Alexander Gordon Smith's Blog, page 4

Book Review: The Mist in the Mirror

Mist in the Mirror, or just smoke and mirrors?

I read The Woman in Black last year, and it was easily one of the scariest ghost stories I have ever experienced – it was beautifully, masterfully written, and it left me with chills. I often read in bed at night, and I rate scary stories on how keen I am to leave my room and walk down the dark corridor to the toilet before I go to sleep. After finishing The Woman in Black I wasn’t quite brave enough to leave the safety of my duvet despite the fact that I was absolutely bursting for a wee. I just knew that if I was to set foot outside my bedroom she would be there, waiting for me…

That’s the power of a good ghost story. It totally seeps out of the pages and becomes real in your own world. A good ghost story is like the Grudge – it’s a contagious haunting. Those ghosts totally know who you are and don’t leave you alone. It’s terrifying, but it’s exhilarating too. It’s why we read them. And I was so hoping that The Mist in the Mirror (which was a Christmas pressie from my Mum, thanks Mum!) would have the same bladder-splitting, spine-chilling effect on me.

For a while, it did. It tells the story (well, the story within a story, as the book is told by a narrator reading Monmouth’s account of events) of Sir James Monmouth who, after spending almost all of his life abroad, returns to England. He intends to write an account of the explorer Conrad Vane, the man who inspired his travels, but the more he delves into Vane’s life the more dark secrets he uncovers about the man’s exploits – and the more he learns about his own forgotten childhood. The two are mysteriously intertwined.

There’s absolutely no doubt that Susan Hill is capable of spinning a fantastic tale. Her gothic style is brilliantly authentic. The world she describes is a world lost, but it feels so real. You’re right there in the heart of it. She is also a genius at creating atmosphere, permeating her words with a palpable sense of dread. There are moments of horror in this book, passages that literally leave you with a cold sweat. And it’s not always the obvious ones, either, the sightings of a ghostly, crying boy or the mist that swirls in the mirror. For some reason the passage in the book that chilled me the most was an apparently innocuous scene on a wooden bridge, and a flock of geese flying overhead. It was so real, so vivid, so imbued with atmosphere, that it gave me goosebumps (no pun intended).

It’s a great mystery, too. Conrad Vane is like a ghost himself in the sense that he dominates the story, and Monmouth’s life, even though he is long dead. The more Monmouth learns about him, the more imposing a figure he becomes. Hill really does keep us guessing about Vane, and about the explorer’s connection to the narrator’s own increasingly sinister childhood. It’s page-turning horror at its best.

Until suddenly you get to the end… And you realise that nothing has really been explained. Without wishing to give away any spoilers (which itself would be quite hard, considering how little is revealed), Monmouth’s investigations lead to a highly anticlimactic conclusion. It really does feel as if Hill had found her stride, built up towards a wonderful ending, then realised her favourite show was on the telly so finished with a couple of halfhearted explanations before rushing off to the sitting room. I finished the book and wondered if maybe I’d missed something, and it was only after checking other reviews that I realised I hadn’t. Who was the ghostly boy? Who was the spooky gypsy lady? What really did happen to Monmouth’s family? Nothing is truly answered. Worse still, the final scene in Monmouth’s story, which has the potential to be utterly terrifying, just peters out. It is so disappointing.

It’s maybe unfair to compare this to The Woman in Black, but it’s impossible not to. Whereas that book slowly charges up the atmosphere before releasing it in a brilliant, devastating ending, this one blows itself up then releases like a balloon, squeaking and whistling and farting itself to nothing. I finished it at about one in the morning last night, then happily got out of bed and went for a wee without the slightest trace of fear or anxiety. I didn’t even turn on the hall light. Such a shame!

Book Review: Zom-B

Zom-B! Awesome cover, awesome book!

As most of you know, I am a massive Darren Shan fan. His number one fan, in fact. He was hugely inspirational in starting me writing, and I now consider us friends, which is so awesome. And yes, I’m trying not to sound too much like Annie Wilkes when I say that…

I bought a copy of his brand new series Zom-B last year, but have had so much on (including reading and loving his new book for adults, Lady of the Shades, which I will review very soon) that I only found time to sit down and start it last night.

Start it and finish it, I should say. I couldn’t put it down! It’s a fantastic read. Quick, gripping, thrilling, vicious, and challenging too. More challenging than his previous work, I think, in a good way. Although it starts off in a very familiar fashion: poor Brian wakes up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a zombie apocalypse, and witnesses much limb-ripping, skull-splitting, brain-devouring nastiness – as well as a mysterious man with large eyes who seems to be immune to the walking dead. It’s a gory, intriguing prologue that reminded me of the start of Lord Loss, but from the end of this chapter the book takes a different route.

The main story follows B, a teenager with anger management problems and a severe disregard for authority. Worst of all, B is a racist. It’s easy to see why, because B has just about the most despicable, fascist thug of a father you could ever imagine, a brutish bully of a man who beats up his wife and child and who would gladly leave a baby to die if it wasn’t white and English. B is locked in a constant moral war between the need to please this nightmare of a dad and the need to do the right thing – a war that B is in danger of losing.

It is such a compelling story. So compelling, in fact, that I could quite happily have read a whole series about the relationship between these two characters without the added horror of zombies. (And that’s really saying something, because I love zombies!) It was a tricky thing for Darren to do, because there’s always the risk of creating something that reads like a school RE textbook on the danger of racism. But B is such a well thought out, realistic character that this never happens. B leaps from the page, brilliantly real because at times you love this character and at times you hate them. It’s been a while since I’ve had such a complex reaction to somebody in a book. The real horror in Zom-B isn’t the living dead, it’s just the living, and they can be so much worse.

But of course this is Darren Shan, so it doesn’t take long for the genre horror to find B’s world! And wow, Darren doesn’t pull any punches. The last part of the book is a non-stop ride on the gore train, and so much fun (in a horrific way)! I won’t say much, only that I always think there’s an easy way to differentiate between the various levels of horror out there: screams and spasms. Most scary books have screams in them, but you know the author is really going for the jugular when people spasm as their lives are being ripped away. And there is lots of spasming in this book! He also does for zombies what he has already done for vampires and demons – presents us with something at once familiar and brilliantly unique. These zombies are nasty!

It’s a fantastic read, and better still it’s the first instalment in a 12-book series so there’s much more to come. And when you finish this one you’ll be desperate for the next because there is not just one but two massive plot twists that will leave you reeling. Zom-B is a must for any horror fan, but more than this it’s a challenging book with some important questions, the most important of which, I think, is how much of our nature is determined by our parents and how much do we use this as an excuse for our actions? From what I hear about the books to come, it’s the first of many moral issues that will really force readers to challenge their own perception of the world, and of themselves.

So, in short, read this book!!!

Film Review: Berberian Sound Studio

It definitely has my favourite movie poster of the year!

I’ve been looking forward to this film ever since I watched the impressive trailer a few months back. I’m a huge Giallo fan, and this promised to be a fascinating, sinister, unsettling story set in the world of Italian horror cinema back in its golden days in the 1970s. I really, really, really wanted to enjoy this…

And in some ways I did. The story follows Gilderoy (played superbly by Toby Jones), a timid English analogue engineer who travels to Italy to work his auditory magic on a gory horror movie. And it starts brilliantly as he brutally assaults a number of vegetables in order to create the right sound effects (a brilliant insight into the work of foley artists). Marrows dropped onto the floor simulate somebody falling from a great height, knives are stabbed into cabbages, and radish stalks are ripped free in a convincing echo of somebody having their hair torn out.

The director, Peter Strickland, does a fantastic job of creating a claustrophobic and alien atmosphere. The people Gilderoy meets are increasingly hostile and unknowable. The whole film takes place inside the almost hermitically sealed studio where Gilderoy works, and inside his living quarters – two sets that are cleverly blurred into one another so we do not always know which is which. It is confusing at times, and that’s the point, because gradually, as Gilderoy works on this film (the only part of which we see are the awesome opening credits), he gradually begins to lose his mind – because by creating the sound effects for the crimes on screen, the artist begins to feel responsible for them. He becomes a complicit cog inside the nightmare factory.

It’s a very clever piece of filmmaking, with Gilderoy’s descent into madness captured perfectly in the breakdown of the film. His life, and the world of the movie he is working on, and even the film that we ourselves are watching, begin to overlap. I won’t say how, because the best parts of BSS are the surprising and innovative ways that Strickland causes the narrative to disintegrate and bubble up. And it’s fascinating how Gilderoy tries to remain in control. I think my favourite scene in the movie is when, in the midst of one frightening incident, Gilderoy moves towards his sound recorder as if he can simply switch it off and make things normal again. It is how he keeps his world under control, how he orders his life. It’s a brilliant piece of acting.

Despite all of this, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I can’t really put a finger on why, other than the fact that after the film had finished I didn’t feel the slightest bit emotionally attached to it. I was expecting the same feelings of unease that you get from a David Lynch film, the uncomfortable gut-tickling fear you have when you see a piece of cinema that truly rocks your understanding of the world. And I just didn’t feel it. For me, Gilderoy’s deterioration happened too quickly, there wasn’t enough of a narrative there, there was no real character development. Strickland, too, was maybe just a little too clever – I felt as if he had a whole heap of amazing ideas but blew them all too quickly. There was almost too much going on to fully appreciate each one. When the film finished – quite abruptly, I should say – my overriding feeling was that I had just watched another trailer for it. It left me hungry to watch a full, complete film.

Saying that, Lynsey loved it, and she has a much more eclectic, arty-farty taste in cinema than I do, so I think part of the problem is that I just wasn’t patient and clever enough to enjoy it for what it was. As Lynsey told me last night, a film doesn’t always have to make sense as a traditional narrative in order to work. And she’s right. If this had been a more conventional horror film then it probably would have been poo and I’d be moaning about the fact the director didn’t do something original with it. I guess there’s just no pleasing some people! There’s absolutely no doubt that it’s an impressive film, and that Peter Strickland is a wonderful filmmaker. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next!

Happy New Fear!!!! :-D

Unlucky for some...?

I can’t believe it’s 2013 already! How time flies!

Clichés aside, though, 2012 was definitely a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it one. I hardly feel like I’ve stopped for breath. It has been an amazing year, though, with so many exciting things, and I feel very lucky and very privileged to have experienced all the things I have done. Thanks to everyone who made 2012 so awesome!! I hope you guys all had a great one too.

And what does 2013 have in store? I’m hoping it will be another exciting one. The Fury will rage on both sides of the Atlantic, Furnace is reissued in the UK with brand new covers, I’ve got a US tour in the summer and maybe a trip to Brazil later in the year, our feature film Stagnant will – hopefully – get in front of the cameras, and there’s some more film news too that is all hush hush at the moment, but still massively exciting. Oh, and a new horror action series, but it may be 2014 before this one hits the shelves. So all in all it really will be a Happy New Fear!!

Oh, and there’s Far Cry 3 to play as well…

There are also my New Year’s resolutions, which traditionally have to be broken at some point in January. I make and break the same ones every year, so this year I’m going to try something different. My first resolution is NOT to get fit. And my second is NOT to become a squillionaire. So hopefully I’ll break these resolutions too.

Have you guys got any cool plans or resolutions for the year? Good luck with whatever they are. I hope you all have an amazing 2013 and get everything that you could ever possibly want!

January 1st. It’s just another day, of course, but I do think there’s something special about it. I like starting over, starting fresh. I like the feeling of optimism and excitement that the new year brings. It’s like an extra Christmas, as there are 365 beautiful shiny new days in front of you. Enjoy them, explore them, have fun with them. They’re your days.

Happy New Year everyone!!

Fan Art Friday No. 2!

I just wanted to show you guys this absolutely amazing cover design for Lockdown, created by a young graphic designer called Skylar Brown. I love it! In fact I love it more than some of the actual cover designs we’ve had for Furnace! You’ve obviously got a great future in design, Skylar, and I look forward to seeing what you do next!

Thanks for picking Lockdown for your project!

An Awesome Cover!!

Fury (and cake) in Manchester!

I’ve been to pretty much every city in the UK to do events, but Manchester was a very notable exception, so I was thrilled to be able to do a mini-tour up there this week! My girlfriend, Lynsey, went to uni in Manchester and she loved the city (although she did tell me that at some point I’d probably be mugged, which was based on her own experience as a student when she was mugged for a pizza, which I kind of pointed out wasn’t exactly a real mugging…), and I was dying to have a good look around.

The best book shop in Manchester!

My events were all outside of the gorgeous city centre, arranged through the absolutely wonderful folk who run the Urmston Bookshop, Peter and Frances. I just want to give a shout-out to them, because their shop is gorgeous. Amazing books, a great atmosphere, friendly faces, and a cafe that serves homemade cake!!! What more could you ever want? Now, I know that all independent bookshops are great places, but this one is amazing, and well worth a trip. Next time you’re browsing Amazon and you’re about to add something to your basket, head up the road and pop in to Urmston Bookshop instead, you won’t regret it!

My first event was on Tuesday, at Chorlton High School. I even got to perform in their theatre! I followed this up with a horror creative writing workshop for some awesome students. Some fantastic stories, and enough to give me nightmares… Well done, guys! It was great fun, and they rewarded me with chocolate!! I think I may make this my new payment system – don’t worry about the money, just fill a bag with sweeties and I’ll be happy!

CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!!!!!

The next morning Peter picked me up and drove me over to the Well Acre Academy, where I did another show for a brilliant audience. Thanks guys! We popped to the book shop for lunch where I got FREE CAKE!!!! Once again, I was a happy man. It’s no wonder I always put on weight when I’m away. We did make up for it with a very healthy lunch before dashing over to the extraordinarily named Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College for the final show of the day. I often worry about doing my talk (guns, explosions, puking, angels that eat people…) at Catholic schools because the teachers sometimes frown at me, but these guys were awesome! Thank you!

That night I went to dinner with Peter, which was lovely. Usually when I’m away I eat alone, unless I know people in the area. And there’s nothing more tragic than a lonely author sitting on his hotel bed watching telly and stuffing his face with a kebab… So anyone reading this who is organising an event for me, hint hint…

My final show was on Thursday, at the Ashton on Mersey Grammar School. It was another fun event, and more questions than I knew what to do with (I think you lot would have kept asking questions until the end of the month)! I stayed behind for the longest signing of the week, which was nice. It was great to meet you all!

It was a whirlwind trip, but I managed to run around the Imperial War Museum before I had to head home – a fantastic place if you ever have the chance to visit. Then I found the most awesome restaurant on the way to the station. It was a Chinese / Indian / Japanese / BBQ / Italian all-you-can-eat buffet, and I tried pretty much everything! I kind of regretted it on the five-hour train journey home, but in a way it was great because the seat next to mine was the only empty seat for the whole journey…

A huge thanks to all the schools, pupils, teachers and librarians for making me feel so welcome, and to Peter and Frances at the Urmston Bookshop for being awesome. It was great to finally see Manchester, and I’ll be back again soon!

Doggy Would Be Proud!

Not the Reading Music Festival, the Aylsham Reading Festival (which is loads better, if you ask me).

It’s always lovely doing events in places where you spent a lot of time as a kid, and yesterday was one of those occasions. I was invited out to the Aylsham Reading Festival, courtesy of Gail from Waterstones and Jo from Aylsham High School (thanks guys!). When I was young (about six, seven and eight I think) I used to live out in a little village called Colby, and Mum used to drive us in to Aylsham all the time to go to the market, get our groceries and pick up some bonbons from the little sweet shop (one of my fondest memories of childhood, which isn’t surprising, really, considering how much I still love sweeties and cake).

Aylsham is also the place where I found my most favourite teddy bear of all time. He wasn’t really a bear, he was a dog. And I gave him the imaginative name Doggy. My sister, Kate, got a teddy bear from the same place (which was actually a bear and yup, you guessed it, she called it Teddy). From that point on Doggy and Teddy became the very best of friends, and we invented a whole backstory to go with them. I, being the annoying, bullying older brother, made Doggy a multi-billionnaire mega popstar. And Teddy became a downtrodden, slightly smelly street urchin who Doggy deigned to live in his vast mansion. We spent hours playing with them, and their coterie of followers (Big Black Teddy, Big Brown Teddy, yeah, we really weren’t great at names…). I honestly think that acting out those stories with the teddies as a kid is one of the reasons I fell in love with writing and storytelling. It was just so much fun.

Anyway… I did think about taking Doggy out with me yesterday. I decided against it, though, because I didn’t want to look like a weirdo (or at least any more of a weirdo). I think he was proud of me, though. It was a fantastic day of events. I did a talk in the marquee, then a horror-writing workshop to a room full of incredibly creative and talkative children (and parents). I got to meet Dave Shelton, too, whose new book looks absolutely fantastic, and my old pal and awesome poet Molly Naylor was there doing a talk and a workshop. All in all, a fantastic lineup! Thanks to everyone involved for inviting me out!

Sadly, though, the little sweet shop was no longer there. And I missed out on homemade cake, too, because by the time the event was over the stall had gone. I had to quell my rage with two Double Deckers from the garage on the way home.

I had a very interesting meeting in the evening about Film Stuff for next year, too, but more on that very soon. It does look like something cool will be happening with Fear Driven Films in 2013, though…

Ireland!!!

I wrote this guest post for the CBI blog but I thought I’d put it up here too (to save me having to write another blog)!

Mini Me!

Getting to go on tour is one of the best parts of being an author, and there are certain places that I absolutely love to visit as much as possible – Edinburgh, New York, and of course Dublin. The first time I visited Dublin was a couple of years ago, and I flew in on St Patrick’s Day. My first event was on the morning after, and out of two schools that were supposed to show up one came with half a class, and the other one didn’t show up at all, apparently because the teachers were off sick…

It was still a wonderful experience, and I’ve been looking forward to coming back ever since, so I jumped at the chance to be part of the spectacular CBI Children’s Book Festival! My event took place in Ashbourne Library, and this time I had a full house of truly awesome pupils from local schools. I talked about writing, reading, making scary masks to cure writer’s block, playing video games, exploring haunted houses, coming up with ideas, how anybody can be a writer and, last but not least, how writing is the best job in the world because you get to shoot cow pats with shotguns and call it research.

There were some brilliant questions and a signing too. It was fantastic to see so much enthusiasm for books and for writing, and there were definitely some future bestselling writers in the audience. Remember, just never give up on your dreams! I followed this with an event at Wesley College, which was great fun (even though I had to fit my talk into twenty minutes, speaking non-stop at roughly thirty words a second, which I think left a few people dazed and confused). Thanks to everyone who came to my events, and to the delightful Aoife Murray for looking after me!

The day wasn’t over yet! I enjoyed pizza and drinks (and cake!) with the amazing David Maybury, Carrie Anderson and Juliette Saumande from Inis Magazine, and I got invited to the premiere of Frankenweenie, which was great! It summed up why I love this city so much – it’s always full of pleasant surprises, fun and friendly people, great food and drink (and cake!), and endless laughter. And that’s just what you need when you’re a horror author and you spend all day holed up writing about monsters, mayhem and murder…

Thanks to CBI for inviting me over, and to the amazing people of Dublin for making me feel so welcome. Hopefully I’ll see you all again soon!

Read the original post here, and check out the other stories on the brilliant CBI blog. Oh, and I also got interviewed at the Frankenweenie premiere, talking about how my dead cat came back to life, which you can see here!

Oh, and I didn’t poo myself with terror on the flights there and back, which I always consider to be a bonus!

Festival Frenzy!

I’m just back from a couple of days in Dublin for the truly wonderful CBI Festival. I’ll be blogging about it imminently, but until then here’s a roundup of some of the other festivals I was at over the summer!

First up was the Guardian Pop-Up Festival in London, where I ran a zombie workshop. I thought it was a workshop for zombies, so did my best to look the part. But it was actually a spooky creative writing workshop for young writers. Still, it’s always nice to dress up! I even made up a zombie quiz to work out exactly what kind of zombie you are, which was fun. I think I ended up being a demonically possessed zombie who eats nothing but livers and cheese, who travels on the bus, smells worse than a rubbish bin and who spends his days trying and failing to get into the best parties. Which actually sounds a little bit like me…

Livers and Cheese, mmmmmmmmm...

I did a couple of really fun events for the Stratford-Upon-Avon Literary Festival, including one in Shakespeare’s old school. How awesome is that! While I was down there I got a chance to look around Warwick Castle, which looks like something out of Game of Thrones. That’s one of the best things about being on tour, you get to do the touristy stuff!

I did have an audience, honest...

Following that I was down in south London for the East Dulwich Literary Festival, which was thoroughly enjoyable, even though I got totally lost and ended up pretty much jogging up the road in the blazing heat to get there on time. I was NOT a pretty sight when I arrived… (There is a picture, but it will give you nightmares.)

I was back in London for Tales From Moon Lane, one of the coolest and most enjoyable events I have ever done. It was organised by the lovely people who run the shop, and the ever-awesome David Maybury and the CBI crew Carrie and Nicola. There were some lovely other authors there too, including Sarah Webb, whose books my daughter absolutely adores. I was originally scheduled to have a cage fight with Derek Landy, but he was running late (if you ask me, he was just a little nervous about facing me so cowered in his limo around the corner for an hour or so until it was safe to come out) so I did the warm-up act in preparation for his main event. It was SO much fun, and great to be able to meet the legend that is Landy. He didn’t seem so pleased to meet me, though (ask me, that’s just a look of terror on his face)!

Is that fear in his eyes...?

Last, and certainly not least, I was back up in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It’s my absolute favourite festival of all time – an amazing city, fantastic people, enthusiastic audiences, the most wonderful atmosphere, and whisky! This year I was doing an event with Susanne Winnacker, author of The Other Life, chaired by the irrepressible Eve Harvey. We had an brilliant audience of about 200 people, and spent a very enjoyable hour chatting about horror, apocalypses, nightmares, and what our plans were for a zombie invasion (mine involved a sledgehammer and a boat, which in retrospect seems like a bad combination). Thanks so much to everyone who came to see us! Oh, and Susanne’s book is great, well worth a read – guns, monsters, conspiracy, and a smidgen of romance, what else could you want? It was so great hanging out in the the author’s yurt before and after the event, especially as there was free booze. Thanks to Janet and Eve and the rest of the festival staff, I love the EIBF so much!

Me, Eve and Susanne!

The absolute best thing about this year’s festival event, though, was that one of my fans travelled all the way up from Manchester to see me. Lizzii even brought me a couple of presents. It was so cool! I sat out in the sun with her and her mum for hours chatting about writing and reading and music and loads of other stuff. Thank you both for coming to see me! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my fans are my heroes. They’re what make this job so amazing. And Lizzii, you’re one of the best! Oh, and I think we agreed officially that she could marry the warden.

Pure fan-tasticness!

A HUGE thanks to everyone who invited me to do events, I feel so lucky to be able to be a part of so many fantastic festivals!

Back in the Real World!

Editing feels a bit like Sisyphus being told he doesn't have to push the rock up the hill any more, only for Sisyphus to say, "Actually, I'll just do it a few more times to make sure I got it right..."

 

I’ve been editing. Which means I have been in hell. It’s weird, it’s something that has to be done with each and every book, but I seem to hate it even more each and every time. It’s not that I’m precious – I don’t mind the books being changed and cut down. It’s more that I’m just lazy. When I finish writing a book I feel like I’ve, well… finished it. The story is done, set in stone. I take a deep breath and step back onto planet Earth where all my friends and family are patiently waiting for me. That feeling is great, because most of the time (or all of the time) bad things happen in my books. Horrible things. And when you’re writing you really feel like you’re in there, smack bang in the middle of the nightmare. It’s an exciting process, but it’s always a relief to get out of the other side with your life and all your limbs.

Editing feels a bit like running back in to a burning building to make sure the flames are in the right place. Or leaving your safe hideout and going off in search of the monster / vampire / serial killer that you have only just escaped. It’s not like reading a book, because you still have the power to change things. But some of the things you might want to change, like characters who perish in the action, you can’t, not without ruining the story anyway. So it’s like having to go through the whole gruelling, exhausting, terrifying adventure all over again. It’s like being back there with your characters (who, by this point, are your friends) and saying “Wow, look guys, we’ve gone back in time, we can do things differently! Oh, except for you, you still have to die horribly. Sorry about that!” For ages I’ve been trying to work out why I hate editing so much, and it has literally just occurred to me that this is the reason. It’s the responsibility of having to change the story, but the inability to make things any better for the characters inside it. It is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Anyway, I’m rambling, sorry! Editing also does that to me. I spend so long muttering to nobody but myself that I come out the other side of it chattering like an excited dolphin to anyone who will listen.

There will be more news on The Fury soon, including some awesome new covers! But, to answer some questions that I know will be coming, here’s the deal with how it’s going to work on both sides of the Atlantic:

In the UK, it will be two books: The Fury (which is already out, yay!) then The Storm (coming out in March 2013).

In the US, both of these books have been condensed into one monster of a read, which is just going to be called The Fury. And that comes out in March or April 2013.

So, if you buy the US version of The Fury, it will have both The Fury and The Storm inside it (bargain)!

But, of course, before we get too excited about the Fury, remember that Escape From Furnace: Execution comes out in the US IN JUST OVER A MONTH!!!!!! Keep an eye on the official Lockdown Facebook page for some competitions to win free copies!

More soon!