Adrian Collins's Blog, page 215

An Interview with Robert Jackson Bennett

We managed to grab a quick word with Robert Jackson Bennett. He is the author of the Divine Cities trilogy, The Founders trilogy, of which two books are written, Foundryside and Shorefall, as well as numerous fantasy and horror novels. He is also a two-time award winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and has been shortlisted for World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy awards.

He took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for us:

 

You have touched upon the question of what it means to be human in many of your books, mainly what true humanity is. Do you find that this is a concept that you gravitate towards? And, if so, why?

I would say that I find myself exploring the ways in which peoples, cultures, and civilizations find themselves in positions of power, and what influences and experiences affect how they then choose to use those powers.

A critical thing that keeps returning is the idea of entitlements, permissions, privileges, and what one deserves. I have a gut intuition that when a person comes by an advantage, either of their own doing or by something else’s, they quickly cobble together the logic to support that this wasn’t happenstance, but in fact something that they earned or that they deserve. This then gives them the right to do with it as they wish.

What I come back to a lot is wondering – why do we do this? What amplifies this impulse? Is it destructive? And, if so, what societal measures could temper it?

 

Sancia is the epitome of a strong character. My favorite quote from Foundryside is, “But the fire was you as well?” Sancia shrugged. “Shit got out of hand.” Which I think sums her up perfectly. When you first sat down to write The Founders Trilogy, did she start differently as a character? 

Sancia was all over the place when I first wrote her. Initially she loved stealing, and was something of a wilding, this mad, savage girl from the gutters who was a bit of a kleptomaniac. I quickly realized this wasn’t going to work: making it an uncontrollable impulse deprived her of choice, and it’s choice – compelling and understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic – that makes a character strong.

I realized then that Sancia was a creature whose life was formed almost wholly by survival: she was someone accustomed to thinking that every tomorrow was uncertain, and you had to fight for every one. This made her pragmatic, brutal, utilitarian – a lot of fun to write for. And indeed, she probably represents the modal form of humanity: for thousands of years, your survival was uncertain. It’s only very recently, and only for some, that that’s changed. Representing that clash of mindset – between people whose safety is guaranteed, and those for whom it’s not – quickly became an obvious and important part of Foundryside.

 

Speaking of Sancia, in one of your scenes from Foundryside, Sancia relives some traumatic memories from her past. It is evident that Sancia has a form of PTSD that she is dealing with. I thought this scene was a thoughtful depiction of a character living with mental illness. Did you research PTSD when creating Sancia’s character?

I didn’t, I’m afraid. I try to make the reality of the story conform to the characters and the plot more than our true reality, when possible. I wanted to make the other characters in the story (as well as the audience) understand the trauma and suffering that had taken place and still was taking place outside of the little bubbles of the campos. If that moment aligned with our actual reality, that’s good – but my general understanding is that PTSD is considerably more complicated than most people, and certainly most writers, would expect.

 

Scriving is one of the most interesting abilities I have read about in fantasy. It seems like it is a combination of capabilities, one that requires courage, talent, and grit. How did you come up with the scriving?

I was driving around, trying to think up a magic system and feeling somewhat irritated, because most magic systems do not feel organic. The idea of someone experimenting and, say, killing a bunch of magic animals, and then stuffing bits of them in a piece of wood, and then positioning their body in just the right way, and thinking the right thing, and saying the right mixture of Latin nonsense – that’s preposterous. No one would ever logically go about discovering that system of magic. And yet, this is what has happened in Harry Potter. (Which I know is a whimsical story, but as the plot engages more and more with the magic, one quickly realizes that if the magic’s shaky, the plot will be too.)

So I thought about that, and decided that magic is basically just a list of instructions given to reality on how it should change, and become something different. At first it was like a legal contract – but then I decided that code was much messier, and much more fun.

 

You recently released book two of The Founders Trilogy, Shorefall. How was the writing of Shorefall different from the writing of Foundryside?

Shorefall was different because it wasn’t a mystery at heart. You knew who the bad guy was, what he was doing, and largely why. This made writing it a bit trickier.

It was also hard because I could tell what I and the audience wanted the next book to be, and how the story wanted the next book to be. Because I went into it wanting to write a sort of Russian Revolutions story with magic, where the Commons would rise up against the campos, and there’d be fighting in the streets, and basically just be Les Mis but with more magic and less bread crimes.

But this wasn’t really how the series wanted to go. That’s a social revolution story – the spreading idea that the governed should have some say in how they’re governed – but Foundryside is really a story about technology, and how technology shapes our attitudes and societies. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this needed to investigate innovation – which can be such a wonderful thing, but is often used to the worst ends.

Will innovation always trend toward serving the powerful? Is this how it’s always fated to go? I realized that this wasn’t on Sancia’s mind yet – so I had to introduce a character to pose those questions to her.

 

Last year I had the immense pleasure of reviewing an advanced copy of Vigilance. It struck me very hard, especially as it described people being regularly close to violence, and numb to it. I am a Las Vegas native and lived across the street from the Clackamas Town Center shooting. I have lived close to extreme violence twice now. Was the catalyst for writing Vigilance a single violent event, or was it the onslaught daily violence in the US. 

I was out walking, and feeling pissed off about shootings and the news several years ago, and I thought about the most lurid, exploitative plot I could imagine, a Running Man style story where mass shooters are the contestants and civilians are encouraged to be vigilant at all times to be ready for them. It was about the ugliest thing I ever thought of.

I never thought to actually write it until a friend asked for a novella. The Parkland shooting had occurred, so I figured – why the hell not. Why not get this poison out of me?

 

Stepping out of the specifics of your books for a moment, I’d like to ask you about writing in general. What is the most challenging part of your artistic process? 

Starting the book. The opening does an incredible amount of work, and all of it has to land. There can’t be any fat in it, otherwise people will get bored.

 

Are you a pantser or ploter? 

Pantser. I think of plotting as planning an educational course for a child I’ve never met. You’re saying to yourself, “By this time, I expect them to have these grades, and have these skills developed, and then they’ll be this kind of major and get this job.” And then you meet the child and realize that they’re not the perfect being you imagined, and there’s no way you can just force them through this abstract plan. You have to work with them and realize they have their own priorities and goals, and trend toward that.

 

The last question I like to ask is a fun one. The dinner party question. If you could invite three people to a party, alive, dead, or fictional, who would they be and why?

Talleyrand, Katherine Hepburn, and Dorothy Parker. That’d be a hell of a fun time.

 

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REVIEW: Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is a story that blurs the lines between science fiction and fantasy in his steampunkesque fantasy novel.

When people think of fantasy as a genre, often, they think of high fantasy. The genre pioneered by our lord and savior, J.R.R Tolkien. But now, 60 years later, since Lord of the Rings, fantasy is a much broader and more complicated genre. Writers, instead of being pigeonholed in a particular style, now take their ideas to new levels by branching out and combining types. What was once thought of as a non-marketable story in the fantasy genre is now just another Tuesday, and we are better for it as readers.

“All things have a value. Sometimes the value is paid in coin. Other times, it is paid in time and sweat. And finally, sometimes it is paid in blood.

Humanity seems most eager to use this latter currency. And we never note how much of it we’re spending, unless it happens to be our own.” 

Foundryside is the first book of a new trilogy by author Robert Jackson Bennett, whose previous works include The Divine Cities trilogy. Reading Bennett’s stories, you get the overall feeling that the human condition and how that condition reflects on other citizens are at the forefront of his mind in his stories. Robert has taken a keen love of fantasy and an understanding of the genre and mixed it with a social conscience. Often in his writing, he asks tough philosophical questions such as: what is humanity? What is true freedom? Or, what are social classes? In Foundryside, Bennett creates a world defined by steampunkesque creations that are given life and magic by the ancient scribed sigils scrawled upon them. Sigils that can make up be down, wood believe itself to be stone, entirely changing physics and the laws of nature. With this kind of power comes inherent problems. Most of those problems come in the form of a monopoly on scrived material between ruling houses. These houses, much like gang organizations, have power over the city and its people. The poor people that work for and around them can barely feed themselves.

“Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation.”

Enter Sancia: protagonist, a thief who has a troubled past. She fights to eat and live like all the other poor people of the city Tevanne. Sancia takes a job to steal something incredibly valuable. The trick is, don’t look in the case.

Sancia looks in the case. Now everyone wants to kill her. Looking in the case might have been the best or worst idea she ever had. Whichever, the choice to peer inside has enormous and far-reaching effects for Sancia as a protagonist, people are dying around her, the city is quaking on its posts, and the houses have turned their steely scrived visage on this lowly thief. There are consequences for her friends and allies, and for the city of Tevanne itself. The politics shift in this story at a breakneck pace, and you never know who the good guys are. But you know one thing, you want Sancia, the underdog to win.

“I did what was necessary to gain my freedom. Wouldn’t you?”

Foundryside is a fantastic all-around novel. Complete enough to be read as a stand-alone, but as a part a trilogy, I feel that the world that Bennett has built will continue to get fuller and more interesting. The second novel Shorefall released last month, and if ratings and reviews are indicators, Shorefall is as good or better than its predecessor Foundryside, which is a tall order.

I know I am looking forward to diving into the second book as soon as possible. The world of Tevanne is a world I want to immerse my self in again and again.

Buy Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

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A Post-Pandemic World: The Ultimate Cyberpunk Primer

Want to understand the surveillance-state dystopia our world has descended into? Need a primer on our cyberpunk present? Desperate to know what comes after the plague?

Well friends, you’ve come to the right place. I doubt there are many humans in the world with a Doctorate in Cyberpunk, but I am one of them. So let me put this vast reservoir of knowledge about an ever-more-relevant, and incomparably cool (neon-lit, black leather cool), subject to work, for you.

We live in a world where China has unfurled a system of high tech mass surveillance across the country. It is testing ‘social credit schemes’ that rate the social and political rectitude of citizens, and punishes them if they diverge from the party line. In the US and elsewhere, giant corporations have more power than ever before, impoverishing their workforces while the owners simultaneously become the richest people in human history. In an acutely cyberpunk moment, giant corporations like Disney and Nike promote their products as a moral imperative. Russia meanwhile prosecutes psyops against democracies through cyber warfare, using personal data harvested by western social media companies. Deepfakes, fake news, and server hacks; high-tech disinformation campaigns from a rogue mafia state led by a former KGB colonel. As we will see, Covid-19 is accelerating these and other trends, solidifying our cyberpunk present and propelling us into a dark, cynical, neon-lit future.

As Ursula Le Guin said, science fiction is not predictive, it is descriptive. That is, science fiction writers (some of us, anyway), take the DNA strands of the future we can see already in the present, and write about those. To be sure, the further we try to project forward, the more difficult the exercise becomes – but, without question, the world today, and the one we are careening into, was imagined decades ago.

In this spirit, I begin this primer with an author who was not even writing science fiction, but who nonetheless established a narrative template that formed the basis for cyberpunk.

Hardboiled Fiction – Film Noir

Dashiell Hammett: Nightmare Town (1924), Red Harvest (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931).

If we take Blade Runner (1982) as the Sistine Chapel of cyberpunk – and we should – then we must acknowledge this masterpiece draws its influences heavily from the past. The hardboiled traditions embodied in the film – the cynical detective, the femme fatale, the neon-drenched city at night, the perpetual rain, moral ambiguity, corruption, and alienation – hark back to the cinema of the 1940s and the literature of the 1930s.

The literature of this era was concerned with the trauma of the modern world. Rapid urbanisation, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the horrors of fascist Europe; these are the foundation stones of the noir cosmology. The creator of the hardboiled style – Dashiell Hammett – was a private eye before he was a writer, working for the Pinkerton Agency during a time when they were known for thuggish union-busting. He witnessed first-hand the crushing underfoot of working people at the hands of the monied elite.

It is perhaps no surprise then that Hammett’s early Novella, Nightmare Town contains a trenchant critique of capitalism. Hammett uses the rather improbable scenario of a whole town collectively willing to conspire to make prohibition-era alcohol for an East Coast crime syndicate. Worse, they lure people to town for work, kill them, and take their identities, planning to later burn down the town and claim the insurance. Aside from corruption, we see in this work the seeds of paranoia and conspiracy that are hallmarks of cyberpunk.

Watch: Miller’s Crossing (1990). Coen Brothers neo-noir using elements of Red Harvest and The Glass Key.

Read: The Maltese Falcon. Why now: First, it’s a fucking great read. Hammett is one of the most elegant and spare prose stylists around. Second, he provides us with a cyberpunk archetype: the private eye. Now it need not be specifically a private eye, but rather what this character represents: a loner who works to their own, often opaque, code; who exists somewhere between the criminal underworld and ‘civilised’ society. Third, Hammett was – according to Raymond Chandler – unique among crime writers of his time, because: “he wrote of a world in which gangsters can rule nations.” He imagined a reality where crime seamlessly pervades the body politics and defines a whole culture. Today, we live in a world where Putin rules Russia, Trump the US, and Xi Jinping China.

Proto-Cyberpunk

Philip K Dick: Minority Report (1956), We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (1966), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), James Tiptree Junior: The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)

While hardboiled literature was a formative influence on both Neuromancer and Blade Runner, we must also look to some of the great science fiction writers to complete this picture. The works of Philip K Dick, insofar as they depict social decay, surveillance paranoia, and the questioning of technological progress, flow directly into cyberpunk. For James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), she imagined a world in The Girl Who was Plugged In where celebrities are also social media influencers – glorified manikins for product placement, where the masses are manipulated and enthralled by targeted advertising, and where the Earth is stripped-mined in order to create ephemeral consumer products.

Directly, the three PKD stories were made into the cyberpunk films Minority Report, Total Recall, and Blade Runner respectively (though with Tom Cruise and a happy ending, Minority Report is borderline). Indirectly, the ideas in these stories are also influential: the relationship between technology and free will (Minority Report), between memory and identity (We Can Remember…), and the pure commodification of the android (and human) body (The Girl…). All stories are concerned with the dehumanising possibilities of technological advancement.

Read: Philip K Dick short stories. Why now: The drug-fuelled paranoia of Philip K Dick is more relevant than ever. Locked down in our homes, social media giants and governments have hit the motherload of personal data. We know that these entities, through social credit programs, or through increasingly sophisticated algorithms, try to erode free will. As a Chinese citizen, speaking of tech controls in their country was quoted as saying in a recent article in The Guardian: “I thought the days when humans are ruled by machines and algorithms won’t happen for at least another 50 years, this coronavirus epidemic has suddenly brought it on early.”

Imagine how Philip K Dick would react to a world where tech companies could predict our behaviour better than we ourselves could. Where each of us carry a tracking and monitoring device for their benefit – the smartphone – in our own pockets, and do so willingly.

Birth of the Cyberpunk Era

Ridley’s Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Williams Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) are the twin foundational events of cyberpunk. Cool, cynical, dark, prescient; Blade Runner provided aesthetic template for a generation of film-makers; Neuromancer – though it came two years later – is widely considered to have initiated the cyberpunk era.

Like the private eye, Rick Deckard as a ‘blade runner’ exists somewhere between the law and the underworld. He is not a police officer, but rather a state-sanctioned hitman used to kill ‘retire’ androids. These androids (or Replicants) are a slave caste created by Tyrell, a megacorporation, for use in establishing the ‘off-world colonies’. Earth has become increasingly uninhabitable (in Do Androids Dream… the cause is ‘World War Terminus’ in Blade Runner and its sequel, environmental catastrophe is hinted at). Here I’m reminded of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, planning their own off-world colonies as we make the Earth uninhabitable through climate change. The rebel Replicants – led by Roy Batty, played by an incandescent Rutger Hauer – believe furiously, desperately, in their own existence, whereas to society they are seen as mere commodities. As Batty says to Deckard, after terrorising and chasing him though an abandoned building: “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it’s like to be a slave.”

In Neuromancer, William Gibson cited hardboiled fiction as informing his vision of the mean streets of the near future. The term ‘cyberspace’ was coined by Gibson, as was his conception of ‘the matrix’. Hackers, mirrorshades, street samurai, corporate conspiracy, Japanese dystopian cityscapes, neural jacks, drug addiction, cybernetic augmentation, sentient A.I., the Russians! ooh baby, give it to me.

What both these stories did was choke off the exhilaration of futurity. That is, where much of the science fiction that had gone before saw technological progress as an intrinsic good, Neuromancer and Blade Runner saw the dark potential of such power. The heroes of this literature are not heroic explorers, or captains of industry, or presidents. The anti-heroes are the conflicted androids and private eyes that have seen the corruption of the power, and the suffering of the marginalised and dispossessed.

Watch: Blade Runner. Why now: Released in 1982, Blade Runner described a future history of urban decay, multiculturalism, corporate greed and corruption, boundless commodification and existential alienation, and was unerringly right on all counts. I hope it isn’t right about an Earth depopulated by environmental (or biological) crisis, as well.

Anime Cyberpunk

Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira (1988), Mamoru Oshii: Ghost in the Shell (1995).

East Asia was, obviously, a key aesthetic influence on both Neuromancer and Blade Runner, works that fused their near-future visions with the techno, teaming, sometimes squalid city-life of places like Hong Kong and Tokyo. But beyond this clear aesthetic connection, at the core of Japanese cyberpunk is a cultural experience unlike any other.

Japan is the only nation to have experienced the horror of nuclear war, to have suffered the fullest measure of the destructive power of modernity. The atomic bomb: the apotheosis of scientific discovery, brought about the most barbaric single moment of mass violence in human history. The devastating aftereffects – orphaned kids, radiation sickness, a loss of national independence, the destruction of nature – have been an ongoing influence on cyberpunk anime. For example, At the finale of the seminal Akira (1988) – set in a dystopian 2019 – a white incandescent blast swallows Neo-Tokyo, leaving a skeleton city in its aftermath.

Japanese cyberpunk is obsessed with the way technology transforms society and the human body, and as a means of pervasive control. Sometimes this means a tendency toward body horror – the physical invasion of the body and the mind as a metaphor for the radical changes technology can have on the nature of humanity, and of the self.

“Cyborgs are not about the future, they are about contemporary society and its current transformations,” according to SF scholar Sharalyn Orbaugh. I agree. We are all cyborgs now – whether prosthetics, organ transplants, pacemakers, digital exo-memory (smartphones); the outsourcing of brain function to the algorithmic decision making of major corporations, to choose the products we will purchase; the news articles we will read; the intimate relationships we will embark upon. Our bodies and our minds have been invaded.

What to watch: Ghost in the Shell (1995). Why now: Sexy. As. Fuck. Major Motoko, sure, but also the tech, the vistas, the haunting music – one of most aesthetically gorgeous films of all time. Work of fucking art. But there’s more to it, than this. Ghost in the Shell combines ultraviolence with deep contemplation on the nature of human identity. The questions posed by the anime are not merely philosophical, but as argued above, are pressing down on us in every aspect of our modern lives.

Modern Cyberpunk

Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon (2002), Charlie Booker: Black Mirror (2011 – 2019)

It’s worth clarifying here that The Matrix, often listed as one of the best cyberpunk films, is not part of the sub-genre. It has the veneer – even a cyberpunk fetish – but is ultimately a hero’s journey narrative, ticking every box of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth: the call to adventure, the mentor (Morpheus), the chosen one (Neo), all of it. The Matrix is about a chosen one fulfilling a prophecy. Friends: happy endings are not cyberpunk. Look at the world around us. Do you think this is going to end well? As a reviewer said about my short story collection, Neon Leviathan:

“I’m reminded of a quote from Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which the old donkey Benjamin says, “Life will go on as it has always gone on—that is, badly.” …every story seems to emulate this one Orwellian quote in one way or another. And that, I think, is the appeal of Neon Leviathan. The malleability of identity and perceived reality aside, life always goes on as best it can. It might not be glorious, it might not be happy, it might not even be what we’ve been made to believe it to be, but—in the end—humans will persevere in whatever way they can, just as they always have.”

What to read: Altered Carbon. Why now: This novel blew me away fifteen years back, when I first read it. It really captured the essence of cyberpunk, I thought, in its hardboiled style, its ultraviolence, and its social commentary. But it wasn’t a mere throwback. It was new, at the same time, showing that the sub-genre still had a lot to say, and could say it with style.

The enduring spectre of the billionaire class (Elon Musk, Twiggy Forest, Gina Rinehart, all the rest) living in gilded bunkers while arguing for a return to work, demanding an expendable worker class to sacrifice themselves on the altar of economic growth, is pure cyberpunk. Altered Carbon shows that one of the most dehumanising things of all is extreme wealth. The immortal billionaires in the novel (‘Methuselahs’) are monsters, their extraordinary privilege completely alienating them from a sense of common humanity.

What to watch: Black Mirror. Why now: The show is at its best when talking about the surveillance state – by mega corporations, by governments, and by individuals of each other – and showing the ways in which these forms of surveillance can destroy us. Its exploration of the ethics of new technologies is – usually – nuanced and intelligent, and a warning of how we may collaborate with the methods of control enabled by our gleaming new technologies.

Conclusion

The thing about the DNA strands of the future observable here in the now, is this: there’s quite a lot of them, for a multitude of different timelines. Yes, we live in a cyberpunk present, but we don’t have to continue this descent, into a future where China is the global superpower, the US has fallen apart, inequality is staggering, climate change unchecked, and the technologies of surveillance and control pervasive. I don’t write about these things in my work because I want them to happen, I write about these subjects as a warning: if we fuck this up, it’s only going to get worse. As cool as the dark, neon-drenched, ultraviolent future appears, better ones surely exist.

Don’t believe me? Then believe Richard Morgan, author of the text listed in this primer, who said:

“Haunting and iridescent – combines the paranoid weirdness of the best Philip K Dick, the chilly but cool-as-fuck future gleam of cyberpunk, and an achingly beautiful literary inflection reminiscent of mainstream heavyweights like Murakami or Ishiguro. T. R. Napper’s futures feel at once gritty and vertiginous and close-focus human in the way only the best SF can manage. Whatever roadmap he’s working from, I can’t wait to see where he’s taking us next.” 

Or Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time) in the foreword to the collection:

“Each one of the stories in this volume is a carefully-crafted masterpiece that, whilst it presents a narrative of its own, is nonetheless a window into a larger world, a current of history that flows a winding path from one to another, carrying us with it.”

“Napper’s own personal history feels as though it pervades the collection. An Australian with more than a decade overseas on the sharp end of foreign aid, he’s seen a great deal of how human nature can twist under pressure, or under temptation…[his stories] have an acute sense of place, not just in a generic cyberpunk future but an Australian and Southeast Asian one that builds on tensions of race, sovereignty, class division and international relations, all currently front and centre in today’s news.”

Anna Smith Spark (The Court of Broken Knives)

“Brilliant… it’s rare for people to write well and deeply about the aftermath of violence, about its effect on the perpetrator, but Napper does this so, so well.”

Reading and watching list

Not everything on this list is cyberpunk; for your delectation I have also included some noir, neo-noir, proto-cyberpunk, and science fiction noir. The latter category has a large – but not complete – crossover with cyberpunk.

Watch: Double Indemnity (1944), The Third Man (1949), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Yojimbo (1961), Soylent Green (1973), Chinatown (1974), Escape from New York (1981), Terminator (1984), Robocop (1987), Bubblegum Crisis (1987), Total Recall (1990), Battel Angel Alita (1993), Strange Days (1995), Gattaca (1997), Cowboy Bebop (1997-98), Memento (2000), Infernal Affairs (2002), The Proposition (2005), Looper (2012), Ex Machina (2014), The Rover (2014), Person of Interest (2011 – 2016), Upgrade (2018), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), First Reformed (2018), Mr Robot (2015 – 2019), Mr In-Between (2018 – ).

Read: James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (1938), Albert Camus, The Outsider (1942), Geoffrey Homes, Build My Gallows High (1946), Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (1956), Charles Willeford, The Burnt Orange Heresy (1971), George V Higgins, The Digger’s Game (1973), William Gibson, Burning Chrome (1982), Rudy Rucker, Software (1982), Bruce Sterling (ed.) Mirrorshades (1986), George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails (1986), Pat Cadigan, Synners (1991), Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992), Natsuo Kirino, Real World (2003), Peter Temple, The Broken Shore (2005), Vu Tran, Dragonfish (2005), Megan Abbott, Queenpin (2007), Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (2007), Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief (2010), Madeline Ashby, Companytown (2016), Sam J Miller, Blackfish City (2018), T. R. Napper, Neon Leviathan (2020).

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REVIEW: The Druid by Steven A. McKay

To my mind The Druid is everything historical fiction should be and more. The reader is served with a lesser known (and therefore original and highly interesting) setting which serves as the backdrop to a desperate hunt for an abducted princess. The characters are engaging and easy to follow, with their backstories and motivations being steadily and satisfactorily revealed with each page turned.

McKay is an exciting and inspiring historical novelist and what I love about his writing is that he clearly understands the strengths and the pitfalls of the ‘historical fiction’ genre. Which makes for a highly engaging story which constantly shifts between riveting action or scenes possessed of a simmering, underlying tension. So that there’s no sagging and boring ‘history lesson’ bits and the historical detail is seamlessly melded into a plot bursting with adrenaline and suspense.

That said, it would be superficial to label this book as just another ‘boys own’ action-filled, sword-waving romp. I think that the female characters are plausible and satisfying, without the author ever resorting to any fawning ‘mansplaining’ (an approach that’s unfortunately often used by certain historical novelists to try and loop in a female readership) in the way they’re crafted. In fact, McKay doesn’t baulk from describing intimate scenes as intricately as those scenes which include a raging battle.

The novelist makes no secret of Tolkien’s influence on him as a writer and it’s a relief to finally find an author who’s confident enough to also include a song or two in his story. That said McKay’s style is unique and all his own: there are some original and humorously grim scenes like the one in which the queen of Alt Clota urges her husband King Coroticus to remove a severed Pictish head from their dining table before asking him to bring her a beer.

McKay also casts the figure of a druid in a whole new light. For his druidic protagonist Bellicus is no bumbling, asexual and feeble Getafix from the Asterix comics but a physically imposing and formidable combatant who’s wise beyond his years. Despite these impressive qualities, Bellicus is not superhuman and struggles with moments of confusion and doubt. The enemy he hunts is also not to be trifled with and this is satisfactorily set out in the narrative.

Fans of high fantasy who want to take a break from their usual genre might want to give The Druid a try, since it also contains a strong and well-crafted mystic element which borders on and at times spills over into the realm of magic.

Buy The Druid by Steven A. McKay

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REVIEW: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

I received a review copy of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank Grady Hendrix and Quirk Books.

I have had The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires on my bookshelf for a little while but I finally decided to pick it because my fellow Grimdark Magazine reviewer Elizabeth Tabler advised me that Hendrix was a great author and because of the following quotation from the author’s note which had me extremely intrigued.

“With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.”

This story follows Patricia Campbell. She is a wife, parent and housewife extraordinaire. Her husband is a workaholic, and her two children are becoming young adults who have very different interests to keep them occupied. Patricia also looks after her mother-in-law, who lives with the family, as she is suffering from dementia. The only time that Patricia gets to escape from the neverending list of chores family life presents is when she can unwind at her book club meetings. The club is made up of a close group of friends who all enjoy reading true crime novels, chatting about their families and talking about serial killers.

One evening after the book club meeting Patricia is viciously attacked in her own garden and she doesn’t come out unscathed. It is around this time that she meets the handsome stranger James Harris. He’s good-looking, charming, and well-read and gradually becomes friends with Patricia and establishes himself as a respectable member of the Mt. Pleasant community. Patrica believes that something doesn’t quite add up when it comes to this new neighbour and when children start going missing or killing themselves in a neighbouring town, Patricia is convinced that James Harris has something to do with it. Little does she know, at first, the sort of creature that she is dealing with and how this all may have dramatic and potentially catastrophic effects on her family’s, and the entire neighbourhood’s lives.

I found The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires to be an addictive read from the very start. The novel is well-paced and I really enjoyed Hendrix’s witty and sharp writing style. It is set in a pleasantly pictured Charleston in the late ’80’s- the early ’90s. There are many moments about home and family life and drama, friends gossiping about the happenings of the neighbourhood and also characters talking about the books they are reading in preparation for, or at the book club evenings. The novel then throws up gruesome and graphic moments aplenty, that are often of a disturbing manner. These incidents are featured more frequently as the novel progresses when Patricia, and us as readers, find out more about James Harris and the part he is playing. Some of the horrendous incidents really stand out for their devious darkness. These instances were uneasy to read as all the horrors were painted crystal clear in my mind’s eye. Certain moments from The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires will stay with me for a long time, such as the scene with the rats, the creepy descriptions of what James Harris does to his victims, and also the gruesome and brutal finale.

The crafted characters were great. I adored the moments where the book club females were able to forget family woes and issues and just relax and talk about the books. The members all had different personalities and the way that I saw some of my mum in Patricia, I saw some of her friends in Patrica’s friends like Grace, Kitty, and Mrs Greene. I think this relatability to the characters made them such a joy to read about and to follow in their day-to-day problems and then the more disturbing dilemmas with James Harris. These ladies are the strongest characters in the novel, however much their husbands with their well-paid jobs and fine careers like to think otherwise, and, as Hendrix’s author’s note alluded to, James Harris never had a chance.

I had a great time reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. It only took me two days to finish these 400 pages and I’ll definitely be checking out more of Hendrix’s back catalogue. This is a brilliantly crafted horror experience that should be made into a Hollywood or Netflix film as soon as possible.

8/10
Buy The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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REVIEW: Mile 81 by Stephen King

Curiosity kills the cat. In this case, curiosity kills human beings. Mile 81, one of Stephen King’s short stories, is brutal. They are all brutal because he is King. Brutality and horror are his bread and butter, but dammit, this one was vicious. Setting the scene, we have an unassuming rest stop, one that could be on any major highway through the United States. It is a place where people in motor homes stop to stretch their legs, or young teenagers go to get into trouble, drink beer, and have sex. It is a place that has an eerie and almost sinister quality to it just from the number of souls that pass through it every day.

Pete Simmons, a typical younger brother, is out alone mucking around. His older brother wanted nothing to do with him today and sent Pete off to play and entertain himself. Pete, as younger brothers do, found himself at the old mile 81 rest stop. Walking around, he finds nude magazines, filth, and broken bottles. He also finds a bottle of vodka, Being the young and stupid kid he is. We have all been there; he drinks until he passes out.

While he is passed out, a mud-covered station wagon pulls into the parking lot. It ignores the posted signs of “Closed, no service,” and rests there. It squats in the parking lot like a mud-covered toad. What the characters of the story don’t know is that this squatting toad of a car is so much more than it looks. Much like an angler fish, the mud-covered station wagon juts both of its doors open and awaits its prey: the curious onlooker or the kind bystander.

The story progresses with a helpful person after a helpful person meeting an unlikely demise.

This is a novelette, so there is not very much character development. What we do have is a crazy and unlikely story about a scary situation. I loved it. Mile 81 is a story that taps into a purely horror-filled moment written as only King can write it.

Buy Mile 81 by Stephen King

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Can Magic be Science by another name?

The fantasy of my reading youth all fell into the category we would now call ‘soft magic’. It had no rules and no structure beyond the occasional dusty tome or wizarding school. If someone had asked me to explain the magic systems of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings or The Belgariad by David Eddings, I couldn’t have done more than point to the places in the narrative where magic existed. I could see it, I knew it was there, I just couldn’t explain it.

This reinforced a childhood full of the unexplained; wonderous magic that lives in fairytales, where some animals can talk and others can’t, houses made of gingerbread somehow survive the weather and a witch seems capable of doing whatever they like so long as it is required by the narrative.

It meant I grew up thinking magic = the unexplainable. That in order for it to be magic, it had to have no rules.

So when I first tried to explain my fantasy world to someone back in the mid-2000s, I told them it had no magic.

Them: “Then how is it fantasy?”

Me: “It’s not set in this world.”

Them: “Wait, do you mean you’ve written historical fiction?”

Me: *increasingly sweaty and panicking that I’d wasted a lot of time* “No! At least, I don’t think I’ve ever read about someone in history who could speed up time or reanimate the dead. I think I’d remember that.”

Them: “…That’s magic.”

Me: “No, it’s a malfunctioning reincarnation system unlocking disused areas of the brain. Although they don’t know that by this time in history because their soul science isn’t advanced enough.”

Them: “…”

It wasn’t the light bulb moment it ought to have been however, as it took many years before I could confidently use the word ‘magic’ to talk about my world. Because like Arthur C Clarke said: “Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.”

One day, when I write about the future of this world, it won’t be considered magic anymore.

So what is Soul Science?

A relative of mine once spent a considerable chunk of time talking about being regressed through past lives and how each one had left a lasting effect on her soul. The concept had never come my way before, and though I struggled to believe it as fact in the real world, I started to extrapolate what it might mean were it true.

What if every soul was reincarnated a certain number of times before taking knowledge back to a creator? They might not have memories, but would they gather wisdom? And what would happen if something went wrong a soul came back too many times?

And so I built the magic system I never knew I had.

In my world, reincarnation is the basis of life. Every soul is reincarnated seven times, learning along the way such that a ‘one’ is simple and a ‘seven’ is the sort of person you would describe as an old soul. For the most part the reincarnation occurs without issue, but as with all systems there are anomalies, and these anomalies are the source of the magic.

The over-reincarnation of everyday souls unlocks psionic abilities. They become increasingly rare and increasingly powerful as reincarnations range from eight times up to fourteen, from Prescients (eights), to Empaths (nines) and Timeburners (twelves)

Sometimes a single soul is born into two bodies, or two souls are born into one body. The latter is called a Deathwalker, and it’s one of these you’ll find in the pages of my most recent book, We Ride the Storm.

Cassandra is a Deathwalker. She is one of two souls trapped within the same body. For a long time she thought the other soul just an annoying voice in her head she could not escape, because as the dominant personality she never gave it space to flourish.

The reason for the name is that a soul is needed for a body to function, and having a ‘spare’ inside her, dead bodies call to her like empty vessels. Empty vessels that can be temporarily filled.

The following excerpt is from the first time they consciously choose to use this ability in combat:

Let me out!

I dropped beneath a blind thrust and caught one of the remaining two guards a jab in the crotch. He joined the young man howling on the stones as the fifth and final man edged toward the door. There a pause for breath, a single moment of peace within a battle, and without dragging my gaze from my assailants, I gripped the commander’s dead hand. The call of death ceased as She bled out through my skin.

The commander groaned.

“Being dead feels worse than being fucked by fat merchants,” he said and even the young man bleeding out upon the floor grew whiter still, his mouth twisting in horror. With a scrape of buckles and boots the commander rose to his feet and every surviving soldier stared at him over my head.

“You’re all staring at me,” he said, the note of amusement hard to ignore. “Haven’t you ever seen a dead man walking before?”

She walked the man’s body forward, and when its silk surcoat brushed my arm I shivered. The man had been dead and now he walked again. Talked again, the voice the same just not the soul.

I glanced at his profile, at his unchanged features and the open wound in his neck, and a pair of all too knowing eyes stared back. Then She moved on toward the centre of the room. No weapon. Just a far too confident swagger. She was as bad as the young guard, all big dreams and no experience.

“Get down, you idiot!” I said. “You’re not even armed.”

She didn’t turn, but with the commander’s hand she drew the commander’s sword, the sort of thing the real man would never have been stupid enough to do. The threat of a blade, however ill held, spurred the remaining guards to movement. One of them made for the door in a panic only to trip over my foot and tumble headfirst into a welcoming blade. The other launched himself at his former commander and buried his dagger up to the hilt in the dead man’s eye. She grunted, more with annoyance than anything, and pushed him away, the awkward move managing to slice the man’s groin.

As his comrade landed on the stones beside him, the youngest soldier shouted for help. I snatched the sword from Her hand and plunged it into his throat, ending his shout in a gurgle of air and blood and a final hiss of death.

“What are you?” the last guard said, gripping the gushing wound in his groin. “I saw you die.”

She pulled the dagger from her own dead eye with a grunt as running feet came along the passage. Two, maybe three men. I growled. “Kill this one. I’ll get these.”

“No.” The commander’s hand wrested the sword from mine and I let it, the touch of the still warm but all too dead flesh making me shiver again. “I’ll do it.”

No time to argue. She strode out wearing her commander-skin and the footsteps halted in the passage. Alone in the sudden silence of the room, the dying guard and I sucked simultaneous breaths and let them go. “What is he?” he repeated. “What are you?”

“Monsters,” I said, hefting a dagger that seemed suddenly heavy in my hand. “I’m sorry.”

“But you’re—”

I slit his throat and the words ended in blood pouring over my hand.

Voices sounded outside. A soldier walked in, followed by a second. They both halted on the threshold, taking the scene in at a soldier’s speed. Before the second could move, a blade appeared through his chest. The other almost got me before I got him, and his corpse joined the others in a mess of blood and flesh upon the floor.

A sob welled up from the depths of my soul.

“Cassandra Marius crying?” the commander jeered, though I knew they were not his words. He was long gone now, never to return.

“Fuck you,” I said. “That was messy and hideous and we’re running out of time. And that last one nearly got me. Was that the plan? Get me killed so we both have dead bodies?”

“No, you were meant to be ready to get him as he came in.”

“Oh yes? Where was that in the plan?”

“I told you when I went out.”

I glared at the widening eye before me, some sort of realisation dawning behind it and its gouged-out brother. “Fuck,” She said. “You can’t hear me if I don’t speak out loud when I’m out here.”

“Yeah, I thought that was kind of obvious.”

Blood oozed from her glaring eye socket. “I’m not exactly used to this, all right?”

“Just like you’re not used to using a weapon. Swords are for big open areas, not confined little rooms, all right? And even so you’re better off keeping to fists and daggers and dirty tricks.” I looked around at the dead bodies. “We need to get out of here before more come. We can pretend like you’re marching me out. Just… wrap something around your eye. We have to move.”

Find out if Magic can be Science in We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson

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REVIEW: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis

Spider Jerusalem of Transmetropolitan is the hero you did not know that you needed. Brash and deranged, Spider yells at the top of his lungs things that make you uncomfortable. And, if you are nervous? Good. Scared to examine painful truths? Good. Because the truth is coming for you, and Spider is going to be bringing it with the fervor and intensity of a bulldog on crystal meth.

“TRUTH comes easier when you’re nine years old, too. Everything’s a lot less complicated. This or that. Us or them. Truth or lie.”

Transmetropolitan was written twenty-one years ago, published by DC Comics between 1997 – 2002, but it might as well been written yesterday for how current and prescient it is. The story is built around the antics of our protagonist and antihero, an investigative journalist named Spider Jerusalem. He is tattooed, brash, brilliant, sarcastic, caustic, drug-addicted, and a wild man of journalists fervor. Often drawn wearing a pair of stereoscopic sunglasses, one red lens, and the other green while streams of smoke curl out of his nostrils and usually sporting a scowl of discontent while gesticulating wildly at the idiocy of passers-by. Describing him, he sounds like a lunatic when in actuality he is the reincarnation of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson dropped into the 23rd century.

The first six issues of the 60 issue story make up Transmetropolitan Vol. 1 Back in The Streets. It is written as Spider is getting his feet under him after a five-year voluntary sabbatical. Called back to finish his book deal with his editor, lovingly known as Whorehopper, he unwillingly reenters The City and society and is equal parts horrified and fascinated by it. The City, as it is referred to, is Id and hedonism run amok puked out in a cyberpunk Technicolor fever dream. If you can dream it, and have the money, you can do it. All of which sounds impressive when tempered with wisdom and ethics. However, The City is neither of those things. Spider is constantly reminded of why he hid in the wilderness and eschewed all human contact.

Issue three of Volume 1 talks about Spider’s first story back into the throes of journalism. He is covering a pseudo-alien messiah named Fred Christ, as he represents the Transcience movement. The Transience movement being a subculture of body modification fetishists who use technology to change themselves to something resembling a new species. In this case, adapting aspects of an alien species. Fred Christ’s base is located in the Angel 8 district of The City. After Spider burns a transient guard in the eye with a cigarette, Spider notices how tense the Transient population is. It is a powder keg ready to blow. Spider finds Fred Christ and has a brief interview with him where Spider basically eludes that Fred is puffed up with fake power and that the government is going to come down and stomp out this little movement of Freds.

“There’s one hole in every

revolution, large or small.

And it’s one word long— PEOPLE.

No matter how big

the idea they all stand under,

people are small and weak

and cheap and frightened.

It’s people that kill every revolution.”

Here is where the writing shines. Eventually, the government does get with the stomping, and Spider gets right in the middle of it and live blogs. He brings the gritty moment to moment of the brutal beating of the Transient population by an uncaring police authority to the people. Eventually, this sways the audience gawking at this display via Spider’s writing and causes a public outcry shutting down the beating. Spider helped. I don’t think he intended to help but to speak the truth as he saw it; however, his truth saved some transient people.

God, I love Spider Jerusalem. He is everything I wish Journalists still were. Raw, uncut assholes who search for the truth as they see it no matter what they have to go through. In the politically charged climate of now, it seems that those who speak truth to power are not the journalists as we used to know them, but bloggers and users of Twitter.

“- You know what this is?

– Nope

– It’s a bowel disruptor.

And you are just full of shit.”

The question is “Should you read this?” Should you delve into the gritty world of Spider and meet with the truth on his terms. I am of a resounding yes, there is a reason why he is a classic graphic novel series. I think the world needs Spider Jerusalem’s even if he is just ink and ideas. All Hail Spider Jerusalem!

Buy Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis

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REVIEW: Shadowheart by Tad Williams

At the beginning of Shadowheart, Princess Briony is with Prince Eneas of Syan’s Temple Dogs as she looks to return to take her rightful seat of power at Southmarch. Elsewhere, Prince Barrick is with Queen Saqri at the castle of Qul-Na-Qar. He is now part Qar after being gifted the Fireflower by the former King. The Fireflower has led to him having the knowledge of all the Qar’s history in his thoughts. The residents of Southmarch including poet Matt Tinwright, guard captain Ferras Vansan, and funderling Chert are not only worried about the threat of the Twilight People who still remain outside their walls but also that the mad God King of Xis, Sulepis, plans to invade Southmarch with his mighty forces and has the intention of waking a God. Please note: the final quotation at the end of this review contains a potential spoiler.

“‘So we face our final hours…and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.’”

Shadowheart mostly takes place in, around, or underneath Southmarch. It is much more action-focused than the previous entries and builds up intensely to a phenomenal culmination. My excitement levels ran through the roof throughout with standout moments including amazingly well-choreographed battle segments, epic showdowns, an intense high-speed chase sequence that includes everybody’s favourite rooftopper, and characters meeting up again after spending many months apart.

As many of the point of view perspectives closed in on each other at certain times in Shadowheart I was engrossed and gripped to the pages. Intently waiting for these characters to cross paths for the first time or to see each other again. It kept building up the drama, and when these meet-ups finally happened they were frequently not when I expected and often events didn’t go how I had envisaged at all.

One of my favourite characters throughout the series was Prince Barrick who has changed dramatically throughout to the brooding, thoughtful, blood-tainted warrior we witness here. He is extremely important to how events transpire as is another favourite Captain Vansen. Vansen is sometimes frustrating to those around him because of honourable and good he is. He spends much of this entry fighting alongside the funderlings and heading their resistance during some subterranean warfare. Other standouts were the funderling Chert who always seems to be at the centre of some drama, and his mysterious adopted son Flint whose role and purpose seems to be unknown. Matt Tinwright’s story reached its high points of the series here as he becomes a spy and also a companion of sorts for the crazy Lord Protector, Hendon Tolly. Tolly’s madness is arguably only exceeded by that of the Autarch of Xis who I loved reading about too. This duo were two of the most powerful men in all of Eion and they were both bonkers and power-mad with their wish to abuse the magical might of the Gods.

“‘When I saw you, I wondered at how much you had changed, Barrick,’ she told him. ‘But now I see that in the most important ways you are no different. It’s still your own sorrows you care about and no one else’s, and you still turn away from love and kindness as though it were an attack.’”

Shadowheart is the incredible final instalment in Williams’ epic Shadowmarch quartet. I had such an amazing time reading this series. I was savouring every moment as I approached the final pages. There is a catastrophically high death count here including some major players and even a point of view character. After the stunning and staggering culmination, there are a few quieter and calmer chapters where loose ends and threads are wrapped up. There are some revelations that are made regarding what part certain characters played during important and defining events and it also sets the scenes for what will happen after the finale here. There are some really touching moments towards the end. This series definitely affected me in an emotional manner. I finished the last few pages in my garden and when I put the book down I sat back and just said “wow” to myself. I must have looked crazy to my neighbours but this is a series that will have a lasting effect on me. It’s probably in my all-time top 10 fantasy series and I’m extremely sad that it is over. Great work Mr Williams. Thank you for the journey.

“Vansen had just begun to form an idea about how to attack this hopeless situation when Barrick Eddon came running to him across the uneven stones, the prince’s pale face smeared with blood from some small wound, his helmet in his hand and his curly red hair flying, so that for a moment he looked to Vansen like some freakish, supernatural creature, an armored demon with his entire head on fire. It still startled Vansen how tall the boy had grown, how he seemed to have aged years in the matter of a single season.”

9.5/10

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REVIEW: The Dread Wyrm by Miles Cameron

The Dread Wyrm is my favourite of the Traitor Son Cycle so far. It is a phenomenal book with epic pacing and some scenes that I will never forget. If you like books inspired by Arthurian Romance, with fearsome knights, horrific monsters and magic that will blow your mind, this series is the one for you.

“Those who have known pain should have mercy on others.”

Number 3 in the Traitor Son Cycle, The Dread Wyrm picks up where The Fell Sword left off. It begins with our favourite characters such as Red Knight in a tavern giving a run down of the events so far. This beginning gave an excellent recap of what has happened in this medieval land and ensures that the reader is up to date with the players and the plot. Without delving into the plot I’ll just say there is a big tournament, intense politicking, almighty battles, an unlikely alliance and one of the greatest duels I have ever read.

“But all you have to do is lie. If enough people lie, all the time, then there isn’t enough truth for law to work. That’s how I see it.”

We follow our favourite characters like Gabriel, Sir Gavin, Bad Tom, Sauce and Michael as they move ever more into danger and make a play for something far more daring than they’ve ever done before. There are new faces and old and each storyline begins to merge in this book, the strands finally coming together making the first two novels completely understandable. From the large cast we are able to see many different personalities and their lives and we are able to enjoy the vast world that Miles Cameron has created.

“War is food and drink and disease and patience and anger and hate and cold and stealth and terror as well as sweet silver and bitter iron and the glitter of arms in the sun or under the moon.”

This is medieval fantasy at it’s finest – especially as it really feels medieval. From the bright, tight clothes to the deadly weapons and shining ‘white’ armour to the way the characters speak, everything is inspired straight from the 14th-century world. Just with dragons and other terrible beasts. The creatures in The Dread Wyrm have a large part to play and they as always shined in each and every scene.

“My da—” Diccon looked at the ground. “… my da calls me ‘Bent.’”

Robin smiled. “No. Sorry, Diccon. It’s a good name, but a master archer had it and it died with him. Got another?”

“My mother calls me a God-Damned Fool,” Diccon said with a smile.

“Good, you’ll fit right in.”

With any Christian / Miles Cameron book, there is a highlight on the combat. The intricate sword plays, jousts and even magical battles are written terrifically. They are able to be exhilarating and informing all at the same time, The Dread Wyrm ramps up the action and is written in brutally efficient set pieces. I will also add that also the subtle details of clothing and life are written so well, that I found myself wanting the combat to hold on for just a second so I could read more lines about how the tournament was organised, or how a doublet was worn.

“A battle was a situation where two commanders each thought they had a decisive superiority and one was wrong.”

5/5 – I loved this book so much it has cemented this series so far as one of my favourites to date. There are the big epic clashes, the intense plans and masterful dialogue, along with intricate details that add a whole lot to the world building. The Dread Wyrm is a five star read!

Buy The Dread Wyrm by Miles Cameron

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