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The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

A century or more in the future, Melanie Tarent is killed in a terrorist attack in Turkey by a frightening new weapon. The only trace the weapon leaves behind is a triangular scorch mark on the ground. Her husband, Tibor, returns home to Britain and learns that the same weapon has been deployed on a larger scale in London, leaving a hundred thousand people dead. There appears to be a connection to something in Tibor's past, something he has no memory of.

The events in Tibor's life have ramifications across the years. During WWI a stage magician is sent to the Western Front to help make British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy and has a chance meeting with one of the most famous writers alive. During WWII a young RAF technician meets a female Polish pilot and learns of her desperate desire to return home and be reunited with her missing lover. And in the English countryside of the near future, a scientist creates the first adjacency, and transforms the world.

Reviewing a Christopher Priest novel is like trying to take a photograph of a car speeding past you at 100mph without any warning. You are, at the very best, only going to capture an indistinct and vague image of what the object is. Photography, perspective and points of view play a major role in Priest's latest novel, as do some of his more familiar subjects: stage magic, WWII aircraft and the bizarre world of the Dream Archipelago. The Adjacent is a mix of the familiar and the strange, the real and the unreal, the lucid and the dreamlike. It's the novel as a puzzle, as so many of Priest's books are, except that Priest hasn't necessarily given you all the pieces to the same puzzle.

The book unfolds in stages, draped on the skeleton of Tibor's adventures (for lack of a better term) in the Islamic Republic of Great Britain. The normal eye-rolling which accompanies any suggestion that Britain could ever become such is mediated here by knowing some of Priest's narrative tricks. This is a future, not the future, and it is possible that it may not be the future of our world but another where history has unfolded differently. From this linking narrative we move back to the First World War, forwards to the Second, sideways to one of the islands of the Dream Archipelago and, in the middle of it all, a short interlude in an English scientist's garden which may hold the key to the whole thing. The book's ending is revelatory, but only in the sense that you can now see the destination, not necessarily that you understand how you got there. As is also traditional with Priest's books, a full and richer understanding of the text will have to wait for re-reads. That said, Priest does play fair: by the end of the first read you should be starting to get a handle on what's going on.

Of course, the novel's satisfaction as a puzzle and an impressive work of intellect would be nothing without Priest's formidable skills with prose, character, detail and atmosphere. His research is put to good use, with the historical settings of the First and Second World Wars evoked to good effect. The future world he paints is convincing as well as disturbing. His central characters - many of whom seem to be doubles or reflections of one another - are convincing and detailed, with their growing frustration as events become more bizarre and inexplicable well-depicted. It also helps that all of the puzzles and mysteries surround that simplest and most traditional of narratives: a love story.

If The Adjacent has a weakness, it's that it's a novel that, whilst readable by itself, will especially reward those already familiar with Priest's work. In particular, the sideways trip to the Dream Archipelago will likely completely confuse those not familiar with it, but readers of The Dream Archipelago, The Affirmation and The Islanders will be able to nod sagely and think that they are 'in' on what Priest is doing (or at least they can kid themselves they are). The Adjacent feels like a culmination of the ideas and tropes Priest has been exploring since at least The Affirmation was published thirty years ago, and is thoroughly rewarding on that basis. Newcomers unversed in the 'Priest Effect' (a term coined by David Langford to describe Priest's way of writing) may find some of the ideas in the book more impenetrable.

The Adjacent (*****) is puzzling, brilliant, frustrating, page-turning, disturbing and absorbing. It is traditional Priest. The novel will be published on 20 June in the UK and USA.

According to Bleeding Cool, who have checked this story with multiple sources at the BBC, a 'large' number of the missing episodes of DOCTOR WHO from the 1960s have been returned to the BBC. The BBC will formally announce this shortly once they have a plan to release the missing material to the fans.

As people may or may not be aware, in the 1970s the BBC, showing less foresight than a chronically depressed lemming, decided it would be a splendid idea to wipe their stocks of DOCTOR WHO episodes to re-use the film. Almost the entirety of the First and Second Doctor's runs were literally burned in the BBC's incinerators as a result. Fortunately, many, many copies of the material had been made when the series had been sold to other broadcasters around the world. As part of a serious restoration effort beginning in the 1980s, over half of the lost episodes were returned to the BBC archives from these other sources. Right now, 106 episodes remain missing, including nine complete serials.

According to the rumour, a 'large' stash of the missing episodes has been recovered. Several of the totally-missing serials are allegedly included, and several almost-incomplete serials have also been completed. The one constant in the rumour is that the 1967 seven-part serial EVIL OF THE DALEKS has been completely restored (only one episode survives). Several also report that the episode haul may complete William Hartnell's run as the Doctor (currently 44 Hartnell episodes are missing). If so, that suggests that at least 50 episodes have been recovered. However, the reports also say that the haul is not the complete run, and a few episodes remain missing. The source for the episodes is allegedly an African TV engineer who kept the episodes after transmission rather than junking them as instructed.

According to Bleeding Cool, the BBC will only announce the news once they have a release plan in place, and also possibly to tie in with the 50th anniversary in November.

However, several fans have pointed out that only a few WHO episodes from the 1960s were ever broadcast in Africa, and we know that EVIL OF THE DALEKS and THE TENTH PLANET (the fourth missing episode of which, featuring the first-ever regeneration scene, is also reportedly in the haul) were never broadcast over there. 'The Feast of Steven', an episode of THE DALEKS' MASTERPLAN (the 12-part megaepic in DOCTOR WHO's second season), was also never sold or transmitted outside of the UK and shows every sign of having been lost forever, so it seems unlikely that would be in the haul (it'd need to be to complete Hartnell's run).

How much of this story is accurate remains to be seen, but Bleeding Cool seem certain of their sources.

The terrible news has broken that author Iain Banks has lost his battle with cancer. He was 59 years old.

Iain Banks came to immediate attention with the publication of The Wasp Factory in 1984. A contemporary novel, the book told the story of a mentally ill murderer and wasp-torturer. With its twist ending, matter-of-fact descriptions of stomach-churning scenes and its thick vein of black humour (best exemplified by the infamous 'psychopathic rabbit on a minefield' scene), it was immediately successful and made readers sit up and take notice. A series of similarly vivid and successful 'literary' novels followed: Walking on Glass, The Bridge and Espedair Street.

In 1987 Iain Banks released his first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas. The move - a successful mainstream novelist moving into SF - was unexpected and commercially questionable. Banks moderated by the blow by continuing to alternate SF and mainstream work, and publishing his SF under the impenetrable pseudonym 'Iain M. Banks' (the M is for Menzies). Banks had actually started off writing SF in the 1970s, writing early versions of what later became Player of Games and Use of Weapons before the decade was out. He had switched to writing mainstream fiction to achieve enough success to get the SF published, and was successful in that regard (despite concerns over the SF community of accusing him of 'selling out', which never materialised).

Consider Phlebas introduced Iain Banks's signature creation, the Culture. Banks envisaged a utopian society consisting of multiple species and advanced benevolent AIs, living on a mixture of planets and exotic megastructures (most notably the Orbitals, more sensible and practical versions of Niven's Ringworld; it was actually the Orbitals that served as the inspiration for the titular constructs in the Halo video game series). In his novels Banks explored how such a utopian society could exist, usually by showing the more underhand and devious ways the Culture would protect itself and affect other civilisations.

Banks continued writing both mainstream and SF. His 1992 novel The Crow Road was adapted as a successful BBC mini-series, whilst 1993's Complicity became a feature film. However, his masterpiece is his 1990 SF novel, Use of Weapons. This novel features two streams of narrative, one moving forwards and one moving backwards, both building to huge climaxes.

Outside of his fiction, Banks was a huge fan of whiskey. In 2003 he wrote his only work of non-fiction, Raw Spirit, an account of Scottish whiskey distilleries.

Banks's work meant that he simultaneously became known as one of Britain's leading SF authors as well as a rising star of its literary scene. He ultimately became one of Britain's best-known authors. In 2007 his dual writing identity was acknowledged in a running gag in the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright movie Hot Fuzz, in which two identical twins can be identified because one always reads Iain Banks and the other always reads Iain M. Banks.

In April Banks announced that he had inoperable cancer. He immediately married his partner and took a short honeymoon. He was hopeful of living for another year or so, but the news sadly came today of his passing. Banks's final novel, The Quarry, will be published next month.

Book 1: Heroes Die

Caine: the most infamous man in the Ankhanan Empire. A hero who has saved the Empire from invasion and destruction, and a villain who killed the Prince-Regent on the orders of a monastic order. Wherever there is danger, intrigue or violence, there is Caine.

In reality, Caine is a fictional character, played by Hari Michaelson. 23rd Century Earth is linked to Overworld - a post-medieval alternate reality where magic and gods are real - by advanced technology. The rigidly caste-bound population of the overcrowded planet is entertained by the exploits of the Actors, and Caine is one of the most famous Actors on the planet. When Caine's wife, Actor Shanna (who plays Caine's lover, Pallas Rill), disappears on an Adventure, Caine is summoned back into battle. This time the mission is to find his wife before her link to Earth expires, killing her, and to overthrow the monstrous new Emperor. But Michaelson faces hidden enemies on Earth even as Caine faces overwhelming odds on Overworld.

Matt Stover has carved out a reputation as the best writer ever to put pen to paper in the Star Wars franchise, writing a string of intelligent, thought-provoking books that overcome and challenge the limitations of the setting. The Acts of Caine is his most famous own creation, a four-book sequence (more are planned) that mixes SF and fantasy. It is an action-packed series, but also one that is heavily character-driven, and those characters (heroes, villains and the ambiguous alike) are three-dimensional, well-motivated individuals, even the most loathsome of whom is at some level understandable.

Heroes Die is the first book in the sequence, originally published in 1997, but is a stand-alone novel with no cliffhangers or incomplete story arcs. Its publication date precedes the bulk of the modern 'gritty' wave of fantasy novels, but it can be seen as an early example of the subgenre. The book has a black sense of humour that will appeal to fans of Joe Abercrombie, a rich urban atmosphere and cast of thieves that serves as a precursor to Scott Lynch (Lynch has said that Stover's books are one of the primary influences and inspirations behind The Lies of Locke Lamora) and features a dystopian future world that emphasises death and murder as a form of entertainment in a similar manner (but a much more sophisticated one) to The Hunger Games. It's a rich, genre-bending brew that satisfies on all fronts.

The characters are where the book shines. Scenes on Overworld are told from Caine's POV in first-person, but scenes on Earth are related in third-person. Other scenes on Overworld involving other characters are also told in the third-person.This device is quite successful, and is intriguing as Caine's POV scenes also feature his running commentary on what's happening back to the millions of people watching on Earth. Some tension is caused by Caine occasionally thinking things impolitic about life on Earth, causing friction with both the Studio and the future Earth's caste-bound government. Michaelson/Caine is a fascinating character, a man of intelligence who is ready to resort to violence at a moment's notice, but has a reason for doing so. His lover, Senna/Rill is likewise well-depicted, with her idealism contrasted against her lover's pragmatism. Stover even has well-developed villains, making even the monstrous Emperor and the psychopathic swordsman Berne (very briefly) sympathetic with reasons (if only convincing to them) for doing the monstrous things they do.

Heroes Die is unusual for the opening volume of a fantasy series by arriving complete, fully-formed and brimming with confidence and presence. It's an explosive and action-packed novel which explores its premise and characters intelligently, develops the plot and themes with skill and then finishes on a high. Complaints are few: one character gains access to a reservoir of incredible power near the end of the book, which has the whiff of deus ex machina until Stover subverts it.

Heroes Die (*****) is available now in the USA, and in the UK has just been released for the first time as an e-book only edition.

Book 1: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

Qarash, the greatest city of the Khaganate, has been destroyed by treachery. Temur, a grandson of the Great Khagan, survives and goes into exile, knowing his cousin will seek his head to eliminate any rivals. At the same time, in distant Tsarepheth, the Once-Princess Samarkar is set to undergo her testing. She will casting aside her life as a noble to become a wizard, if she has the strength of character needed. The destinies of Temur and Samarkar are linked along with those of others: a half-blind warrior monk, a pregnant princess doomed by politics and a tiger-woman with formidable skills in battle. The destruction of Qarash and the raising of armies of ghosts portends the arising of a great threat which must be faced.

Range of Ghosts is the opening novel of the Eternal Sky Trilogy. This is a work that blends together different fantasy elements, with traditional epic fantasy stylings such as political intrigue and war mixing with both the historical fantasy of Guy Gavriel Kay and moments of offbeat strangeness that recalls the New Weird (though this is the least of the three influences).

The world the book takes place in is reminiscent of our own Central Asia during the Middle Ages, with lands in the book serving as analogues of the Mongol Empire, India, China and Russia. These aren't quite one-for-one correlations, with Bear mixing things up in interesting ways. The skies over each land are different, with the Khaganate skies being filled with small moons which appear or disappear to herald the births and deaths of important figures. The Uthman Caliphate's skies have a sun which rises in the wrong location. These differences extend to constellations as well. It's an odd detail but one that is never dwelt on by the characters, as it's simply the way the world is to them.

The book is divided amongst relatively few POV characters: Temur and Samarkar (whose names are echoes of Timur the Lane/Tamerlane and his capital city of Samarkand) are our primary protagonists, but we also get occasional chapters from Al-Sephehr (our antagonist) and Edene, an innocent woman caught up in events due to a chance meeting with Temur. The restricted POV count keeps the book moving quickly, but Bear is able to lace a lot of characterisation through this small POV count. Other fantasies, even otherwise excellent ones such as A Song of Ice and Fire, have a tendency to portray their 'barbarian' cultures fairly broadly (the Dothraki are rather under-developed and unconvincing compared to their Mongol, Hun and Amerindian inspirations, for example). Bear here flushes out the Qersnyk tribes with much greater nuance, noting their ability to speak many languages, their relaxed approach to religion and their military skills. Temur is widely-travelled and much more than the simple barbarian it would have been easy to portray him as. Bear also uses her characters to analyse issues ranging from gender discrimination to religious co-existence, and does so in each case as an intelligent and natural extension of the story.

Weaknesses are few and are mostly the natural issues that arise with a book being merely the opening section of a much larger tale. The book packs a lot into its 350 pages before ending fairly abruptly, leaving readers wanting more (although this is better than the alternative). There are a few passages which are a bit over-expositionary. I wasn't entirely sold on the romance that develops near the end of the novel with relatively little preamble. And that's about it really. Otherwise, this is a very fine novel.

Range of Ghosts (****½) is an exceptional opening volume to a fantasy trilogy that blends different influences and the author's own impressive prose to great effect. It is available now in the UK and USA. The sequel, Shattered Pillars, is also available now. The already-delivered third book, Steles of the Sky, will follow in early 2014.

Book 1: Shards of Honor

Cordelia Naismith, commander of a survery ship from Beta Colony, is marooned on an uncharted planet when her vessel is attacked by Barryarans. Naismith is captured by Captain Aral Vorkosigan, the infamous Butcher of Komarr, and taken on a gruelling cross-country journey to his base camp. However, Vorkosigan himself is facing a prospective mutiny led by an ambitious junior officer and both Beta and Barrayar are about to find themselves on opposing sides of a bloody war.

The Vorkosigan Saga is one of the most famous ongoing works of science fiction in the United States. Comprising (so far) fifteen novels and numerous short stories and novellas, the series has won four Hugos (including three for Best Novel), been nominated for another six and has won an additional two Locus Awards and two Nebulas. The series has sold more than two million copies for Baen Books in the States, but is almost unknown in the UK. Repeated attempts to publish the series here have failed, usually due to low sales and indifferent reviews.

Reading Shards of Honour, I have to reluctantly adopt the traditional British stance of not seeing what all the fuss is about. The book starts off well enough, with an adventure storyline featuring two people (and a severely injured third) abandoned on a planet and having to work together to survive. These sequences, though indifferently written, are interesting enough and Bujold reveals an interesting amount of character through the actions of Cordelia and Aral. Unfortunately, what she doesn't do is provide them with any chemistry. When Cordelia realises she is attracted to Aral, and Aral reciprocates those feelings, it kind of comes out of nowhere. When (spoiler alert!) they are eventually rescued, the book descends into a montage of Cordelia being captured, released, re-captured, escaping, being almost-raped (the lazy go-to jeopardy trope for any female character in peril, naturally) and so on for a good hundred pages or so. Due to the stodgy prose, mechanical dialogue and somewhat stilted character reactions, none of this is particularly exciting.

Things perk up a little bit towards the end, with the revelations of the extent of a supporting character's psychological trauma and a subplot about a bunch of unborn babies in exowombs (the result of war rapes) having to be forcibly supported by the fathers who conceived them both being intriguing, but these are very minor elements that arrive rather late in the day.

Shards of Honour (**) has moments of interest, but overall is stodgily-written and unconvincingly-characterised. Still, it's a first novel and not one of the most well-regarded in the series, so I will press on with the (chronologically) second novel in the series and one of the most critically-acclaimed, Barrayar. Shards of Honour is available now as the past of the Cordelia's Honour omnibus (UK, USA).

Occasionally I am asked why I don't review Doctor Who on the blog. The answer is pretty simple: I do not regard Doctor Who as a serious SF drama. I enjoy watching the show, especially with my girlfriend's son, but usually as a way of switching my brain off and just having fun without having to worry about analysis. If I did try to analyse the new show and review it with its myriad plot holes (which at this point are so numerous as to make the show resemble Swiss cheese) and often very ropey writing, I would probably go mad.

It was not always so. I grew up with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, although I didn't count myself a fan until Remembrance of the Daleks and the final two seasons of the original show. I spent most of the first half of the 1990s collecting large numbers of Doctor Who stories on VHS. A few years back I revisited some of the more classic stories, like The Caves of Androzani and The Ark in Space, and found (dodgy effects and being filmed on video aside) that they still stood up quite well. The new series has had some very good moments, such as The Doctor's Wife, Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace and, most recently, Cold War, but generally speaking it has been mostly incoherent and confused.

There has been much discussion in fan circles of why this is so, with some going as far as saying they are going to 'break up' with the show. Some have cited the decision to move the show to mostly self-contained 45-minute episodes (rather than the 25-minute, three-to-seven part serials of the old series), which severely curtails the time available for plot setup, resolution and characterisation. There may be something to this, as Doctor Who does not have a regular cast outside of the two or three central figures and each story needs to establish its own cast, location and threats, which is a tall order in just a few minutes. This is the inverse of most shows, where the cast and location are fixed and a small number of guest cast come in every week who can be set up quite quickly. However, I don't think it's the whole story, especially as most of the two-parters (which are roughly the length of the old four-parters) suffer from the same issues.

More convincing is the argument that the show has become way too dependent on season-spanning story arcs: Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Mr. Saxon, the disappearing planets, the crack in time/exploding TARDIS, the 'death' of the Doctor and now the mystery of Clara Oswald. In contrast, the old show had exactly two season-spanning story arcs in twenty-six years (three, if you count the much looser 'E-space' trilogy in Tom Baker's final season). Doing a season-spanning epic story arc is great if you have a really compelling storyline for it. At the moment it feels like the story arcs are there simply because it's 2013, and almost every series has a big story arc of some kind, so Doctor Who needs to do one as well. Doctor Who has never been a trend-follower, so it's not entirely clear why it has to be one now.

However, I have also been pondering if one of the problems with the new series has been that it puts way too much work on the shoulders of a single person: the showrunner/head writer. Since 2005, Doctor Who has been run by just two people: Russell T. Davies (2005-10) and Steven Moffat (2010-present). Davies and Moffat have both been in charge of the show and have also been the head writers, each penning several episodes per season in addition to handling rewrites on other writers' scripts as well. There have been other producers (a veritable revolving door of them, in fact) but their roles on the show seem to have been more like facilitators and enablers rather than having a strong say in the creative process.

Going back to the original series, there is a stark difference in how the creative workload was handled. Going right back to 1963, the first showrunner, Verity Lambert, was not a writer. She made business decisions and had a strong say in the creative process, but the creative direction was handled by her script editor, David Whitaker, and the individual writers. An associate producer, Mervyn Pinfield, was also present to help with production issues, although in reality Pinfield was actually only present due to BBC concerns that Lambert, who was only 28, might be too inexperienced to handle the whole show; this criticism was withdrawn after Lambert overruled the BBC executives who didn't want to include the Daleks in the series and was shown to be right, with a massive boom to the show's profile and popularity following their introduction.

Throughout most of the show's history this pattern was repeated: a strong producer focusing on the big picture but rarely actually writing episodes, with a script editor who handled the creative direction of the show. The show's most creative and interesting periods were usually the result of an excellent producer and a good script editor working in concert: Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks during most of the Jon Pertwee era and Philip Hinchliffe and Robert Holmes during the early Tom Barker period are the most notable examples of this. Later partnerships were more troubled but also successful on occasions: the pairing of Graham Williams as producer and Douglas Adams (yes, that Douglas Adams) as script editor resulted in one of the very best Doctor Who stories of all time (City of Death) but also several of the very worst. John Nathan-Turner's controversial, long period in charge of the show in the 1980s was marked by bursts of creativity led by strong script editors, most notably Eric Saward in the late Davison and Colin Baker years, and Andrew Cartmel at the end of the original run.

This set-up may also be more familiar from American television, which is often handled by two or more executive producers with a number of other writers working for them. Game of Thrones is handled by two showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Lost was handled by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Battlestar Galactica was handled by Ronald D. Moore, who focused on the show's writing, and David 'not that one' Eick, who focused more on production. Babylon 5 divided its executive producer credits between head (and often the only) writer J. Michael Straczynski, business facilitator Doug Netter and on-set producer John Copeland. The Star Trek shows of the 1980s and 1990s may have been overseen by Rick Berman, but he devolved a lot of authority to individual showrunners, such as Michael Pillar, Ira Steven Behr, Brannon Braga, Jeri Taylor and Manny Coto, each of whom in turn was supported by other writers and producers. And so on. Running a TV show is a big job, and arguably requires more than one person in charge.

Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat are interesting in that both are quite capable writers (the latter rather moreso than the former, to be frank) but in both cases their writing seems to have suffered when they had to handle production duties as well. Moffat wrote several of the very best episodes of the new run when he was working as just a jobbing writer under Davies, but since he became showrunner the quality of his scripts has nosedived. Even great concepts he created under Davies, such as River Song and the Weeping Angels, seem to have gone off the boil under his stewardship of the whole series. Arguably the role of the showrunner-producer should be more focused in one direction or the other. If Moffat wants to keep writing, he needs a strong production partner who can keep an eye on the show as a whole (and who perhaps can advise Moffat when, for example, he has incomprehensible and overly-confusing story arcs for two seasons in a row). If he wants to run the show in an oversight capacity, he needs a strong writing partner who can focus on the show's creative direction.

As it stands, the constant comings and goings of the sub-producers and the seeming lack of anyone equal in rank to Moffat as producer means that the show is way too dependent on just one person, which is definitely a recipe for disaster.

Book 1: Spirit Gate

For centuries the land of the Hundred was ruled by the Guardians, powerful beings to dispensed justice, aided by their reeves, effectively a police force riding giant eagles. The Guardians have disappeared and are feared dead, but the reevers remain, overstretched and in increasingly few numbers as chaos and barbarism spreads across the land. Reeve Joss is given the difficult task of restoring order to an area in the south ravaged of bandit attacks, threatening trade between the Hundred and the Sirniakan Empire to the south-west.

Meanwhile, in lands far beyond the Hundred and the Empire, a Qin warrior named Aniji marries a local woman, Mei, and finds himself and his troop of 200 soldiers drawn into danger and adventure, forcing them to flee their lands and journey into the Hundred, where they find the land on the brink of full-scale war.

Spirit Gate is a compelling story set in an interesting and well-realised world. Whilst Crown of Stars was deliberately set in a very rigid society highly reminiscent of medieval Europe, Crossroads is far more original and fantastical, although the two works share some character tropes and ideas. The book opens with a nice piece of misdirection that holds the attention and directs the reader into the story. However, the pacing is mismatched and key characters, most notably Joss, disappear for long stretches. In other places the timeline is a bit confused, with Elliott not being afraid to revisit the events of several chapters past from another POV, although once you get used to it this plot device does start yielding useful information. There is also a rather odd tendency for central characters to engage in frivolous discussions and banter in the middle of mortal danger, which defuses tension from the book, and after a very impressive build-up to a major confrontation at the end of the book, the actual final battle is resolved in perhaps two pages at best, which is very disappointing.

On the plus side, the relationship between the reeves and their eagles is well-defined. Those fearing that the giant eagles were going to be reduced to cuddly sidekicks can rest assured that these animals are depicted as the dangerous creatures they are. The idea that the reeves are policemen and not soldiers is also nicely done and leads to some interesting exploration of the roles of the police and the military in a fantasy world.

Unfortunately, the central threat in the book is left rather vauge and undefined. Is chaos and lawlessness returning in general because the Guardians are gone and some people are taking advantage of it, or is there a much darker master plan at work? Elliott hints at both possibilities but never really gives us enough information to come to a conclusion.

Spirit Gate (***) is an enjoyable and solid fantasy novel with some very nice ideas which doesn't entirely come together satisfyingly. Still, the novel leaves me intrigued to read the sequel, which I suppose is its main objective.

Book 2: Shadow Gate

This is the second book in the Crossroads series, and the middle volume of the first story arc, reportedly a trilogy (preceded by Spirit Gate, which I reviewed here, and to be succeeded by Traitor's Gate, due in 2009).

In Spirit Gate, a number of outlanders arrived in the Hundred to find the land beset by troubles. Armies of vagabonds and cutthroats have appeared out of nowhere to challenge the justice of the reeves, the giant eagle-riding police force who have ensured the rule of law in the land since the disappearance of the Guardians many decades earlier. The outlanders, led by Captain Anji and his wife Mai, joined forces with Reeve Joss and the militia of the city of Olossi to defeat one of these roving armies and build a safehaven in the south-west of the Hundred. However, all are troubled by rumours of beings wielding supernatural powers and riding winged horses - as the Guardians were said to have done - apparently leading the invading armies.

Shadow Gate is a worthwhile and enjoyable follow-up to the first book, mostly because it works on two levels. On the one hand, it is a direct sequel, following up on the adventures of Joss, Mai, Anji, Shai and others following the Battle of Olossi. On the other, it is also parallel novel to the first, explaining a great deal of the mysteries in the first volume. One of the key weaknesses in the first book, I felt, was that the nature of the winged horse-riding beings and some storylines, most notably that revolving around the wandering envoy-priest and the bizarre antics of the slave Cornflower, were decidedly under-developed, to the point where their inclusion seemed to be extremely confusing. In this second volume you get the answers to those questions, told in an accessible and intriguing manner. Any thoughts that this was going to be a simple good-versus-evil struggle go out the window as we learn more of the nature of the Guardians, the rules they operated under and some explanations as to why they disappeared (although the full story, I suspect, will have to wait until Book 3).

At the same time, we get to meet some new characters, such as Nallo, the refugee who is chosen to become a reeve but whose training is complicated when the main reeve base comes under siege, and Avisha, a simple village girl who attracts Mai's favour and has to sort out a complicated love life as well as caring for her family. The new additions to the cast generally give us new and interesting outlooks on the world and the plot, and don't slow the story down too much. The pacing is also good, but arguably the conclusion is not as strong as it might be. Just as the Battle of Olossi seemed to happen very quickly at the end of Book 1, so the two big set-piece battles at the end of Book 2 also get short shrift, but arguably this is less important this time around as revelations about characters and several dramatic scenes between major characters form the meat of the finale, which does a better job of leaving the reader wanting to pick up the next volume straight away.

Spirit Gate (****) is a notably superior book to the first one, and actually makes the first one more enjoyable as well (a full re-read of the first book after the series is completed will pay unexpected dividends, I suspect). The book is published by Orbit in the UK and by Tor in the USA.

Book 3: Traitors' Gate

An invading army is laying waste to the lands of the Hundred. The reeves, the giant eagle-riding police force of the land, are unable to hold them back. In desperation they have struck up an alliance with an exiled outlander prince and his militia, but the enemy are led by corrupted Guardians, resurrected beings with the power to look into souls and strike people dead with a glance. The only hope of victory may lie with the uncorrupted 'pure' Guardians. But to achieve this, they may have to give up a terrible secret...

Traitors' Gate concludes the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott, or rather it concludes the opening three-book arc of the series. Future books are planned picking up the story some generations further down the line. For now, however, it is a self-contained trilogy with no major cliffhangers or unresolved plot elements.

It's been five years since I read the first two volumes in the series, so I was initially a bit swamped as I caught up with what was going on. The core storyline is fairly straightforward, but the secret to the success of the trilogy is how Elliott layers in thematic elements to apparently trivial characterisation and how she addresses a wide range of different topics - from sexuality and female empowerment to commerce and religious freedom - within the confines of a more straightforward story. In fact, my biggest complaint about the trilogy as a whole is that it like it could have done with an additional book to help flesh out the world and cultures (a far cry from her prior Crown of Stars series which, whilst very good, could have probably done with at least a volume being shaved off its length).

The book and the trilogy as a whole also explores the concept of corruption and the ethics of the use of power. Elliott has little truck with evil magic or other examples of simplistic morality, instead citing that every person has within them the capacity for good or ill, the Guardians included, and she contrasts well the rigid thinking of the Qin (who prefer to see the world in absolutes rather than shades of grey) against those who are more open to a more complex view of the world. There's a good culture clash element which is not over-egged. There's also a feeling of melancholy to the story: the Hundred is an open-minded, tolerant land which has to become harder and more regimented to fight the invaders and in the process loses something of itself.

The worldbuilding is excellent - the Hundred is not another European medieval fantasyscape but an original creation drawing on many sources - and the characterisation is fairly strong. The pacing is a little off: for almost three-quarters of the length of the novel it honestly feels like there is no way of defeating the enemy and most of the time is spent on less-important character arcs, and suddenly everything spins on a dime. It is done reasonably convincingly, but certainly the ending feels a little abrupt. However, the ending is also deliciously messy. Allies suddenly find themselves at odds and what seems like deliverance could be (and we don't find out for certain) enslavement under a different name.

Traitors' Gate (****) concludes an accomplished fantasy trilogy with intelligence and complexity. Elliott has crafted an interesting world here and it'll be interesting to see what happens there next. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins

Investigator Vissarion Lom is summoned to Mirgorod, capital of the Vlast, to help investigate a series of terrorist attacks in the city. Josef Kantor, the son of a famous revolutionary, is the chief suspect and Lom is soon on his trail. But a simple manhunt turns into something more serious. An angel has fallen to the earth in the vast forest thousands of miles to the east. A devastating war between the Vlast and a grouping of island-nations to the west is coming to an end. And a spirit of the forest made manifest arrives in the city, seeking a young woman who may hold the key to the world's salvation.

Wolfhound Century has picked up a fair bit of advance buzz as a novel to watch for this year. It's easy to see why. Coming over as the result of a genetic experiment splicing the works of Chine Mieville, Ian Fleming and Robert Holdstock into a single entity, but with a few twists of the author's own invention, it's definitely a refreshing change from Generic Epic Fantasy #312. The book is set in a world where revolvers and airplanes exist alongside nature spirits and giants, a sort-of Soviet Russia that never was but where honest cops still have to get on with foiling crimes, even crimes involving alien space entities and objects of transdimensional quantum power. It's a glorious mash-up of genres and styles that works very well.

Higgins is telling a big story here, but by tightly restricting the points of view to just a few characters and by using short, sharp chapters he is able to get through the story with an enviable economy. Even better, that economy does not prevent the prose from being more ambitious than the SFF norm, with evocative flourishes and place and character undertaken in just a few deft sentences. The writing is superb and the characterisation excellent, with Lom and his nemesis Kantor both shown to be complex, damaged characters, and also both more than they initially appear.

Even more impressive is the melding together of different ideas and genres. There are SF ideas about quantum physics and alternate realities existing alongside rural fantasy notions of nature spirits and living woodlands. In the middle of this lies the alternate-Soviet tropes of secret police and investigations where the truth is subservient to perception and politics. It could be an unruly mess, but Higgins makes it work with aplomb.

Where the book not so much stumbles but falls flat on its face is the unexpectedly abrupt ending. Wolfhound Century has been advertised as having a sequel (already written and submitted, thankfully), Truth and Fear, due out in a year's time, so it was already known that this would probably not be a completely self-contained book. The problem is that at no point is it stated that Wolfhound Century is functionally incomplete as a novel. It doesn't so much climax as just stop. This isn't the first in a series, but the first chunk of a much longer single novel being published in multiple volumes. Some forewarning of this would have been appreciated. Also, given that Wolfhound Century is only 300 pages of pretty big type in length, the question arises of why this story is being published in such small chunks also arises.

Still, whilst Wolfhound Century (****) may be just the first chunk of a bigger story, it is still a finely-written and compelling story. Higgins has created an engrossing fantasy world which is a million miles away from the more played-out ends of the genre and all the better for it. The book would have simply benefited from either being held back until the entire story was complete, or a mention of its heavily serialised nature was given on the cover at some point. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Grim Company

Davarus Cole has a destiny. Only he can wield the sorcerous blade Magebane, one of the few weapons in existence that can kill a Magelord. Five centuries ago the Magelords slew the gods themselves, becoming immortal in the process and seizing control of the world. Now they wage war amongst themselves. Cole knows it is fate itself which has decreed that he will kill Salazar, Magelord of Dorminia, and liberate the city from his tyrannical rule. His comrades in the rebel group known as the Shards are less sure.

Meanwhile, a new threat is rising in the far north. Demonic forces are spilling into the northern mountains and the Shaman, the Magelord who rules the region, must face this threat whilst also confronting a renegade lord who has turned against him. At the same time, he owes a favour to Salazar that must be repaid.

The Grim Company is the opening volume of the fantasy trilogy of the same name. It's the debut novel by Luke Scull, a computer game designer who has worked for BioWare and Ossian Studios. It's also one of the SFF launch titles for Head of Zeus, a new publisher which won the publication rights to the novel in a significant auction.

It's easy to see why. The Grim Company is a rollicking dark fantasy adventure novel. It moves with verve and pace, fitting more plot than some entire trilogies into its lean 450 pages, and is threaded through with a great sense of humour that pokes fun at some of the conventions of both epic fantasy and the recent eruption of 'grimdark' fantasies in particular. The book packs in an impressive number of subplots, locations and characters without feeling rushed or overburdened, and manages to ensure these storylines are not extraneous material (one side-plot taking place hundreds of miles to the north in the mountains feels like pure set-up for later novels, but is linked back into the main storyline quite impressively in the climax).

Character-wise, we are in familiar archetype territory. Davarus Cole is a fine 'pratagonist', the apparent hero who's actually a barely-sufferable pillock. Cole believes it is his destiny to be awesome and free the people from tyranny, but he suffers from a blinkered view of reality and a tendency to ignore what's going on right in the moment (occasionally even during moments of high danger) as he daydreams of gaining the adoration of screaming crowds. This is frequently hilarious, but also gets close to becoming overused by the time we get to the novel's climax. Thankfully, some well-handled moments of character revelation near the end of the book show Cole to be a more sympathetic character than might have been first expected.

Brodar Kayne is the former Sword of the North, the Shaman's champion who defied his master and is now on the run, assisted by his exceedingly temperamental and borderline psychotic best friend, 'the Wolf'. Kayne is old and past his best days, but still exceedingly lethal with a greatsword. His only weakness is a sentimental streak, which leads him into a doubtful alliance with the Shards. Kayne is the 'actual hero whom Cole is trying to be' and Scull finely contrasts the differences between the two characters. There's nothing particularly new or notable about Kayne, but Scull pulls off the 'grizzled veteran with a dark past who is now trying to be a better man' trope reasonably skillfully.

Elsewhere, we have Eremul the Halfmage, a sorcerer whom Salazar spared during a purge of potential rival magic-users but still left crippled. Then there's Isaac, Eremul's apparently bumbling aide who turns out to be unexpectedly good at, well, everything. Particularly well-done is Barandas, the head of Salazar's Augmentors (magically-enhanced super-warriors), a good man serving a ruthless and amoral ruler because of his strict code of honour. There's also Sasha, another young member of the Shards who is actually good at her job and not an insufferable prat, and Yllandris, a young sorcerer and lover of the King of the Fangs who likes to think of herself as a badass witch and master manipulator but has too much of a good heart to really pull it off.

Aspects of the novel do feel somewhat familiar. The post-apocalyptic fantasy setting and the notion of a band of rebels gathering to pull down a tyrant is reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, but The Grim Company is certainly a more striking and fun novel than The Final Empire. The Shards being a band of rogues rather than purely idealistic rebels also recalls some elements of Scott Lynch (particularly the brothers), though the story then goes off in a completely different direction. Much more notable - and probably will be mentioned in every review of the book ever - are the similarities to Joe Abercrombie. These include some of the basic archetypes (though Cole, Kayne and Eremul's similarities to Jezal, Logen and Glokta are thankfully only superficial), the similar black and self-aware humour and some the language, most notably their mutual enjoyment of the word 'fruits' as a euphemism. Indeed, if you enjoy the works of Abercrombie, I can unreservedly recommend The Grim Company with no hesitation.

For those who are less keen, Scull uses magic in a more interesting manner, and his worldbuilding craft is certainly stronger, but it's likely that if you are really not a fan of Abercrombie and the more recent similar eruption of similar fantasies, this will not do a lot to impress you. The author is certainly aware of the pool he's swimming in, and occasionally seems to lampoon it, but it's also not an outright satire of the genre and does play a lot of the tropes straight (though, refreshingly, his female characters are as well-portrayed as his male and that most overused of 'grimdark' plot devices, rape, is kept for the most part off-page, though not unmentioned).

The Grim Company (****) is an energetic and well-written dark fantasy debut. It doesn't steer far from familiar waters, but it combines standard tropes and ideas into a more than satisfying whole. The novel is available now in the UK and on import in the USA.

In the XCOM thread people were saying it would be cool if there was a new SPACE HULK game which played like XCOM (as XCOM seems to have borrowed a lot of ideas from the original SPACE HULK board game).

REJOICE! There will be a new SPACE HULK game which will play a lot like XCOM. Only with Terminators and Genestealers in space. The game is also taking a lot of rules from the original board game. There may be some reference to the EA 1990s games (which were great), but this new title will definitely be turn-based and not real-time like they were.

That game will launch on PC with an iOS port to follow. The release date they are targetting is the end of this year. It's looking very cool. Also a great story on how they came to make it at the link.

Redshirts

Andrew Dahl is a newly-assigned crewman on the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union. Initially what appears to be a plum assignment turns into a nightmare. Almost every away mission turns into a lethal showdown with hostile aliens and crewmen are frequently killed, although oddly the bridge crew seem to survive every one of these encounters. As the situation becomes more bizarre and crew are slain by robots, alien worms and - somewhat unexpectedly - ice sharks, Dahl becomes determined to find out what the hell is really going on.

Redshirts is John Scalzi's tribute to all of those unfortunate extras and minor characters whose sole purpose in life is to show up for ten minutes and then die in a feeble attempt to make the audience believe the main characters might be in danger. It's a huge, nerdy in-joke that anyone who's ever sat through an episode of Star Trek should appreciate. Anyone who hasn't (and Star Trek and its cheesier tropes - distressingly - are getting a bit long in the tooth these days) might find the book pretty pointless.

The book starts off as a look at the workings of such a ship from the POV of the regular crewmen rather than the command crew (and yes, The Next Generation did a whole episode about that) but rapidly escalates into being a funny commentary on the aforementioned TV tropes before moving into a metafictional storyline about fictional characters coming to life before skewing sideways into a very ill-advised attempt at pathos (which falls completely flat due to a lack of decent characterisation, meaning we don't care). Scalzi seems to be aping funny SF authors like Harry Harrison, Terry Pratchett (whose Guards! Guards! pursues a vaguely similar premise, but altogether more successfully) and Douglas Adams. However, the premise of the novel is one that Douglas Adams threw into a TV documentary about his own life, explored and moved on from in about five minutes. Stretched over 300 pages, the premise becomes rather thin. Scalzi is a funny writer (though not in the same league as the aforementioned writers) and the laughs keep things ticking over, but despite a couple of attempts to make serious points (most notably in the codas, where the laughs dry up but the prose style improves markedly) the novel is pretty lightweight and disposable.

Redshirts (***) is an entertaining, easy read which will make you laugh for a bit but you will also completely forget about within a week. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

And so it began.

It's actually rather depressing the show is so old. I remember I started watching it in my penultimate year at secondary school and followed it avidly for the five years it was on. The very first time I ever went on the Internet was to look up info about the show. Great times.

The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

According to prophecy, mankind will be saved by the Deliverer, a figure who will unite all of humanity during the Daylight War before defeating the forces of demonkind in the First War. The demons that rise from the Core at night will be destroyed and peace restored to the world. But there is a problem: two men have arisen, both named as the Deliverer by the people they have saved. From the north comes Arlen, the Painted Man. From the south comes Jardir, the ruler of Krasia, and his armies of well-trained, fanatical warriors. For humanity to survive to fight the First War, only one of them can live.

The Daylight War is the third novel of The Demon Cycle, currently planned to run to five volumes. It follows on from the events of the enjoyable The Painted Man and the less-accomplished Desert Spear and replicates the structure of the latter novel. Whilst the current-day storyline continues to unfold, we are treated to lengthy flashbacks to the past to flesh out the background of a key character, in this case Inevera, Jardir's First Wife.

In this case, these flashbacks are not as extensive as The Desert Spear's, which were important to add to our understanding of the character of Jardir (who, as one of the two major protagonists of the series, needed such fleshing-out to better explain his actions at the end of The Painted Man). Inevera, though an important influence on events, is not a character in the same league and as such her flashbacks are more succinct. This leaves more time for the book to address the modern-day storyline, which has effectively been on hold since the end of The Painted Man: The Desert Spear moved the present-day storyline forwards infinitesimally, due to both the flashbacks taking up an immense amount of the book and an apparent decline in Brett's pacing abilities.

Unfortunately, and for reasons that remain unclear, The Daylight War does not do this. An immense amount of the book is taken up by characters sitting around and talking about the plot, about what has happened (and is redundant, as we've already read it) and what might happen next. Then we switch from the rustic faux-Two Rivers/Shirefolk of Team Arlen to the faux-Muslims of Team Jardir and the exact same thing happens again. Then we get a brief scene in which some demons get killed. Then people discuss the plot a bit more in light of these demons being killed. This happens repeatedly for about 650 pages, whilst the reader wonders what is going on.

Finally, towards the end of the book, we get a couple of big action set-pieces in which lots of demons get killed, there are a few reversals as some minor characters are killed off, and then a painfully contrived final cliffhanger showdown between Jardir and Arlen that comes almost out of nowhere, and seems to be more the result of a dwindling page count then any natural plot development. The book's title also seems misleading: the Daylight War simply does not happen in the this novel (all of the major battles are against demons, not between the two human societies). The conclusion hints that maybe it does not need to happen, with the winner of the duel walking off with all of humanity united, so the title may be deliberately ironic.

The novel is not a complete disaster, despite its flirtation with Crossroads of Twilight levels of pacing. Brett's prose is fairly basic - and if anything has decreased slightly since the first novel - but remains effective at drawing environments, characters and situations. He is good with actions scenes, and his ward-based magic system is well-envisaged. Like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, Brett has come up with a system that is flexible and imaginative, and allows for it to be reinterpreted and upgraded as the series continues. There's more than a tinge of Dungeons and Dragons to this approach, with Brett's characters 'levelling up' in magical power to face the increasingly powerful monsters they face, but it remains an effective device. We get more information about demons, including more scenes from the demons' POV, which give us a hint about their society (but not their origins which, given that Brett's world is clearly ours millennia hence, remain puzzling).

The book also improves - though moderately - in its treatment of female characters. Previously Brett drastically over-used rape as a device of dramatic change, with both male and female characters suffering some kind of sexual abuse whenever he needed them to undergo some kind of moment of character realisation. In The Daylight War several of these abusers get their just desserts and the institutionalised rape within the Krasian culture is heavily eroded by Jardir's progressive policies (we also see the rise of a Krasian sect of female warriors). Unfortunately this has been replaced by a willingness by the female characters to simply use their bodies as a means to get whatever they want, replacing rape with consensual prostitution. At any rate, though Brett seems aware of the previous books' dubious gender politics and moved to address them, there remains some serious issues in this area which makes for some uncomfortable reading.

The Daylight War (**½) is an extremely badly-paced novel that features a tremendous amount of filler and redundant recapping of the plot. Intermittently, we get good moments of characterisation and a fair few decent action beats, along with some imaginative development of the magic system and the basic premise of the series, which remains interesting. But the book's main storyline crawls forwards at a snail's pace (ending in a contrived cliffhanger) and its treatment of female characters and sexuality remains painfully clumsy, despite minor improvements. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Book of Words 1: The Baker's Boy by J.V. Jones

Conspiracies and treachery run deep at Castle Harvell. King Lesketh is dying of an illness, the Four Kingdoms are at war with the neighbouring land of Halcus and Chancellor Baralis is intriguing with the Knights of Valdis and the Duke of Bren. The other major powers of the continent, sensing a coming clash of nations, are arming for war. But such things are flying high over the head of Jack, a simple baker's apprentice who just wants to get on with his life. When Jack manifests powers that mark him as a sorcerer, he earns the enmity of Baralis. Fleeing into the wilderness along with Lady Melliandra, who is trying to escape a marriage to the sinister Prince Kylock, Jack has to come to grips with his powers and discover his role in the unfolding events.

The Baker's Boy, originally published in 1995, is the debut novel by British fantasy author J.V. Jones and the opening volume of the Book of Words trilogy (itself the opening three volumes of a longer fantasy epic continued in her current Sword of Shadows sequence). As a glance at the plot summary will reveal, we are deep in the heart of Traditional Fantasy Territory here. There's a young boy destined for great things. There's evil sorcerers conniving to bring about dark ends. There's cruel and unworthy heirs to thrones, and beautiful ladies trying to escape from pre-arranged fates. It's all very traditional.

Traditional does not necessarily mean bad, and Jones laces her story with some darker and more interesting elements. The book is fairly 'low fantasy' in nature, dwelling on conspiracies, murders and assassinations. Characters such as Baralis are ruthless and merciless, but do not see themselves that way and are presented as the hero of their own story. Blurring the moral boundaries nicely, Jones sets up the greatest threats to Baralis as coming from Tavalisk, Archbishop of the distant city of Rorn, who himself is a venal, vain, arrogant and cruel man, little better than Baralis; and Maybor, Baralis's rival at court and the father of Melliandra, who is also presented as a violent and unpleasant man. The fact that these three characters are as bad as one another makes it hard to root for any side, although Jones gives a more sympathetic portrait of the three characters caught up in the three connivers' webs: Jack, Melliandra and Tawl, a knight who is searching for a young boy whose coming is foretold in prophecy (yes, one of those). There is also a tremendously satisfying vein of black humour running through the book, such as Tavalisk's wry observations of events being accompanied by a battle of wits with his much put-upon manservant.

Whilst Jones mixes the traditional fantasy ingredients up a little, and the book is always readable, regular genre readers will find little here that has not been done before, and better. As a first novel, The Baker's Boy is certainly very rough in places. Where the book gains some additional value is that Jones later went on to write The Sword of Shadows, a fantasy epic that is categorically superior to almost everything else in the genre (certainly it's batting at the same level as A Song of Ice and Fire, the Malazan series and the works of Guy Gavriel Kay). Whilst The Book of Words is nowhere near as good, though there is an escalation in quality from book to book that is impressive to watch, it's certainly worth a look as some characters that re-occur in the later Sword of Shadows do first appear here, and knowing their backstory has some worth for the later books.

The Baker's Boy (***) is as traditional a start to a fantasy series as there has ever been, though it remains resolutely entertaining. There are some rough spots as Jones comes up to speed but there's a rich vein of dark humour, some solid characterisation and an ending that was rather startling and refreshingly bleak in those altogether more cliched times when the book first came out. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Games Workshop seem to think they invented the term 'space marine', despite it being in regular use in SF since 1932.

Just...no.

Excession

Thousands of years ago, the Culture encountered an Outside Context Problem. A perfectly black sphere materialised out of nowhere next to a trillion-year-old sun from another universe. It did nothing and vanished. Now it has returned, and both the Culture and a hostile alien race known as the Affront are desperate to uncover its secrets.

Excession was originally published in 1996 and is the fourth novel in Iain M. Banks's Culture series. As with all of the Culture books, it is a stand-alone novel sharing only the same background and setting, with minimal references to the events of other books and no characters crossing over.

A plot summary of the novel makes it sound like Banks's version of a 'Big Dumb Object' book, a novel where the characters are presented with an enigmatic alien entity and have to deal with it (similar to Rendezvous with Rama or Ringworld). However, this isn't really what Excession is about. Instead, the novel operates on several different levels and uses the titular artifact as a catalyst for a more thorough exploration of the Culture and its goals, as well as a more human story about relationships and change.

Excession is the first book in the series to explore the Minds, the (mostly) benevolent hyper-advanced AIs which effectively run and rule the Culture (as both spacecraft and the hubs of the immense Orbital habitats). Previous novels had portrayed the Minds as god-like entities whose vast powers allowed the various biological species of the Culture to live peaceful lives of post-scarcity freedom. Aside from their whimsical sense of humour and tendency towards ludicrous names, the Minds had not been fleshed out much in the previous novels. Here they are front and centre as several groups of Minds attempt to deal with the Outside Context Problem, or Excession, and find themselves working at cross-purposes. One group of Minds appears to be involved in a conspiracy related to the object's previous appearance, whilst another is trying to flush them out. Another Mind appears to be operating on its own, enigmatic agenda. There are also Minds belonging to the Elench, an alien race closely aligned with the Culture but who may have different goals in mind in relation to this matter.

Banks depicts communications between the Minds as something between a telegram and an email, complete with hyperlink-like codes (in which can be found some amusing in-jokes). Following these conversations is sometimes hard work (especially remembering which ship belongs to which faction), but worth it as within them can be found much of the more subtle plotting of the novel.

The stuff with the Minds and with the alien Affront (think of the Hanar from Mass Effect but with the attitude and disposition of Klingons) is all great and somewhat comic in tone, but the book also has a serious side. Several human characters are dragged into the situation as well, and it turns out two of them have a past, tragic connection that one of the Minds is keen to exploit. It's rather bemusing that Banks drops in a terribly human drama into the middle of this massive, gonzoid space opera, but the juxtaposition is highly effective, giving heart to a story that otherwise could drown in its own epicness.

Excession (****½) is, as is normal with (early) Banks, well-written and engaging, mixing well-drawn characters (be they human, psychopathic floating jellyfish or Mind) with big SF concepts. The book's only downside is a somewhat anti-climactic (though rather clever) ending. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The publisher THQ has just gone down in flames after years of financial disappointments, but fortunately other companies have swept in to save its developers and games.

Arguably the highest-profile development firm working for THQ was Relic, the creators of the well-regarded WH40K: DAWN OF WAR, SPACE MARINE and COMPANY OF HEROES franchises. Relic have been saved by Sega, which is excellent. Sega already own the Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive, home to two of the PC's most dominant strategy franchises (the TOTAL WAR and FOOTBALL MANAGER games), and, crucially, have a WARHAMMER FANTASY licence which they are using for a new game with the CA. Reacquiring the WH40K licence to allow Relic to continue with DAWN OF WAR 3 should be straightforward, whilst COMPANY OF HEROES 2 is on course to come out this year as planned.

Potential major disappointment however: the HOMEWORLD IP, which THQ rescued back in 2006 (HOMEWORLD was Relic's first franchise, made when they were working with Sierra/Vivendi a decade ago), does not appear to have been saved, and will likely be sold off for peanuts as part of the last dissolution of the company.

Almost as well-regarded is Volition, the creator of the RED FACTION and SAINT'S ROW games. Koch Media has bought Volition and the SAINT'S ROW IP, but from the sound of it not the RED FACTION one, which will likely now disappear. Koch Media have also purchased the METRO IP, and will be publishing METRO: LAST LIGHT (the sequel to METRO 2033) in a few months.

Crytek have purchased the HOMEFRONT IP, which makes sense as they were working on HOMEFRONT II anyway, and are now free to shop it to any publisher of their choosing (probably Electronic Arts, given their close relationship over the CRYSIS franchise).

Ubisoft have purchased the rights to publish the new SOUTH PARK game, being developed by Obsidian.

The fate of a number of other franchises - most notably DARKSIDERS - are also up in the air.

InExile, the team working on WASTELAND 2, have announced their next project. Their new game will be a spiritual sequel to the legendary PLANESCAPE: TORMENT and will bear the TORMENT name (though not the PLANESCAPE one, which is held by WotC). The setting, however, will be Numenera, the new RPG world created (via Kickstarter) by Monte Cook.

The inXile team, containing many veterans of Interplay and Black Isle who worked on TORMENT, are planning a game that will continue the original TORMENT's themes of consciousness, life and death, as well as world-hopping. The game uses new skill and combat rules, inspired by the Numenera P&P RPG.

There will be a Kickstarter for NUMENERA: TORMENT (or whatever it ends up being called), though not for a while. InXile are planning to release WASTELAND 2 in October and will probably move into full production on NUMENERA shortly afterwards.

HBO are developing a TV series based on Neil Gaiman's novel AMERICAN GODS and its-as-yet-unwritten sequel. After a year or so in early development, the series has entered active pre-production, with Gaiman recently revealing that he is busy writing the pilot episode. Based on this, I suspect we'll see this on screens by late 2014 or early 2015 (assuming the pilot is successful), potentially replacing either TREME or TRUE BLOOD (assuming the rumours over that show ending after a 6th or 7th season are accurate).

No casting news as yet. Gaiman envisages the first season adapating the novel, the second season dealing with the fall-out from that (and possibly adapting his AMERICAN GODS short stories) and presumably the third season adapting AMERICAN GODS II, if he can write it in time.

The Fencer Trilogy Book 1: Colours in the Steel

Triple-walled Perimadeia is one of the richest city-states in the world, famed for its teeming markets and its impregnable defences. After decades of trying fruitlessly to take the city, one of the plains tribes comes up with an ingenious idea: send one of their own to get a job in the city arsenal and learn its secrets from the inside.

Even as an ambitious young chieftain's son plans the most audacious siege in history, life in the city goes on. Bardas Loredan, a former soldier, now works as a defence advocate. In the courts of Perimadeia cases are settled through swordplay and Bardas is very good at what he does...until a vengeful young woman hires the city's Patriarch to curse him.

Colours in the Steel was originally published in 1998 and was the debut novel by the enigmatic K.J. Parker. It's also the first in The Fencer Trilogy, although it also works quite well as a stand-alone book. It can be best described as a sort-of anti-epic fantasy. The trappings of much of the subgenre are present: swordfights, large armies, sieges, military manoeuvres, magic (more or less) and prophecies (kind of). However, most of this is window-dressing, with the focus being on Bardas Loredan and his troubled family life, and on young Temrai, the chieftain's son and spy who ends up plotting the genocide of a city he actually quite likes.

As with Parker's later books, Colours in the Steel has a cynical vein of black humour running through it. There are musings on the futility of revenge, the pointlessness of warfare and the quite insane meanderings of the military bureaucracy (there's more than a whiff of WWI incompetence to the leaders of Perimadeia and their military judgement during the siege). There's no glorification of warfare, with both sides suffering heavy losses and wondering if it's all worth it. However, there is also a distinct love of military hardware. In fact, Parker devotes pages to how swords are forged, how siege engines work and are built and on the best ways of defending a city under siege from a superior enemy. Colours in the Steel belies the tendency of much of epic fantasy to be pure escapism, instead educating the reader on matters mechanical and mathematical more effectively than most science fiction novels. Sometimes the deviations onto the best way to make a trebuchet work go on for a bit too long, but Parker's writing skill is enough to keep even the most detailed descriptions of gears and counterweights interesting.

Long-term readers of Parker will know that she(?) has little truck with gratuitous worldbuilding. There is no map and the legal system of Perimadeia seems to have been created more for dramatic effect than any desire to create something that would work on a practical level. There is no 'magic system' either, with the city's Patriarch cheerfully acknowledging that he has no idea about how magic (the Principal, which actually seems more like some kind of limited prophetic or telepathic ability) works. What does work quite well is the subplot where the Patriarch and his best friend try to lift the curse the Patriach put on Bardas (without understanding what was going on), only to find other forces getting involved. Parker doesn't spell out what's going on with this 'magical' plot and it's left to the reader to piece together what it all means, which shows respect for the reader's intelligence.

The book's biggest success is in its characterisation, although it has to be said that Bardas himself is painted a little too straightforwardly. Those who are familiar with the whole trilogy (particularly his actions in the second novel, The Belly of the Bow) will be aware that there are good reasons for this, but newcomers may find Bardas a little too obvious as a protagonist. However, the rest of the cast are painted well, particularly Patriarch Alexius and his friend Gannadius who spend a lot of the book as outside observers and commentators on what's going on before having to get involved. Bardas's brother, Gorgas, is also a fascinating and contradicted character. Whilst definitely being a nasty piece of work, he also has his own sense of honour and fair play. He doesn't play much of a role in this novel, but is set up well for the sequel.

Colours in the Steel (****½) is a striking debut novel. It has the requisite amounts of well-depicted carnage and military activity for an epic fantasy, but it's focus is much more on the characters, their motivations and the realisations they lead to. The book is also darkly funny. It's an excellent example of an epic fantasy novel that uses the tropes and limitations of the genre to say something a bit more interesting than normal. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The fourth game in the seminal ELITE space trading/combat series has been formally announced via a Kickstarter campaign.

The original ELITE was released in 1984 and is notable for being one of the first major 3D games and one of the first games to give the player total freedom of how they played it. It was a stunning technical achievement and arguably represents the single biggest jump forward in both technical and conceptual gameplay terms in gaming's history (it's sometimes been likened to the arrival of sound in film in being a transformative momentin the history of the form).

The sequel, FRONTIER, was released in 1993 and was almost as impressive, featuring hundreds of millions of star systems and allowing players to undertake a much vaster array of missions, fly different ships and land on planetary surfaces as well as with orbiting space stations. The game also had a Newtonian physics flight model and a superbly accurate recreation of our Solar system. Despite its technical brilliance, actually flying the spaceship was less fun in FRONTIER. The third game, FIRST ENCOUNTERS (1995) suffered a botched, extremely buggy launch which caused the creators to sue the publishers for releasing an early version of the game without their permission.

ELITE: DANGEROUS is planned for release in 2014 and will apparently incorporate the vast galaxy of FRONTIER mixed in with a more traditional (and accessible) flight model. The game will have modern, state-of-the-art graphics (of course) and an integrated multiplayer mode. However, further details on the project are somewhat thin. Videos and screenshots of the work undertaken so far will apparently be posted soon (and I'd argue that putting up a Kickstarter page without them was rather silly, but a mistake they can recover from).

Chris Roberts, the creator of the WING COMMANDER and STARLANCER/FREELANCER franchises, has announced that he is working on a new space combat game.

The game is hugely ambitious. The project overall is called STAR CITIZEN and works on one of several levels. On one level the game works like FREELANCER or PRIVATEER, with you trading, flying around the universe and upgrading stuff. You can run the game in this mode as a single-player game or on a private server with some friends. You can also play this mode on public servers, where it becomes more like an MMORPG.

If that doesn't appeal, there is a story-driven, single-player campaign. This campaign mode is called SQUADRON 42 and will feature sequential missions. This mode can be played single-player or in co-op with a friend (or possibly several friends). This campaign will be upgraded on a regular basis with new missions and expansions.

As well as space combat and trading, the game will also allow you to walk around in a first-person mode on spaceships and stations (and possibly starports as well).

The game will be PC-only, since it is simply beyond the capabilities of the 360 and the PS3 to even begin being able to handle. However, I would not rule out its eventual appearance on the next-gen machines.

Chris Roberts give an impressive one-hour talk about the game here.

There's a five-minute trailer here.

Apparently all of the game footage was rendered in-engine using an Nvidia 680GT graphics card, which is seriously impressive.

Book 1: The Year of Our War

Steph Swainston is the author of three books set in the Fourlands, a series she collectively calls The Castle Series. Two more are forthcoming. The Year of Our War is the story of Jant, the Messenger, one of fifty immortals who serve the Empire, a large nation covering most of a (fairly small) continent which is under threat of destruction from the Insects, a vast, endless horde that dominates the northern part of the landmass. Jant is a drug addict, but with good reason: the drug he takes, cat, transports him into the Shift, another world where some of the dead souls of his own world go, and where he has vital allies in the war against the Insects.

This is a pretty difficult book to review. Just when I was certain that I was going to end up hating it, the story would take off, the characters and the writing would click and I'd end up enjoying it. Then something else would happen and it would end up annoying me again. This pattern repeated itself throughout the book until it finally reached a highly ambiguous conclusion (there is no resolution, the book just stops with less of a climax than many of the standard chapter endings). To some extent it was a frustrating book, but I think its positives outweigh it problems.

The writing is quite interesting, with a sense of bright-eyed whimsy which is often at odds with the subject matter (drug abuse, a soldier getting his stomach torn out, a violent sex scene) in a manner not entirely removed from Jack Vance (although Swainston doesn't push it quite as far as Vance). The strange mixing of time and space in the book - this is a medieval world with T-shirts and jeans and added steampunk moments - is much more reminiscent of Mieville, which I get the impression is what Swainston was aiming for (and was successful, given her acknowledged place in the New Weird pantheon and Mieville's endorsement on the cover). The anachronisms and incongruities were initially rather jarring, but you rapidly get used to them and assume there is some kind of explanation for them.

The characters are all reasonably well developed, with the immortals coming across as a mix between superheroes, Greek legends and ordinary people in over their heads. Swainston crams a surprising amount of plot into the book's 360 pages, such as the tortured family history of Lightning, the Archer, and the machinations of Swallow, the musician-governess of Awndan, as she attempts to become immortal herself. These backstories give the characters weight and depth that informs their actions and doesn't feel incongruous, which is quite an achievement. Less successful is the attempt to give Jant himself development, with his flashbacks coming in disjointed scattershot, making it difficult to put together the pieces of his life and find out how he came to be who he is. Also, because Jant is exceptionally emo a lot of the time (being immortal , one of the fifty most important people in the world and the only person alive who can fly is extremely traumatic, obviously) and spends much of the book either urgently wanting a fix or going through cold turkey, he is a hard protagonist to like, which is a problem in a first-person narrative.

The climax also leaves much to be desired. This is very much the first part of a series and not a self-contained novel at all. As well as Jant's under-developed backstory, there are numerous storylines and characters left hanging in mid-air. I assume that these points are addressed in the sequel, No Present Like Time.

The Year of Our War (***) aspires to be different and certainly achieves that. Swainston is clearly a talented writer and I look forward to investigating her other work, but at the same time this debut novel is rough around the edges and the ending doesn't really justify the build-up.

Book 2: No Present Like Time

The Fourlands are recovering from a devastating invasion by the Insects. The Emperor San has ordered reconstruction efforts to be undertaken, under the watchful eye of his immortal Circle, but many feel that these efforts are proceeding too slowly. Refugees from the front clog the cities and dissatisfaction is spreading. When the Swordsman Gio is unseated by a skilled newcomer, his resentment fuels the flames of rebellion.

Meanwhile, the Messenger, Comet Jant Shira, is commanded to join an expedition to a newly-discovered land beyond the ocean. Terrified of the sea, Jant can only get through the journey by lapsing back into his drug habit. The new land of Tris turns out to be a wonderful paradise, but the Fourlanders' arrival sparks fear and trepidation...even before an Insect gets loose on the island.

No Present Like Time is the second of four novels in Steph Swainston's Castle series, set five years after the events of The Year of Our War. Whilst earlier events are referenced and provide notable backstory for this volume - such as the characterisation of Jant and several other members of the Circle - the main storyline of No Present Like Time is self-contained.

As before, the novel unfolds in the first-person from Jant's perspective. The book contains three principal storylines: the discovery of Tris and the events that unfold there; the rebellion against the established order led by the deposed Swordsman; and Jant's own personal crisis as he deals with his wife's supposed infidelity and his own resulting lapse back into drug use. There is a feeling of duality to the novel, as the external, large-scale and major events in the outside world impact on Jant's own personal life and emotional development, the epic made personal.

This blending of big events and Jant's own personal issues is more successful than in the first novel, The Year of Our War, which I enjoyed but overall felt was not an altogether successful blending of traditional epic fantasy elements and the New Weird (Swainston is regarded, by no less than China Mieville, as one of the leading authors of that much-debated movement). Here Swainston is much more confident in melding these elements into a much more cohesive whole. She also makes much better use of the Shift, the other-dimensional realm that Jant visits in his drug-induced state. The Shift is a place where sharks can take on a human aspect and drive cars made of animal organs, and where time can be rolled back and forth at will (I suspect this is also the part of the book which Mieville nodded approvingly over the most). However, rather than just being the destination for an excursion to Weirdsville for its own sake, the Shift plays a key role in the narrative, both thematically and practically.

There are some weaknesses. The book features no less than two separate visits to Tris, complete with descriptions of the sea voyages there and back. In a novel that's only 400 pages long, that doesn't give the author much time to pack everything in. The result is that Tris itself feels somewhat under-developed. We don't see any more of it than a single town and the fascinating culture-clash between the democratic, Senate-led Tris and the Empire of the Fourlands, ruled by its immortal god-emperor, is not expanded upon satisfyingly. Also, as the rebellion against the Emperor gets going off-page during the toing and froing across the ocean, it is never really convincingly established either. Swainston does a great job of using it for plot and character purposes, but the thematic chance to really challenge and question the way the Empire is run is not exploited to the full.

Nevertheless, No Present Like Time (****) is a significant improvement over its forebear and is an enjoyable read, packed with satisfyingly fantastical ideas and some excellent character development of both Jant and several of the other major principals. However, some other elements could have done with a bit more fleshing-out.

Red Country

Gold has been discovered in the hills and mountains of the Far Country, that untamed frontier beyond the Old Empire and far to the west of the Union. Prospectors, mercenaries and those eager to find a new life flock to those lands, only to find the greed and violence of their pasts following them, even those of honourable intentions. Shy South and her adopted father are searching for missing kinfolk, kidnapped for purposes unknown. Their pursuit across the Far Country leads them into an alliance with a fellowship of the plains, a caravan hoping for a better life in the distant mining town of Crease. But, with rebels gathering in the mountains and Nicomo Cosca and his Company of the Gracious Hand also on a sworn mission to root them out for His Majesty's Inquisition, this is a journey where nothing will turn out as hoped.

Red Country is Joe Abercrombie's sixth novel and his third semi-stand-alone set in the same world as The First Law sequence. As with its two immediate predecessors, Best Served Cold and The Heroes, Red Country can be read by itself, but regular readers will pick up on a lot of nods and winks to previous novels, from cameo character appearances to the ongoing development of a 'cold war' between two opposing factions.

The book moves between several major POV characters. Shy is our main protagonist, but shares a lot of the page-time with Temple, a lawyer in Cosca's army whose moral centre is gradually crumbling in the face of so much pain and violence. Other characters also flitter in and out of the story, with Abercrombie re-using the 'POV handover' trick from The Heroes to great effect several times, where the perspective shifts between several characters in succession to help clearly tell the story of a battle or confrontation. As usual with Abercrombie, the characters' personalities and motivations are convincingly laid out and developed, and there are some nice pay-offs for returning characters (Cosca, in particular, gets some fairly thorough character development here). One slight flaw is that the storyline following one of the kidnapped children never seems to really develop, and feels like it either needed several more chapters dedicated to it or the whole thing dropped and the reader (like Shy) made to discern for themselves what happened off-page.

The novel has been billed as 'Joe Abercrombie's Western' and there is certainly a degree of that in the book's influences. Brief nods to The Searchers, Unforgiven and the mighty Deadwood can be discerned, though unexpectedly the most constant cultural reference is the original Star Wars movie: one brief line of dialogue by Obi-Wan Kenobi inspires an entire subplot in the novel. However, there are significant deviations from the Western motif. The West in this case is the long-abandoned northern provinces of the Old Empire, festooned with ruins from ancient times, rather than a totally virgin and untamed land (apart from the natives, of course). The area is also (relatively) close to the Old Empire, the Union and the North, making it much more of a cultural melting-pot and having it effect (and be effected by) events in more established lands than you might expect. Finally, there's no six-shooters, with everyone falling back on the old stand-bys of swords and bows. More or less.

The tone of the book is bloody and cynical, with Abercrombie's trademark line in black humour preventing things from getting too depressing. However, the cynicism feels a little harder-edged and a bit blacker than in his previous books, the humour perhaps a tad less prevalent. It's still a page-turning, well-written book with points to make about human nature, but at times the tone feels wearier than his previous books. However, this also ties in with a feeling of tragedy underpinning the book, one that results in a grimly satisfying pay-off at the end (and one element of the novel that is completely lifted - if appropriately - from a Western).

Red Country (****½) is Joe Abercrombie doing what he does best, writing a story of violence, mayhem and vengeance and the effect it has on all-too-human characters. As with his previous stand-alones, the book works as both a satisfying novel in its own right and also moves a lot of political and religious pieces into position to be (presumably) used to good effect in his next work, a full-on trilogy. Some may find the cynicism a tad overwhelming at times and at least one of the subplots doesn't quite work as well as it could have, but this is a strong effort from one of the better writers in the genre. The novel will be available on 18 October in the UK and 13 November in the USA.

Black Mesa

When it comes to the genre of first-person shooters, there have been several gamechangers during its lifespan. The mass-popularisation of the genre through id's Doom was an early one. The success of 2001's Medal of Honour: Allied Assault inspiring dozens of 'realistic' shooters using real weapons and history was another. But towering over all of them is Half-Life. Released in 1998 it transformed the genre from mindless shooting to something based more around characters, personal narrative, puzzles and full immersion in the world it depicted.

More recent shooters have seemingly ignored the lessons laid down by Half-Life, becoming lost in a few short hours of tiresome, badly-acted cut-scenes and even more tiresome gimmicks like regenerating health and cover systems. Yet returning to Half-Life, or introducing it to new players, is almost impossible. What was a fantastic-looking game on release is now a painful collection of blocky models and low-res textures. What is needed is a full HD remake of the game which preserves the pacing, weapons and enemies but updates everything else.

Happily, Black Mesa is a (nearly) full HD remake of the game which preserves the pacing, weapons and enemies but updates everything else. Created over a period of eight years (!) - or two years longer than it took for Valve themselves to make Half-Life 2 - by gamers and fans working in their own time, Black Mesa is a carefully-crafted love letter to the franchise. The attention to detail in the game is tremendous, and it's quality easily exceeds that of many 'proper' Triple-A releases. Even the voice-acting (all re-recorded, as reusing the original game's audio files was legally dubious) eclipses that of many supposedly professional games.

The game opens as the original Half-Life did, with you standing on a tram as it makes its way into the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. You play Gordon Freeman, a 27-year-old theoretical physicist and graduate of MIT. Freeman is a silent protagonist who never speaks, allowing the player to come up with his own personality and interpretation for the character. The iconic tram ride shows the similarities and differences between the original game and the remake. The areas you pass on the tram are more or less the same, but are now inhabited by more people with more activity going on. A mech clearing up a chemical spill have now been joined by two scared scientists trapped against a nearby wall. Other spaces, formerly bare, are now bustling with people moving equipment around. The reception area to the main lab has been transformed from a poky square room into a cavernous circular chamber filled with computer screens. A nearby canteen has changed from a small room with a table in it to a large public space filled with vending machines.

There are multiple models for scientist and soldier characters now (including the introduction of female characters), lending more realism to scenes where Gordon forms up a posse. Amusingly, Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance (from Half-Life 2) show up as younger characters, in keeping with the canon. The developers have resisted the urge to thrown in other appearances from Half-Life 2 characters: Administrator Breen is referenced, but does not appear (as he did not appear in the original game), whilst Barney also does not appear: whilst multiple security guards in the original game had the 'Barney voice', the canon Barney is the one glimpsed briefly trying to open a door as Gordon passes by on his tram journey, and otherwise does not feature in the original Half-Life, only its expansion, Blue Shift.

The weapons load-out is the same as in the original game, and pleasingly you can carry a full arsenal around with you rather than having the current, tiresome restriction of two-guns-per-person (or whatever) shoehorned into the title. The variety and types of enemy is also the same. The integration of the Source Engine's physics system also gives rise to the closest thing the game has to a new weapon, the ability to pick up flares and throw them at enemies, setting them on fire.

As noted above, the game has been redesigned on a micro scale in many areas: few rooms or corridors avoid having had some tweaks to make them more interesting, from whiteboards filled with amusing jokes (or occasionally dirty cartoons) to a mug featuring the Chuckle Brothers (dubious UK comedians) sitting on a security guard's desk. The general layout of the game is the same as before, but a few areas have been opened up. Whilst still a linear shooter, some areas do feature multiple paths, requiring Gordon to scout out surrounding corridors and rooms for bonus weapons and ammo before finding what is the correct way to proceed. These changes, though minor, do hugely enhance the feeling of Black Mesa as a place where, under normal circumstances, people work together.

Something that did come as a surprise whilst playing the game was the fact that, by modern standards, Half-Life is only barely a shooter. The game can happily go half an hour at a time without having any combat, instead throwing puzzles and environmental challenges at the player that must be negotiated without a shot being fired. These range from having to open up valves to prime a rocket engine with fuel and coolant so it can be fired into a blast pit, killing a giant, triple-tentacled monster inside, to finding a way of powering up a computer system so you can use it to unlock a blast door.

Combat, when it does take place, is intense and also quite tough: the AI of both the alien invaders and the marines sent to deal with them and also wipe out any eyewitnesses is impressive, especially given fan consensus that the original Half-Life actually featured better AI than Half-Life 2. Whether the smart, tough enemies of Half-Life would survive the transition to Black Mesa was a key question for many fans, even a dealbreaker, and it's a relief to report that they have. Enemies are smart and canny, knowing when to take cover, flank you and use grenades to flush you into a killzone.

Unfortunately, the game's transition to Source means that the controls suffer a little. The original game sometimes used a feature called 'crouch-jumping' to allow you to reach tall ledges that would otherwise be out of reach. For some reason Black Mesa actually forces you to use crouch-jumping far more than the original game, almost for every single jump in the game. When you have to run fast and crouch-jump (requiring three simultaneous button pushes whilst using the mouse at the same time), it's almost impossible to execute the move. It turns out the development team set the jumping parameters too low, but it's very easy to go into the source files and modify it back to something sane. The game also has a lot of problems with ladders. In fact, the only FPS I've ever seen handle ladders well was the original Half-Life. Every other game, including Half-Life's own sequels and expansions (and now its remake), seems to love sticking you to ladders to the point of mouse-throwing rage when it results in you dying. Also, for some reason, the 'walk slowly' button does not work, which makes traversing the aforementioned blast pit (inhabited by an indestructible triple-tentacled blind monster that hunts by sound alone) absolutely horrendous, although it's completely unnecessary for any other part of the game.

These problems seem fairly minor when you consider the overwhelming quality of the game. A few areas feel like they could have been truncated a little bit (the residue processing sequence in particular is a little dull) but overall, Black Mesa is a phenomenal achievement. The original game's superior level design, excellent weapons and impressive AI are now enhanced by modern graphics, a subtle-but-brilliant redesign of many areas to work better with physics and a new, moody soundtrack. The game does have a different ending to the original, however, concluding in the Lambda Complex as you prepare to teleport to Xen. The thorough, exacting redesign of the game means that Xen is not yet ready. However even this has its benefits, as the Xen levels are the most widely-hated part of the original game. Their absence makes Black Mesa a tighter, more focused (though, at over 10 hours, still very long by modern standards) experience, even if the bizarreness of the place (a refreshing antidote to 10 hours of grey walls) is missed a little.

Black Mesa (*****) is available now from the developers' website, completely legally and free of charge. The game will also be available from Steam in a few weeks.

It's not been officially announced yet, but it's been a bit of an open secret that Bethesda would be returning to the FALLOUT universe once work on SKYRIM and its DLC was completed (though apparently there's still some people working on further updates and content for the game, so there may be a little more to come from them about that game). We know that the next FALLOUT game will use the updated Creation Engine from SKYRIM and that Bethesda have said they are steering clear of the 'traditional' FALLOUT setting of the West Coast and the Nevada/Arizona area, leaving that to Obsidian, so it was always assumed that FO4 would again take place on the Eastern Seaboard.

That now seems confirmed, with Bethesda writers and personnel allegedly visiting Boston, MIT and the surrounding area for 'research' purposes. In FALLOUT 3 there are numerous references to the Commonwealth - a nation based in New England - and to the Institute, a centre of study and technological development where, among other things, robots and even androids are constructed (such as the one in the BLADE RUNNER-style mission in FO3). Based on this, it does appear that FO4 will indeed be taking place in the Massachusetts area.

No idea of a release date, but I doubt it'll be before the end of 2013 at the absolute earliest.

Book 1: The Iron Wyrm Affair

Emma Bannon is a powerful sorceress in the employ of Victrix, Queen of England, vessel of the god-spirit Britannia and ruler of the Empire. Archibald Clare is a mentath, a human capable of staggering feats of logic and deduction. When other mentaths start turning up dead on the streets of Londinium, Bannon and Clare have to join forces and uncover the reasons for the deaths...and the nature of a conspiracy that threatens the nation.

The Iron Wyrm Affair is a curious hybrid of alternate history, fantasy and steampunk, with a dash of SF added to proceedings (mentaths essentially being mentats from Dune). The early part of the novel struggles as Lilith Saintcrow tries to find a way of simultaneously balancing these elements, introducing the characters and establishing the plot without it all falling into a mess. She succeeds mainly by adopting a, "Damn the torpedoes, fall steam ahead!" approach and trusting the reader to stay with her. This pays off about a third of the way into the book, when it starts to fulfil its billing as a glorious alterno-history romp through a Victorian England that never was.

So we have a book that features mustachioed Italian assassins, German engineers who become enraged after being denied breakfast, and ancient dragon-spirits lurking in the slums of the city. There are steamborgs and primitive mecha, sorcerous duels and Holmesian moments of impressive logical deduction. The book has its fun factor turned up fairly high, but Saintcrow mixes in some nice moments of characterisation, particularly of Bannon who has a complex backstory. Archibald Clare is more straightforward, but Saintcrow includes some interesting elements to his character, such as his not-very-mentath-like ability to reason away the unreasonable (such as the existence of sorcery, which drives many mentathes insane due to its irrationality).

After a slow start, the pages start flying as the conspiracy is unravelled, the stakes are raised and the pace quickens. Events culminate in a grand, explosive finale, the hints of further adventures to come and, of course, the consumption of a well-earned cup of tea.

The Iron Wyrm Affair (***½) is a solidly-executed novel which combines several genre elements into a successful whole. It's definitely at the more lightweight end of the genre spectrum, but remains an entertaining read. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season was released on Blu-Ray last week, the culmination of more than a year's work in digitally restoring and remastering the first season for high-definition.

I go into this in more detail in the linked post, but briefly ST:TNG was originally shot on high-quality 35mm film but was mastered and compiled on standard-definition video for NTSC transmission in the United States. Whilst it looked good in 1987, this was not acceptable for high-definition viewing (and was starting to push it on the DVD releases, to be honest). After various upscaling experiments failed, CBS went back to the original 35mm film elements and re-scanned them. This required the entire series to be re-edited and re-composited from scratch, with every optical effect (phaser blasts, transporter beams etc) redone as well. They also had to replace every background planet shot in the series (the originals surviving only as low-res bitmaps) with animated 3D spheres, and the few instances of CGI-only shots had to be remade from scratch.

The results, costing tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours, are well worth it. The series looks jaw-dropping in HD, like it was filmed yesterday. Re-compositing effects sequences from scratch with 2012 equipment has had the unintended (but very welcome) side-effect of eliminating matte lines and obvious uses of greenscreen. Overall, the series looks fantastic.

The only flies in the ointment are that, since the show was not originally shot in widescreen, it cannot be shown in widescreen. Watching the HD image in a square picture can be a bit disconcerting, it has to be said, although you soon adjust to it. The other problem is that, well, it's the first season. The Battle, The Arsenal of Freedom, Conspiracy and a few other episodes are decent-to-good, but there are no all-time classic episodes here and quite a few howlers: Justice is still one of the worst 45 minutes of TV you will ever watch in your entire life, though even with this episode it's still possible to appreciate the impressive planet rendering effects and the alien space probe god thing, which looks a bit weirder and creepier in HD.

Nevertheless, a brilliant technical achievement and a potentially vital precedent in how other older shows can be 'saved' for future HD reproductions.

Sharps by KJ Parker

The neighbouring kingdoms of Permia and Scheria fought one another for forty years before the Scherian general Carnufex, known in infamy as 'The Irrigator', flooded a Permian city and killed thousands. The war ended with an uneasy truce and the two nations maintaining a neutral zone between their kingdoms, containing the very territory they spilled so much blood over. To help restore relations and build on their mutual interest in the sport of swordplay, the Scherians dispatch a team of fencers to tour Permia. The fencers quickly learn that they may just be pawns in a larger game as factions in both kingdoms attempt to use their visit as an excuse to restart the war or to seize power in their own land. But no-one has reckoned on this particular team and their individual motivations and ambitions...

Sharps is the latest stand-alone novel from the enigmatic K.J. Parker. Parker is known for her fascination with medieval and renaissance weapons of war and basing entire narratives around them. Usually these narratives work on multiple levels, with both extensive literal use of the item in question and also its use as a metaphor. In Sharps Parker returns to her love of the sword and the sport of fencing, which she last studied in detail in her very first novel, the excellent Colours in the Steel, fifteen years ago. Sharps is a very different book, however, to both that novel and her normal output.

Most of Parker's books focus on a single character in detail, whilst Sharps has an ensemble cast. The four fencers are the main focus, along with their manager/trainer and their redoubtable political liaison officer. Parker also visits a whole bunch of bit-players on both sides of the border as different factions try to make use of the situation for their own ends. The result is a busier feel than most of her novels, which tend to be more intensely focused (sometimes to the point of claustrophobia). This works well, with each character set up and well-motivated in a concise fashion and then developed through the novel through their interactions with one another. Each character - the deadly war veteran Suidas, the manager Phrantzes, the foppish Giraut, the level-headed Addo (the son of the Irrigator) and noble Iseutz (the only female member of the team) - has his or her secrets, demons from the past or hidden motives, and Parker flips between them with verve and ease. Her trademark dry, black humour is also very much in evidence.

Sharps is an offbeat epic fantasy novel. Blood is spilled, thousands are killed and the fates of entire nations hang in the balance. Yet we see very little of it. The bulk of the book is set in the fencers' carriage (or one of them, as the have to change wagons several times due to various acts of mayhem) as they talk to one another, discuss the political situation, play chess and argue over various matters. Intermittently the novel feels like Waiting for Godot as rewritten by George R.R. Martin, with a dialogue polish by Terry Pratchett. The situation outside the carriage changes rapidly, with riots taking place and civil war threatening, but the four fencers only hear about it second-hand through confused reports, some of which may be misinformation fed to them deliberately. Neither the characters or we really know what's going on, and both will be baffled for much of the novel's length as increasingly random events take place, only being explained in the revelatory conclusion (after which a re-read of the novel with foreknowledge of the end could be an enlightening move).

Sharps (****½) is one of Parker's strongest novels to date. The characters are among her most memorable and fully-fleshed out, the structure is unusual but well-handled and allows for the politics, intrigue and backstabbing to be undertaken in a manner that does not descend into cliche. There's also a mordant wit which is deeply satisfying (especially when Parker directs it against some of the corniness of the fantasy genre). Parker even gives the book an ending which makes everything feel worthwhile, rather than pointless (a traditional weakness of some of her earlier books). The only problem is that the opening sections can feel very stilted until you get used to Parker's approach to this storyline. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Shevek is a brilliant physicist from the barren anarchist world of Anarres. His work could revolutionise interstellar society, permitting instantaneous communication - maybe even instantaneous travel - between the worlds of humanity. But, in contrast to the idealism of Anarres, he finds his work undervalued and even repressed by jealous colleagues. Frustrated, he travels to Anarres's capitalist sister world of Urras, hoping to find more tolerance there but instead becoming embroiled in politics, rebellion and war.

The Dispossessed is widely considered to be one of Ursula Le Guin's finest novels and is arguably her most ambitious work. The book asks nothing less than how best should human society function and by what means. Le Guin picks two popular models, that of a semi-communist state and a capitalist one, and pits them against one another. She is not interested in 'proving' the values of one over the other, instead comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of both and also the affect they have on the individual, particularly on the individual who has a great, transformational idea but whom is seen by others purely as a pawn or something to be crushed.

The novel relies on this thematic idea to sustain it, but the actual plot structure is also intriguing. The book alternates chapters between the present-day storyline (Shevek on Urras) and events in his past (Shevek growing up on Anarres). We see the present-day Shevek as being an open-minded, questioning individual and how he has changed from his earlier incarnation as a blinkered man who accepts dogmatic ideas as fact (such as the notion that Urras is a corrupt capitalist state that will one day destroy itself), with later Anarres chapter depicting his shift in belief and motivation. Le Guin constantly has Shevek developing as a character even as she develops her ideas and the setting of the two worlds.

The novel's greatest strength is its depiction of someone who seeks simple answers and is instead rewarded with having his worldview broadened and made more complicated. Shevek sees Urras as the answer to all his problems but instead of the utopia he was hoping for he finds a cluster of nations all feuding with one another (at one point fighting a Vietnam-style proxy war between two superpowers with the rulers acknowledging that nothing will change, only thousands dying for no real goal). Anarres is not rose-painted either: the world is desolate, the people poor and, for all of their freedom of choice, are often forced into jobs and roles they despise and are not well suited-for. The book is sometimes criticised for condemning capitalism and promoting communism/anarchism, but it's more complex than that. Le Guin's argument appears to be that all human societies are prone to dysfunction and corruption, no matter how well-meaning people are.

The novel's ending is unexpected, as Shevek's conflicted views are commented upon by an outsider (an ambassador from an Earth ruined by war and ecological disaster) and her analysis spurs him to reconsider his approach. However, the book somewhat abruptly ends before Shevek's return to Anarres with him not having reached a conclusion. This is presumably because any answer would be unsatisfying and simplistic. Instead we are left with the questions, which are far more interesting.

The Dispossessed (*****) is a thought-provoking novel that does not attempt to simplify complex matters and combines fascinating worldbuilding and character development with a refreshing plot structure and some rich prose. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Half a century in the future, the human race has survived several brushes with extinction. True AI has been created but - so far - has been benign and helpful. A terrible nuclear incident has taken place, but humanity has endured. As each bullet is dodged, so mankind's chances of survival to a brighter future appear to be growing...until an ancient alien artefact is recovered from Earth orbit which harbours a terrible truth about the nature of the universe.

After almost twenty years as an important and relatively prolific voice in the hard SF field, David Brin dropped out of the genre in 2001 after the publication of Kil'n People. He's remained active, penning non-fiction and the occasional short story as well as working in comics and doing consulting work, but no more novels have appeared, either stand-alone or in his Uplift universe. Now he's back with Existence, a self-contained, epic SF novel about mankind, our place in the cosmos, why we seem to be alone and where our destiny lies. Certainly if you're going to mount a comeback, there's no better way than doing so with your most ambitious work to date.

Existence revisits the Fermi Paradox, that familiar problem of how, given the sheer size and age of our galaxy, it is implausible that intelligent life has not arisen elsewhere and left visible traces of its presence. Brin's solution to the paradox is both intelligent and, initially, deeply depressing: that the minefield of threats that each race must survive to reach the starts is so extensive that very, very few make it. The novel's opening sections dwell deeply on the threats to mankind's own existence, from climate change and the threat of nuclear war to the possible 'threat' of super-advanced AI. The discovery of the alien 'guidestones' then provides a possible answer, but one which is not to our liking.

The novel unfolds on a large scale, with characters in America, in undersea habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, in floating bases above drowned Pacific island nations and in ruined mansions in Shanghai having their own part to play in the global mystery that unfolds. Our protagonists include a spoiled rich kid who races suborbital rockets for fun, a Chinese sailor who lives on the salvage he dredges out of the sea, a hotshot reporter caught up in a horrendous disaster and a self-obsessed, politically-motivated novelist who slums it as a Hollywood script writer (any similarities to the late Michael Crichton being presumably coincidental). Brin's skills with characterisation - something that set him apart from his fellow 'Killer Bs' back in the day (the Gregs Bear and Benford) - are on full display here as he develops his characters through the unexpected events that engulf them whilst keeping his thematic and philosophical musings integrated with the plot.

In fact, this is what sets Brin's novel apart from Kim Stanley Robinson's recent and equally epic portrait of the future, 2312. Where Robinson seems to have wanted to create a mood piece and then felt compelled to tack on an undercooked thriller plot, Brin keeps his plot, characters and musings all on track simultaneously, developing them all in tandem. This is helped by Brin's prose which has always been above average for hard SF, but in Existence hits new heights. His skill to move between harsh pessimism (the universe is cold and empty and we are a fluke who will soon splutter and die) and tremendous optimism (we can do whatever we want with the universe, if we try) is particularly impressive.

For a novel more than 500 pages long in hardcover, Existence has verve and pace. It's hard SF but done with a light touch and a sense of humour. It's not set in the Uplift universe but Brin drops in parallel-universe versions of some elements of that setting just for fun (those who enjoy Brin's depiction of futuristic dolphins will find some more that on display here). Some of Brin's moments of whimsy backfire - 'Awfulday' seems like an odd nickname for the anniversary of a terrorist attack - and some plot elements feel left behind when several time-jumps take place late in the novel, propelling us decades further into the future. But these are less than niggles.

Existence (****½) moves between being exuberant and fun and serious and contemplative (even maudlin). It asks big questions and proposes a variety of intelligent answers but doesn't resort to over-simplicity. It's definitely as good a comeback as we could have hoped for from Brin. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Book 1: Principles of Angels

Khesh City floats above the uninhabitable surface of the planet Vellern. It is a city of contrasts, with the rich and powerful living on the luxurious surface and the poor and downtrodden forced to live in the Undertow. The city is a democracy by assassination, where unpopular politicians can be removed by official killers known as Angels. When an Angel is brutally murdered, it falls to her nephew, Taro, to learn the reasons why.

Principles of Angels, the debut novel by Jaine Fenn and the first in her loosely-linked Hidden Empire sequence, is a far-future SF novel centred on two contrasting protagonists: Taro, a male prostitute trying to avenge his murdered aunt, and Elarn, a high-class singer who has been blackmailed into travelling to the city to commit a heinous crime. Taro lives in an underworld of crime and exploitation, but is idealistic, which leads him into becoming an agent for the Minister, the city's enigmatic ruler. Elarn is a more civilised character, out to do the right thing but trapped in a situation not of her own making, one which could have severe repercussions for the entire human race. Other major characters include the Minister himself, the Angel Nual and detective/info-broker Meraint. Fenn does an effective job of distinguishing and motivating these individuals, although the focus is firmly on the two main characters (who alternate POV chapters for much of the novel).

A thousand years before the events of the novel, mankind was ruled by an alien species, the Sidhe. Humanity broke free of their control and apparently destroyed them but, as the title of the series indicates, this may not be the case. Fenn does a good job of filling us in on this backstory by seeding the information into the text naturally, not relying on info-dumps. In doing so, she creates an intriguing universe which the reader definitely wants to see more of.

The plot unfolds at a good pace, helped by the book's relatively concise length (the novel is just over 300 pages long in paperback) which keeps events moving nicely. The writing is reasonable, though given the weird and unusual nature of the setting possibly a little too straightforward. Ultimately, events unfold in interesting enough a manner to make the sequels - Consorts of Heaven, Guardians of Paradise, Bringer of Light and Queen of Nowhere - appealing.

Principles of Angels (***½) is a decent debut novel, with well-drawn characters, a memorable setting and an interesting premise. The book suffers a little from too tight a focus on the two principals, which results in some of the more interesting side-cast being neglected, and also from a writing style that feels like it should have been bolder rather than settling for decent. It is still an entertaining book which effectively sets up a fascinating universe. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Matthew Swift #1: A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin

Matthew Swift is an urban sorcerer, someone who can channel the energies of the city to perform great deeds of magic. He is also dead, torn of pieces by a shadowy monster. He is therefore confused to be up and walking around again, with two years passing in the blink of an eye. As Swift struggles to find out what has happened to him, he learns many of his friends are dead, his greatest ally may now be a dangerous enemy and that his only hope of survival may lie with a band of ill-matched wizards, bikers and fortune tellers who hate one another almost as much as their mutual foe.

Urban fantasy is a crowded subgenre and stand out from the tosh is an increasingly hard trick to pull off. Fortunately, A Madness of Angels manages to do so through sheer skill and accomplishment. Unlike many series in the genre, which require multiple volumes to gain traction and confidence, this series gets off to a flying start with a book which is brimming with confidence.

Kate Griffin is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, who had already published numerous YA novels (the first at the age of 16) before tackling this, her first adult work. That experience shows with a bold introduction to the world and characters that most authors would probably steer clear of. The novel opens in media res as Swift is dropped (almost kicking and screaming) back into the life he was snatched away from two years earlier. Strangers are living in what used to be his house and strange forces are chasing him down London streets and trying to murder him. Swift's uses of tenses (he moves between 'I' and 'we' almost randomly) is confused. Bizarrity abounds. We're almost fifty pages in before things start calming down and can start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It may be harder work than having information dumped in an obvious fashion, but it's also more rewarding (and unlike say Steven Erikson, we at least get the answers to the mysteries in the same novel).

Griffin's prose is a cut above the average for this subgenre, fairly sparkling as it moves between describing feats of magic and the city itself. London is the setting for many urban fantasy novels, but not even in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is it evoked as strongly as in this book. The rhythms and beats of the city are given vivid life, not just to merely establish background but also in the magic of the book. In Griffin's world, magic is an evolving, constantly changing force. It's moved into the city and taken its nature as its own, with bag ladies, bike-riding couriers and crazy back-street magic shops having unusual powers and trains and electricity developing their own types of magic.

Swift is our first-person POV character and, normally, the format would restrict any sense of mystery in the character. However, the circumstances of Swift's demise and resurrection are extremely confused, even to Swift himself, and this allows a fair amount of time to pass before we get the full picture of Swift's background and character. He is a well-drawn protagonist, more capable and powerful than many an urban fantasy lead character, but not overpowered or invulnerable (as a running joke about how he can't go more than a few hours between visits to cleaning shops to get blood and/or scorch marks out of his clothes indicates). He's also undergone a fairly radical transformation of the soul as a result of his experiences, and Griffin explores this in interesting psychological detail. The 'old' Swift appears to be more humourous and sarcastic than the 'current' one, who bursts of black humour aside is more passive. The reasons for this are intriguing. The supporting cast is impressively-depicted as well, with the 'villains' having their own motivations and desires rather than being evil for the sake of it.

A Madness of Angels is highly impressive, especially for the opening novel of a series (though the books are somewhat episodic; this first volume doesn't have a cliffhanger ending or anything of the sort) and only has a few minor issues. The first fifty pages or so sees some clearing of the throat going on as Griffin attempts to find her voice. A laudable attempt to inject a slightly more offbeat writing style into the book ends up with a few instances of purple prose before she finds a more comfortable writing style. There's also probably a bit too much information given away early in the book about the central mysteries, allowing readers to deduce what's going on a little while before the characters.

Aside from these niggles, A Madness of Angels (****½) is an accomplished, highly readable novel and promises great things for later books in the series. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The 1980s CYBERPUNK pen-and-paper RPG (aka CYBERPUNK 2013, CYBERPUNK 2020 and CYBERPUNK v3), created by Mike Pondsmith, is being turned into a CRPG by CD Projekt, the creators of THE WITCHER and THE WITCHER 2. Apparently the game is at an early stage of development.

Excellent :-)

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2143. Detective Sid Hurst is called upon to investigate the unusually violent murder of a North. The Norths are a large family of clones who have forged a powerful, interstellar corporate empire. Twenty years ago another North was killed in the exact same manner on the world of St. Libra...but the woman responsible, Angela Tramelo, has spent two decades in prison, protesting her innocence and claiming that an alien lifeform was responsible.With mounting evidence that she may have been right, an expedition is mounted to St. Libra's wilderness hinterland to investigate further, even as Hurst's enquiries on Earth continue.

However, St. Libra, a planet twice the size of Earth circling Sirius, is a difficult world to survey. It's thick ring system inhibits the operation of orbiting satellites and the planet is already under investigation for its bizarre plant life (which cannot have evolved in the short lifespan of the system). The expedition soon finds itself operating in a wilderness far beyond any relief efforts, with something in the jungle stalking them.

Great North Road is the latest novel from Britain's biggest-selling science fiction author, Peter F. Hamilton. It's a stand-alone unconnected to any of his previous universes or series, so can be read in confidence that there are no cliffhanger endings lurking in wait. With my review copy clocking in at 1,087 pages (the final version may be slightly shorter, apparently) it's also a huge book, giving a lot of words to the pound. It's actually Hamilton's longest book since The Naked God, outstripped his previous seven novels in size (none of them particularly short either).

As usual with Hamilton's space operas, we are introduced to a large cast of characters who are divided up amongst several storylines. There are two primary plots: the investigation into the murder in Newcastle and the expedition on St. Libra, with a number of smaller subplots that are developed more concisely. There's also a complex backstory to the novel that is revealed gradually through strategically-placed flashback sequences. Hamilton is an old hand at both multi-stranded epic plotting and also depicting high-tech police investigations and Great North Road is a triumph in both departments. The pacing is pretty good as we move between characters and storylines and their individual pieces of the puzzle slot together nicely in moments of revelation.

Character-wise, it's a solid cast, although not Hamilton's best. We're lacking a character as vivid as Ozzie or Paula Myo (or as frustratingly punchable as Joshua Calvert) but otherwise they are an interesting bunch. Angela Tramelo is embittered from her two decades in prison (not to mention effective torture by a shadowy government agency), but also has herself to blame for her lack of cooperation when that could have vindicated her much earlier. The reasons for this form a mystery that gradually unfolds over the course of the novel. Sid Hurst is a reliable protagonist as the detective investigating the murder, although his house-hunting woes (Hamilton continuing a slightly random theme of futuristic property market musings that began in The Dreaming Void) take up a fair bit of space that could have been trimmed. Vance Elston, the leader of the St. Libra expedition, is also a key protagonist and Hamilton uses him to return to one of his favourite topics, the place of religious faith in a science-driven world.

The science is a mix of the fairly basic and the advanced, speculative. The basic science comes from the history of observations of Sirius, which, if you accept the history at face value, is fairly bizarre. The presence of a fairly complex system of planets orbiting Sirius is also something Hamilton almost cheekily sneaks in: due to Sirius's size and type, detecting planets circling it through current methods has proven almost impossible, giving him a window to make up his own planetary system. The more speculative science applies to his traditional use of quantum and wormhole physics. As in his earlier novels, Hamilton brusquely describes his advanced scientific concepts in a straightforward manner that renders them fairly understandable to the reader. Unfortunately, he does commit one error when he fails to take into account relativity during a sublight interstellar voyage, which is a bit of an elementary mistake. Fortunately, it is not of major importance to the storyline.

In most respects, this is Peter F. Hamilton at his traditional, page-turning, easily-readable, SF blockbuster best. Unfortunately this extends to his traditional problem of including a number of sex scenes that add little to the narrative. It's not as prevalent an issue as it has been in the past (and we're fortunately still a long way from the dissolute Misspent Youth) but there are still a few scenes where characters start disrobing and the reader has to groan as the more interesting SF stuff is put on hold for a few paragraphs. Hamilton's other notable problem of how he ends his novels also rears its head here. In general terms the ending is fine and well-foreshadowed, but it does seem to almost be implausibly happy given the body count in the story and is certainly rather abrupt (something a character even half-apologetically notes). However, the storyline is mostly wrapped up satisfyingly, with only a couple of minor elements that could have been explored a bit thoroughly.

Overall, Great North Road (****) is a very solid novel. It's not amongst his best, but it rattles along at a good pace and handles its immense length quite well. It's also great to read a book where Hamilton is able to combine his mastery of epic plotting with a definitive ending. The novel will be published on 27 September in the UK and on 26 December in the USA.

The Dreamblood #1: The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin

In the city-state of Gujaareh, power is split between the ruling Prince and the priests of the dream goddess Hananja. The priests have magic based on the power of dreams, with which they can heal the sick. One sect, the Gatherers, is dedicated to helping people peacefully pass over when their time has come. However, when the Gatherer Ehiru discovers he has been manipulated into trying to kill an innocent, he realises that Gujaareh is threatened by a conspiracy lurking at the very heart of the nation.

The Killing Moon is the first novel in the Dreamblood duology, the latest work from N.K. Jemisin (the author of the Inheritance Trilogy, which I have not yet read). It's an epic fantasy, but one that proudly discards the limitations of a Medieval European setting. Gujaareh is inspired by the legends and mythology of ancient Egypt, although it is not a carbon copy (there are no pyramids, sphinxes or mummies), and the novel draws upon Carl Jung's ideas about the collective unconscious to provide its unique magic system.

The setting is vividly described. The planet Gujaareh is located upon is a moon circling a gas giant (the 'Killing Moon' of the title is actually the gas giant, although confusingly the cover art depicts a red-coloured version of our moon) which makes for an interesting day/night cycle. This feeds into the power of night, sleep and dreams which provides the book with its spine. Gujaareh itself is a compelling location, built to withstand annual floods and with a complex mixture of native and foreign influences: like ancient Egypt, Gujaareh is not a monolithic state, but one where people from across the world can be found, trading or negotiating.

Ehiru, our central character, is an expert at using the power of dream magic and is trying to pass his knowledge onto his apprentice, Nijiri. This process is interrupted by the discovery of a possible threat to the country, which Ehiru is compelled to investigate. Sunandi, an ambassador from the southern nation of Kisua, completes our central triptych of characters. Though there are occasional chapters from other POVs, these three viewpoints dominate the novel. Each is a fascinating character, with Sunandi being a capable and intelligence diplomat who is sometimes undone by arrogance. Ehiru is determined and resolute, but is also prone to become unhealthily obsessed, to the point of endangering himself. Nijiri is highly capable but lacks confidence. He's our 'young, tallow youth' viewpoint but amusingly that's more his own assessment of his abilities than the reality. All are painted with colour and depth.

The novel is a fast read, with a cracking pace that still allows time for some interesting characterisation. Something that Gujaareh shares with ancient Egypt is a certain rigid inflexibility in its traditions (something Pratchett notably satirised in his novel Pyramids, the only other Egyptian-flavoured fantasy that immediately comes to mind) but also the ability to adapt once those limitations are exposed. This extends to the micro-level of the characters, who each find their view of the world widened by the events of the book. This self-realisation is hardly new in concept (Nijiri becomes more confident, Sunandi becomes a bit more open to other cultures) but is executed with skill.

Where the novel falters is in its denouncement, which feels both rushed and a little too neat. This does mean that The Killing Moon works excellently as a stand-alone novel (there are little to no elements left dangling for the sequel, The Shadowed Sun).

The Killing Moon (****½) is available now in the UK and USA. The sequel will be published in June.

The railsea: a network of metal rails and wooden slats which extends in all directions, covering the hostile, animal-filled earth which is too dangerous to walk on. Great islands and continents of rock rise between the rails, on which cities, towns and people exist. Sailing the railsea are thousands of trains, ranging from the primitive wooden, animal-pulled trains of tribal plainsfolk to the sleek, metallic dreadnoughts of powerful navies. Inbetween lie the independent trains, such as the Medes, a moler which strikes deep into southern climes in search of an ivory-coloured moldywarpe, the nemesis of the captain and the subject of her obsession. But when the Medes instead finds a wrecked train holding a tantalising secret, the destiny of the railsea, and of a young man named Sham Yes ap Soorap, will be forever changed.

Railsea is Moby Dick rewritten to feature a crazy woman steering a train across an ocean of rails in search of a giant burrowing mole. Except when it's not, which is most of the time. It's also A Wizard of Earthsea but with trains rather than boats, except not really. It's a homage to trains and to boats and pirate movies. It's a book about language where people's lives are given meaning by pursuing giant monsters, which they call their philosophies and embody ideas and archetypes within them. It's a Young Adult novel but with so much baroque language and complex use of metaphors that no-one should consider the term a pejorative. One thing is clear: it's a China Mieville novel.

Railsea is Mieville's ninth book and, judged purely superficially, is a romp. It's an adventure about a young man (Sham Yes ap Soorap) who goes to (rail)sea, gets caught up in his captain's obsession and uncovers a secret that will lead him to the ends of the earth and beyond, in search of the meaning of it all. Along the way he fights, is captured by and eventually escapes from pirates, takes part in the hunting of a gigantic mole (going by Mieville's illustrations, we're talking a mole bigger than a blue whale), tames a hostile bat and gawps at vast, cosmopolitan cities. It's a vigorous page-turner, compulsively readable and endlessly inventive.

Stepping back, the book is more complex. In a possible metatextual nod at the cliches of such fiction, many captains of trains have missing arms and legs, snatched away by one kind of beast or another. Captains even carry lists of what animals their fellows are hunting, so they may pass on news of any sightings. Each animal represents an ideal and a philosophy, so the ships of the railsea aren't just molers and merchants, but devices searching for meaning and answers. For Nephi, captain of the Medes, her nemesis represents something very simple indeed: everything. And to find that truth, she would take her ship and her crew anywhere the trail leads. For his part, Sham is likewise obsessed, with an impossible image glimpsed briefly, an image that could shake the world, and it is how these two obsessions cross paths and align that gives the book its narrative spine.

The world of Railsea is vivid and initially bewildering, with Mieville's inventive but remorselessly logical mind working overdrive to give us his most fully-fleshed out creation since Bas-Lag itself. It's a world with two skies and myriad levels of land, a place that is a secondary fantasy world like Bas-Lag but also an alien planet such as those seen in Embassytown. It also might be something else. No direct answers are given, but the questions are more interesting for that (and the ending is powerful, opening more possibilities as it closes down others). It's a world of monsters, however, and Mieville gives us some of his best, from the great southern moldywarpes to the naked molerats to the friendly (if treated right) daybats. Occasional illustrations show these creatures in all their (sometimes revolting) glory.

Mieville populates the book with his normal gallery of well-defined characters, from the archetypal young hero Sham to the coldly authoritative Captain Nephi to the vision-seeking siblings Shroake. What unites the characters is their need for answers and their desire to search rather than to accept what is and what has been for centuries.

Railsea (*****) is a well-written, compulsive page-turner and sees Mieville's imagination on top form. It's a book that works on multiple levels and is thoroughly rewarding. His finest work since The City and The City and maybe his finest since The Scar. The novel will be published on 15 May in the USA and on 24 May in the UK.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Swan Er Hong, a notable performance artist native to Mercury, has her life abruptly changed by the death of her grandmother, Alex. As Swan is asked to investigate the project her grandmother was working on, her home city is subjected to a brutal terrorist attack. This sparks a series of journeys back and forth across the Solar system, from Mercury to terraformed Venus to drowned Earth and out as far as Io and Titan, as Swan and her allies attempt to discover the threat nature of the threat to humanity.

2312 is Kim Stanley Robinson's first widescreen, big-budget, blockbuster SF novel in some considerable time. His recent novels (such as the recent Galileo's Dream or his near-future Science in the Capital trilogy) have been modest in their ambitions, but 2312 trots out the same Robinson who charted the colonisation of Mars in such fascinating, exacting and sometimes-frustrating detail over the course of three books in the 1990s.

The novel works on several levels. On one, it paints a portrait of life in the early 24th Century where the bulk of humanity lives on Earth (and, increasingly, Mars) but the 'spacers' who have settled the rest of the Solar system hold increasing amounts of power, despite their small numbers. This portrait is vivid, rich and compelling. It shows Robinson's imagination at its most fertile, as he depicts Terminator, a city which rolls over Mercury's surface, permanently trying to stay on the nightside of the planet out of the fierce rays of the nearby Sun. Elsewhere he shows the terraforming of Venus as its thick atmosphere is stripped away and politicians debate on slamming giant asteroids into it to increase its rotation. Another section takes us to Greenland, where a huge damming project is underway stop one of the Earth's last few glaciers from melting into the sea. On Io people have to live in settlements which act as gigantic Faraday cages (to hold the immense radiation of Jupiter at bay), whilst in orbit around Saturn people go surfing on plumes of ice pulled out of the rings by the passage of the shepherding moonlets. As a grand tour of the Solar system, 2312 is constantly inventive and fascinating.

On the second level, the book is striving for literary credibility. Robinson has always been one of the finest writers of prose in hard SF (not, it has to be said, a densely-populated field), and that continues here. He may be fascinated by science, by technology and by visions of the future, but he's much more fascinated by people, as individuals and as collective societies, and how they operate. As such the characters are richly-defined and textured, showing surprising depths as the novel develops. The prose is also finely-weaved but Robinson's long-standing tendency to interrupt it with infodumps remains an issue, although much less so than in his Mars Trilogy. Most notably, Robinson's writing keeps two potentially dull sections (one featuring characters having to hike along a thousand mile-long tunnel, the other featuring a character adrift in space) from flatlining and in fact elevates them to two of the strongest sections in the book.

The third level, the actual plot, is where the novel hits the most bumps. In the Mars Trilogy Robinson portrayed a vision of the future where the characters had to deal with scientific hazards and the simple realities of day-to-day life in a hostile environment. Whilst there were antagonists, these were shown to be part of the naturally-arising problems of colonisation and the eventual need for independence. In 2312, however, Robinson has a much more overt and traditional thriller storyline in which mysteries need to be investigated and explored and a resolution reached. To put it mildly, this plot feels half-arsed at best and the novel improves dramatically when Robinson completely drops it for much of its middle third, instead focusing on his grand vision of humanity's possible future.

2312 (****½) is a credible and somewhat optimistic vision of our future, highly detailed and constantly inventive. Coupled with some rich characters and enjoyable prose, this makes for his finest novel in many years. However, some contrived plot twists and a dull thriller element weaken the narrative a little. The novel will be published in the UK and USA on 24 May.

NOTE: The first half or so of the novel strongly indicates that 2312 is set in the same continuity as the Mars Trilogy. However, a detailed timeline given later in the book reveals this is not the case and the two works are separate, although 2312 does borrow a few names and terms from the older work.

The Elder Scrolls Online has been announced.

What we know so far:

An MMORPG (obviously).
The entire continent of Tamriel will be the setting. Some areas will be locked off for use as future expansion areas, however (i.e. Windhelm is reachable but Winterhold is not in the initial release).
Set 1,000 years before the events of SKYRIM.
Cyrodiil will be a PvP zone with 3 factions fighting for control of the Imperial City. Cyrodiil's topography has been recreated from OBLIVION, though it will be slightly smaller.
100-vs-100 PvP battles will be possible.
Faction 1: Ebonheart Pact, an alliance between nords, dunmer (dark elves) and argonians.
Faction 2: Aldmeri Dominion, an alliance between altmer (high elves), bosmer (wood elves) and khajiit.
Faction 3: Daggefall Covenant, an alliance between bretons, redguards and orcs.
Thieves' Guild, Fighters' Guild and Dark Brotherhood will be present.
'Hubless' quest design: an attempt to give quests to players in a less contrived fashion than going to town and asking around, though that will still be present.
'Dark Anchors' will fill same role as Oblivion Gates/Dragons: tough, semi-random magical objects that must be destroyed (otherwise Tamriel will be dragged into a daedra dimension). The arrival of one is hoped to be a big event in any given area, hopefully encouraging lots of players to band together to destroy it.
The stamina bar will impact on combat by allowing different types of attacks and defences to be used.
'Aggroing' will apparently be non-viable due to superior AI that will target the most dangerous players rather than the first one to wander into range.
Towns/Cities present: Imperial City, Daggerfall, Windhelm, Sentinel, Mournhold, Ebenheart, Elden Root, Shornhelm, Evermore, Riften and 'many more'.
Fast travel possible through waystones only. Standard fast travel will not be possible.
Radiant AI of singler-player games likely to be dialled back for player convenience (i.e. stores will be open all the time).
No houses, or NPC romances. Dragons probably not present in the main game, but may be encounterable via time travel quests. Pets possible.
Mounts present, but no flying ones.
Vampires and werewolves present as enemies, but players cannot become them (at least, not in the initial release).
Constellation and birthsign-based buffs will be present.
Developed by Zenimax Online Studios, helped by Bethesda. Bethesda will remain focused on their single-player RPGs, however.
In development since 2007.
Full voice acting.
Pretty standard MMORPG controls: 3rd person, hotbar-based skill use.
Shouldn't interfere with future Bethesda projects (FALLOUT or ELDER SCROLLS).
Out in 2013 for PC and Mac.

Screenshots and concept art.

Rome, 2760 AUC. Three years ago, the Emperor's younger brother was murdered as part of a scheme to seize control of the Roman Empire. His son, Marcus, went into hiding and survived thanks to the help of two slaves, Sulien and Una, who harbour secrets of their own. When the Emperor suffers a stroke, Marcus has to assume the regency. With tensions rising between Rome and her great eastern rival, Nionia, Marcus embarks on a daring peace mission. But there are those within Rome who still covet the Imperial throne, and will use Marcus's past against him.

Rome Burning is the sequel to Sophia McDougall's debut novel, Romanitas, and the middle book of the Romanitas Trilogy (which concludes with Savage City). The premise of the trilogy is straightforward: the Roman Empire never fell and, by the present day, has gone on to conquer most of the world. However, the Empire is still built on the back of capital punishment, slavery and the occupation of other peoples. The principal characters in the books are Marcus, the imperial heir whose view of life is radically altered after spending time in the first book as a fugitive, and Sulien and Una, the freed slaves who now want Marcus to abolish the institution once and for all. Also, somewhat randomly, Una also happens to have mildly telepathic powers (which definitely seem to have been pared down in this second novel).

Romanitas was a flawed novel. It had a strong premise, but the premise was constantly under-explored throughout the novel. Coupled with somewhat poor characterisation and often stodgy prose, it was a hard book to get through, despite the 'on-the-run' storyline giving rise to some interesting tension. Rome Burning shows massive improvements in some areas but, unfortunately, some significant weaknesses in others.

On the plus side, McDougall's characters are (mostly) much-improved. Sulien, Una and Marcus are all better-defined, with Una in particular becoming a more interesting, complex protagonist and Sulien having a lot more to do this time around. Marcus's development from callow youth to statesman continues, with his former idealism now being tested by political practicality. His desire to end slavery is contrasted against the possible economic collapse of the Empire if he moves too quickly, and his attempts to find a balance (that come across to Sulien, Una and other former slaves as back-pedalling) are constantly misunderstood. There's a lot more meat to the main characters this time around. Unfortunately, our principal antagonist for most of the book, Drusus, is a cartoon villain at best, who is so utterly unsuited for the political skulduggery required that he should never really be a threat to the considerably more intelligent Marcus. The eventual defeat of Drusus's return to power is also chronically under-explained (basically Marcus gets annoyed and makes a speech to his uncle and suddenly everything's okay).

On the worldbuilding front, the alternate Imperial Rome is not particularly convincing, resembling as it does one of those computer game RPG cities which seem to consist of three streets and twenty people. There is no real sense of any life in the city beyond where the immediate action takes place, and it's a genuine surprise when other Roman senators or characters outside of the core cast show up. For the first half of the book, it's a claustrophobic-feeling story rather than the epic it is aiming towards. Things improve a lot when the action moves to Bianjing (where the isolated-from-the-outside-world feeling is much more appropriate) and the scope of the story widens.

The biggest problem is the writing. McDougall favours a very old-fashioned style with frequent POV shifts within the same paragraph, making following what's going on and who's thinking what unnecessarily difficult. Coupled to some fairly indifferent prose, this makes reading the novel rather hard work. In fact, the book is definitely leaning towards the turgid when the halfway-point shift to Bianjing takes place. At this point, fortunately, the book picks up a lot, the writing improves, the pacing turns up a notch (as Drusus's laughable political fumblings take a back-seat to a much more interesting plot about slavery and terrorism) and things become more enjoyable, ultimately culminating in a genuinely tantalising cliffhanger.

Rome Burning (***) is a book that very nearly collapses under the weight of its negatives until they get straightened up and it ultimately becomes a solid read. The presentation of the premise is still highly implausible, characters outside of the central trio can still be sketchy and the writing style can be frustrating, but the latter half of the novel shows an improvement in quality that ultimately makes the experience - just about - worthwhile. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

In one of the more amusing industry work-arounds I've seen, BioWare spelled out what to expect from DRAGON AGE III at the recent PAX East convention. One problem is that EA has not officially confirmed DRAGON AGE III to be in development (possibly they were going to by now but the furore over ME3 has delayed things), so BioWare got around this by talking 'hypothetically' about what a 'possible' DRAGON AGE III would be like.

So the news so far is:

* No reused locations like DA2.
* You can equip henchmen again.
* No Kirkwall.
* More open, varied and 'French' landscapes.
* Less wheels of cheese.
* Decisions from previous games having consequences.

Pretty much what people wanted, then. Apart from the French thing, which just sounds odd.

Whilst hard info is still borderline non-existent on the PlayStation 4 (apparently code-named, and maybe finally-named, the PlayStation Orbis) and the X-Box 720 (code-named Durango), there seems to be a growing consensus that Sony and Microsoft want to shoot dead the pre-owned gaming market with their new systems, regardless of what impact that has on gaming retail.

According to Kotaku, the PlayStation Orbis will require Internet activation for all of its games. This will link your game to a unique serial code. The code may actually be transferrable, but only for a fee payable directly to Sony.

It is also strongly rumoured that at least the PS4 will require an always-on Internet connection in order to work.

In other words: for the next console generation there will be uniform, perpetual DRM for all titles. There will be no preowned games market to speak of. There will probably be no grey/import market for hardware. If you're living in the USA and want an early console, tough, you'll have to wait for the native release. If you haven't any Internet access for any reason, tough, you won't be able to play games.

I suspect many console gamers will not be happy with this.

Obviously we're still 2-3 years away from these consoles launching and complaints and market research may change the console companies' minds, but this is still a startling development. Sadly, it may have been triggered by the relative passivity that has greeted PC DRM schemes in the last few years. Whilst there's been complaints about it, PC game sales have still increased dramatically in the last two years, mostly through DRM services like Steam and Origin. This may have encouraged Sony and Microsoft to take this step.

Kings of Morning by Paul Kearney

Years ago, ten thousand Macht mercenaries marched into the heart of the Asurian Empire and were betrayed. Only a handful of survivors, led by the famous warrior Rictus, escaped to see home. In the years since then, Rictus has lived through times of peace and war, standing alongside the legendary Corvus as he forged the fractious Macht cities into a single nation. The Macht have now re-invaded the Empire, this time deploying new weapons and strategies that baffle their enemies. But their greatest ally is the division and turmoil that seethes in the heart of the Empire, as the imperial household is divided at the very moment it needs to unify against the invaders.

Kings of Morning is the third and concluding book in Paul Kearney's Macht sequence, which began with 2008's excellent The Ten Thousand and continued with 2010's even better Corvus. As with those books, Kings of Morning mixes fantasy with historical fiction and even a hint of SF: Kuf, the planet on which the books take place, is apparently an alien world and the Macht seem to be the descendants of human settlers/invaders, with the natives a notably different humanoid race. The influence of Alexander the Great on Corvus's story is clear, meaning the general trajectory of the plot can be a little predictable. However, Kearney mixes things up enough to ensure the story never gets stale.

Structurally, the novel is a little different to its two predecessors, which focused almost completely on Rictus's point of view. The opening quarter or so of the novel shows a political crisis within the heart of the Empire, as the brutish heir to the imperial throne, Kouros, and his younger brother engage in a bitter feud, with their father apparently unwilling to intervene. A hapless slave boy is unwittingly caught in the middle of this dispute, to his ruin (a strong stomach is required for the scenes where he is tortured by Kouros). This is an interesting way of starting the book and demonstrates Kearney's impressive power of concise storytelling without sacrificing depth. In this story the Macht are a vague and distant threat, easily dismissed, until it's almost too late.

We then switch back to Corvus, Rictus and the Macht army on the march and are soon back into a world of strategy meetings, comradeship and desperate battles against superior numbers. Yet Kearney, for all his reputation as one of the finest writers of battles working today (in either fantasy or historical fiction), keeps the martial action at a distance for most of the book, instead focusing on Rictus's character development as he sees the culmination of Corvus's plans and starts thinking about his own future. The conflict in Rictus between the lifelong soldier who tires of peace but hates the waste of war is developed well throughout the book and contrasted against the world-weariness of the Asurian Great King, Ashurnan.

Kearney's skills of characterisation are impressive, particularly the attention he gives to Kouros. Though an unthinking, thin-skinned brute, Kouros is given a backstory and motivation that explain why he is the way he is without ever risking him becoming sympathetic, and developing him as a villain (if he's even competent enough to be called that) much more than beyond the initial impression the reader gets of him. Kearney also undercuts the storyline of the two royal twins and their mutilated servant trying to flee into the wilds, with it moving in some very unexpected directions (even if the ultimate destination is unsurprising).

Kearney restrains the military activity to a few brief descriptions of sieges and negotiated truces before giving us one large battle. Inspired by several of Alexander's engagements, the Battle of Gaugamesh is an impressive display of depicting a complex engagement spread over a large battlefield in a straightforward manner. Kearney's skills at writing warfare remain undimmed, but it's his depiction of the aftermath, of the mix of disgust at the waste of life of war and admiration of the heroism of those who endure such hellish circumstances, which impresses the most.

The novel climaxes in a surprising fashion. Whether the parallels between Corvus and Alexander will continue or not is something that is not answered, as this trilogy is the story of Rictus, and that story ends impressively with Kings of Morning. We bow out of the story at this point with the full impression that life will go on regardless.

Criticisms are hard to find. The novel is very concise and at times the reader will want more information, more character scenes, more battle sequences, but these are not necessary for the story Kearney is telling. In epic fantasy it is rare to find an author who leaves the reader wanting more rather than feeling over-stuffed on thousands of pages of needless filler, and the former is definitely preferable. Some may feel the novel lacks a full resolution to Corvus's story, which is fair, but then this trilogy is not about Corvus and it certainly finishes Rictus's story in fine form. Finally, some may feel we don't get any revelations of note about the (possibly techno-organic) black armour of the Macht that makes them so difficult to kill, but again Kearney gives us some clues to be going on with and there are few possible explanations for it that would not veer towards either the obvious or the cheesy.

Overall then, Kings of Morning (*****) is a superb military fantasy novel and a fine conclusion to one of the best epic fantasy/historical fiction crossovers of recent years. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Blue Remembered Earth

Tanzania, 2161. The matriarch of the Akinya family, Eunice, a famous pioneer of space travel and exploration, has died at the age of 130. The family convenes for the funeral, but grandson Geoffrey would prefer to be carrying on his research into elephant cognition. When an anomaly is discovered amongst Eunice's possessions, Geoffrey is asked to investigate, the beginning of a journey that will take him from Earth to the Moon to Mars...and further still.

Alastair Reynolds's new novel is the first in a new sequence, Poseidon's Children, which will span 11,000 years of human history. As such, the three books in the sequence will presumably be stand-alones, divided by immense gulfs in history, but with added context given to the reader by reading all three in order. Reynolds and his publisher have backed away from the 'trilogy' moniker (and the 'Book One of Poseidon's Children' tagline present on some early drafts of the cover has been removed) to de-emphasise the idea this is a serialised story that people will have to wait years to be concluded.

Reynolds is noted for having a somewhat grim vision of the future in his previous books, so Blue Remembered Earth is notable for its more optimistic tone. The human race has become richer and more technologically advanced than ever before, with Africa now driving the world economy and formerly war-torn, poverty-stricken states are now prosperous and driven. The price of this new era of peace and development is the Surveilled World, a state of near-total coverage of the planet by AIs which intervene if any crimes are detected. As a result almost no crimes or murders have been committed in decades (although Reynolds, a noted fan of crime thrillers, can't help dropping one puzzling and apparently impossible murder in as a subplot). This near-total surveillance state is not so prevalent on other planets and moons, however, due to time-lag issues.

The book is essentially a treasure hunt, with Geoffrey and his sister Sunday following the trail of clues left behind by their grandmother which ultimately leads to the Big Reveal. The trail, and the resulting plot, are somewhat convoluted and, it has to be said, unconvincing. Nevertheless, the story is entertaining with a constant stream of inventive ideas: an area on Mars controlled by rogue machines; an AI simulacrum of Eunice who provides advice and becomes more and more like the real Eunice as they uncover more information; attempts to help improve the quality of life for zoo elephants by merging them holographically with a real herd in the African wilderness; and a system-wide telescope being used to scan for signs of life on other worlds. The characters, particularly Geoffrey and Sunday (our main POV characters) are well-developed as we learn their respective reasons for turning against the family's strict business-oriented hierarchy, but even their antagonistic siblings (who initially appear to be villainous) are fleshed-out satisfyingly by the end of the book.

As the most low-tech of Reynolds's books to date, Blue Remembered Earth is perhaps his most conservative in terms of ideas and scale and scope. This isn't a bad thing and he seems to enjoy working under greater technological constraints than previously, but occasionally he seems to chafe against the restrictions (the robots on Mars and the large-scale mining of the Oort Cloud both seem somewhat more advanced than the tech elsewhere). He also doesn't fully explore the freedom implications of having a state of total surveillance, other than in a cursory surface manner.

Still, Blue Remembered Earth (****) is highly readable, brimming with ideas and refreshingly optimistic. Recommended. The novel is available now in the UK and on 5 June 2012 in the USA.

The Black Company

The Black Company is an elite mercenary force whose history goes back centuries. Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, the Black Company fights for coin, but is also a proud army that is its own master. Accepting the commission of the Northern Empire and its ruler, the ruthless Lady, the Company soon finds itself fighting a war against an oppressed populace struggling to be free...but the leaders of the rebellion seem every bit as ruthless and amoral as the Lady and her senior sorcerer-warriors - the Taken - are. Evil battles evil, a continent bleeds and through it all the Black Company struggles to survive.

Glen Cook's Black Company books are widely regarded as being amongst the most influential and important epic fantasy novels ever written. Steven Erikson cites them as the primary influence on his Malazan series, whilst George R.R. Martin is a fan. A dozen years before Martin made 'grimdark' cool, Cook was already writing adult stories about wars, soldiers and the causes they fight and die for, with no elves in sight and no punches pulled.

Published in 1984, The Black Company is an object lesson in how to write a large-scale epic fantasy and execute it with razor-sharp focus and nuanced characterisation, and to do so in a relatively modest page count. More happens in The Black Company's 300-odd pages than in many entire trilogies. Empires rise and fall, battles that make the Pelennor look like a playground scrap are fought and all is seen from the point of view of a single medic and historian, who is all to often drawn in to become part of the events he is trying to dispassionately record.

The book is episodic, with each (very long) chapter relating a different incident during the war. As the Lady's empire battles the Rebel, so the different Taken feud amongst themselves and the Black Company are caught up in one of the exchanges (but don't exactly get much gratitude for taking sides), giving the conflict an air of complexity and extremely conflicted morals. This is emphasised by the addition to the Company of its first native northern soldier, Raven, who has his own agenda. Given that we are with the POV of Croaker, the medic, for the entire novel, Cook achieves an impressive depth of characterisation of the other principals. Other well-developed characters include the old, feuding mages One-Eye and Goblin, Raven and his mute ward, Darling, and the Taken Soulcatcher, who may be a servant of darkness but even he needs to unwind and chew the fat from time to time.

The prose is clipped and efficient, though some criticise it for being blunt. Cook skips descriptors in some sentences, or uses a soldier-style shorthand designed to transmit information with maximum efficiency and conciseness on the battlefield. It can be a little odd at first, but once you get into the author's headspace it becomes second nature, and a marvellously effective way of telling a large, epic story in a constrained space.

Problems? The absence of a map makes the geography of the war (which is critical to the plot) sometimes a little confusing. With one exception, we really don't get to know anyone on the side of the Rebel, making them a somewhat faceless and uninteresting foe. Cook also prefers to avoid exposition, starting in media res and pausing for explanations only rarely. However, unlike Erikson (who employs a similar device at the start of the Malazan sequence) Cook's story is actually pretty straightforward, and by the end of the novel the reader should have pieced together everything pretty nicely.

The Black Company (****½) is a novel brimming with verve, confidence and attitude. As fresh and readable today as when it was published a quarter-century ago, it's a stellar opening to the Black Company series. The novel is available now in the UK and USA as part of the Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus (along with its immediate sequels, Shadows Linger and The White Rose).

Eden: a world of perpetual darkness, lit by fluorescent vegetation and headed by geothermal trees. Five hundred humans - the Family - live in an isolated valley. They are all descended from the same couple, Tommy and Angela, astronauts stranded on Eden one hundred and sixty years ago. As a result, genetic deformities and aberrations amongst the Family are commonplace. The Family is held together by the dream that one day Earth will send a rescue ship to pick them up and take them home.

For teenage hunter John Redlantern, this dream is a futile delusion. He believes that the Family must branch out to survive, as the valley's food stocks are dwindling. But the only way out of the valley is a dangerous ascent over an unlit, freezing mountain that has killed every person who has tried to climb it. John's determination to escape to a better place splits the Family apart, but how much is John's plan motivated by a desire for humanity to survive on Eden and how much to appease his own ego?

Dark Eden is a dark (thematically and literally) novel that uses an interesting SF concept - a world in perpetual darkness - to explore themes about human society and the impact of ideas, traditions and rituals on a small group of people. Chris Beckett, the author of the excellent Holy Machine, has been noted as an author who fuses SF subject matter and 'literary' ambitions together into something interesting. Whilst hardly new - there's a faint hint of Brian Aldiss or early Ballard to his work - it's something that Beckett does well, creating stories that work from a scientific viewpoint as well as a literary one.

Eden itself, with its luminous trees and vividly nocturnal wildlife, is a fine, stirring creation. It's the inverse of the superheated Earth of Aldiss's Hothouse, a world here plunged into utter darkness and, away from the geothermal foliage, total cold. How this is possible is left to the reader's imagination: does the planet orbit a black hole or a brown dwarf? Does it orbit a normal star and is merely tidally locked? If the planet is indeed freezing cold, how does the atmosphere not simply melt away? Various solutions to such questions present themselves but are ultimately left ambiguous.

The Family survive by clinging to one central belief - that a rescue ship will come from Earth to find them - and their entire existence revolves around it. They refuse to travel far from their ancestors' landing site, even though local food sources have been almost exhausted. They constantly tell stories about their ancestors and the founding of their society. But they are trapped into a mode of existence so all-consuming it is taken for granted. When John Redlantern is able to step back and point out the flaws in their blinkered worldview, it creates strife and discord. A serpent enters this Eden, but this time we are on the serpent's side, as the Family remaining where they will ultimately destroy them.

At the same time, John is motivated not just by a desire to save his people, but also to prove himself better than them, a visionary leader. Beckett's structure - he uses a rotating first-person POV, swapping characters every chapter - allows us to see events from John's perspective and also from that of both his friends and enemies, allowing a tremendous depth of character to be achieved (both of John and several other key characters). John's character is built up, deconstructed and reassessed with tremendous skill. Beckett is keen to avoid passing judgement: some of John's actions are admirable, others are loathsome, and the reader is invited to decide which is which.

At the same time the story moves forward, it also moves back. The story of how Tommy and Angela ended up on Eden is revealed in layers, as more and more stories and legends from the distant past of Eden are revealed, and the story that the people of Eden know may not be the whole truth. It's also a story that doesn't have an ending, as the fate of the three astronauts who left Eden in search of help is not known (in the novel's only possible misstep, Beckett eschews the ambiguity of the rest of the book to give as a fairly straightforward answer in the book's climax). The Family want to stay in their valley so the rescuers can find them, and the end of the story can be known, whilst John and his followers want to abandon such beliefs and strike out in search of their own destiny. Conflict follows and both sides' arguments have their merits.

Dark Eden (*****) is a superb novel about ideas, the struggle to survive and the dangers of blind faith. Beckett says little that is new, but makes his points with subtlety and intelligence, all against a well-realised, vividly-described backdrop. The novel is out now in the UK and is available on Kindle in the United States.

Some thoughts on books by one of the better-known 'classic' SF authors.

Childhood's End

Humanity is about to launch its first manned mission to another world. Finally, the human race is about to escape its cradle and take its first step towards the stars. But on the eve of the launch the skies over the Earth's major cities are blotted out by the appearance of huge, alien spacecraft. The Overlords have arrived, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most famous writers the science fiction field has ever produced, thanks to his work on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and his role as a popular science commentator (he covered several of the Apollo moon landings for American television and had several successful TV series in the 1980s). Clarke's work is notable for its straightforwardness (he was never a great prose stylist) but also its scientific rigour. With a few exceptions, Clarke had little truck with what he considered to be some of the more fantastical concepts of SF (such as faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity) and did not use them in his work. In his view, the universe is vast, timeless and unknowable. Much of Clarke's work is notable for a certain melancholic optimism: the human race can be much more than it is now, but even so is unlikely to challenge the vastness of the universe.

Childhood's End was published in 1953 and was his fourth novel, although his first published in the United States, where it immediately established him as a major voice in the field. In many ways it is atypical Clarke. The aliens are comprehensible and easily relate to human beings, unlike the enigmatic entities of say 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama. At the same time, his normal scientific vigour is a little slacker than normal, as concepts such as telepathy and group consciousnesses are explored (Clarke had a passing fascination with the supernatural at the time, though later firmly rejected such notions). Clarke's influences are clear, with the presence of Olaf Stapledon particularly hard to ignore.

The novel is extremely concise, with my paperback copy clocking in at 160 pages. For its short page count, the novel is fairly epic. It is split into three sections, each with a distinct cast, focus and storyline (unsurprising, as the first section was originally a stand-alone short story). In the first, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has to oversee the painful transformation of humanity from bickering nation-states to a single world government. In the second, a family 'escape' the Overlords' utopia to live in an island commune free of their influence, only to discover the real reason for the Overlords' arrival on Earth. In the final section, a lone human who stowed away aboard an Overlord ship returns to Earth eighty years later (though only a few months later by his count, due to time dilation) to find a world vastly changed from the one he left. Clarke doesn't waste a word as he lets the story unfold inexorably, moving to a conclusion that looms somewhere between awe-inspiring and horrific.

As a novelist, Clarke was much more interested in ideas (thematic, scientific or both) than people. His characterisation was often variable, although Childhood's End is actually one of his better books in that regard. Its major protagonists (even the Overlords) are clearly defined and sympathetic. In terms of structure, Childhood's End is unusual in that the entire story is pre-ordained, and nothing any of the characters do can change what is happening. They - and the reader - can only witness it and make their own minds up about whether it is something that can be called 'good' or not, and I suspect many will fall on the 'not' end of the spectrum.

As a result Childhood's End can be viewed as a colossal tragedy. The book has a tremendous emotional charge as it poses a simple question: how would we face it if our way of existing ended tomorrow? Clarke's answer is surprisingly bleak but, one suspects, one that would be close to the truth.

The novel has aged in some respects. The first edition opened with the USA and USSR battling to land a man on the moon, since Apollo 11 was still sixteen years in the future at the time it was published. Clarke also makes a very dated joke where he discusses how the Overlords have to force the rulers of South Africa to treat all their citizens equally regardless of skin colour. The 'joke' is that by this time majority rule in South Africa has been restored, and it's the white population that's being mistreated. An amusing aside in 1953 actually feels rather cynical today, assuming as it does that the African population would be as racist and authoritarian as the white one was. However, another point about how the people of Israel bitterly resist being absorbed into the Overlords' hegemony and giving up the freedom they have spent centuries fighting for, is more resonant. There's also a recurring problem in Clarke's work where he underestimates the power of religion, and the sequences where the Overlords' arrival causes the downfall of all world religions in a matter of months are rather unconvincing.

In most respects, Childhood's End (****½) has not aged badly at all, and its central themes of parenthood and the futility of railing against the night - but the effort nevertheless being laudable - remain interesting. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Thousands of years from now, the myriad colony worlds of Hain (including Earth) are being reunited under a new interstellar government, the Ekumen. Genly Ai is the First Envoy, who sets foot alone onto the surface of the frigid planet of Winter (Gethen to its inhabitants) to bring offers of trade, peace and alliance to the people of the planet. However, the genderless inhabitants (who only have sexual urges and genders for a brief period once a month) are sceptical of Ai's claims, and he soon finds himself a pawn of political factions in two neighbouring countries eager to use or discard him as they see fit.

The Left Hand of Darkness was originally published in 1969. It is set in a shared future history which Le Guin has used for several other novels and short stories, though foreknowledge of these other works is completely unnecessary to read this book. The novel also has a formidable reputation as one of the most critically-acclaimed science fiction novels in the history of the genre, noted for its complex themes and its use of metaphors to tackle a wide variety of literary ideas.

The novel spends a fair amount of time talking about the genderless inhabitants of Gethen, who have no sexual urges at all apart from a brief period called kemmer, when they are able to mate and reproduce. Le Guin has put a lot of thought into how not only this works biologically but also the impact it has on society and on the world. Her notions that a lack of sex drive for most of the month reduces the aggressiveness of humans (Gethen has never had a major war) seem obvious, but these ideas are constantly examined and re-examined during the course of the book and she steers away from trite answers.

Whilst the gender theme is notable and the most oft-discussed aspect of the novel, much is also made of the planet's cold climate and the challenges the people face in living in a world mostly covered by glaciers and icecaps where the warm seasons are perishingly short. The politics and divisions between the neighbouring countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn are also described in some detail. As a result Gethen, also called Winter, is as vivid and memorable as any of the human characters in the novel.

Amongst the individual characters, the dominant ones are Ai himself and Estraven, the Prime Minister of Karhide whose interest in Ai sees him suffer a fall from grace and having to travel a long road to try to redeem himself. The book is told from the first-person POV of both characters, moving between them with interludes taking in myths and legends from Gethen's past and also on matters such as the Gethenese calendar and sexual biology (there's also an appendix which handily collates this information into an easy-to-find collection). The two characters are compelling protagonists, with Ai's bafflement at his status as a man from another planet being considered incidental at best to the trivial politics of two nations leading him into difficulties, whilst Estraven's characterisation is subtle and compelling, with the reader constantly having to review his or her opinion of him based on new information as it comes to light.

The themes that the novel tackles extend far beyond the obvious ones of gender and climate. Duality (expressed in Ai's discussion of Taoism with Estraven), faith, the difficulties of communication even when language is shared and politics are also discussed and examined. But where The Left Hand of Darkness impresses is that these thematic discussions are woven into the narrative in a manner that is seamless and stands alongside a compelling plot. The book's climax, where the two main characters have to traverse a 700-mile-wide icecap with limited supplies, is a fantastic adventure narrative in its own right.

Complaints are few. Written in the 1960s, Le Guin presents a few outdated ideas on gender roles and sexuality that were common at the time, but these are minor issues at best.

Overall, The Left Hand of Darkness (*****) is a smart and intelligent read that has a lot to say and does so in a manner that is page-turning, compelling, relentlessly entertaining and refreshingly concise (the novel clocks in at a slim 250 pages in paperback). One of the all-time classics of the genre and a book that more than deserves its reputation. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Riyria Revelations #1: Theft of Swords

Hadrian and Royce are partners in crime, a mercenary and thief who make a living working for the various nobles who rule over the lands of Avryn but spend most of their time feuding with one another. One particular job ends with Hadrian and Royce being arrested and charged with regicide. Determined to prove their innocence and take revenge on those who framed them, they set out on a quest that could change the fate of Avryn and the whole world.

Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Revelations series is already a proven success, with both small press and self-published editions of the books selling well. Orbit have picked up the series and recast the original six books as three omnibuses, bringing them to a wider audience. Whilst this laudably rewards the author's success, it also raises the stakes: standing out from the crowd in self-publishing is one thing, but how does Sullivan's work stack up compared to the current fantasy heavyweights?

The answer is...okay, actually. Sullivan's ambition with this series was to create a series that in a way beat against the current trend for adult, edgy, violent and explicit fantasy novels in favour of something more straightforward or 'classic'. Something that evoked the spirit of say Eddings or Brooks without being as dire. Sullivan lists Harry Potter as an inspiration, particularly the way it welded together accessibility and a classic structure with darker elements (such as major character deaths), and that's certainly a reasonable ambition.

Theft of Swords (which combines the first two novels in the series, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha) is a fast-paced, straightforward read with a fast-moving plot and easy-to-read writing. Sullivan's risk in aping the simpler form of fantasy fiction is that he might skirt towards blandness, and this is certainly a problem in the book. He has a fairly blank prose style which is effortless to read, but also somewhat forgettable. His skills with characterisation are somewhat stronger, but still not as great as might be wished. Particularly odd is that his central characters of Hadrian and Royce are not very well-developed at all, and many of the secondary characters are more interesting and better-drawn. The central duo do get a bit more fleshed out towards the end of the second half of the book and we also get a possible reason for why Sullivan had to hold back on certain revelations about them, but it is a bit of a challenge to read a book where the two heroes are so (apparently) shallow.

Other issues can be found in the worldbuilding, particularly the existence of apparently substantial kingdoms with walled cities in them that are only about 20 miles wide. Sullivan aims for some consistency here - a couple of hundred soldiers forms a large army in this world, presumably because populations are correspondingly tiny - but it's still a bit odd. On the racial front, things are fairly traditional: dwarves are geniuses for stonecarving whilst elves are long-lived, pointy-eared types. The only dwarf we meet is a grubby villain, whilst the elves are (in this first book anyway) kept firmly off-screen and are the enemies of humanity, but these are minor (and not particularly unprecedented) twists to the established formula. Naturally, the main storyline also revolves around prophecies, chosen ones whose arrival will signify the end of the world and so on, and it won't take a genius to guess who the chosen one is going to be.

The principle problem with the book is its very predictability. At first, reading an epic fantasy without blood spraying over people's faces every five seconds or two mandatory graphic (and usually badly-written) sex scenes per book is a refreshing change of pace, and feels like a valid direction to take at this time. However, the book's embracing of classic tropes without doing much (or, at times, anything) to subvert or challenge them eventually gets dull. Brandon Sanderson, for example, is also writing classic epic fantasy but remembers to put in plenty of interesting twists: a post-magic-apocalypse setting, a Wild West angle and, of course, lots of original magic systems. These flourishes are absent from Sullivan's debut work.

Theft of Swords (***) is an easy, relaxing read but also one that lacks depth or originality. It's fun enough to warrant reading on (and the series rep has it improving massively as it continues), but I do wonder if publishing these stories as 650-page omnibuses rather than their original 320-page, bite-sized chunks was a mistake. A fun popcorn read, but ultimately not much more. The omnibus is available now in the UK and USA.