: The Fourth Faction an instalment in the Judge Dread saga – by John Wagner, Ben Willsher, Staz Johnson, Colin MacNeil and Henry Flint – is due next week from 2000AD at £17.99).

“With the much-loved mayor of Mega-City One presumed dead by the citizens, an election has been scheduled to choose his successor. Cadet Judge Hennessey has predicted that something terrible will happen on the Election Day and she may be right. East-Meg assassin Nadia has arrived in the Big Meg, looking for a scientist who has created a very dangerous virus...”

And in March: The Judge Child by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Mick McMahon and Ron Smith also appears from 200AD (£6.99). In this case, the book is published in tradepaper back size with b&w interior art.

“When Judge Feyy, Mega-city One's oldest pre-cognitive, has a vision of the city being destroyed in 2120, Judge Dredd and a select group of other Judges, including future Chief Judge Hershey, are sent on a mission to find the Judge Child. Apparently, young Owen Krysler may be the only one with the power to stop the apocalyptic event from ever happening. With the fate of the 'Big Meg' in the balance, Dredd will travel through the irradiated wastelands of the Cursed Earth and venture out into the depths of uncharted space to find him.”

Sever by Lauren DeStefano

Sever by Lauren DeStefano is the final volume in The Chemical Garden trilogy (Harper  Voyager £9.99)

“Time is running out for Rhine. With less than three years left until the virus claims her life, Rhine is desperate for answers. Having escaped torment at Vaughn’s mansion, she finds respite in the dilapidated home of her husband’s uncle, an eccentric inventor who hates Vaughn almost as much as Rhine does.

Rhine’s determination to be reunited with her twin brother, Rowan, increases as each day brings terrifying revelations to light about his involvement in an underground resistance. She realizes must find him before he destroys the one thing they have left: hope.”

In this conclusion to The Chemical Garden trilogy, “…everything Rhine knows to be true will be irrevocably shattered. But what she discovers along the way has alarming implications for her future…”