Hûw Steer's Blog, page 36

Salvage Seven: Excerpt 3

Might as well let you all finish the first chapter of Salvage Seven, eh? There’s one more member of the team to meet. Enjoy.

Collins was tinkering with his drones when Gideon walked in, dumping his pack on his narrow bunk and then pulling off his boots. The skinny technician jumped at the noise, pulling off his boxy, modified VR goggles.

“You’re back!” He powered down the drone he’d been modifying, letting the compact sphere, the size of a grapefruit, drop into his waiting hands. Their tiny table was covered in bits of circuitry and Collins’ laptop, wires spiralling out in all directions towards the goggles, a few strange metal boxes covered in blinking lights, into the power sockets. The man never wired the place the same way twice – which led to an interesting variety of trip hazards.

“Yeah,” Gideon grunted. He tossed his helmet onto the bunk, stepping over one thick table to do so.

“Sorry, I’ll tidy up,” Collins said, already darting around the cramped room for the wires and tools he’d left everywhere.

 “It’s alright,” Gideon sighed, unstrapping his meagre weapons and laying them carefully on the bunk. “Need to clean up.” For all the good it’ll do.

“Ok,” said Collins, as Gideon squeezed into their little bathroom. In this one regard they’d lucked out; the Salvage squads had been assigned quarters as an afterthought, separate to the big barrack-rooms where the bigger regiments lived, and so Unit 7 had ended up with a cramped suite of rooms that had once been quarters for merchant passengers. They’d been quarters for three merchant passengers, not seven soldiers, so every room was doubled up, but it was an unexpected bit of privacy. The bathroom was small, spartan, but the shower was big enough for Gideon to bring his filthy fatigues, boots and flak jacket in with him. He rinsed everything of the worst of the battlefield mud, then luxuriated in the lukewarm water for a whole five minutes, scrubbing himself as clean as he could and then wrapping himself in a grubby towel. Emerging, he pulled on (relatively) fresh fatigues, then grabbed his wet clothes and dumped them in the laundry basket. Yaxley would wash them later; it was his turn. Collins wordlessly helped him hang up his body armour in front of the noisy, rattling air-vent that kept them up half the night but was great for drying clothes. The software-man had cleared away a lot of his tech – or at least moved it to his own bunk –and didn’t comment for a while as Gideon sat heavily down on his bed and began stripping down his shotgun and pistol. As ever, mud had somehow found its way into their very innermost workings, and though Gideon barely ever had cause to fire the things he paid them their proper share of attention. One never knew.

Once Gideon was reassembling the light shotgun, screwing its slide back into place, Collins cleared his throat.

“How was it?”

“Wet,” Gideon grunted. “Wet and miserable, same as always.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“No.” He didn’t mention the T-27; Collins loved technology, and few things on the battlefield piqued that interest more than drones and other auto-hardware. The last thing Gideon wanted was another excited lecture on the development of anti-infiltration software in military vehicles. Collins could wax lyrical about the death machine with Handel later. “Yax found some mines,” he said, aware of the awkward silence, “a few rifles. Nothing special.” He finished the gun, leaned over and clipped it into place on the wall rack that held their weapons, next to Collins’ submachine gun – with the war officially ‘over’, nobody really cared how the Salvage units chose to arm themselves. It wasn’t, in the less-than-quiet opinion of most officers, like they were real soldiers, after all. Gideon started cleaning his pistol – somehow wet despite having spent the whole day sealed inside a supposedly waterproof holster – as Collins nodded, settling back in their one rickety chair.

“That’s not so bad then. We’re making progress.” Gideon grunted again, not dignifying the blindly optimistic statement with a response. Collins was far too positive for his liking – for anyone’s liking, really. As Salvage 7 crawled across their assigned segment of the Polaris battlefield, yard by sodden yard, it seemed to Gideon, Donoghue and the rest that they would be stuck forever in this blasted hellscape, digging up mines until they died of old age or – far more likely – making one mistake too many. But Collins – bright-eyed, idealistic Collins, the only volunteer in all of Salvage, the one man mad enough genuinely believe that cleaning up the battlefield was a public service – Collins smiled and nodded, and slept soundly every night believing that he’d made a difference. That wasn’t the only reason Gideon often hated the man – but it was definitely high on the list.

A high-pitched beep cut through the air, followed by Donoghue’s voice.

“Seven, briefing, now.” The speaker crackled, then was silent. Gideon hastily snapped his sidearm back together, grabbed his belt – still muddy – pulled on his boots, as Collins did the same. The technician followed Gideon out of their berth into the little hub room that connected Salvage 7’s quarters. It was just barely big enough for all seven of them to assemble, now that almost all the furnishings had been stripped out, replaced by a lectern and a big monitor screen. Donoghue was at the podium already. Gideon and Collins filed in and stood to attention, as Yaxley slid in quietly, taking up the space of two people. Donoghue waited, silently, pointedly; Handel was still in the forges, Dawson repairing the flatbed, but there was one more person missing. Finally, another door slid open, and a slender woman in fatigues a shade darker than the rest of the squad’s stepped in. She walked slowly over to the rest of the squad, standing beside Yaxley, and looked at Donoghue for a long moment before finally snapping to crisp attention.

“Thanks for joining us, Corporal,” Donoghue growled. Gideon could still see traces of battlefield mud on her neck, though she looked cleaner than he’d felt in months.

“Reporting for duty, Sergeant,” replied Corporal Petra, saluting languidly. She held Donoghue’s gaze without the slightest flinch. The sergeant nodded curtly.

“Alright. Second shift in an hour. Collins, Petra, you’re up.” Collins nodded happily, Petra slowly.

“Where are we heading, Sergeant?” she asked.

“A klick north of this morning’s trawl,” Donoghue replied, fiddling with something on the lectern. The monitor came to life, displaying a map of the battlefield, bright white lines splitting the ruined grey terrain into ruined grey squares. Some of them were tinted blue – ones that Seven, or another squad, had already swept for salvage – some red; areas deemed too dangerous for either army to patrol. Donoghue pointed at one of the red ones.

“We sweep here,” she said. “Initial scans show us a couple of tanks, or similar, some minor radiation spikes. Collins, prep your drones for cracking. AIs might be dormant.”

“Copy, Sergeant.”

“Dawson’s almost done with the truck,” Donoghue continued, “so we just need to decide who’s the third.” She pulled three battered plastic straws out of her fatigue pocket; two long, one short. She stepped down and passed them to Petra. “If you would, Corporal?”

Petra shuffled the straws behind her back, then held out her hand. Yaxley, Gideon and Donoghue clustered around her. Gideon was already feeling sick. Not me. Not again. He’d been out on both shifts twice already this week. Not me.

Donoghue drew her straw. It was long. She nodded to Yaxley.

“Yax.”

The big man reached down delicately, his massive fingers twice the size of Petra’s, and plucked out the fragile straw. Against his huge hand it was impossible to tell if it was long or short – but when Gideon drew his, his heart dropped through the deck and deep into the sucking mud below.

“Petra, Collins, Gideon,” Donoghue confirmed. “Alright. Petra, all yours. Collins, Gid, get prepped; Petra, stay here for briefing.”

Yaxley disappeared back into his quarters, and Gideon followed Collins back into their room. As the technician began gathering up his many wires, plugging in blocks of metal and plastic and tapping at his keyboard, Gideon sank heavily to his bunk. His flak jacket was still damp, his boots still muddy. He wanted nothing more than to just bury himself in his thin blankets and never come out.

With a heavy sigh, he levered himself to his feet, and began checking the contents of his pack.

Life: An Update

I promise I’ll get better at posting regularly, honest. For now, a brief update on what’s actually happening in my corner of the world.

After many weeks of wrangling, I’ve finally moved house… at least, I’ve moved out of my old place. While I’m physically transported to my new place (with my wonderful sister), I won’t officially move in until her current housemate has moved out – so I’ve managed to compact myself into their… let’s say ‘snug’ spare room. Lovely place though. It’s nice to feel rooted again.

The Blackbird and the Ghost continues to sell slowly (obtain it here!), and I’ve entered it into the Kindle Storyteller contest, because why not? I still await the verdict of the Qwillery in the SPFBO, but as soon as I hear it it’ll be on here.

Once I’m properly settled in the new place I can get down to some very overdue editing of a certain Arthurian epic…

For now, expect more Salvage Seven soon – it’s chugging along and I’ve got about 80,000 words of material ready to post on here!

Next post won’t take so long. Probably.

Salvage Seven: Sneak Peek 2

It’s going slowly, but it’s going. I’ve been working on Salvage Seven for a good five months now (frighteningly), and though I’m nowhere near done I’ve made a lot of progress. I figured I’d share some of it with you!

There are some things I don’t want to spoil, so this extract follows directly on from the prologue (which I posted back in April). We’ve been introduced to Gideon, so let’s meet some of the rest of the team.

The six-wheeled flatbed jerked to a stop, mud-caked brakes biting first not at all, then hard. Gideon smacked his head on the back of the seat in front, cursing quietly and wishing he hadn’t taken off his helmet. He leaned down and grabbed the strap of his pack, heavy with all manner of objects, some strange and others so mundane that he yawned just thinking about them. Through the door’s imperfect seal, he could already smell the stench of fuel and hot metal. Good to be home.

“Off your arses,” called Donoghue from the driver’s seat, unbuckling her belt and kicking open the stiff door. “Let’s get this shit sorted. I need a drink.” Gideon joined the desultory chorus of “Yes, Sarge”s and followed Yaxley out of their door, the huge man opening the heavy door with one hand and no visible effort. His sodden boots hit the concrete with a wet slap, but it was inaudible over the cacophony of the motor pool; of rumbling engines and shouting mechanics, backed by the atonal shrieks of twisting metal, the irregular drumbeat of a hundred hammers. The first few times Gideon had entered the colossal hangar he had been utterly overwhelmed – as he cast his eyes around he could see a few younger men and women who clearly still were, wincing at the noise, squinting at the blinding light from the vast neon strips that stretched all the way across the high ceiling of the hangar bay. Now, however, he barely noticed it.

He shouldered his pack and walked around to the back of the flatbed, joining Yaxley, Petra and Donoghue; some bright spark in Logistics had decided that they would be working split shifts this week as an ‘efficiency trial’ – rather than the whole squad of seven going out together, they would go forth in two groups of three or four. What Logistics had conveniently failed to take into account was the fact that only five of the squad was actually able to take to the field at a time – Handel hadn’t been in the field for months, and at least one engineer had to stay behind in the motor pool for repairs – and so, regardless of how they drew straws, someone was pulling a double every day. Because she was nothing if not ‘fair’, Donoghue had ordered that everyone take their share of extra shifts until Logistics moved onto its next bright idea, so everyone was losing sleep. The trial was, at least, doing a marvellously efficient job of reducing Salvage’s average life expectancy.

“Get them down,” Donoghue ordered, gesturing vaguely at the big crates of scrap metal and defused ordnance, all jumbled together. Gideon knew it had all been made safe, but he and Yaxley were still very careful as they heaved the big crates down and onto a collapsible four-wheeled dolly. They’d seen enough careless salvagemen to know they didn’t want to be among their number. Yaxley took one dolly by himself without complaint, and Donoghue and Gideon took the other, Gideon pushing from the back while Donoghue pulled, and they heaved their bounty up the ramp and out of the little vehicle bay that was the squad’s very own slice of the vast.

“All yours, Dawson!” Donoghue shouted. A broad-shouldered woman with round glasses and hair that was blonde under a thick layer of engine grease looked up from where she sat, perched on a big metal toolbox.

“When are we out again?”

“Two hours.”

Dawson swore and stood, hefting the toolbox and jogging down to their flatbed. Even over the roar of noise from the rest of the motor pool, Gideon could hear her cursing Donoghue, Gideon and every deity under the suns as she inspected the damage they’d doubtless done to the unreliable rustbucket. Donoghue ignored the engineer diplomatically. They’d all learned early on that it didn’t matter whether you were a grease-monkey or the Grand Marshal herself – if you hurt one of Dawson’s biodiesel-guzzling babies, you were in for one hell of a dressing-down. As the engineer knelt down and pulled out a socket wrench, Donoghue ushered them on. They crossed the hangar floor as quickly as they could, dodging squads of infantry jogging to their transports, ducking under mobile gantries hung with rebuilt engines and bits of armour plating, almost getting run over several times by the little electric runabouts that lazy officers favoured – and barely knew how to drive. At last, they reached one of the many exits, where they were stopped by a burly guardsman in the blue-grey fatigues of Internal Security.

“Sergeant Donoghue, Salvage Unit 7,” Donoghue said wearily, pulling her ID out of her fatigues and flashing it, “going to Redistribution.” Yaxley and Gideon pulled out their own IDs, and the InSec man let them through onto the treadplate floor of the cargo lift. The guard pressed the appropriate button, and the lift jerked into life, descending into the bowels of the earth, where the forges burned eternal.

“Bloody security theatre,” Donoghue growled to no-one in particular. “Nothing I’d like to steal more than a crate of scrap metal and a damn Salvage uniform.” Gideon grunted assent, knowing it was the safest thing to do no matter how he felt. Donoghue’s mood didn’t need to get fouler. He did agree that it was irritating; InSec’s insistence on guarding every lift and major entranceway slowed everything down interminably; but he knew there was good reason for it. Trust was in short supply these days, and the Great Cooperation really wasn’t helping. The lift ground downwards for what felt like an age, until the steel doors juddered open, revealing another, familiar hell. Gideon breathed in sweat and molten metal and sighed. It was, he supposed, the smell of home.

Great conveyors stretched the length of the big room, covered in scrap metal of all kinds, rolling inexorably towards the gaping mouths of the smelters, from which waves of heat pulsed constantly, the merest hint of the white-hot glow that bubbled in their bellies. Spindle-armed drones lined the belts, scanning the scrap with cunning sensors and plucking out any errant alloys or valuables that had slipped the net. Donoghue, Yaxley and Gideon ignored the dumb machines, trundling their heavy crates past the conveyors to those worthy of their time; their cousins, the quartermasters. Dozens of them strolled around heaps of scrap, sorting through broken weapons, leaking power cells, keen eyes plucking out anything worth using and tossing the rest aside. Some had drones following them, organising the discarded scrap into boxes to be poured onto the conveyors; some had human aides, many of whom were far too young to be in a place like this but were here anyway, building up their portfolios of lung diseases and hunched backs. There were piles of muddy rifles, heaps of power cells, stacks of tyres and bits of armour-plating – and, in a dark corner Gideon tried not to look at, the body-parts and whole corpses that were still occasionally missed by the medics and undertakers who swept the battlefields for the dead and dying. He shuddered, and looked away, pushing Atwell’s face to the back of his mind.

“Afternoon Sarge!” called a familiar voice, and even Gideon couldn’t help but smile. It was a warm voice, a welcoming voice, a voice so utterly out of place in the smoky, forge-lit room that for a moment Gideon thought he was somewhere else entirely; in some busy, oak-panelled pub, the voice that of a kindly landlord pulling pints.

“Piss off, Handel,” shouted Donoghue good-naturedly, and the illusion was broken, as Petty Officer Handel stomped out from behind a heap of rifles, trailed by a gaggle of soot-blackened teenagers.

“What’ve you got for us?” the older man asked, his hair silvering beneath the patina of oil and smoke that tarnished him head to foot.

“Scrap, mostly,” Donoghue replied, indicating the two big containers they’d dragged up from the flatbed. “Few rifles, bit of body armour. Yaxley found a bundle of mines. How many were working, Yax?”

“A few,” the big man rumbled, his voice sonorous. Handel nodded.

“Go on then,” he said, ushering his crew forward, and the half-dozen boys and girls made for the crates, upending them and beginning to sort through the mixed scrap metal. Their eagerness surprised Gideon, as it always did – unlike the rest of the quartermasters’ monkeys Handel’s crew actually seemed to want to be there. He treated them a damn sight better than most, that was for sure. Gideon saw an almost paternal smile on the older man’s face as he turned back to the squad.

“And what have you got for me?” he murmured, nodding slightly at their packs. Donoghue smiled.

“A few things.” She nodded, and Yaxley and Gideon unshipped their packs, followed by Donoghue herself, hefting them onto a nearby workbench – Handel didn’t bend too well these days. The squad’s quartermaster stumped across and pulled the first pack open with clumsy fingers, cursing as the alloy fingertips on his right hand struggled with the buckles. Gideon knew better than to offer help. The former infantryman managed it, and, after pulling out a few broken sidearms and a couple of helmets, slid out a gently glowing plasma reservoir from an AT rifle, muddy but undamaged.

“Very nice,” he muttered, and the canister disappeared into some hidden pocket. He might be missing both legs and half an arm, might be slow and clumsy in his movements most of the time, but Handel could pull off some impressive sleight of hand when he needed to. The rest of Yaxley’s pack was junk. Donoghue’s pack yielded a couple of exotic handguns, battered but clearly an officer’s matched set, which Handel tucked inside a flak jacket that was barely holed and slid into a satchel of his own.

“And this,” Donoghue said, opening Gideon’s pack herself, “is a little something from Gid here.” She pulled out a few bits of scrap, then carefully unfolded a spindly, blade-tipped arm. Handel whistled quietly.

“Bloody hell. That’s one for the bounty.” He took the blade in his artificial hand, metal fingers heedless of the razor-edge, tugged the T-27 a little further out of the rucksack. “Damaged?”

“Plasma fire,” Gideon replied, uncomfortable rather than proud. Just seeing one of the many blades again made him nervous. “I fried the brain, lower quadrant slagged, but otherwise it’s in good nick.”

“Then it’s one for the bounty for sure,” Handel repeated, a greedy smile splitting his face. Weapons like the lethal combat drones were difficult to get hold of, and thus highly prized by Union command, no matter which side they belonged to. Republic drones were held up as examples of how the rebels were willing to deploy weapons of terror on a legitimate battlefield – Union drones were quietly refitted for later reuse. In the spirit of cooperation that the ceasefire and reluctant truce was largely failing to foster, however, the Republic had been doing exactly the same thing with whatever drones they found – so Gideon supposed it would balance out.

Handel dragged the pack off the table and over to another workbench, where another skinny young man guarded jealously the quartermaster’s special stock. Gideon could see a few fusion mines there, half a suit of power armour – rare wargear, in other words, the kind of thing that the Union would pay Handel a bonus for once he handed it in. The quartermaster was cannier than that, of course – some men would sell off all their stock immediately, but Handel kept his back, waiting for the minor fluctuations in demand that would make his pieces worth that little bit more to the high command. In another life the man would have made a killing on the inter-systems stock market alone – and that was without his less obvious dealings.

“Cheers, Gid,” Handel said, stumping back over on his metal lower legs, crude and heavy. “I’ll ping your share once I get it.” Gideon nodded thanks. Even with Gideon’s larger portion as the finder, Handel’s bonus didn’t go far when split seven ways – but every little helped make life on the base that little bit more tolerable. Good thing he’s generous. What would make a difference would be their shares from Handel’s private supply, which, while rarer, were almost always much bigger.

“I’ll get these squared away,” Handel was saying to Donoghue, “before your next one. Who’s going out?”

“Not me,” Donoghue growled. “I need a shower. A long one.”

“You really do,” Handel replied, and Donoghue punched him on the shoulder lightly – and not only because she didn’t mean it. Gideon knew how much it hurt to hit metal like that.

“Piss off and make us some money, you old sod. I’ll see you later.” Handel gave Donoghue the finger as they walked away, but he was smiling. Old friendships die hard. Donoghue and Handel’s was an old one indeed; at least twenty years from what Gideon had been able to figure from scraps of conversation. She respected the old infantryman more than anyone else she knew – that much Gideon knew all too well.

They left the forge-room behind, Gideon breathing a little more easily when the oppressive heat was cut off by the closing doors. The Union had adapted it well, but it was always obvious to Gideon that humans weren’t really meant to be so close to the slumbering infernos of the vast fusion drives that, even banked to a fraction of their normal output, melted down scrap metal without the slightest effort. The lift slid smoothly upwards, unencumbered by their weight of scrap, deck after deck disappearing beneath them. Gideon let himself breath out, relax. With a little luck, he was done for the day. Their barracks beckoned; hot food, lukewarm showers, a hard bed; everything soldier or scavenger needed. If I’m lucky. He couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that his work wasn’t done yet. It was that kind of day.

The lift rose up, as Gideon’s spirits sank.

The Blackbird and the Ghost by Huw Steer

The Blackbird and the Ghost has been featured on Vince Lowry’s E-Author Resources blog!

E-Author Resources

PRAISE FOR ‘THE BLACKBIRD AND THE GHOST’:

“full of imagination… over far too soon” – Beauty In Ruins

★★★★★ – “a real page-turner” – The Voracious Bibliophile

The Boiling Seas are the mariner’s bane – and the adventurer’s delight. The waters may be hot enough to warp wood and boil a hapless swimmer, but their scalding expanse is full of wonders. Strange islands lurk in the steamy mists, and stranger ruins hold ancient secrets, remnants of forgotten empires waiting for the bold… or lying in wait for the unwary.

On the Corpus Isles, gateway to the Boiling Seas, Tal Wenlock, the Blackbird, seeks a fortune of his own. The treasure he pursues could change the world – but he just wants to change a single life, and it’s not his own. To reach it, he’ll descend into the bowels of the earth and take ship on burning waters, brave dark…

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Review: La Belle Sauvage

Given that The Secret Commonwealth, part 2 of The Book of Dust, is coming out on the 3rd of October, I thought I’d probably better get around to reading La Belle Sauvage, and as I’ve done that I thought I should share my thoughts on it. TL:DR; it was bloody good.

I haven’t read His Dark Materials in a while. I have read all three books several times – they were some of me and my sister’s favourites when we were younger, and I reread them a few years ago, but by the time I got to La Belle Sauvage the details of Pullman’s original trilogy had somewhat faded. As I began the book I was sucked once again into a beautifully realised Oxford – it’s very nice to spend a lot longer there than His Dark Materials allowed – pulled along by a beautifully realised protagonist in the form of Malcolm Polstead. He is inquisitive but careful, clever and insightful, and through his eyes the world first set in ink in Northern Lights takes on a new life entirely.

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It’s such a well-realised world, and so well-grounded through Malcolm’s eyes, that the story takes on a very different character to His Dark Materials – at least at first. This is a thriller, a spy story, where Northern Lights began a sprawling fantasy epic. Lyra walked alongside armoured bears and fought evil ghosts and angels – Malcolm evades enemy agents and struggles against a brilliant madman. The fact that I hadn’t read the original trilogy in a while certainly helped reinforce this feeling. Aside from the ever-present daemons and the occasional presence of an alethiometer, Malcolm’s Oxford is so well realised as to feel, well, real. Even when the great flood sweeps the world away, Pullman creates such a realistic disaster and gives Malcolm such true feelings that La Belle Sauvage still feels firmly grounded in reality.

Then the fairies turned up, and the underwater otherworld was entered, guarded by the servants of Father Thames, and I was just as swept away as Malcolm was by the sudden reappearance of the supernatural. I had genuinely forgotten how magical Pullman’s world was, and to be so vividly and suddenly reminded was shocking, but wonderful. I felt just as confused and awestruck as Malcolm and Alice – a real testament to Pullman’s writing.

My sole critique of the novel, really, is its ending. The tale builds to a great crescendo, the climax is reached – and then it is over, without even the slightest scrap of epilogue. I felt cheated by that, especially knowing that The Secret Commonwealth picks up almost twenty years later. I felt robbed of the chance to see what happened to Malcolm in the immediate aftermath, robbed of the chance to see him breathe, return home, to hint at what’s to come for this marvellous protagonist, and for Alice, and their daemons. Obviously the next part of Lyra’s story has been told – but I can’t help but feel that having to learn what happened to eleven year-old Malcolm from thirty year-old Malcolm is going to be immensely dissatisfying. I’m thrilled at the chance to see him again – I just wish that Pullman had written another day in his life, even a few hours. There was no room to breathe at the end. Northern Lights ended abruptly, but The Subtle Knife picks up almost straight afterwards. The Amber Spyglass had a long, slow ending before the jump forwards to The Secret Commonwealth, and I feel that La Belle Sauvage needed the same to be truly complete.

That said, I can’t wait for The Secret Commonwealth – especially as I had the chance to read the first few pages at Penguin the other day…

Best of British Fantasy 2018

The other day, a one does upon occasion I Googled my own name. I am blessed (well, maybe) to apparently be the only person with that name on the Internet, so I actually get results relevant to me (hooray!).

But hiding in the usual list of this website, Amazon links, and random job sites on which I’ve made profiles, was a little site called The Best of British Fantasy. And on it was a list. It was (annoyingly) a few months old. It was a list of honourable mentions for their 2018 anthology – not the actual stories included, but a recommended reading list for some of the best fantasy short stories of 2018.

And I was on it.

Specifically, ‘The Vigil of Talos’ was on it (from TFF’s Making Monsters). My story. Not one of the absolute best, in their opinion’s, of last year, but damn close. Close enough to recommend. Close enough to be worth a read.

Just thought that was pretty cool.

£0.99 Sale – SPFBO

Great news everyone: I’m in a big o’l £0.99 fantasy novel sale! Over 120 authors, from this year’s SPFBO, all have works available for less than a single pound!

“But Huw!” I hear you cry, “isn’t The Blackbird and the Ghost always priced at £0.99?” Well, you’re right, it is – but it continues to be so, and a load of other excellent books are joining it!

Do take a look – the sale is only running until the 20th of August, so get in there quick!

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Check out the sale here!

Actual Real Books II

They’re here, and the cover artwork fits, and the typos are gone, and they’re lovely and I’m very excited!

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Review: Episodic Sleep Disorders

I’ve recently had the pleasure of exchanging books with E.L. Haines, a delightful fantasy author (who I ran into on reddit, of all places!) of no little skill. As we both fancied a good read, we swapped our recent releases, read them, and threw together some reviews. We’ve saved the in-depth versions for our respective blogs – therefore, here’s my review of the excellent Episodic Sleep Disorders.

You can read Ethan’s review of The Blackbird and the Ghost here at his blog.

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The enigmatic – and diminutive – storyteller known as Sparrow first graced the printed page in Haines’ earlier Storytelling with Confidence. I made sure to read this too, of course, and it’s a good introduction to the character, grounding him in a fantastical world full of thieves and confidence trickery. He fits there fairly well – but it’s in the murky lands of mystery provided by Episodic Sleep Disorders that Sparrow really thrives.

Sparrow narrates the tale of his visit to the town of Lozère in what begins as a series of vignettes but quickly becomes an ever-more complex and absorbing mystery. The first ‘episode’ sets the tone beautifully: Sparrow walks into town and stumbles upon a bizarre and terrifying funeral service, following Lozère’s silent inhabitants from church to graveside and looking on in bewilderment and horror. Haines captures the sensation of confusion and fear perfectly – I was drawn in immediately to the mystery of the town, of its people. From there the episodes offer up yet more intriguing mysteries: the tragic past of the local barmaid; the terrible, unseen Beast of Lozère; a wagon filled with eyeless masks; the deadly scissors of Isengrim; each one drawing Sparrow and the reader into yet more speculation, and each one coming with its own terrible revelations and solution. The story is genuinely unsettling, as Sparrow stumbles across ever-more disturbing secrets; the action scenes are tense and exciting and his resolution of the cause of the town’s many terrors (no spoilers!) is beautifully conceived.

Haines’ descriptions are sumptuous and rich with detail – I was heavily reminded of the travellers’ tales of Jules Verne and his lavish descriptions of environments and characters. Sparrow often feels like a guide in such a traveller’s tale, relating the mysteries of Lozère with the glee of an experienced and gifted storyteller. It’s a credit to Haines that he, as a writer and teller of stories, is able to craft such a good storytelling character. At no point did I doubt Sparrow’s provenance as a wordsmith.

Episodic Sleep Disorders is not perfect, however. Unfortunately Haines follows Verne in more than one aspect; there is a point at which a lavish description becomes excessive, and the chapters devoted almost wholly to Sparrow’s breakfast and the anatomy of a local brewery are prime examples of this. The fact that these chapters come in the middle of the narrative serves to break the flow of the mystery, interrupting its steady build. On the whole, the extravagant descriptions are entirely in-character for the verbose Sparrow – but several times they veer into detail for detail’s sake.

There are also some odd anachronisms scattered throughout the text. Often, they serve to enhance the liminal feel of Sparrow’s world – it’s never quite clear where and when the book is set, with swords and daggers sharing space with gas-lanterns and industrial breweries – and this is entirely fine. I love the way that Sparrow’s world is undefined, nebulous; it only enhances the mysterious atmosphere of Lozère. But sometimes, like the extravagant descriptions, the anachronisms go too far, breaking the reader’s immersion. An extract from Sir Walter Scott fits just fine, but a reference to a “polyester suit”, or to a “cinematic” sight, just seem out of place in such a fantastical environment, as do the frequent (yet inconsistent) use of terms like ‘guys’ or ‘kids’ by characters who are otherwise well-spoken to the extreme. Haines’ overall tone is rich and verbose – but there are moments when it’s much less eloquent.

But this is, frankly, nit-picking. Overall, Episodic Sleep Disorders is a great book; an enthralling mystery that I couldn’t put down, with a likeable protagonist who is only outmatched in his compelling storytelling by his author. The mystery of Lozère is captivating, and Sparrow is the perfect man to unravel it. Read the book, follow him as he does – and listen to Haines’ advice at the start! This is a perfect story with which to unsettle yourself, chapter by chapter, before you sleep. I’ve done so once, and I’ll definitely do so again.

Paperback Writer

Dear Sir or Madam won’t you read my book

It took a year to write, won’t you take a look

It’s on Amazon now for £7.99

You can buy it now, so I guess I’m now a paperback writer

Paperback Writer…

(The Blackbird and the Ghost is now available in paperback. If you like physical objects made of paper this is the object for you.)

Buy the actual real book here!

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