Review of Undead and Unemployed by Mary Janice Davidson

This is one of the fluffier offerings of chic-spec I’ve read. In a sub-genre that generally doesn’t take itself too seriously, this book is more firmly tongue in cheek than most – think Clueless rather than Buffy. For starters, the protagonist is a ditzy blonde with a thing for shoes. Nothing can make Betsy Taylor give up her shoe fetish – not even dying and rising as the new Queen of the Vampires. Only being royally undead doesn’t mean there aren’t still credit card bills to be paid. Luckily, Betsy lands her dream job selling designer shoes at Macy’s Department Store.

But then there’s a string of vampire murders in town and Betsy has to enlist the help of the one vamp who makes her blood boil: the oh-so-sexy Eric Sinclair. Only the last time she ran into Sinclair she accidentally fulfilled an ancient prophesy – and ended up married to him…

Written in first person POV, the story might be fairly light-hearted – but it is well crafted and the character is convincingly dim. Which I find endearing – and I am conscious that writing a stupid heroine isn’t as easy as it might seem, having tried it and thrown the result across the room in disgust…

If I have a niggle, it is that Betsy tends to go on and on about how much she dislikes Eric – while the reader knows that in stories of this type that means that it is a sure thing the pair of them will finally get together. I also found the liberal use of the f-word rather jarring. I realise that swearing and graphic sex scenes are par for the course in a lot of books in this sub-genre. But in this particular story, the swearing just didn’t seem to fit the chirpy and humorous mood – having said that, I’m conscious that I’m older by several decades than the target audience.

But do I celebrate the fact that this book – and a slew of others like it is out there? You bet. If only I’d had this sub-genre to fall back on years ago when I wanted to chill out from the grittier stuff – instead of tired old Mills and Boon! Young women brought up on a diet of quality fantasy want something ‘other’ than the clichéd staples of secretaries dating bosses… nurses dating doctors… in their light romances. And now they have it with vamp chicks strutting around, biting/agonising over human lovers and/or solving murders. The love interest might be just as trite – but at least the heroine is less annoyingly vapid and the hero is less worryingly chauvinistic.

And if your taste runs to this sub-genre, you could do a lot worse than Undead and Unemployed.
7/10

Review of I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

This is the fourth Tiffany Aching book from The Great Man and his thirty-eighth Discworld novel. If you are a fan, then you’re in for a treat – this is classic Pratchett, complete with all the special individual touches we enjoy from this unique author, including the famous footnotes.

Tiffany is older, but Life isn’t getting any easier. She is working flatout in treating the sick – both animal and human, laying out the dead and interceding in local quarrels. In short, the duties of a typically busy witch. It doesn’t help when Roland announces his engagement to a highborn girl with blonde hair and delicate features. Neither does it help when the Nac MacFeegle, who insist on shadowing her every move, decide that she needs their help. Because something has been awakened. Something foul smelling and evil – something that moves amongst people and turns them against witches. Once more, it is down to Tiffany to save the day. But despite the fact that she is older and wiser, there’s every chance she’ll not succeed…

We meet up with a bunch of old friends in this book – the Nac MacFeegle are as hilarious as they ever were; Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg feature as they give Tiffany what help they can; we also meet up with Eskarina Smith, the female wizard who featured in Equal Rites and discover what has happened to her in the intervening years. I got the sense that Pratchett is tying up some dangling ends in this story and saying farewell to some of his most beloved characters.

There are familiar Pratchett themes in this book—the importance of thinking for yourself, rather than accepting what you’re told; of doing the right thing whatever the cost; the notion of community; endeavouring to leave things better than you find them… Which all sound very worthy and rather stodgily dull. But this is Pratchett’s genius—he manages to wrap up such fundamental, worthy ideals in stories that sparkle with wit, humour and adventure. This one is no exception.

And there is, of course, the overarching idea that runs throughout this particular sub-series of the Discworld books – the notion that stories and belief profoundly impact on everyday life, affecting even those who are more sceptical. Pratchett’s contention is that humankind cannot cope with Life on almost any level, without overlaying it with a veneer of the mystical, amazing and macabre. This theme is embedded in all the Discworld books to some extent – but is at the core of all the Tiffany Aching books, as Tiffany is the sceptical one who is frequently amazed at the lengths people will go to preserve their ideas and beliefs. The myths that have grown up around Miss Treason are an amusing example.

Pratchett has a wide cast of characters that people the Discworld, but I suspect Tiffany is one of his favourites. She certainly is probably his most lovable heroine, with her unassuming courage and strong common sense. I don’t believe there are any more Tiffany Aching books planned – and if this is, indeed, the very last one, then Pratchett has completed the series on a suitably strong note.
10/10

Review of Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

I picked this book off the library shelf (something I won’t get to do much longer, if the Government and local councils have their way…) because I thought the cover intriguingly different.

Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky was one of a group of Russion SF writers called together by Josef Stalin in 1946. Stalin, convinced that the defeat of America was only a few years away, needed a new enemy for Communism to unite against. Skvorecky and the others were tasked with creating a convincing alien threat; a story of imminent disaster that could be told to the Soviet peoples.

And then after many months of diligent work the writers were told to stop and, on pain of death, to forget everything. Little is known of what happened to the writers subsequently but in 1986, Skvorecky made a dramatic reappearance at Chernobyl claiming that everything that he and the others had written was coming true. His assertion was widely disbelieved but Skvorecky claimed (tastelessly many believe) that the Chernobyl disaster and the destruction of the Challenger space shuttle conformed to the pattern set by Stalin’s scenario. Skvorecky believes that alien invasion is ongoing.

I’d not come across Roberts’ work before, but it didn’t take long to realise that this chap can write. Narrated in Skvorecky’s first person viewpoint, the character is beautifully realised – right down to the odd Russian contradictions such as his (completely understandable) world-weary cynicism, along with the touching belief in love. The book recounts Skvorecky’s adventures leading up to the Chernobyl disaster and how an encounter with a couple of American Scientologists changed his life.

Roberts deftly portrays a Russia suffering a crisis of confidence with everyone scrabbling to cope with Gorbachev’s cataclysmic changes involving perrestoika against a backdrop of crumbling Communism. It isn’t a pretty picture – especially filtered through the viewpoint of an aging, burnt out ex-alcoholic. By rights it should be unremittingly grim enough to make the likes of Dan Simmons and Roger Levy look pink n’fluffy in comparison. However Roberts leavens the underlying awfulness of his subject matter and backdrop by dollops of humour, to the extent there are laugh-aloud moments in this book. I found myself chuckling during Skvorecky’s interrogation when the official questioning him gets in a muddle as to when the tape is turned off and on…

The book veers from moments of acute danger, high farce and reflections on the dreadful circumstances within a couple of pages without jolting the reader out of the story. It takes a writer at the height of his powers to pull this off. And Roberts really does flex his ‘show off’ muscle in this book – the narrative voice denoting English as a second language, complete with amusing puns and odd confusions; Skvorecky’s entirely believable transformation from a miserably cynical has-been to someone a lot more hopeful and proactive; the swooping changes of mood from moments of high drama to farce… But then, if I could write like this, I’d probably be performing the literary equivalent of dizzying pirouettes, too.

Interestingly, science fiction as a genre and belief system comes under close examination in the book, right from when Stalin decides that aliens should make the next unifying threat to keep Mother Russia together. Skvorecky maintains his belief throughout that alien abductions and spaceships do not exist – that even when he was a respected science fiction author, he did not believe in such things. Science fiction becomes a metaphor for a population’s credulous belief in things without any proper foundation. Or does it? Roberts plays the sorts of games with the reader that we are more used to seeing from the literary end of the spectrum, such as providing us with an unreliable narrator. Generally I have limited patience with such gimmicks – but then they are often employed by authors who don’t possess Roberts’ skill and humour.

Any niggles? Nope. Not a single one. I’ve read reviews that have grumbled that some of the interesting issues raised in the book are not fully developed – but that’s FINE with me. This is a piece of fiction designed to entertain. In addition, Roberts has also chosen to give us food for thought along the way – what he didn’t do was to hold up the narrative pace to extend those reflections beyond their use in the story. A writer that – despite his stylist flourishes – puts the needs of the reader above his own hubris. Hallelujah! In short (in case it’s already escaped your attention) I think that this is a superb, funny, sharp read by a clever author who knows exactly where he’s going… Go on – track it down, you be thanking me if you do. And if you’re scratching your head about the odd title – apparently the Russian phrase Ya lyublyU tebyA, meaning I love you, sounds roughly like yellow, blue tibia.
10/10

Review of The Fuller Memorandum – Book 3 of The Laundry series by Charles Stross

This account is narrated as a debrief by the longsuffering Bob Howard, who works for the undercover British agency known as The Laundry. They are a down-at-heel, typically Brit-bodge version of the Men in Black, busy battling with nasty occult occurrences and alien incursions. Bob is trying to come to terms with the emotional fallout after his latest hair-raising adventure.

A top secret dossier goes missing. At the same time, Angleton, Bob’s boss disappears. No one is saying very much at The Laundry but suspicion, like mud, sticks. While struggling to clear his own name and Angleton’s tarnished reputation, Bob also has to cope with over-helpful Russian agents, worries about an apocalyptic cult targeting his wife – and the trail of dead bodies. What is so important about the missing Fuller Memorandum and why is everyone who knows dying…?

Told in first person viewpoint, this spy horror clips along with all the zest and ink-black humour of the previous books in the series. Poor old Bob has to put up with a lot, and his world-weary, humorous commentary gives this book an extra twist of enjoyment. Stross evidently has great affection for Bond films and H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, because he borrows elements from both these influences and mixes them in a neat combination that has you chuckling while your skin pimples… It is a uniquely disturbing and memorable reading experience.

The world works wonderfully well and Stross skilfully plays with the tedium of Bob’s everyday office life set against the dangerous nature of his job. So the knowledge that we are on the verge of being invaded by some ghastly alien power vies with the notion that all paperclip movement needs to be strictly monitored because they become imprinted with traces of the documents they fasten… The book teeters on the edge of farce and horror all the way to the suitably horrific climax.

Stross is no slouch at characterisation, either. Mo, Bob’s intrepid and very accomplished wife, is beautifully drawn. But Angleton, Bob’s mysterious boss, is the true star of this tale and Bob’s viewpoint of him, along with his understandable resentment as a subordinate, is compelling enough to draw us in and make us care – very important in this story.

Any grizzles? Well… I’m being ultra-picky here – but in a genre where pace is everything, there were instances where I felt Bob’s doom-laden monologues could have done with being pruned back for the sake of keeping the tension wound sufficiently tight. But, overall, it is a trifling detail. I think this book is a triumph. If you’re feeling a bit jaded and looking for something truly different, then look no further. You won’t pick anything else off the shelves quite like this, I guarantee it.
4.5 stars

Review of The Accidental Sorcerer by K.E. Mills

Do you groan every time you come to the end of a Diana Wynne Jones tale? Or pine for another Neil Gaian masterpiece? Fear not, I’ve found you another author with the same quirky humour and deft storytelling skills. For those of you interested in such things, K.E. Mills has also written the fine fantasy Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology – a thoroughly worthwhile read – under the name Karen Miller. She has also written some of the Stargate and Star Wars tie-in novels, so is thoroughly experienced as a science fiction/fantasy writer – and it shows.

Gerald Dunwoody is a wizard. Just not a particularly good one. He’s blown up a factory, lost his job and there’s a chance that he’s not really a Third Grade wizard after all. Career disaster strikes again. Luckily, an influential friend manages to get him a post. So it’s off to New Ottosland to be the new court Wizard for King Lional. His back-up, an ensorcelled bird with a mysterious past, seems dubious. But it’s New Ottosland or nothing.

Unfortunately, King Lional isn’t the vain, self-centred young man he appeared to be. With a Princess in danger, a bird-brained back-up and a kingdom to save, Gerald soon finds himself out of his depth. And if he can’t keep this job, how can he become the wizard he was destined to be…?

All the characters are well drawn, particularly the main protagonist, whose flounderings are nicely counter-pointed by his humorous musings and his constant fights with the bird who has adopted him. It is the slight eccentricity of all the characters that I find so appealing. From the no-nonsense Princess – whose tweedy efficiency put me in mind of my PE teacher – to Rex, Gerald’s feathered companion no one in this novel is exactly normal. Just as in Wynne Jones tales, when events continue to stack up, there is an initial false sense of security before the narrative becomes a whole lot darker in tone and action. The story steadily pulls you in – and by the time the climax crackles across the pages, it is impossible to put the book down.

Despite having the memory of a concussed goldfish where books are concerned, I generally remember Gaiman’s and Wynne Jones’s offerings – and I suspect it will be the case with this book. I suppose that The Accidental Sorcerer ticks the Young Adult category – it certainly doesn’t contain any swearing or sex – which doesn’t lessen the impact of the grisly outcome one jot. As soon as I can afford it, I’m going to buy the sequels, settle down on my garden swing during these long hot afternoons and immerse myself in Mills’ world.
9/10

Review of ‘Unseen Academicals’ by Terry Pratchett

This book – unlike his other recent best-selling success Nation – is set in Pratchett’s famous Discworld. (A flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants, standing on the back of the Great A’Tuin – a giant turtle – that swims through space.) Unseen Academicals is the thirty-seventh Discworld novel.

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork – not the old-fashioned grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with point hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match without using magic, so they’re in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of the Big Match draws together a likely lad with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt. (No one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too.)

As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.

This is vintage Discworld fare. Old favourites such as Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully and Lord Vetinari, tyrant of Anhk-Morpork, head up the cast of colourful and varied characters, who also include newcomers Dave Likely, Glena and Mr Nutt. As ever, Pratchett uses his fantastic backdrop to make sharply acute observations about contemporary life. There are the usual suspects – the rights of the individual versus the state; responsibility of power – and in this book, football is gently prodded for the more ridiculous aspects of the sport and the fashion industry also gets the Pratchett treatment.

However, the darker tone apparent in some of the more recent Discworld novels, such as Making Money, Monstrous Regiment and Thud! is less obvious in Unseen Academicals, which contains more gags and one-liners. For ardent Discworld fans, this book ticks all the boxes. However, if by some fluky chance you’ve managed to miss the joys of Discworld, I wouldn’t advise that you start with Book 37 in the series. While they don’t exactly run in strict chronological order, there is a definite progression with characters. So, in order to get the best out of Discworld, start with the exuberant fun of The Colour of Magic and work forward. You’ll find – when you get there – although lacking the inspired brilliance of Small Gods (my personal favourite), Unseen Academicals is a worthy addition to the canon.
9/10