What follows is from the beginning of part two, the chapter is called Canon To The Left Of Me, Canon To The Right. I’d be grateful if anyone can give me some feedback, let me know what they think, let me know if they’d want to know more?

So without further ado fly you monkeys, fly….

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Bennett’s knuckles were white as he gripped the armrests of his chair, all around him the bridge shook, annoying rattles and squeaks that he made a mental note of to tell the maintenance crew about when they returned to Los Alamos. Apart from that the bridge was quiet, the crew tense, to his left Patterson stood behind the navigator, his eyes locked on the readouts.

“Range?”

Lieutenant Kelso partly turned; her eyes still on her station. “We’re still at least fifteen minutes out sir.”

“Too long, increase speed.”

Patterson turned to look at him. “She can’t take the stress sir, she’ll shake apart.”

Bennett glared at him as he slammed his hand on the hand rest. “Then shake her apart damn it.”

He saw the look that passed between Patterson and Kelso. Bennett had seen the two of them together during R&R, he was glad his young First Officer had found something of interest other than his career, but he’d have to keep an eye out incase this blossoming relationship threatened the smooth running of his bridge. Patterson turned back to watching the navigators station, the intensity of the shaking seemed to increase. Bennett looked round, he knew his ship. She could take it.

The minutes crawled by, no-one on the bridge spoke, they all knew what they were heading into, all knew the seriousness of the situation. Bennett was about to ask what their position was when the speaker overhead crackled.

“I’ve managed to bounce a signal off an outlying drone.” Callum was a new addition to the crew, a communications expert who had proved his worth in upgrading the ships internal and external systems.

“…there’s too many the skies full…”

“…the Mark Twain is going down, she’s on fire…”

“…tighten up the left flank, plug the gaps…”

Bennett recognized the last voice, Captain James Moorson of the Alexander M Palmer.

“Range?” Bennett barked.

“We’ve reached the outlying ships.”

Patterson looked across at the Tactical Station. “Lower the shields, launch our drones, reduce speed…”

“Belay that, take us in flank speed.” Bennett saw Patterson turn to look questioningly at him but chose to ignore him.

The shutters that protected the bridge windows snapped shut, the lights brightened and everyone looked to their stations. They now relied on radar and the drones to be their eyes. Bennett swung a screen across in front of him and watched as the Vegas headed into the battle.

“They’ve launched airmines.” Patterson looked at Bennett, his eyes imploring, they both knew the danger the mines meant. He nodded at his First Officer.

“Reduce speed; let the drones to clear a path.”

They were still a long way out, when most people think of an aerial battle they have images of ships tightly packed together, daring maneuvers, one-on-one dog fights. In reality a battle can cover several dozens of square miles. Ships like the Vegas need a lot of room to move, she could take a mile just to turn and face the way she’d come. Real airships were not designed to behave the way the ships in the movies did.

The outlying ships were those that were damaged and were trying to return to base. Below, plumes of smoke rose from less fortunate ships, black smears on the landscape, debris scattered over hundreds of yards.

“I’m picking up a UFS transponder signal.” Callum adjusted some dials. “It’s the Palmer, she’s taking a pounding.”

Bennett looked to his screen calling up Callum’s station feed. The image was blurry, being bounced across miles of debris strewn sky and via several booster drones. The Palmer was smaller than the Las Vegas. Smoke was pouring from the rear section of her single gondola and her envelope looked to be deflating. Several smaller ships surrounded her, taking pot shots. Standing off was a larger shape, nearly equal to the Vegas.

“We have a lock on that ship yet?”

Patterson looked at him concern on his face.

“Transponder identifies it as the Luigi Galleani.”

Despite the situation Bennett smiled, the Galleani was the most powerful ship the Soviets had this side of the Rockies; a dangerous opponent but a great prize.

“Zero in on the Palmer, deploy the rest of our drones give then some cover. Bring the main batteries to bear on that ship.”

Around him his crew carried out his orders, they knew what to do; they were the best to come out of the academy in the recent draft. They had to be to get a berth on the Vegas, Bennett was very picky about who he would trust with the safety of his ship.

The Ship lurched, a loud clang reverberated overhead. They were taking fire, the enemy knew where he was going and were trying to slow him up to give the Galleani a chance to move to face him. But the Vegas was the most technologically advanced ship in the air, no matter which flag was painted on the side, and she was built to take a lot of punishment.

The images of the Palmer and Galleani grew on his screen, Bennett could make out the damage the smaller ship had suffered, yards long rents in her envelope, gaping hole in the aft of the gondola. He could imagine the damage inside, the casualties.

“What’s the state of the rest of the battle group?”

“Six ships down, the Denver and Mississippi have withdrawn with heavy damage. The remaining three are holding their own trying to keep the worst off the Palmer.”

“Time we evened the odds.” Bennett looked across at Patterson. “Deploy the hammer.” Patterson nodded and turned to the vacant station at the rear of the bridge. Callum got up from his station and joined him.

The station was a new addition, something that hadn’t been there a few months ago. The wood frame was bright, polished. The metal gleamed. Central on the wall above was the screen of a Difference Engine, Callum slid into the chair and typed in a command into the keyboard below. The screen came to life, a confusing muddle of symbols and formula. Patterson sat at the second chair and accessed what looked like a basic navigation station.

“Coordinates locked.” A set of numbers appeared on the screen in front of Callum. “Power levels at maximum, target acquired, Fastlane formed.” He punched a command; Bennett looked back at his screen in time to see the side of the Galleani’s envelope bulge outward then rupture as something big and lethal shot skywards.

Callum cheered behind him, Bennett suppressed his excitement. He watched as the missile – that was little more than half a ton of solid metal with one of the new diesel engines bolted on the side – arc round and ploughed back into the top of the envelope. The Soviet ship sloughed sideways as the envelope lost its integrity. The hammer shot out the bottom of the rear gondola, flame and debris following it out. Fires raged within the ship, she began to lean over, turning on her axis, before beginning the slow, graceful fall earthward.

Bennett looked round at Callum’s beaming face.

“It would seem Professor Sykes isn’t full of hot air after all.”

All Rights Reserved © Philip James Norris 11^th June 2013

Darr felt movement beside him and saw Malash, the Shifter, step forward. His skin was alive, moving like waves on the sea. Darr smiled; the odds weren’t that bad after all. He drew steel, long sword in his right, shorter blade in his left, and gritted his teeth. The wet sounds next to him, the crunch of bones, ripping of clothes, were the only sounds and both groups tried their best to ignore them.

The low rumble was felt more than heard, Darr saw some of the Scallian’s pale; they were a superstitious race and he could see they were spooked, uncertain. Tales of Shifters existed in every society Darr had visited, from The Four to far away Sarakesh, but none had seen one in centuries. There was movement to his right, a black hulk towering above him. Darr was reckoned a giant, standing near seven feet tall, but compared to this, he was no bigger than a Scallian. Malash the Shifter was gone, a monster Gorilla twice Darr’s height stood in his place.

The moment broke the same time the Scallian’s did, Darr and his company surged forward, swords and axe’s flashing in the sunlight, screams and blood filled the air. Above all the mighty roar of the beast, it tore into the Scallian ranks throwing bodies around as it they were toys. Darr cut three down from behind; there was no room for honorable conduct in situations like this. All around bodies littered the ground, broken, cut and bloodied. Darr was glad to see none were his friend’s.

One, braver than the rest, turned and stood his ground, Daar swung and their blades locked. He had some skill with a blade this one, they cut and thrust, parried and twisted. But Darr was stronger and stood head and shoulders above the smaller Scallian. No matter what skill you had, size and strength always mattered. Eventually the Scallian made a mistake and Darr split him from shoulder to gut, both hands gripping the hilt, his full weight behind the cut. The Scallian didn’t cry out, he didn’t have time to, the look of surprise on his face nearly made Daar laugh out loud. Then, like a dead fish the Scallian flopped boneless to the ground. Darr moved on, he was already forgotten; there were plenty more where he came from.

The rest of the Scallian’s were broken, half their number dead the rest fled. Darr stood covered in blood and gore, his company around him all breathing heavily but alive. The monster Gorilla stood beside Darr, its arms covered in blood, the fur matted.

“Just a little chat you said?” Joakim, Darr’s second, spat onto the ground, his one eye blazing with battle fever still. He pointed at the bodies. “Is this your idea of a chat?” Darr smiled as Malash, the Shifter, began to change next to him, his skin moving like waves on the sea.

“In situations like this,” Daar wiped the sweat from his face, his hand running up over his bald head. “You can’t avoid a little blood.” He looked round the ring of bloodied faces, all battered and scarred from a life time of living by the sword, and they all nodded in agreement. Beside him the noises had stopped and Malash was Malash again, a frail grey skinned creature with an over large head and black eyes. He looked at Darr and smiled.

“Better than sex.

Title:

Author: Sarah Pinborough

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: Out Now

Snow White lives the idyllic life of a fairytale Princess, she has the love of her father and of the people, she has the loyalty of the dwarves who toil all daylong under the mountains. But her stepmother – the Queen – is not happy with the way Snow White lives her life and feels it is time she accepted her role and found a husband. With the King away at war the Queen weaves her magical web around the castle and the country beyond, making every-one’s life a misery and threatening horrible punishments on any who defy her. She also sets about pressing Snow White to accept a husband, so the Queen can be rid of her, leaving her no rivals. But Snow White defies her step-mother and she does it with seeming impunity, the protection her absent father offers her a greater threat than any the Queen can make.

The Queen does not take this situation lying down and when her guards capture a Huntsman in the forest, in return for his life she tasks him to kill Snow White, the Huntsman accepts and sets out in search of the Princess, of course he fails, and in order to save his own life tries to trick the Queen, but in this he also fails and the Queen punishes him for trying to trick her. But the Queen’s grandmother is on hand and says she will deal with the problem of Snow White her own way and sets off into the forest with a poisoned apple. With Snow cursed the dwarves entomb her in a glass coffin where eventually the Prince finds her and falls in love, the curse is lifted by true loves first kiss and the couple married to live happily ever after.

Everyone knows the story of Snow White, it is said to be the most famous fairy tale in the world. But the version everyone is most familiar with is the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves; a twee musical animation, with a stunningly beautiful Snow White  running away from her wicked step-mother, and hiding in the woods with the cuddly dwarves in harmony with the forest animals. Now how do you take that image, that icon of purity and goodness, and make it sexy. Why you give it to Sarah Pinborough. Poison is Snow White with all the Disney taken out and a lot of Pinborough put in, anyone familiar with Sarah’s work will know what I’m talking about. Sarah has a knack of weaving a tale that’ll twist around you making you addicted in no short time.

You know you’re in for something different when the evil Queen performs a sex act on the King in the first chapter. Here you’ll find no gentle tale of good versus evil, what you will find is a head strong young woman fighting against the bonds of her birth and trying to stake a place for herself in a man’s world. Of course it’s not as simple as that, all the elements everyone has come to expect from the story are there. An evil Queen, a Huntsman, seven dwarves and, of course, Snow White. But here those elements are turned on their head so the traditional roles are seen through different eyes. The Huntsman for one is exactly that, but I feel reading between the lines he is more a hunter of men – a mercenary perhaps – than the forest living hunter gatherer more traditionally depicted. Hot from a previous adventure he is in the forest on the run when captured by the Queen’s guards. Likewise the handsome Prince, he is every inch Prince Charming from all the fairy tales, but he has an edge that makes him more of a danger than the simpering dandy more usually seen.

In fact out of all the characters I feel that it is the Prince and the Huntsman that are the most interesting, and the two that readers need to pay great attention to in what they say and their inner monologues. Both characters have a history, and I feel they have a shared history. As to what that may be is up in the air, but I’m convinced they are the two characters that link the three stories Poison, Charm and Beauty together. Whilst this is the first in the trilogy of fairy tale retellings, I don’t think it is the first chronologically.

All in all this is a fairy tale with edge, a sharp edge that cuts both ways and leaves you with more questions than answers. It also has a nice twist in the tail, a twist that I didn’t see coming and makes you sit back and go “whoa!”.

Title:

Author: Adam Christopher

Publisher: Angry Robot

Published: Out Now

RRP: Print £8.99 – Kindle £5.49

The Empire State is dying. The Fissure connecting the pocket universe to New York has vanished, plunging the city into a deep freeze and the populace are demanding a return to Prohibition and rationing as energy supplies dwindle. Meanwhile, in 1954 New York, the political dynamic has changed and Nimrod finds his department subsumed by a new group, Atoms for Peace, led by the mysterious Evelyn McHale. As Rad uncovers a new threat to his city, Atoms for Peace prepare their army for a transdimensional invasion. Their goal: total conquest – or destruction – of the Empire State.

The Age Atomic, what’s that about then I hear you ask? Well it’s a gritty noire detective story, mixed with fantasy and science fiction and the subtly blended with smooth classic 1950s style robots. You take all those ingredients, mix them with alternate universes and a frenetic prose, and you have Adam Christopher’s follow-up to 2012s fantastic Empire State. There, those few brief sentences contain all you need to know about this book, but there’s more to it than that.

Rad Bradley is back as the hard bitten and harder nosed Private Eye from the Pocket universe, known as the Empire State. But things are not going well for Rad or his city. The Fissure – the spatial link that joins the Pocket to the Origin, New York – has vanished, and Rad’s city has been plunged into a hard winter that shows no sign of ending. To make matters worse the city is being rocked by tremors that are collapsing buildings and threatening to rip the city apart. Rad is also into it up to his neck, a new case, a madman building a robot army, his friend – and probably the only man who understands the nature of the Fissure – Captain Carson missing, and a pretty secret agent who has an agenda all of her own.

Things in the Origin are not too well either; Captain Nimrod finds his department under threat from Atoms for Peace and its mysterious director Evelyn McHale. The power he once wielded slowly eroded and his department seemingly under siege in a post McCarthy 1954. Plus for some reason all contact with the Pocket has ceased, and the agents he’s sent to investigate are missing.

As with the previous book the story takes place in both universes, but unlike last time here we get more of the action in New York.  That’s not to say there’s not plenty going on in the Empire State; the fast opening first quarter is a breathless example of tight writing and multiple cliff hangers. If Adam is adept at one thing it’s his skill at keeping the reader hooked, constantly I’m reminded of the old black & white Buster Crabbe starring Flash Gordon or Buck Rodgers adventures, every episode ending with the hero’s in a dire predicament. That’s not to say every chapter is predictable in how it ends and the next starts. The thrills are unexpected and there are some interesting curve balls thrown in that Flash or Buck would have had a challenge sorting out.

All the surviving characters from the first book are back in play (including one who everyone would have thought they’d seen the last of), around them Adam has woven a densely complex web, multiple plots that all rumble along beside eachother, gradually throughout the course of the book these plots jockey for position until the endgame where you find out they are all intricately linked. Likewise Adam’s characters weave in and out of the plots, all have a part to play, and as before not all are as clear cut as it seems. Characters coloured a muddy shade of grey are nothing new, but here the grey is a little deeper. Double-crosses come, unexpected, that make already ambiguous characters, an even darker shade of grey.

The fantasy element is ramped up more this time round (ghosts, that’s all I’m saying), but it doesn’t detract from the science fiction but adds to it in the same way brown sauce makes a bacon sandwich complete. What Adam has done is taken both genre’s and moulded them into a hybrid that gives you something that may not be new, but is different enough to stand out from the rest, it all goes towards making the story dark and moody with some flashes of humour and plenty of action. There is a lot to like about Adam’s style, he is obviously a fan of classic sci-fi and fantasy stories, and here he’s melded them onto a hardboiled Mike Hammer style crime story.

Adam Christopher has grown as a writer and the growth shines through here, his prose has become stronger, his characters more real; his ideas, settings and themes bright and full of depth. There were times during Empire State where for me the pace became bogged down; like we were treading water waiting to be rescued. I suppose it was expected for a first novel, the writer still finding his way around a story, still trying to find his voice and that of his characters. Adam has learned his trade since; he’s grown to a stylish and exciting writer, with ideas that are full of adventure and mystery.

My current WiP had been going well, part one wrote and with beta readers, and part two progressing better than I’d thought. But he was doing his utmost to put paid to that feeling of wellbeing that has been with me for the most part of this year. That feeling that finally I’d hit on something that might just do it, might just get people interested in what I had to say. In the space of a couple of days I hit snag after snag. Characters wouldn’t behave and the flow stalled. Since he came calling my writing has been hit and miss, going from everyday to every other day, and then every other other day. I was despondent, finding excuses not to open the file up and start writing, the Not Worthy Monkey was winning.

Then last night that all changed. It’s amazing how effective two emails can be to lifting the spirit.

I submitted a short story to the third in Pill Hill Press’ Monster Hunter anthology collection – Use Enough Gun - close to a year ago. I’d already had my story Groundhog Day published in the second volume and was over the moon to be accepted again. Then things went a bit awry at Pill Hill, the result being the site closed and all the authors were told the rights to their stories had reverted back to them. But then came Miles Boothe like a veritable knight in shinning armour, he took up the challenge and created Embry Press, a new publication house that would be specializing in stories about monster hunters. Whilst he was sorting things out he told all authors accepted by Pill Hill that he would be carrying on with publication of the third volume.

Last night I had an email from him, it had attached the edits for my story Jack, he’d indicated some changes that helped the pace and tone of one of the action scenes. He also put a note on the email saying he felt that this story was the best work I’d done. Four little words, best work I’d done, that’s all it took and the Monkey was riled, his grip on me weakened and he was starting to become dislodged. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet, he was still in my head, his case still unpacked.

Then I had a second email, this one was from Douglas Strider – author of the brilliant Space Danger: The Deadly Planet of Death -, Doug is someone I’ve know for about a year on Twitter, his a fellow budding authour, and he kindly accepted my request to beta read the first part of my current WiP. He’d done a great job, he’d given me lots of comments, ideas and a huge barrel of encouragement. He liked what I’d done and how I’d done it, and what’s more he wanted to find out what happens next. I was high on praise and my back sore from all the clapping. The Monkey, he was on the doorstep his case in hand, a dejected look on his face as he went on his way.

Now I have my laptop back, now I have my mojo back, the Monkey banished – for now – but I’m not complacent cos I know if I’m not mindful he’ll be back.

To Miles and Doug I’d like to say’s thanks, you’ve lifted a flagging writers spirits a thousandfold.

I pulled on the reigns and the mule whinnied before stubbornly stopping, we both sat there looking down as the last embers flickered and died, leaving a prone figure face down in the dust. The mule whinnied again, eager to be off, but the situation intrigued me and once intrigued I liked to see a thing through. A man who had no right travelling the night road at this particular time had dropped by, it was my duty to find out why. I clicked my tongue, the mule looked over its shoulder, a quizzical look on its face; and with a snort it jerked forwards.

The man was tall and lean, dressed in a uniform that was tattered and blackened in places. I knew a soldier when I saw one, I’d been one, still was. This one was different, his skin grey, mottled. His skull totally hairless, one hand was under his body, but the other was stretched out; the hand looked withered and only hand three fingers. The mule sniffed and then whinnied, stamping one hoof on the hard packed ground. I’d learned long ago to listen to the reactions of animals; they had a sense beyond the norm. But I was committed and swung myself off the seat and walked over to the man.

Kneeling beside the body there was a peculiar smell, sweet, cloying, like spoiled meat. It reminded me of the aftermath on a battle field; the dead piled high, carrion filling the sky. I reached out and pushed the body over, he was light as a feather. I stepped back and will admit I was surprised, not a bad trick as usually nothing catches me out. Stretched out looking up the man was stranger than I could have imagined. The head was misshapen, long, stretched almost. The features flattened; the nose just two slots between the eyes and mouth. The eyes were big, way too big for the head. It gave a groan, the mouth just a line, no lips and no teeth from what I could see.

“Hnnxshhuiio…” I didn’t understand what it was saying, which was strange?

“What you saying there fella?” The eyes flickered open, black pools, all pupil. I crouched down next to it, reached over and placed a hand on the chest, feeling around. I’d reached its abdomen before I got a rhythm. “You a long way from home?”

It opened its mouth, the eyes wavering around, trying to focus. “Where…”

“That’s better, got the beat of you now.” I took my hand off and sat back on my haunches. “You fell, not sure where from cos I not seen the like of you before.”

“Earth…”

“Earth?” I looked up and down the length of it. “You ain’t like nothing that walks there.”

“Attacked…had to defend ourselv…” The eyes drooped and its head fell sideways. It was normal for any traveler coming through to be disorientated, but this was different. I suppose it not being of the Earth the reaction was different, thing is, if it’s not from there then how had it come to be here?

I looked back at the mule; it looked at me with those sad eyes then down at whatever our new friend was.

“Can we keep it?”

“It ain’t supposed to be here.”

The mule looked up into the eternal darkness above.

“What if more come?”

I smiled; what indeed. The crossroads were meant only for humans, but seemed someone had found a way to send something different through. What was their intention, to threaten us, to force us into a reaction? Who knows, it’s been so long I’d forgotten how humans think.

“We’ll have to take him in.” I looked back at the mule, he had the right of it; this would have to be reported.

“Aye, suppose you’re right.” I got up and headed to the back of the wagon and grabbed the edge of the tarpaulin. “He ain’t gonna like it though.”

I flung the tarp back; another body lay on the bed of the wagon. This was the one from a few days ago, he at least was human, but looking at him properly I realized I’d missed before that he too was in uniform, his too tattered and blackened. I looked past the mule at the prone figure and then back at the one in the wagon and whistled. I shook my head as I walked over and picked the figure up; walking back I looked the mule in the eye.

“If they’re fighting a war up there; there’ll be hell to pay.”

The mule brayed with laughter.

All Rights Reserved © Philip J Norris April 2013

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2013/04/10/the-first-law-graphic-novel-2/

The First Law graphic novel will be available FREE to anyone who has an internet connection, the site is now live.

http://www.firstlawcomic.com/

And new pages will be added every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In addition to these freely available versions, you can also buy hard copies via Comixology - http://www.comixology.com/ - and there are also plans for hardback versions of collected series later.

This is great news, I’ve been a long time fan of Joe’s work and feel this only opens his work up to a whole new audience. And who knows, maybe if this is as successful as his prose then we may one day see a screen adaptation (you listening HBO?)

Title:

Author: Emma Newman

Publisher: Angry Robot

Published: Out Now

RRP: Print £8.99 – Kindle £5.49

Something is wrong in Aquae Sulis, Bath’s secret mirror city.

 The new season is starting and the Master of Ceremonies is missing. Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds Treaty, is assigned the task of finding him, with no-one to help but a dislocated soul and a mad sorcerer. There is a witness, but his memories have been bound by magical chains only the Arbiter’s enemies can break. A rebellious woman trying to escape her family may prove to be the ally Max needs.

 But can she be trusted, she a daughter of one of the Great Families of Aquae Sulis, a family allied to one of the most powerful Fae Lords. And why does she want to give up eternal youth and the life of privilege she’s been born into?

This is a beautifully crafted story, the characters fit, the settings fit; everything fits. Reading it you’d expect it to be the author’s 4^th or 5^th book, but this is Emma Newman’s debut novel; and it doesn’t show. Emma’s been very ambitious leading up to the release of this book, she embarked on a project of releasing a short story a week for a year, all set somewhere within the Split Worlds. I signed up and received an email every week and really enjoyed them all. It was a taste of what was to come, but upon starting this book I realised she’d saved the best for these pages.

Long ago there was a war between the Fae and sorcerers, the sorcerers won and the Split Worlds were created. The normal world (our world called Mundanus and humans are referred to as Mundanes) is devoid of magic and is off limits to the Fae. The Fae are trapped in Exilium, a prison from which there is no escape. Between the two, the Nether – neither here nor there – a world locked in time, its people living a strict caste system, a world where the puppets of the Fae live and plot and scheme. Great Families; all allied to one Fae Lord or another, all vying for power. But much like the Fae they too are trapped in their own prison. Making sure the Fae and Great Families behave – and do not interfere in Mundane life – are the Arbiters, soulless guardians immune to Fae magic, led by a sorcerer who has the power to force the Fae and their puppets to do as they are bid.

This is the Split Worlds, each world unlike the other. It’s a nice twist that Exilium – the Fae prison – is seen as a beautiful world, full of colour, dance, music. Whereas the Nether is dull monochrome, a silver sky, no stars, no sun, no day, no night; its people ageless and trapped. Emma manages to bring each of these worlds vividly to life, no detail is left unclear, the worlds themselves characters as well.

Emma’s work over the previous year with her weekly short stories means she is freed up here to get straight into the story. That being said you can read this without having prior knowledge of what came before; there is ample world building so you know what is what, and who is who. Several strands are started in the opening chapters that run the length of the book, and interestingly not all the strands are tied off in the closing chapters. There are a couple of late reveals that leave the book on a sort of cliff hanger. This bodes well for the future of the Split Worlds.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book; I’ve recently got into stories about Fae and Fae magic. This adds a nice twist to that mythology and it’s obvious from the off that Emma knows and loves what she is writing about.

Title:

Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: Out Now

RRP: Print £7.99 – Kindle £1.99

My name is Peter Grant, and until January I was just a probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known as the Metropolitan Police Service (or the Filth). My only concerns were not getting assigned to the Case Progression Unit and how to get into WPC Leslie May’s pants. Then one night I tried to take a witness statement from someone who’d been dead for over a century, that brought me to the attention of DI Nightingale, the last wizard in England.

 Now I’m a DC and trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become a whole lot more complicated. Nests of vampires in Purley, digging up graves in Covent Garden, brokering a peace between the warring gods and goddesses that rule over the Thames and its tributaries. But there’s something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious, vengeful spirit that takes ordinary people and turns them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair.

 The spirit of riot and rebellions has awakened in the city, and its fallen to me to bring order to the chaos; or die trying.

 I’ve been hearing about the PC Grant books for a while, I’d always steered away because I was worried that it would just be a Harry Potteresque story, about an apprentice who is better than everyone else and shows the experts how to do it. I’m glad to say that when I finally did get round to picking a copy up that I was so wrong.

There are elements of Harry Potter in there – the story has magic – but its how Harry Potter would have been if he’d been ten years older, a lot more cynical and was born a raised in London. Peter Grant is not your ordinary wizard; he’s not your ordinary copper. He over-thinks things too much, but in over-thinking them he manages to see what is there better than some others. Deemed to be too cerebral to be an ordinary copper Peter is sidelined into the Case Progression Unit, his role, in-putting all the data “ordinary” coppers collate. It’s a dead-end assignment and not what he’d signed up for; lucky for him the guy he took a witness statement from one cold January morning happened to be a ghost.

One dead body, one ghost witness and Peter’s life is turned upside down. Within days he is thrust into a world of magic, gods, demons and other creatures that shouldn’t be allowed into polite society. To his credit Peter handles the transition fairly well, he guided through the rules and pitfalls that come with him being an apprentice. He is introduced to age old agreements between the supernatural world and the Metropolitan Police Service. But something is hell bent on tearing that fragile peace to shreds.

The plot slowly builds, each set piece introducing Peter – and the reader – to the hidden world that coexists alongside ours. There is a lot of interesting history thrown in for good measure, showing the author has gone out of his way to set his story in a grounded reality. I liked the fact that London itself is a character in the story, its streets, buildings and the rivers that flow through it, all have a part to play and add something to the tale as a whole.

If I had any niggles it’s that I’d liked to have seen more of DI Nightingale, but I suppose this isn’t his story, and seeing there are already three more books in the series out, I’m guessing more of his story will come out as Peter’s training progresses.

Idea’s, what to do with them? Plot and plan, sit and make a spreadsheet, detailing every nuance, every minute details down to what colour thong your protagonist is where today? Or just run with them, see where they take you as they whoop and holler across the fields of your imagination. I’ve never been that much of a planner, I’ve tried, sat and worked out what the characters are like, their stories, their histories. But then part way in I get that feeling that instead of spending time doing this I could actually be writing. Everyone ha their own way of doing it, their own rituals that have to be performed in exactly the right order so as to raise the story from the ooze. My way – like most of my life – is to just wing it.

Life In The Fastlane – my current main WiP – started life as a short story, a military steampunk with ingredients from SF and fantasy. An alternate history of the mid-20th century. But after submitting it to several magazines – and getting rejected but some nice feedback – it started to become more than a self contained story. The characters were crying out for release, their world began breaking the bounds of just over 6,000 words and demanding to procreate. So it was the short story became part one of a bigger story and the idea began to evolve.

It wasn’t a conscious effort, I didn’t find myself sitting for hours working out which direction to go. I made adjustments to the initial short story – which is now out with beta readers – and dived headlong into part two. It was this headlong dive that became a bit of a marathon, resulting in part two surpassing part one in words and character view points. As of the end of March part two is nearly complete – well the first draft is – and is bordering on a novella all on its own. I already know where to go in part three, but I have no map to take me there, I’ll be jumping on that wing again.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere, I’m rambling, making my inner thoughts public. I feel it helps to vent every now and then. But I just wanted to get it out there, feel some sort of release. With parts 1 & 2 almost in the bag part 3 is the biggy, its the one that could make or break the whole project. I’m entering into unknown territory, beyond 25,000 words territory.

But I have an idea I know how this will play out, I just hope it’s an idea people can get on board with.