Post-Apocalypse

Review: THE WAKE (Vertigo)

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TheWake-Complete

Writer: Scott Snyder | Artist: Sean Murphy | Colors: Matt Hollingsworth

When Marine Biologist Lee Archer is approached by the Department of Homeland Security for help with a new threat, she declines, but quickly realizes they won’t take no for an answer. Soon she is plunging to the depths of the Arctic Circle to a secret, underwater oilrig filled with roughnecks and scientists on the brink of an incredible discovery. But when things go horribly wrong, this scientific safe haven will turn into a house of horrors at the bottom of the ocean!

Collects: The Wake #1-10

This is a tricky one to review. This is the whole ten-issue run of the series, which means a lot happens. The multiple timelines, the expansive scope of the story… There’s a lot crammed into this book. It’s the most ambitious of Snyder’s stories that I’ve read, and while I found it excellent on a number of levels, the second half really let the book down. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE DEAD LANDS by Benjamin Percy (Grand Central)

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PercyB-TheDeadLandsI thoroughly enjoyed Benjamin Percy’s previous novel, Red Moon, and have been eagerly awaiting his next book ever since. Now (via SF Signal), here are the details of that novel, a re-imagining of the Lewis & Clark saga in a post-apocalyptic setting:

A super flu and nuclear fallout have made a husk of the world we know. A few humans carry on, living in outposts such as the Sanctuary – the remains of St. Louis – a shielded community that owes its survival to its militant defense and fear-mongering leaders.

Then a rider comes from the wasteland beyond its walls. She reports on the outside world: west of the Cascades, rain falls, crops grow, civilization thrives. But there is danger too: the rising power of an army that pillages and enslaves every community they happen upon.

Against the wishes of the Sanctuary, a small group sets out in secrecy. Led by Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark, they hope to expand their infant nation, and to reunite the States. But the Sanctuary will not allow them to escape without a fight.

Benjamin Percy’s The Dead Lands is due to be published in the US by Grand Central Publishing, in April 2015. Red Moon was published in the UK by Hodder, and they will be publishing The Deadlands as well, in May 2015.

Also on CR: Interview with Benjamin Percy

Review: IMPACT by Adam Baker (Hodder)

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BakerA-4-ImpactUKSuperb fourth novel in Baker’s horror survival series

The world is overrun by an unimaginable horror. The few surviving humans are scattered in tiny outposts across the world, hoping for reprieve – or death. Waiting on the runway of the abandoned Las Vegas airport sits the B-52 bomber Liberty Bell, revving up for its last, desperate mission. On board – five crew members and one 10-kiloton nuclear payload. The target is a secret compound in the middle of the world’s most inhospitable desert.

All the crew have to do is drop the bomb and head to safety.

But when the Liberty Bell crashes, the surviving crew are stranded in the most remote corner of Death Valley. They’re alone in an alien environment, their only shelter the wreckage of their giant aircraft, with no hope of rescue. And death is creeping towards them from the place they sought to destroy – and may already reside beneath their feet in the burning desert sands.

Impact is the gripping, suspenseful fourth novel set in Baker’s post-apocalyptic reality. Everything I liked about Terminus, the previous novel in the series, is evident here: the tightly-plotted story, the stripped-down prose, realistic characters, sinister atmosphere, and addictive, chilling suspense. From the first page until the last, I was hooked. Continue reading →

Upcoming: IMPACT by Adam Baker (Hodder)

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Baker-ImpactUKI came rather late to Adam Baker’s novels. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the blog, for some reason I never got around to reading Outpost or Juggernaut. That changed with Terminus, which I read and loved last year. This morning, I was greeted with a lovely surprise when Impact arrived in the mail from Hodder. I hadn’t been aware it was on the way (it’s not listed on Goodreads, yet), and I am very eager to get it. I’ll probably read it next week. It sounds great…

The world is overrun by an unimaginable horror. The few surviving humans are scattered in tiny outposts across the world, hoping for reprieve – or death.

Waiting on the runway of the abandoned Las Vegas airport sits the B-52 bomber Liberty Bell, revving up for its last, desperate mission. On board – six crew members and one 10-kiloton nuclear payload. The target is a secret compound in the middle of the world’s most inhospitable desert.

All the crew have to do is drop the bomb and head to safety.

But when the Liberty Bell crashes, the surviving crew are stranded in the most remote corner of Death Valley. They’re alone in an alien environment, their only shelter the wreckage of their giant aircraft, with no hope of rescue. And death is creeping towards them from the place they sought to destroy – and may already reside beneath their feet in the burning desert sands.

Impact is published in the UK by Hodder on July 3rd, 2014.

Also on CR: Interview with Adam Baker, Guest Post

Review: DEADLANDS by Lily Herne (Much-In-Little/Constable & Robinson)

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Herne-MR1-DeadlandsAn interesting new Post-Zomebie-Apocalypse Series

Welcome to the Deadlands, where life is a lottery.

Since the apocalypse, Cape Town’s suburbs have become zombie-infested Deadlands. Human survivors are protected from the living dead by sinister, shrouded figures – the Guardians. In return, five teenagers are “chosen” and handed over to them for a mysterious purpose: this year, Lele de la Fontein’s name is picked.

But Lele will not stick around and face whatever shady fate the Guardians have in store for her. She escapes, willing to take her chances in the Deadlands.

Alone, exiled and unable to return home, she runs into a misfit gang of renegade teens: Saint, a tough Batswana girl; Ginger, a wise-cracking Brit; and handsome Ash, a former child soldier. Under their tutelage, Lele learns how to seriously destroy zombies and together they uncover the corruption endemic in Cape Town, and come to learn the sickening truth about the Guardians …

I first heard about the mother-daughter writing team Lily Herne at World Fantasy Con 2013 in Brighton. I was walking along the signing corridor and Jared of Pornokitsch pulled me aside and introduced me to them. Since then, I have read The Three by Sarah Lotz (the mother of the duo), which I think will most likely be one of my Top 5 reads of 2014. Then, despite having a signed copy of Deadlands, I spotted the first two books in the series on sale for Kindle. I snapped them both up, and started reading Deadlands right away. And, I must say, I really enjoyed it. Continue reading →

Upcoming: Gollancz Debuts 2014

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I’ve already featured Edward Cox’s upcoming debut, The Relic Guild, and Den Patrick’s The Boy With the Porcelain Blade, but I thought it would be good to take a quick look at Gollancz’s other 2014 debuts. All of the novels will be included in the £1.99 eBook promotion. So, in order of release, here are Gollancz’s other four 2014 debuts…

HuntS-FCS1-InDarkServiceUKStephen Hunt’s In Dark Service (May 15)

Carter has been kidnapped. Enslaved. But he’s determined to fight to the end.

Jacob is a pacifist. His family destroyed. He’s about to choose the path of violence to reclaim his son.

Their world has changed for ever. Between them, they’re going to avenge it.

Jacob Carnehan has settled down. He’s living a comfortable, quiet life, obeying the law and minding his own business while raising his son Carter… on those occasions when he isn’t having to bail him out of one scrape or another. His days of adventure are – thankfully – long behind him.

Carter Carnehan is going out of his mind with boredom. He’s bored by his humdrum life, frustrated that his father won’t live a little, and longs for the bright lights and excitement of anywhere-but-here. He’s longing for an opportunity to escape, and test himself against whatever the world has to offer.

Carter is going to get his opportunity. He’s caught up in a village fight, kidnapped by slavers and, before he knows it, is swept to another land. A lowly slave, surrounded by technology he doesn’t understand, his wish has come true: it’s him vs. the world. He can try to escape, he can try to lead his fellow slaves, or he can accept the inevitable and try to make the most of the short, brutal existence remaining to him.

… Unless Jacob gets to him first and, no matter the odds, he intends to. No one kidnaps his son and gets away with it – and if it come to it, he’ll force Kings to help him on his way, he’ll fight, steal, blackmail and betray his friends in the name of bringing Carter home.

Wars will be started. Empires will fall. And the Carnehan family will be reunited, one way or another…

I’ve never read anything by Stephen Hunt, but they’ve all sounded great – this is not his debut novel, just his Gollancz debut.

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WallaceJ-BarricadeUKJon Wallace’s Barricade (June 19)

A kinetic, violent and hugely intelligent SF road thriller – a desperate journey through a ruined future world.

Kenstibec was genetically engineered to build a new world, but the apocalypse forced a career change. These days he drives a taxi instead.

A fast-paced, droll and disturbing novel, BARRICADE is a savage road trip across the dystopian landscape of post-apocalypse Britain; narrated by the cold-blooded yet magnetic antihero, Kenstibec.

Kenstibec is a member of the “Ficial” race, a breed of merciless super-humans. Their war on humanity has left Britain a wasteland, where Ficials hide in barricaded cities, besieged by tribes of human survivors. Originally optimised for construction, Kenstibec earns his keep as a taxi driver, running any Ficial who will pay from one surrounded city to another.

The trips are always eventful, but this will be his toughest yet. His fare is a narcissistic journalist who’s touchy about her luggage. His human guide is constantly plotting to kill him. And that’s just the start of his troubles.

On his journey he encounters ten-foot killer rats, a mutant king with a TV fixation, a drug-crazed army, and even the creator of the Ficial race. He also finds time to uncover a terrible plot to destroy his species for good – and humanity too.

This sounds like a pretty cool SF novel.

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Caltabiano-SeventhMissHatfieldUKAnna Caltabiano’s The Seventh Miss Hatfield (July 17)

A spellbinding debut from a hugely talented young author, featuring time-travel, 19th-century New York, unrequited love and a mysterious portrait…

Rebecca, a 15-year-old American, isn’t entirely happy with her life, comfortable though it is. Still, even she knows that she shouldn’t talk to strangers. So when her mysterious neighbour Miss Hatfield asked her in for a chat and a drink, Rebecca wasn’t entirely sure why she said yes. It was a decision that was to change everything.

For Miss Hatfield is immortal. And now, thanks to a drop of water from the Fountain of Youth, Rebecca is as well. But this gift might be more of a curse, and it comes with a price. Rebecca is beginning to lose her personality, to take on the aspects of her neighbour. She is becoming the next Miss Hatfield.

But before the process goes too far, Rebecca must travel back in time to turn-of-the-century New York and steal a painting, a picture which might provide a clue to the whereabouts of the source of immortality. A clue which must remain hidden from the world. In order to retrieve the painting, Rebecca must infiltrate a wealthy household, learn more about the head of the family, and find an opportunity to escape. Before her journey is through, she will also have – rather reluctantly – fallen in love. But how can she stay with the boy she cares for, when she must return to her own time before her time-travelling has a fatal effect on her body? And would she rather stay and die in love, or leave and live alone?

And who is the mysterious stranger who shadows her from place to place? A hunter for the secret of immortality – or someone who has already found it?

How cool is that cover GIF? I’m really intrigued by this novel. Sounds different, and should be a stand-out of the summer.

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JacobsJH-IncorruptiblesUKJohn Hornor Jacobs’s The Incorruptibles (August 14)

On the edges of the Empire, life is hard – and men must be harder.

In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it – from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do.

In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who is the key to peace between warring nations and survival for the Empire. When a callow mercenary saves the life of the Governor on an ill-fated hunting party, the two groups are thrown together.

For Fisk and Shoe – two tough, honourable mercenaries surrounded by corruption, who know they can always and only rely on each other – their young companion appears to be playing with fire. The nobles have the power, and crossing them is always risky.

And although love is a wonderful thing, sometimes the best decision is to walk away. Because no matter how untouchable or deadly you may be, the stretchers have other plans.

I have been hearing a lot of great things about this novel. Can. Not. Wait to read it.

*

“Black Moon” by Kenneth Calhoun (Hogarth)

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CalhounK-BlackMoonUKAn interesting premise, well-executed, but still slightly flawed

“A black moon had risen, a sphere of sleeplessness that pulled at the tides of blood-and invisible explanation for the madness welling inside.”

The world has stopped sleeping. Restless nights have grown into days of panic, delirium and, eventually, desperation. But few and far between, sleepers can still be found – a gift they quickly learn to hide. For those still with the ability to dream are about to enter a waking nightmare.

Matt Biggs is one of the few sleepers. His wife Carolyn however, no stranger to insomnia, is on the very brink of exhaustion. After six restless days and nights, Biggs wakes to find her gone. He stumbles out of the house in search of her to find a world awash with pandemonium, a rapidly collapsing reality. Sleep, it seems, is now the rarest and most precious commodity. Money can’t buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it.

I hadn’t heard of this novel before it arrived through the post. As someone who has a soft-spot for post-apocalyptic novels (and the various sub-genres that covers), and also someone who has always suffered from varying degrees of insomnia, Black Moon’s premise jumped out at me. Given its slim length, too, I decided to read it right away. What I found was a novel that is, strangely, both excellent and also wanting.

To be sure, one of the things that drew me into the narrative was the insomnia aspect. In this story, rather than ravenous zombies prowling the streets and eating the living, we have a population suffering from true insomnia – no sleep whatsoever, rather than the more common syndrome that restricts sleep and prevents restfulness. As a result, the majority of the global human population is going through the debilitating symptoms of hallucinations, dissociative disorder, emotional turmoil, and eventual death. On top of this, and here’s where the peril for non-sufferers comes in, those suffering also experience homicidal rage when they are either confronted with someone they believe to be a “sleeper” or if they actually witness someone sleeping. The descriptions of what those in the early stages of suffering experience was very close to home, and I immediately sympathised with them all. [Interestingly, and rather meta, I ended up reading Black Moon well into the wee hours of the day, unable to sleep myself…] Here’s one example (I share Carolyn’s frustrations):

“Unlike Carolyn, he had never had trouble sleeping. Early in their relationship, his ability to drop off anytime, anywhere, had been a point of occasional contention. It offended her not only in that she felt that he was using sleep as a means of avoidance, but also because she held sleep so precariously. The slightest noise or change in the light could wake her. Her mind, roaring in the chassis of her skull, pounced on painful memories and worries about the future of the challenges of her studio work, batting them around for hours as she tossed and turned. Meanwhile, he snored at her side. They had decided that sleep was his super-power…”

CalhounK-BlackMoonUSDespite a great premise, however, the novel felt rather underdeveloped and, perhaps, far too short. Calhoun can certainly write, and his prose and pacing drew me on through the novel at quite a clip. However, we are never really given the chance to get to properly know the characters, which left me rather uninvested in some of their fates. Certain characters were far stronger than others (Biggs, Felicia, for example) and I think their storylines offered greater storytelling potential than a couple of the others (Chase, for example, who was a little irritating by the end). I think this would have benefited from being longer, which would have allowed us to feel the tensions of the world a bit more, get to know the characters better, and become invested in their struggles. The work-around developed by the sleep institute was arrived at rather suddenly and out of the blue, too, which robbed yet more of the tension.

True, the novel is structured and composed in a way that reinforces the hallucinatory symptoms of prolonged true-insomnia, which made it rather disjointed at certain points (on purpose) while at the same time evoking an appropriate atmosphere. This was a solid attempt to do something different, which is always welcome, but the vagaries of what I was reading often just obfuscated certain elements of the story, which meant my investment waned as things became worse.

Ultimately, there were certainly things I liked in Black Moon – the insomnia-induced zombification and mania, for example, and also the work-around that they develop (which, while suddenly introduced to the story, was also pretty cool), and the aforementioned stronger characters. Sadly, however, I didn’t love the book. It will be interesting to see what the author comes up with next, though, and I await his next novel with anticipation.

Upcoming: “Shovel Ready” by Adam Sternbergh (Headline)

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SternberghA-ShovelReadyI first spotted a photo of a Shovel Ready ARC on Twitter (I forget exactly when it was, and who Tweeted the image), and I did some digging. Ever since, I have been rather looking forward to this novel. It’s still some time until it is published, but the new UK cover was unveiled today, and I rather liked it. So here it is, as well as the synopsis:

I don’t want to know your reasons.

I don’t care.

Think of me as a bullet.

Just point.

Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, before New York became a burnt-out shell. Now the wealthy spend their days tapped into virtual reality; the rest have to fend for themselves in the streets. Now there’s nothing but garbage.

So he became a hit man.  He doesn’t ask questions, he works quickly, and he’s handy with a box-cutter.

When he’s hired to kill the daughter of a high-profile evangelist, Spademan’s life is upended. He will have to navigate two worlds – both the slick fantasy and the wasteland reality – to finish the job, clear his conscience, and make sure he’s not the one who winds up in the ground.

Shovel Ready is due to be published by Headline in January 2014.

Upcoming: “Day One” by Nate Kenyon (Thomas Dunne)

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KenyonN-DayOneI stumbled across this today, and thought it sounded pretty interesting. In my way, that meant I decided to share it on here. [Ok, by “stumble”, I mean “found in the catalogue which I was reading”…]

I’m a sucker for post-apocalypse New York stories – Adam Baker’s Terminus being the most recent example. Here’s the synopsis – so there was little chance that I wouldn’t be interested in this:

Scandal­-plagued hacker journalist John Hawke is hot on the trail of the explosive story that might save his career. James Weller, the former CEO of giant technology company, Eclipse, has founded a new start­up, and he’s agreed to let Hawke do a profile on him. Hawke knows something very big is in the works at Eclipse – a major computing breakthrough – and he wants to use the profile as a foot in the door to find out more.

After he arrives in Weller’s office in New York City, a seemingly normal day quickly turns into a nightmare as anything with an Internet connection begins to malfunction. Hawke receives a phone call from his frantic wife, and just before the phone goes dead, she indicates that someone is trying to break down the apartment door. Soon, Hawke and a small band of survivors are struggling for their very lives as they find themselves thrust into the middle of a war zone – with no obvious enemy in sight.

The bridges and tunnels have been destroyed. New York City is under attack from a malevolent entity that can be anywhere and can occupy anything with a computer chip. It is deadly. It is brilliant. And it wants to eradicate the population of New York. Somehow, Hawke must find a way back to New Jersey and his pregnant wife and young son. Their lives depend upon it… and so does the rest of the human race.

Nate Kenyon’s Day One is due to be published by Thomas Dunne Books in October 2013. Kenyon is the author of Bloodstone and The Reach, both of which were Bram Stoker Award finalists. His other fiction includes The Bone Factory, Sparrow Rock, StarCraft: Ghost Spectres, and Diablo: The Order.