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Alyxandra Harvey
Bloomsbury (2012)
ISBN: 978-1-4088-1132-0
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Stolen Away is a standalone novel by the author of the Drake Chronicles (to date, My Love Lies Bleeding, Blood Feud, Out for Blood and Bleeding Hearts) and Haunting Violet.
Stolen Away has much the same strengths and weaknesses as Harvey’s other novels. It seems that she’s not changing much as an author; she’s found her rhythm and is sticking to it with little improvement (or degeneration). But the result is a set of entertaining, pleasant enough novels; and if she’s happy and her audience is happy, does she really need to push herself?
Eloise Hart is a pretty ordinary teenage girl. She doesn’t fit with the cool kids, but she does have her good friends – notably, Jo and Devin. She has her share of insecurities, but she’s also pretty comfortable with who she is. Her family is a bit unusual – her single mother dresses like a rockabilly and tends bar, and her aunt appears every year for around six months and then disappears completely for another six. She’s not even contactable during those six months.
Jo Anderton
Veiled Worlds, book 1
Angry Robot (2011)
ISBN: 978-0-85766-154-8
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Debris is the debut novel from Australian writer Jo Anderton, and it is remarkably good. Although it is not without flaws, it may be that most of those are due to it being the first in a trilogy; they may be resolved when we have the rest of the series in front of us. In the meantime, this is an exciting, engrossing novel.
Debris is set in a far future world, one in which people called pionners manipulate the particles that hold all matter together to create; pions are used to build, to decorate, to run almost all forms of technology. Although only a very talented few can manipulate pions with great skill, most people can see them and use them to some degree. The very few people unable to see pions at all are outcasts; viewed as not only disabled but somehow distasteful. They are relegated to a life one step above the gutter, collecting the dangerous waste products created by manipulating pions. For some reason those who can see pions can’t see the waste; and those who can’t see pions can see the waste.
John Birmingham
Axis of Time, book 3
Pan Macmillan Australia (2006)
ISBN: 9780330423397
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (this review was first published in September 2007)
Final Impact is the final novel in a trilogy that tells the story of a world in which World War II is disrupted when a military Taskforce from the 2020s is accidentally thrown back in time by an experiment goes wrong. The Taskforce lands in the middle of the Allied fleet en route to the Battle of Midway. Once the resulting firefight has ceased, and the confusion sorted out, the Taskforce sets its eyes on ensuring that the Allies win World War II, as they “should”. Unfortunately the Taskforce has already considerably warped the original course of the war; and even more unfortunately, some parts of the Taskforce have fallen into the hands of Axis powers, meaning they too have access to historical records about the outcome of the war and particular battles; and access to technical information about weapons not yet invented.
One area where Birmingham has remained consistent with the “real” World War II is in the personalities of the main players – people such as Hitler, Stalin, Himmler, Churchill. He has used this as the crux of how the war ultimately turns out – whatever knowledge they all have, however the original course of the war has been derailed, these people still make decisions in the same way they originally did. They still suffer from the same personality defects and strengths, and this influences the final outcome. Read the rest of this entry »
John Birmingham
Axis of Time, book 2
Pan Macmillan Australia (2005)
ISBN: 9780345457158
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (this review was first published in September 2007)
Designated Targetsis the second book in a trilogy that tells the story of a military taskforce from the 21st century, who are accidentally thrown back in time 80 years, finding themselves in the middle of World War II. In the confusion of the initial “Transition”, as the accident comes to be known, the Taskforce inadvertently does considerable damage to the Allied fleet heading to the Battle of Midway – not a great start to their new lives in the 1940s.
Birmingham has essentially sidestepped all of the usual time travel paradoxes by simply asserting that once the Taskforce had landed in the 1940s, it was a parallel world to their own. That means they don’t have to worry too much about anything they do affecting the future; and that’s a good thing, because these people are less than subtle in their impact on the world. One thing they’re certain about, and that’s that they want to make sure the Allies win the war. But if they could also do that with less loss of Allied life, and without letting some of the horrors such as the Japanese Prisoner of War camps or the Nazi Extermination camps, that would be a good thing. Read the rest of this entry »
John Birmingham
Axis of Time, book 1
Pan Macmillan Australia (2006)
ISBN: 9780330421898
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (this review was first published in August 2007)
I was rather disappointed by this novel, in part because I’d enjoyed other novels by Birmingham and expected to find the same pleasure in this one. I didn’t; ultimately what let Birmingham down was his characterisation, rather than his ideas, plotting or prose. Weapons of Choice is a reasonably good novel, and many people will enjoy it, but I felt it fell short of what it could have achieved.
This is the first novel of a trilogy. In this novel, a near future military taskforce is accidentally thrown back in time by an experiment gone wrong. They land right in the middle of the US fleet heading to the Battle of Midway, and the fleet and the taskforce promptly proceed to shoot each other up. Once the initial confusion is resolved, it becomes clear that there are two essential problems. One is how to ensure the Allies win World War Two as they’re “supposed” to; and the other is the impact of the cultural attitudes of taskforce members on people of the 1940s. No-one seriously thinks the taskforce can be returned to their own time, so this isn’t treated as a problem.
The novel runs into trouble early. Birmingham transports the taskforce through time almost immediately. This makes sense; since the story he wants to tell is in the 1940s, there’s little value in hanging about the 2020s. Unfortunately, the shooting starts about thirty seconds after they arrive in 1942. We’re treated to around 100 pages of people we don’t yet know shooting at and killing each other. It’s probably an accurate rendition of what would happen, and it’s vividly written. But it’s also essentially boring and somewhat confusing as we simply haven’t had the chance to get to know these people or even sort them out completely. Read the rest of this entry »
Kristen Painter
House of Comarre, book 3
Orbit (2011)
ISBN: 978-1-84149-971-0
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Bad Blood is the third in the House of Comarre series; there are at least four books in the series. Book two, Flesh and Blood, is reviewed here. Like book two, book three is challenging to follow if you haven’t read earlier books in the series. Although there are strengths to the books individually, I would strongly recommend that intending readers start with book one.
In this volume a spate of violent serial murders are striking fear into Paradise City (a renamed Miami). All of the girls bear a resemblance to Chrysabelle; a real Commarre – a human bred to provide blood to vampires. As well as bearing a superficial resemblance to Chrysabelle herself, each victim was a fake Comarre, who sold their inferior blood to vampires who either didn’t know better or didn’t have access to a real Comarre.
The murders are only one sign of a breakdown in the centuries old covenant which has enabled humans to live in blissful ignorance of the supernatural world right under their noses. With the breakdown of the covenant, it’s getting harder to ignore. And with Halloween coming, it’s likely that human noses will be well and truly rubbed not only in the existence of the supernatural, but in how dangerous it is.
Kristen Painter
House of Comarre, book 2
Orbit (2011)
ISBN: 978-1-84149-970-3
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Flesh and Blood is book two in the House of Comarre series; there are at least four books in the series. None appear to stand alone – they are written as instalments of a series and there isn’t a lot of recapping for people who haven’t read the earlier book (or books). They are well written and have considerable strengths, but it’s not really a series you can jump into part way through and fully enjoy.
I have not read book one, so was very much picking this up as I went along. It was reasonably easy to pick up the basic plot, but many of the motivations were a little murky to me, and there were past events that seemed critical to events in this novel but which were never fully explained here. In addition, there were some really important things about the relationships between characters that appeared to be very dependent on events in the first novel – referred to in passing here but again not clearly recapped.
Chrysabelle is a Comarre, one of a group of humans bred to provide blood to vampires. It’s not clearly spelt out, but I assume that this is part of the covenant which has allowed the supernatural world to exist side by side with humanity, with most humans entirely ignorant of it. It appears that Comarres and their relationships with vampires are governed by a complex set of traditions and rules. However, Chrysabelle appears to be somewhat isolated from the Comarre House in general, and it’s not particularly clear if she is, indeed, still technically a Comarre. (Not clear to me as a new reader, that is.) Read the rest of this entry »
Alyxandra Harvey
The Drake Chronicles
Bloomsbury (2011)
ISBN: 978-1-4088-1497-0
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Bleeding Hearts is the fourth book in the Drake chronicles, following on from My Love Lies Bleeding, Blood Feud, and Out for Blood. Like its predecessors, Bleeding Heart is an enjoyable and well written young adult novel.
The Drake Chronicles follow a clear pattern. In each novel one of the seven Drake brothers falls in love. The Drake family are vampires; they are unusual in that they are not “turned” by another vampire – instead, when they turn sixteen they also turn into vampires. This significantly reduces the yuk factor when it comes to their becoming vampires; it also provides a credible explanation for the existence of an entire family of vampires. (There are some flaws if you think too hard, such as the question of why their father doesn’t look sixteen; but generally this is a well constructed world.) Importantly, it also means that we are reading stories of vampires who are either the same age as or only a few years older than the teenage girls they fall in love with. For me, this is less creepy than all those vampires who are one or two hundred years old and still fall for sixteen year olds.
Celine Kiernan
Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 978-1-74237-752-0
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
Reading Taken Away was a rather unexpected experience, largely because the blurb on the back bore very little resemblance to what the story was actually about. It was quite a good story, and I enjoyed the novel; it’s just that it was not at all what I had anticipated.
The story opens in 1974 on the night that Dom and Pat’s senile grandmother burns down their house. They weren’t rich to start with, but now they have nothing. The family must essentially start again, and to do so they move into the house they normally rent for holidays. It’s not much fun living in a holiday house when you’re not on holiday. A lot of the flaws that you never notice when you’re in a good mood and the place is bursting with relatives suddenly become obvious.
Sarah Silverwood
Nowhere Chronicles, Book 2
ISBN: 978-0-575-09580-9
Gollancz
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
The Traitor’s Gate is book two of the Nowhere Chronicles, following on from The Double-Edged Sword. Like the first, this is an outstanding young adult novel which deserves a wide audience, including of older readers.
In volume one, Finmere Tingewick Smith – Fin to his friends – discovered that there are doors between worlds, including the Somewhere (our world) and the Nowhere. The orphaned Fin is not sure of his origins – no one is – but it becomes clear that he is critical to the survival of both worlds. Much intrigue and action followed.
In volume two, the story picks up some months later. Although Fin and his friends thought they had, perhaps, saved the worlds and fulfilled the Prophecy, there are ominous signs of trouble. The Story Holder has not yet been able to reclaim all of the Five Eternal Stories that hold the worlds together. In the Nowhere, something is wandering the streets, attacking people and leaving them mad and dangerous. And in the Somewhere, a crack has appeared in the Prophecy table.
