BOOK REVIEW: The Cat Who Walked A Thousand Miles, by Kij Johnson; Nomad's Hollow, by Chris Jags; Unaltered, by JC Steel; Guardians at the Wall, by Tim Walker; Going Green, by Christine McMullen; The Redhead, The Rogue and the Railroad, by Jane Jago; and What She Said, by AM Leibowitz; Six Dreams About The Train, by Maria Haskins

 The first day of the New Year! And this is a hangover from last year. Not in the drank-too-much-the-night-before sense, alas. But this is a catch-up on my last remaining reviews from last year. Coming up soon will be my pick of my favourite books of 2021, but for now... let's start with a tale of a cat and a long walk...

The Cat Who Walked A Thousand Miles, by Kij Johnson

A thoroughly sweet tale, this tells the story of Small Cat, cut adrift from his community of fellow cats by a fire that rips through their home. With her community held together by stories, she sets off to find another family, one where her story might fit with theirs. 

It's an adventure that sees her face earthquake and fire, abduction and lost friendship as she makes her way to the top of Mt Fuji and beyond. 

At the heart of it is the importance of stories, and the importance of finding our own family and place in the world. 

For Small Cat, that also means finding a new name. A new identity. A new home. 

Charming, delightful and thoughtful. 

AI Rating: 5/5

You can read The Cat Who Walked A Thousand Miles free on the Tor website.

Nomad's Hollow, by Chris Jags

I blasted through this and its sequel, Cannonbrook, over the Christmas holidays, and after a rough year, this was a good way to end things. 

Faeries are cute, right? Well, no better way to start a story with cute critters than by a bunch of human knights coming in to chop them up. 

What do these little cute beings do in the aftermath of the slaughter? Find shelter then plot bloody revenge, of course!

It really zips by as a read - as does its sequel. I wouldn't normally be into stories about faeries, but these are mean little brutes and I'm fully on their side as they exact their vengeance on us mean old humans. 

AI Rating: 4/5

Nomad's Hollow is available on Amazon.

Unaltered, by JC Steel

I didn't quite know what to expect with this one when I started, so I was quite delighted when it turned out to be a splendid little sci-fi adventure, with a dash of Firefly here and a feeling of the old Traveller RPG too. 

It's part of a bigger series, but a great way to dip your toe into the Cortii universe. It tells the story of a horse rancher who has to wear a remarkable number of ridiculous outfits to seal a deal - and the deadly bodyguard watching his back who might be the one in most danger of all. 

It's not a long read, but it does a lot in the space it has to tell its story, hinting at the much larger universe while delivering an effective introduction and telling its own tale along the way. 

Nicely done, and a good way to try out the setting for new readers. 

AI Rating: 4/5

Unaltered is available on Amazon.

Guardians at the Wall, by Tim Walker

A story told across centuries, this book tells of the Roman soldiers of 180CE, and the archaeologists in the modern day uncovering their story. 

Centurion Gaius Atticanus faces a series of battles as he is stationed by Hadrian's Wall, while in the modern day, archaeology student Noah follows the trail of clues that might lead to the centurion's last act, and a treasure hidden for thousands of years. 

Both sides of the story are well told, though I'll confess I preferred the mystery of the modern to the action of the ancient. But no need to choose, we have both! The modern also works in secret lust, tentative romance and grand theft along the way. 

An intriguing way to tackle a story inspired by real history. 

AI Rating: 4/5

Guardians at the Wall is available on Amazon.

Going Green, by Christina McMullen

Published in 2014, my word does this land in a whole different way post pandemic. 

This is a satire about a zombie apocalypse, but boy it might as well be a manual describing how stupidity and selfishness can spread a deadly virus with the past two years as a prime example. 

Told in fragments throughout the apocalypse - World War Z style almost - we see people pretending not to have been nibbled here, the government trying to avoid the word zombie there, the rich trying to flee to safety elsewhere. 

It's witty, it's snarky, it's prescient and I found myself laughing before realising yes, that's exactly how dumb humans would be before slumping into gloom at how horrible we all are. 

If the world was a nail, this is the hammer that hit it upon the head. 

AI Rating: 5/5

Going Green is available on Amazon.

The Redhead, The Rogue & The Railroad, by Jane Jago

Jane Jago has a talent for characters. In this alternative history Western story, the lead characters have the kind of solid relationship you don't often see in books. They've had a rocky road in the past, but they can rely on one another, and pull one another out of the fire when need be. You can feel their history in the storytelling.

The story tells of Miriam and Cuchilo as they try to find out where the girls going west on the railroad are after they keep going missing. 

Along the way, they face all kinds of threats - including the influence of the Church. 

Part Western, part Noir, this is a really intriguing tale that you could easily see spinning off into more books involving Miriam and Cuchilo.

AI Rating: 5/5

The Redhead, The Rogue & The Railroad is available on Amazon.

What She Said, by AM Leibowitz

Sometimes in life there are moments that matter so very much. This collection of short stories dwells on some of those.

In large part, it's a series of vignettes, dropping in on moments of romance, of coming out, of realisation. 

While short, some of these really hit the mark, and it's especially nice to see stories such as these navigating life within the LGBTQ community. 

My only wish - which is never a bad one - is that we could have had more. The stories are gone too soon, and I wanted to stay a while longer. That said, the length may be slight, but for some these will be important moments. 

AI Rating: 3/5

What She Said is available on Amazon.

Six Dreams About The Train, by Maria Haskins

Maria Haskins is one of the best writers in the field today. That takes some saying, because this really is a golden age for short story writing. There are magicians who delight, conjurers who pop up worlds of magnificence and entertainers who bring a grin. 

Maria writes extraordinary stories. I bought this and... well, I couldn't read it quickly. I had to savour it. I had to let each story of pain and heartbreak and love and uncertainty settle in my bones before I could move on to the next.

There's And You Shall Sing To Me A Deeper Song, which creates a world of rogue military AI and the singers who silenced them - only to become unwanted weapons no longer needed in the aftermath.

There's the title story which binds together fragments of action with cords made of heartache and hurt, telling the short tale of imminent and unavoidable tragedy.

There's Cleaver, Meat and Block, which has made it into the best horror stories of the year anthology, telling of a world after a zombie apocalypse in which the zombies were cured, and those who weren't infected live side by side with those who ate their friends, their relatives.

Then there's one I had a hand in publishing originally, Tunguska, 1987, which tells its story across time periods about a man and his dog having a strange encounter in 1929 and picking up the after-effects of that in a world of 1987 where the Tunguska meteor contained something very different from in our own world.

It's a collection of beautiful, sometimes painful stories. There's an old story about two sculptors who are carving a piece of work. Both are asked what they're carving, and one says "A unicorn! It's beautiful!" and the other says "My heart." Maria is carving her heart with these stories to see what it shows. They are personal, and really linger with you afterwards.

Read this. It's wonderful.

AI Rating: 5/5

BOOK REVIEWS: Road Kills, by Isaac Thorne; Abandoned, by Tim Walker; The Ballad of Halo Jones, by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson; Generational, by Norman Turrell; Light's Rise, by Yvette Bostic; The Lift; Darkly Dreaming, by Chloe Hammond

Welcome, readers! Our latest selection of reviews covers Roman history and roaming killers, soaring space ships and snarky space heroines, angelic warriors and, perhaps, a devilish girl. But first, let's hit the road, with Isaac Thorne. 

Road Kills, by Isaac Thorne

I had the pleasure some time back of reading and reviewing Diggum, a short story by Isaac Thorne about a gravedigger with murderous intent - and promised myself I'd come back for more of his work.
Road Kills is a collection of his short stories, neatly ordered with a theme of tales that could take place out on the road, where the flash of headlights up ahead could bring a welcoming face or a dangerous stranger.
Some tales are linked - such as the saga of the pretty girl who snaps and goes on a murder spree through several of the stories here - others are standalone.
Particularly creepy was Bedside Manner, telling the story of a little boy haunted by the literal ghost of his father's past mistakes, full of the cloying fear that comes with a childhood bedroom plunged into darkness and parents absolutely failing to realise that the monster really is in the closet.
Hoppers is a revenge tale... about bunnies. For Buffy fans, maybe Anya's fears were well founded.
And sometimes the road is less travelled, such as the detour into space for Safety First, a story of first contact about to go horribly, horribly wrong.
Diggum reappears here too in two forms, both the original short story and a screenplay version. It's the best of the tales to be found in this collection, still as creepy as the graveyards its words frequent, but Bedside Manner is a strong challenger. Not all tales quite caught me - I wasn't keen on the social media-inspired Dislike, and the trio of stories about the killer girl Tiffany weren't my bag. But that's okay, any short story collection will have tales you love more than others.
Sometimes, you catch a single work by a writer and investigating further disappoints - that's far from the case here. I want more.

AI Rating: 4/5

Road Kills is available on Amazon here.

Abandoned, by Tim Walker

Blimey, this is thorough in its exploration of British history! Much credit to author Tim Walker for a well researched story looking at the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain - and the consequences it means for both sides involved.
Abandoned looks at the early part of the Dark Ages, and you can see the amount of effort the author has put in to ensuring accuracy.
The story hops through several of the characters involved in the era - which while helping to cover the scope of events of the time does have a tendency to dilute how we feel about the central characters. Also, I felt it could have used, to quote Elvis, a little less conversation, a little more action. The early part is slow but picks up as sides move into conflict with one another.
Stick with it and you'll find yourself drawn into the details of the battle, as the cut and thrust moves beyond the shaping of empires to the visceral desire to protect family.
In the end, this is a love letter to history, and a credit to the author's passion for his subject.

AI Rating: 4/5

Abandoned is available on Amazon here.

The Ballad of Halo Jones, by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson

I'm not even going to pretend this is a new book to me. I read this first of all issue by issue back when it first appeared in 2000AD. Those issues were much treasured, and well thumbed - so when the complete collection appeared on Kindle, I wasn't hard to convince.
Halo Jones is the heroine we need. Caught in a dead-end world with a family of best fit rather than genetic history, she's trapped. Bored. Almost numbed by an environment that stifles innovation, crushes emotion, drowns out aspiration in a mire of vid soap operas and at its worst leaves hollowed out drum-drum-drummers tuning out the world to listen to a non-stop beat.
But Halo Jones is different. Halo Jones wants out.
It's glorious to revisit the story after all this time, seeing the sub-plots as they play out, noticing the groundwork being laid for tragedy.
Through it all, Halo shines. It's a darn shame that Halo hasn't soared beyond the boundaries of the comic pages - barring for a title appearance in a Transvision Vamp track. She's kickass without being obviously badass. She's a feminist hero in a time when they were few and far between. She's the girl who got out.
The complete collection features three books in total - and they are left poised waiting... waiting... waiting for more. They'll never come now, I'm sure. Moore and Gibson have spent too many years since they left Halo hanging, and rights squabbles seem to have abandoned her on the shores of a distant planet.
But it's brilliant. She's one of the finest comic book characters ever created, and I've loved every moment of being able to hang out with Halo Jones once more.

AI Rating: 5/5

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available on Amazon here.

Light's Rise, by Yvette Bostic

Recently, I read the prequel to the Light in the Darkness series - of which Light's Rise is book one, and it was so entertaining I wanted to read more.
It's an innovative series - starting in the Napoleonic War when a young Austrian soldier finds himself confronted by literal demons. Not inner demons, but the human-consuming kind, and is soon enlisted in a war very different from the one he enlisted for.
He becomes part of a somewhat-superhuman team doing battle with demons across continents and across decades as the underworld creatures seek to subvert the world locked in warfare for their own ends.
The soldier, Darian, finds himself imbued with his own powers which he can use in the battle, as he and his comrades strive to save humanity.
The story is Christian-themed, but not heavily so. The hints of good v evil in the story are subtle and not preaching, and the whole thing reads as a light adventure - I could see it doing awfully well as a manga.
Dashing along at a fair clip, it's a real page-turner - and the finale sets up the next step in the series with... well, that would be saying, wouldn't it?

AI Rating: 4/5

Light's Rise is available on Amazon here.

Generational, by Norman Turrell

Norman Turrell is a thoughtful writer - and Generational is a tale that asks questions of our future.
Set aboard a colony ship orbiting Earth and preparing for its voyage, the story dwells less on the nuts and bolts of the science of the ship, and more on the social science of the humans aboard it.
An early, off-kilter encounter introduces lead character Leyton to a young woman whose role is, as she puts it, a breeder. Or more colourfully a "ghetto-ho" or "ship's bike". She seems unstable, and Leyton is whisked away from her - an early sign that not all is well aboard the ship.
Leyton becomes the explorer guiding the reader as the slightly twisted society on board is revealed - freed from the structures of society down below, the ship has developed its own paths, becoming possibly a powder keg ready to blow... or the only hope of Earth's survival.
It's an unusual story - and I think of that as a good thing. What shape will our future be, what route will our philosophies take us? These are the questions at the heart of Generational - a tale that asks the unexpected.

AI Rating: 4/5

Generational is available on Amazon here.

Darkly Dreaming, by Chloe Hammond

This is an unusual vampire novel. Two divorcees (or near-divorcees) are wrestling with the problems of mid-life, jettisoning their unfulfilling husbands and struggling with work and the prospect of trying to have children - when an encounter leaves them forever changed. They become vampires. Beautiful, ravishing vampires.
They proceed to try to make sense of their lives as they chart their unlife. Their vampire existence brings new passion, occasional accidental lesbianism, and a desire for growth. Eat, Prey, Love, you might say.
I must say this book is not for me - I feel I'm very much not the target audience. It's mildly racy and it's deeply wish fulfillment at work, but if that's what appeals to you, you might want to dip into the first pages preview.
I'm giving it three stars - but not being the intended reader for this, I wouldn't take that as a criticism. I like my vampires darker and more dangerous, whereas with this, being undead has never been so life-affirming.

AI Rating: 3/5

Darkly Dreaming is available on Amazon here.

The Lift, 9 Stories of Transformation

The Lift started life as a spin-off from the Wicked Library podcast - which I've reviewed elsewhere on the blog - but now it has sprung into life as a collection of short stories. Volume one of such in fact, with the tantalising promise of further volumes. 

There is more than a theme at work here, with each story revolving around the character of Victoria, a little girl who plays a music box and offers people a ride in her lift to places which... well, which vary according to the passenger. 

In Brothers' Keeper, for example, two bickering brothers relive the spectres of their carnival past, while creator Daniel Foytik takes a swing at Trump in Buying America. Human Monsters, meanwhile, ventures into an apocalyptic landscape. The settings are abundant, Victoria is the constant. 

The highlight stories for me were Meg Hafdahl's The Barren, a hard-hitting contemplation on infertility and the choices we make; the splendid Cake, by Nelson W Pyles, with that conversation we can never have, with one we have lost - even harder, with one we lost long before their death to the bitter split of a family; and The Final One, by Charles Rakiecz, a time-twisting tale of cause and effect in the crucial moments of personal history. 

Much love has also been poured into the anthology in terms of its presentation - artwork of the music box, poetry and sketches, and even the sheet music for the theme tunes of Victoria, and the sound of the music box itself. 

For that extra love, the book earns an extra star in my ratings - bringing it to a hearty five out of five. 

AI Rating: 5/5

The Lift is available on Amazon here.

You can hear the podcast here.