Review
The story of the aftermath of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Theatre of Pompey in 44BC is a familiar one, possibly the most famous of all Roman tales thanks to Shakespeare and Hollywood. For Conn Iggulden, though, it represents the inevitable and natural culmination of his superb series Emperor, which has brought alive the rise to power of the god Julius and now, in The Blood of Gods, depicts his fellow Romans slipping in his blood, scrambling for position, giving way under the indomitable obsession for revenge wielded by his adopted son Octavian, the new Julius Caesar – Rome’s first emperor in everything but name. The story might be familiar but Conn Iggulden brings a context to it, to Octavian’s dramatic rise to power, as well as a poignancy thanks to all that we have learned over previous books about Caesar’s deep friendship with Brutus, the final assassin. We can’t forget Mark Antony here either. Iggulden replaces the famous speech of Shakespeare’s Antony with a piece of gutwrenching theatre performed over the corpse of his friend. The die is cast and we’re on the road to Philippi before you know it.

The familiarity of the novel’s story is offset by Conn Iggulden’s perceptive insight into the characters of Caesar’s friends and enemies. This is especially true of Octavian, renamed Julius Caesar in the days following the killing. We are first introduced to Octavian and his brave and loyal friends Maecenas and Agrippa on leave in Greece. Their behaviour, which speaks large of bravery, honour and drunkenness, immediately has to readjust itself as Octavian learns of events in Rome. He is transformed into a young man with a mission. He is a poor man and so must use all his guile to win over support. It’s not possible to doubt for a minute that he won’t achieve power and the fulfilment of his oath to avenge his adopted father. Octavian is a fine creation here who comes into his own more and more as the chapters progress, mirroring the increasing confusion of Mark Antony. Both, ingeniously, are very likeable.

Mark Antony, a consul, is a man who holds great authority and wants to do the right thing by Caesar but knows that he must use all his charisma and intelligence just to stay alive. As the forces of Rome realign and ajust, these are dangerous days. Even facing each other across the battlefield is no guarantee that you know what side you’re on. You could almost feel pity for Brutus and Cassius but in The Blood of Gods the time for sympathy for Brutus’ ideals is past. In this book, the focus is very much on the complex character of Octavian instead.

There are some fantastic set pieces in The Blood of Gods. In addition to the famous last battle, there is also a harrowing sea battle led by Agrippa. This is real heart in the mouth action and while the creation of a new fleet should seem not out of the ordinary for the builders of the Empire’s network of roads, its heroism and gall is pounding. The horrifying battle sequences complement well the political machinations of Rome just as the combat exists side by side with great oratory. The manipulation of Rome’s masses is as important as prowess on the battlefield.

It’s been over five years since the publication of the last Emperor novel, The Gods of War. Now the story ends at last, just a few months short of Iggulden’s move to Penguin for the launch of his new Wars of the Roses series. There is indeed closure here. You can feel it in the few scenes with Brutus and Cassius, in the shifting of Mark Antony as he tries to find his own place of comfort and power, and in the resolution of Octavian Caesar to proclaim his adopted father a god, his assassins all slaughtered. Above all, though, The Blood of Gods is an enormously confident and accomplished novel that achieves the near impossible task of placing you, the reader, in the very heart of this most fascinating time in Roman history as a witness to the actions of its greatest men.

Review
In 1351 BC, Akhenhaten, the Sun-Pharaoh, vanishes into the desert, leaving clues to his mysterious disappearance in the sands beside the Nile. In 1884, a British soldier serving in Sudan discovers the remains of a submerged temple dedicated to a god fed by human sacrifice. The soldier’s mission, though, is to reach General Gordon in Khartoum which is under siege by the forces of the enigmatic Mahdi. What he takes from the temple may be lost. In the present day, maritime archaeologist Jack Howard undertakes a dangerous dive into the Nile waters on the hunt for not only Akhenaten but also this Victorian British soldier, Major Edward Mayne of the Royal Engineers, who carried his own secrets.

It’s been a while since the publication of a David Gibbins novel but Pharaoh is well worth the wait. The last book in his Jack Howard thriller series, The Gods of Atlantis (review here), seemed to me to have an element of closure about it, bringing to a conclusion a circle that began with the first of the novels, Atlantis. In Pharaoh, Gibbins picks up a theme he visited in The Tiger Warrior in 2009, the history of Howard’s namesake and great great grandfather who served in the British Army in the the late 19th century. Gibbins here expands this to create an utterly absorbing historical adventure set in the Sudan in the 1880s. The original Howard is not a main player but he does give his descendant, our Jack Howard, a path into this fascinating period of British Imperial history. The thriller element that sat rather uncomfortably (I thought) in some of Gibbins’ earlier novels is at last allowed to have a rest, popping up here and there when needs be, but allowing itself to be replaced by what David Gibbins does best and does so well: historical adventure and archaeological mystery. When the adventure is as exciting as it is here, it is too good not to be allowed to speak for itself.

Following an introduction set in ancient Egypt, the novel is divided between modern day Egypt and Sudan and its Victorian past, when the British army was attempting to float or drag a small armada of boats through the cataracts of the Nile into the Sudan. They were in the perfectly awful position to be picked off one by one by the snipers of the Mahdi. Luckily for the British, they have with them the sharpest shooter of them all, Mayne, who, with his Native American scout Charrière, is on a mission from highest command to reach General Gordon. Mayne’s fascination for ancient Egypt has to take second place.

Almost a century and a half later, Jack Howard and his good friend and colleague Costas are on the trail of Akhenaten, along this same stretch of Nile, now mostly inundated since the construction of the Aswan Dam. They pick up the scent of Mayne and follow the story to its conclusion.

Jack and Costas, as always, are thoroughly good company. Their humour and ease together is matched only by their bravery and by their expertise. In previous novels, Jack’s lengthy (albeit very interesting) explanations of archaeological and historical details can cause the action of the stories to flounder but here that is not the case. The archaeological diving scenes are so well done, perfectly capturing the thrill, danger and claustrophobia. What takes precedent here, though, is Mayne’s story and it is so exciting and gripping, I could not stand to put the novel down. This is a period of British and Egyptian history I know next to nothing about but Gibbins here brings it to life, intensifying how almost alien this environment must have felt to the British (and American) soldiers dragging the boats through the crocodile-infested waters by bringing in glimpses and clues to the exotic ancient history that surrounded these men on their dangerous journey.

The Battle of Abu Klea is included here and I recall very few battle scenes I have read that are as intense as this one, if any. I was actually shocked by it and totally absorbed. Mayne is a fine creation but so too is General Gordon. We meet other famous men such as Kitchener but General Gordon comes alive in a way I wasn’t expecting.

Pharaoh is a superb novel. When I finished it, I remarked that I would have love to have read another 500 pages. Fortunately, the story will continue in Pyramid and I am guessing that this sequel will be much more focused on Howard and Costas (in extremis, no doubt).This seventh Jack Howard novel is most definitely the finest amongst a series of great books. Put aside your assumptions of what a thriller should be and instead immerse yourself in one of the best historical adventures you’ll read this year.

Other review
The Gods of Atlantis

Review
The 11th century in England was a time of invasion, conquest, subjugation and tyranny. Kings had to rely on bribes, military might, persecution and guile to claim and hang on to the throne and the one period of relative calm – the reign of Edward the Confessor in the middle of the century – was sealed by the most infamous invasion of them all. English, Vikings, Danes and Normans all believed they had a stake in the land and, while this caused uncertainty and upheaval amongst the upper levels of society, it also brought catastrophe into the lives of the people of these islands.

In Three Kings – One Throne, Michael Wills examines these difficult years, this transition from Saxon and Viking to Norman and medieval, through the lives of two contrasting men: Torkil, the grandson of an Anglo Norse Thane on the Isle of Wight, who becomes the swordsman of Harold Godwinson, and Ivar, a Danish slave to prince Harald, whom he follows to Byzantium. It would seem, though, that all roads lead to Hastings and that is indeed where the novel takes us.

Three Kings – One Throne is a short novel but every page is filled with historical detail and knowledge. Not a line feels unconsidered and there is a strong sense as you read it that this is indeed how people of mixed classes and fortune lived, from the clothes on their backs, to the food they ate, ships they sailed and also their loyalties to clan, lord or king.

This air of authenticity that Michael Wills is so careful to create is also, for me, the difficulty with the novel as a story. As a piece of historical writing it is fascinating but as a story it felt far less successful. I’m not a fan of footnotes in a novel unless they serve a literary purpose (as with Pratchett), but here there are many of them and all they did was throw me out of the story. Such details – mostly translations – have a happier existence in a glossary where I can consult them when I choose. There are other devices which serve history far better than the characters. For instance, Torkil’s grandfather spends his deathbed days telling his daughter and grandson in every meticulous detail his life story from the beginning of the century. While what we learn is fascinating and gripping – his mother tried as a witch, raids and persecutions and so on – it suffers from the circumstances of its telling.

Matters aren’t helped, as Wills states himself, by two major characters sharing such similar names. It is difficult to avoid a confusion over the Haralds and Harolds.

Where Three Kings – One Throne succeeds is in its sincere and historically faithful (as far as I could tell) recreation of history during one of the most utterly absorbing periods of English history. Clearly, Michael Wills has much to teach us about these years and the men and women who suffered and fought through them. I would suggest, though, that he keeps more of an eye on the needs of a reader who wants to be taken away from the pages of a history textbook and thrown into the heart of such a potentially compelling human tale.

I was very pleased to be invited to be part of the Blog Tour for Three Kings – One Throne!
Yesterday’s post: Sir Read-A-Lot
Tomorrow’s post: Paula Peruses

Michael Wills’ website.

Review
The drama and violence of the English Civil War sliced families to shreds – both literally, on the battlefields and in fiercely contested streets, and psychologically, brother pitted against brother, father against son. Mothers, sisters, wives left with the shell of a home to maintain and facing very real danger themselves. This human tragedy is brought starkly into focus by Giles Kristian in his series begun with The Bleeding Land and now continuing with Brothers’ Fury. The land that bleeds is England and the brothers are Sir Edmund (Mun) and Tom Rivers. Mun fights for Prince Rupert and the crown while Tom belongs to Parliament. Neither fight for ideology, instead the elder fights for tradition and the good name of his father and the younger, Tom, for a mad and dark vengeance, inspired by Lord Denton, the barbaric aristocrat who killed his true love.

In the middle is sister Bess, a young woman and new mother of a baby that has lost its father. Bess is driven by her own goal – she will travel the torn, unsafe land to find Tom and reunite him with his brother. Supported by peasant Joe and Alexander Dane, an enigmatic and dangerous hand hired by her grandfather to protect her, Bess sets off into the heart of enemy territory. Meanwhile, both Mun and Tom have their own battles to fight and missions to accomplish, as they get caught in the politics and deception of civil war when there is almost none to trust and propaganda can play an equal part with guns and swords.

At the heart of Brothers’ Fury are Tom, Mun and Bess but they are supported by a host of vivid and colourful creations, men and women fighting their own cause and surviving as well as they can, some even profiting. The conflict within the Rivers family is mirrored in others, notably Lord Lidford and his young son Jonathan who slowly comes into his own through the pages, achieving great feats of bravery. War makes a man grow up fast. We have some of the familiar characters from The Bleeding Land, especially Mun’s loyal men. It’s a fair bet, though, that not all will survive to the next. Others are not at all what they seem, for good or for bad. Many, though, you will remember.

Giles Kristian is a master storyteller. In addition to an army of characters, he also brings places to life, most vividly here, London. Lichfield, Oxford. The research is worn lightly but effectively. As someone born and bred and living in Oxford, I know the streets well and I now see my own town very differently thanks to Brothers’ Fury. The segment of the novel set in Oxford will bring you to the edge of your seat and it was extra special for me to follow the chase through streets with old, now disused names, passing colleges or pubs that I know well. The Lichfield chapters put my heart in my mouth due to the horrific conditions endured by those on the defence and those on the attack. It’s hard to imagine (thank heavens) how utterly terrifying and dangerous it would have been to tunnel under the walls of a town while under bombardment.

The violence and drama are paired perfectly with the very human story of the two brothers and their sister. At times the events they suffer seem extreme, even touched by melodrama, but then you take a moment and realise that it is very likely that the truth would have been far stranger than fiction. That during the English Civil War behaviour took place in our streets, between neighbours, that we could not comprehend. Recently, I visited Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. The church has bullet scars on the exterior of the walls, the result of fighting through the streets. Similar scenes would have taken place across the country, no matter the size of the town.

Despite the horror of it all, and these are dark times indeed, there is hope and there is even humour. This comes through the endurance and camaraderie between men on both sides. There are also little moments of gold when Kristian makes reference to other characters from beyond these pages that, if you’re a fan of other English Civil War fiction, you’ll be delighted to pick up on. Look out, too, for references to Kristian’s other work, his superb Raven trilogy. In other words, keep your wits about you and you’ll be rewarded.

Brothers’ Fury is a highlight of 2013 for me, just as its predecessor The Bleeding Land was for 2012. I would argue that Giles Kristian has reached greater heights in Brothers’ Fury. The story is told with greater confidence and the vision is expanded, fitting little crucial adventures within a grander context. There is a lot of movement to the novel and it grips. How it grips! Brothers’ Fury is exhilarating and also personally involving, even upsetting in places. ‘This war has made killers of us all’, says Mun. In Brothers’ Fury we are not spared the consequences of this dreadful truth.

Do make sure you’ve read the excellent The Bleeding Land first.

Other reviews
The Bleeding Land
The Raven trilogy

Review
The Armada Legacy is the eighth Ben Hope thriller so, if you want to know nothing about the characters, please do read first the opener in the series, The Alchemist’s Legacy.

When Dr Brooke Marcel is kidnapped on a visit to Ireland, the clock starts ticking. The chase is on and in pursuit of the kidnappers, who have ruthlessly killed Brooke’s friend and her employer, is no ordinary hero. Brooke is the ex-girlfriend of Ben Hope, a former Major in the SAS who now works as an expert consultant in just these sorts of cases. But this kidnap is personal and there’s nowhere Ben won’t go and nothing he won’t do to get Brooke safely home. The motives for the kidnap are unclear though, lost in a knot of possible clues, some of which involve the salvage of a 16th-century Armada vessel, sunk off the Irish coast, and a piece of jungle in South America. As Ben searches for Brooke across Ireland, Spain and South America, other men hunt for him. But there are others on a similar trail, driven by their own obsessions. But with the hours and days passing, and the urgency and desperation (not to mention violence) increasing, will Ben be too late to save Brooke?

I am a big fan of Ben Hope, the tough, heavy drinking, charismatic, blond warrior-hero created by Scott Mariani, so much so that a friend and I spent some time working out who we would cast for the role in the movie (we settled on Michael Fassbender – a sensible choice, I’m sure you’d agree). While I have read all eight Ben Hope thrillers, the last – The Sacred Sword – was for me the weakest. You can read my review here but it’s fair to say that I found it formulaic and even tired. It was certainly full of thrills but they didn’t grab my attention.

The Armada Legacy is a different kettle of fish altogether. Arguably, this is a back to basics Ben Hope thriller. The archaeological mysteries, the world-stopping revelations, the bulletproof superhero all take a step back and what we have instead is a tightly plotted, focused race against time, dominated by the always intriguing and fascinating character of Ben Hope. This is a man who has woken up with a jolt. We’ve followed his stormy relationship with Brooke over several books and now he is faced with the very possible outcome of losing the woman that can heal his life. He even stops and thinks before taking a drink. In The Sacred Sword there were other discoveries about Ben’s past that you could call more significant and earth-bending but for me they were far less meaningful. In The Armada Legacy, it’s much more simple. Ben Hope loves Brooke Marcel and he will stop at nothing to get her back.

While this intensification of Ben’s purpose is a positive force, it did mean that the mystery of the Armada legacy itself gets very short shrift. Whereas in some of the Ben Hope novels the archaeological mystery has prominence, here it does not. But this didn’t matter. The pace of the novel is so strong and the efforts of Ben to find his way back to Brooke are so satisfyingly complex, that the thrill of the hunt more than atones for the lack of archaeological puzzle. The strength of this series lies above all else in the character of Ben Hope and in The Armada Legacy he comes into his own. We’ve got to know Brooke over the years and she too gets to show us a little more of what she’s made of. And I liked it. As for the villain of the piece – you’d have to read a lot of thrillers to find a villain as nasty and as corrupted and yet still as human as this one.

As with many series, it would make sense to read the Ben Hope novels from the first, The Alchemist’s Secret, but each can be read alone. Each will, though, insist that you read the others.

Other review
The Sacred Sword

Review
It seems only fair to warn you that, should you pick up Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave, whether in innocence or with deep intent, you will lose all sense of time and self. Your sleep will be invaded by the urgent compulsion to read and your need to communicate with other humans will degenerate to ‘shhhh’ sounds. I picked it up on one day and finished it the next with big bags under my eyes. It’s not a short book, not that that makes any difference to the drive to finish it once you’ve started. The longer the better.

The 5th Wave is a story about alien invasion (and not about waves, which was my pre-reading mistake), told by a number of youngsters who have survived the initial four waves of terror which have wiped out most if not all of their families and left so few alive to fight the threat. They all live in dread of the fifth wave. What will it be and when will it happen? They all know it must come because it is horrifically clear to the few left that no human is meant to survive this cleansing of the planet. This sounds exciting and blimey it is!

Young Adult science fiction done well is unbeatable in my eyes. But Rick Yancey has not only raised the bar, he’s also removed some of my difficulties with YA fiction on the strength of his superb characterisation. I don’t expect YA fiction to be aimed at me (I am more youngish than young) but I do want it to be populated by believable characters, including the teens. I was one once, after all. The central figure of The 5th Wave is Cassie, a 16-year-old young woman who worries about her self-image, boys, seeming vulnerable, at the same time that she worries about whether The Silencers will kill her dead. The beauty is she knows how this would seem. She worries about it. She is a witty, warm, living, breathing young woman on the page and I empathised with her completely and liked her very much indeed. There is a little romance here but it’s fragile, fraught and full of feeling.

Cassie is such a strong character and we see so much of the story through her troubled eyes that she’s hard to compete with but there are others too who have left a strong impression here. I’m mentioning no names – I would really like you to discover the people of this novel for yourself.

You expect sound worldbuilding in a good YA SF novel and you certainly get it here. We follow the decay of daily and family life, of normality, through the waves. You also expect a thrilling plot and you’ll find it here by the bucketload. Rick Yancey has written a story so tightly plotted and packed with imagination that it’s almost impossible to put the book down at the end of a chapter. The structure and plot are designed to pull you in and the characters ensnare you deeper. The prose balances perfectly the action of the story with the thoughts of the characters. The tension between the two is superb.

If I read a YA novel I enjoy more this year, I’ll be very happy indeed. The 5th Wave is published today. Buy it.

Review
In the 1850s, taking the Queen’s shilling (enlisting) was for many the only escape from poverty, the workhouse, the prisons or even the noose. The streets of London, though, no matter the amount of grime and disease, were no preparation for the slaughter fields of the Crimean War. It’s difficult to blame orderly Jack Lark when he seizes an opportunity of chance and puts on the uniform of his dead officer and takes his identity for himself. With a history he needs to escape, this could be the solution he needs. Jack Lark becomes Captain Arthur Sloames of the Royal Fusiliers.

But the rank of officer comes with an enormous price – keeping himself and his men alive in the face of Russian attack not to mention disease and the horrendous conditions of life on the frontline. Soldiers and officers might be separated by class, education and wealth but enemy bullets don’t care. Unfortunately for Clark/Soames, though, it’s not just foreign enemies he must contend with.

The Scarlet Thief is a very fast punchy read. After an introduction set in the barracks in Aldershot in England, we are launched into preparations for the Battle of the Alma in the Crimea in 1854. From then on in, there is little time to draw a breath. Lark has to consolidate his stolen position while at the same time dealing with his own self-doubt and the problem of leading men when guiding an army has become an exercise in bureaucracy, filling in forms, paying for commissions, knowing the right person, saying the right thing. As a mudlark with an unruly tongue, Jack Lark is a man who makes enemies easily although he better than anyone is able to see through the disguise of riches to asses the true nature of his brother officers. Many have the best of intentions. If only Lark didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.

My knowledge about the Crimean War is strictly limited to Florence Nightingale. I welcome, then, the chance to be given a peep inside an unfamiliar period. The Battle of Alma and the general conditions of fighting a war with far too few resources in the mud of the Crimea are told very well indeed. Characters come and go through the pages and I wanted to know more about most of them. These are terrible days, though. Not all will live long enough for us to get to know. But I would have welcomed the chance to have spent more time in Collard’s capable storytelling hands, being given more background about events and characters, not feeling that it was all such a rush.

The Scarlet Thief is a debut novel and it is an encouraging one. Jack Lark is an extremely interesting character and it is more than apparent that Collard knows his Crimean history very well just as he can also write very well. Unfortunately, the pace and brevity of The Scarlet Thief don’t do Collard the justice he deserves. I never like comparisons between books – for instance, thrillers hailed as the new Dan Brown or historical military fiction given the title of the ‘new Sharpe’ – I’m not a fan of either Brown or Sharpe. In this case, the similarities with Sharpe are very clear. The Scarlet Thief is catchy, exciting, violent and strongly driven by an intriguing and virulent leading male. No doubt he is also handsome but it’s difficult to tell as so little time is spent on the details. I do hope that in the next novel Collard is allowed to take his time, to develop more of his own voice and to expand on his undoubted historical knowledge and storytelling abilities. Given that chance, this could turn into a fascinating and thrilling new series.

Review
There is something fascinating about the fortune of western Europe during those years of mystery that lay between the Roman and Carolingian empires. Centuries of decline and decay, caused and aggravated by abandonment by the Roman authorities, now based in Constantinople, and attack by the northern tribes. Arguably, the one hope for those living amongst the ruins lay in the new Christian order which flourished in the West, just as it did in the East. Unfortunately, with the bishops not able to agree about even the nature of Christ, union seemed impossible and even undesirable.

It’s in this 7th-century world that we meet Aelric – senator and advisor to the emperor in Constantinople, troubleshooter and troublemaker, handy with fist and pen, with one eye open for attractive female company and the other for enlightening literary or theological texts. Having failed to keep the peace in Alexandria, Aelric is sent with Priscus, a deeply unsavoury general, to Athens. They are there to be either executed (or at least have their eyes burnt out) for having failed their master or to rule over an unhappy meeting of bishops and prelates designed to bring the western and eastern churches together. The fact that the novel is over 400 pages long indicates the latter.

The historical setting of The Ghosts of Athens is superb. The descriptions of Athens are compelling. The remains of the glory days can still be seen, admired and visited while the decayed city streets are filled with an ugly, diseased and impoverished population, as far removed as is possible to be from those famously godlike Athenians of antiquity. You can almost taste the rot. This is compounded by a description of a garden frog stew that put me off food for a week. And when a headless corpse turns up, pulled out from under an ancient tomb, and is subjected to the kind of treatment that only the despicable Priscus could summon up, I was reaching for a bucket.

There is an issue, though. This extraordinary historical colour is let down by a rambling and incoherent story that loses direction and point at every turn. Aelric has similar colour and is entertaining and shocking in equal measure. But he is not enough. The other characters came across to me as either cartoon grotesques or cardboard cutouts. Nobody seemed ‘normal’. The story could have been about the murder, it could have been about religious argument and debate, it could have been about a city on the point of violent collapse. I didn’t really know. It was a bit of all of these with Aelric’s own private agendas added in. Also, the early chapters are set at a future date in a fantastically-realised decrepit London but there was little to join it with the bulk of the novel.

The first third is excellent and pulled me in. The remaining two thirds did their best to spit me out. It is a shame because Rome’s death throes provide such a setting and Blake clearly enjoyed putting them to paper. The beginning is so much fun to read. However, a novel needs to give more to its reader, at least this reader.

The Ghosts of Athens is the fifth book in a series and it’s possible that if I had read the others I might have enjoyed it more. It’s unlikely, though, that I’ll read the next.

Publications:
Temporal Tales
Untruths
Satan’s Schoolgirls
The Dead Files Volume 1
The Dead Files Volume 2
The Dead Files Volume 3

Let’s start with the zombies – is there an audience out there?

I think there is. I think the important thing we have to bear in mind is that 90% of zombies novels, zombie stories, aren’t anything to do with the classic idea of a zombie. The traditional idea of a zombie is the recent dead. Most zombies that you see in books and film these days are rage or virus-infected humans. Angry, almost rabid. But they’re not the living dead. There’s always going to be mileage in that sort of thing because it’s like any kind of centre for disease control base coming through. You can take that initial fear of society. It doesn’t have to be the dead coming out of their graves and walking. You get the weird thing like in Warm Bodies (by Isaac Marion) where you get a zombie romance where love can bring the dead back. Because the initial remit is so broad, you can narrow it down. I think it’s incredibly broad. You’ve basically got very simple ideas. You’ve got a dystopia, you’ve got the few versus the many, you’ve got global disaster. All that stuff you can narrow down and you can find little tweaks and twists in there.

My take on it that I’ve been doing with the Dead Files is with a slightly more science fiction approach where it’s set 500 years after an event. It’s a science gone wrong kind of thing where we design this electrical field that’s supposed to be free power, cheap power. What it effectively does is reanimate the dead. Huge dystopia. The world goes to pot but we find a way of shutting that field down 500 years later. There’s hardly anyone left. We’ve gone back to a kind of agrarian, almost medieval society and the tasks that we need to do to actually keep the field damped have become almost something that no one believes in anymore. 500 years later suddenly all of the machines that were keeping the field damped start failing and the dead start coming back again. So, what do you do when an old myth or legend suddenly comes real? It’s kind of far future and almost historical fiction in a way.

I’m always fascinated by the mix between horror and science fiction. I think when that works well, as in Alien for example – probably my favourite film of all time – it works brilliantly.

Do zombies have to be nasty?

There’s a wonderful French movie, Les Revenants, in which the dead come back to life but they come back to life as they were before they died. They go back home. You’re trying to live with your partner or kid and yet they’ve come back to life. They’ve got no recollection of that at all. If you’re in the middle of the grief process it’s possibly the worst thing you could watch but it’s more an exploration of grief. It’s not really a horror movie at all.

The decision to publish – putting oneself out there

It was massively difficult girding my loins to put that first collection out there even though what I was basically doing was collating all the stuff I already had on the website along with a few other bits and pieces. Putting them all into a Scrivener project and then out to Amazon. But there’s always that moment when you hover with your finger over the publish button and you think ‘Are you sure you want to do this?!’ With that first collection, in some ways it was almost like an experiment, to see what would happen because it was stuff that wasn’t really doing much and I thought that rather than have it on a random website that no-one was ever going to see, why not try the book experience, collate it all together and see how easy it would be to put it into Amazon and that experience was remarkably simple and remarkably positive.

When, where, how to write…

Two events changed the way I write, and freed me up to get the work done. First up, NaNoWriMo. The National Novel Writing Month taught me discipline, the importance of the first draft (and not sweating the details on a first draft, most importantly–just get the words on the page and worry about the polish later). At the same time, moving to Reading from London meant that I had a 30 minute train ride to work every day, which was the perfect opportunity to sit and write in a distraction-free environment. Every writer has their sweet spot, the time which works best for them in terms of creativity. As luck would have it, I write best in the early morning. Tie that into the train journey, and I have motive and opportunity to write.

On top of that, I’ve realised that I enjoy being a mobile writer. Trains, cafes, pubs, you name it. I can write at home, but there are a lot of distractions. I can blam out 1000 words in an hour in a cafe. At home, I’ll find excuses to dodge the keyboard. If I need to write, all of a sudden the hoovering gets done. Get me out of the house, and I write like a demon. All of which means that I’m a great believer in a stripped-back, clean writing solution. I’m an Apple fanboi, as the hard- and software are robust and trouble-free. Less faff, more wordcount.

Future writing plans

Simon Turney invited me into the Inkslingers group which is doing themed anthologies. I have something planned for a series called Tortured Hearts – dark romance. Temporal Tales is already out. They’re working on a historical fiction, fantasy anthology, fairy tales. I’ve got stories in two or three of those. I’m also currently doing the second part of my electrical zombies story that I started in Dead Files 2 so that’s set in a future past world. Hopefully I’ll get that ready for Dead Files 5.

The next long piece of fiction is probably going to be a fairly radical step away from horror. It’s a science fiction book – part one of a trilogy – called Pirates of the Moon. It was written as part of NaNoWriMo in 2007/2008 probably and I’m really, really pleased with it. I’m very excited about it. It’s about a 15-year-old female space pilot, Aurora Armstrong, and her adventures after she crash lands on the Moon. I’m very pleased with it in terms of plot and character. This is the one I’m probably most proud of. I did actually sit down towards the end of last year and write a plan of stuff I wanted to do in terms of writing for both film and prose. I’m currently just about still on target but I’ve got a busy year ahead of me.

Film projects

In terms of projects that aren’t book related, I’ve got a couple of scripts that I’ve been working on. One is a horror script that my partner in that is taking to Cannes this year. It’s called Seeds of the Vampire. It’s set in Serbia in the 18th century and it’s got vague science fictiony bits in it. If you imagine something akin to Nosferatu meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it’s that kind of thing. Apart from that I’m doing an awful lot of documentary work with my filmmaker partner, Dominic Wade. We’re currently working on three different projects, one of which is a documentary about Banksy, which hopefully should be getting a distribution deal in the States fairly soon. We’re doing a documentary on rave culture called ‘Decks, Dance and Videotape’ which had a screening, the short version, a couple of weeks ago in Crouch End and in Bristol the following day and that got a very positive reaction. We’re doing a long term project that follows a guy called Gimpo who was involved with the KLF. He’s doing this performance art project where he drives around the M25 for 25 hours once a year. He’s doing that for 25 years and has been doing it since 1996/1997. It ties into ritual and endurance. Year 17’s just been completed so we went over to his gaff in East London yesterday and sat and chatted to him about it. We’ve been doing that for five years. That project’s probably going to mutate over time. We want to get a half hour cut of that into the Portobello Film Festival in August but there’s no reason why we can’t do little updates here and there. The scheme won’t finish until 2021. Dominic Wade is the prime mover in these and I’m usually the guy behind the camera.

Inspirational writers

Names that spring to mind most immediately, probably Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, I think in terms of their simplicity and the style and the way they can absolutely devastate with a sentence. Elmore Leonard – he’s got that thriller sensibility and at the same time the ability to push you through a story. I should probably mention Neal Stephenson, sort of going the other way, the breadth of vision he achieves is extraordinary. He can populate stories with this huge mass of people.

Long or short?

Novel-length projects are all about organisation. Keeping the plot nailed down, not losing track of details (characters hair colour, accents, names) balancing the pacing, trying to avoid the ever-present middle-act sag. A novel is a project that is much about management as it is craft. There’s a reason that books start life as a rainbow of post-its on a fridge door, or an Excel database. The idea of starting a book at page one without knowing what happens in the middle or end is utterly alien. That, to me, is what short stories are for. There’s a reason that JK Rowling, James Patterson and GRR Martin make the money. They are consummate, meticulous plotters. The characters blossom alongside the plot, but without that framework they’re just wandering about bumping into the scenery.

Useful links

Rob’s website: Excuses and Half Truths
Rob’s Amazon page
Rob on GoodReads
Verse Publishing

Review
Zenn Scarlett is no ordinary 17 year old. She is a novice Exovet, or alien vet, on Mars at a time when the planet is separated from Earth by a Rift, its inhabitants looking instead starwards, its explorers travelling across great distances on spaceships powered by Indra, enormous beasts who tunnel through the lightyears, directed by Shepherds, carrying mankind from one far planet to another. Zenn’s ambition is to be an Exovet like her late mother, treating exotic alien species from across the Galaxy that are dropped off on the planet because of this unique care. These are no ordinary patients, not in the least. They can be the size of villages, they can fly, leap or soar, they can be as small as a handful or as dangerous as a T-Rex. Some can even help out around the place. But while Zenn and her uncle Otho are focused on providing care for their patients, the inhabitants of Mars are facing hardships not least due to the Rift. Land and resources are becoming limited. Handy, then, that the lease of Otho’s centre should be up for renewal. Quite apart from the land issue, not all of the inhabitants of Mars are happy to have such monsters about. As Zenn works hard to finish her training, these are difficult days.

With Zenn Scarlett, Christian Schoon has begun what promises to be a thoroughly enjoyable and beguiling series of science fiction novels for young adults. Zenn herself is an appealing heroine, dealing with considerable parent issues – especially the death of her mother in appalling circumstances – while suffering the more usual and earthly problems associated with these years. She wants to do what’s right and she wants to achieve her professional goal to become a qualified Exovet but the presence of Liam, a local towner, is a reminder that life should not be all work. But these thoughts and troubles are secondary to Zenn’s drive to prove her ability as an Exovet to her uncle. But, things don’t always go right. Perhaps not everything is under her control. It’s possible, though, that something very odd is going on.

The glory of Zenn Scarlett, though, without doubt, are the alien lifeforms that Zenn must treat. They are mind blowing. These scenes captivated my imagination, especially as the novel progressed. I’m spoiling none of these here.

After an excellent prologue, the novel settled down to a style that I felt was comfortably aimed at a younger readership. In the second half, though, the pace picked up and the adventure took off and I moved towards the edge of my seat. This half was very hard to put down while I found the first a little difficult to pick up. This was aggravated by some of the teenage angst, the wandering, temporarily unfocused plot and the wearisome cuteness of Zenn’s annoying little alien pet, Katie. Offsetting Katie, though, is the very likable and fun swarm-insect assistant Hamish who is trying to learn independence of thought – not easy for a giant alien bug. However, as I say, these early irritations do iron themselves out as the novel proceeds and by the end I was more than ready to read the next book in the series.

I think that any youngster with a love of animals and a fascination for the wonders of space will be enchanted by Zenn Scarlett and its strong, warm and brave heroine.