The Amtrak Wars to resume?

Now here's a blast from the past. When I was a teenager I loved The Amtrak Wars series by Patrick Tilley. Six books long, this series was a seriously enjoyable mix of a Western, a high-tech SF post-apocalyptic scenario and Shogun. Set in the 30th Century, nine centuries after the world was devastated in a nuclear exchange, it saw the North American continent become the battleground for three very different factions: the primitive, Native American-like Plainfolk, the high-tech underground Amtrak Federation (based in and under Texas) and the nation of Ne-Issan (a Shogunate-era Japanese-derived culture dominating the Eastern Seaboard). Whilst not exactly great literature, it was a tremendously fun series with interesting worldbuilding, intricate political maneuvering and an action-driven pace. Its setting was vivid and compared to some other works of SF or epic fantasy (the series is heavily derived from both) it had some originality going for it. It was also quite brutal and ruthless, killing off major characters at a rate that would even put GRRM to shame.

Unfortunately, after the publication of the sixth volume in 1990, the author apparently abandoned the series. He published one more novel, a middling SF comedy called Star Waltz, in 1995 and nothing since then. Tilley later revealed that the series was supposed to be a twelve-book series divided into two natural stages: the setting-up of the Talisman Prophecy and its later fulfilment. Apparently he had started writing Book 7, Ghost Rider, and had been hoping to publish it before the end of the century but he lost faith in the project after being turned off writing violent stories by real-life events (specifically the Balkan wars).

Last year, The Amtrak Wars was optioned by an Australian development company to be turned into a series of feature films, although at Tilley's request the series was renamed The Talisman Prophecy. It's unclear if, as with some reprints of the original series, the Amtrak Federation will be renamed. The scriptwriter set up a Facebook group to reveal progress on the project. Apparently emboldened by this development, Tilley claims to have restarted work on the latter books, but has shortened them to a trilogy. Since he just turned 80 years old, he decided to hedge his bets and finish the series as succintly as possible.

Whilst these developments are encouraging, they may come to nothing in the end, but if this interesting and 'different' SF/fantasy crossbreed series can be brought to a more definitive conclusion it would certainly be worth taking a look. I remember reccing this series to friends with the tag-line, "Lord of the Rings with flamethrowers and samurai," and even my more cynical, older self has to admit that's still pretty cool.

The original series seems to be out of print, but I've rarely found a second-hand bookshop that didn't have at least a few of the volumes in stock (it was a huge seller back in the 1980s) and Amazon seems to have second-hand copies readily available. Intrigued by this news, I'll be re-reading the series in the near future and hoping it lives up to my fond memories of it.

The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley
1: Cloud Warrior (1983)
2: First Family (1985)
3: Iron Master (1987)
4: Blood River (1988)
5: Death-Bringer (1989)
6: Earth-Thunder (1990)

Dark Visions: An Illustrated Guide to the Amtrak Wars (1988)

Wertzone Classics: Battlestar Galactica: Season 1

Season 1 of the new BSG picks up where the mini-series left off: the Twelve Colonies have been destroyed in a surprise nuclear attack launched by their former creations, the Cylons. A ragtag fleet of about 80-90 ships has assembled under the protection and leadership of the last surviving battlestar, the Galactica, and have fled into deep space. Commander Adama and President Roslin have promised to guide the people to the long-lost thirteenth colony, Earth. However, contrary to public belief, they have no idea where it is. As the search for Earth unfolds, the crew of Galactica are also relying on Dr. Gaius Baltar's project to build a device to smoke out the Cylon infiltrators among the fleet. There is a great deal of dramatic tension to be mined by the fact that, as a result of the mini-series, the audience knows who one of the Cylon infiltrators is, but neither the crew nor the character know.

An ongoing subplot takes us back to Caprica, now devastated by nuclear explosions and radioactive fall-out, where Lt. Karl Agathon, callsign 'Helo', is trying to find a way off the planet after being stranded there in the mini-series. However, the Cylons have their own plans for Helo...

Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica is its most concise: 13 episodes compared to Season 2-4's 20 apiece. It's also its most consistent in quality, with no longeurs or unwatchably bad episodes. The pace of events is relentless, with the constant Cylon pursuit of the fleet and their hounding of Helo's attempts to flee from Caprica driving the narrative forwards. The emphasis here is less on the mystical elements that come to dominate the later seasons and more on the cold, hard realities of survival: finding or growing the vast amounts of supplies that 50,000 people need to survive on, finding water and fuel, and putting in place an administrative structure to govern the people more effectively. The clash between the military and political perspectives (espoused by Adama and Roslin) provides an underlying thematic structure to the season culminating in the events of the startling finale. Numerous subplots are established and expanded upon with confidence and verve.

For the individual episodes, the award-winning 33 is an astonishing piece of work. The ticking clock element and the constant Cylon attacks on the fleet turning the crew into strung-out wrecks is handled superbly. Water deals with the supply problem effectively whilst increasing the paranoia quotient. Bastille Day introduces the recurring character of Tom Zarek (excellently portrayed by the original series' Richard Hatch) and a number of political subplots that culminate at the end of Season 2. Act of Contrition and You Can't Go Home Again mix together the problem of recruiting new soldiers and pilots from a very limited pool of recruits with a more dynamic storyline involving Starbuck crashed on an inhospitable planet. Litmus addresses the some of the apparent plot-holes of earlier episodes by having someone investigate the security lapses on board the ship. Six Degrees of Separation puts Baltar on the spot when he is accused of treason, with James Callis delivering a stand-out performance. Flesh and Bone is another excellent piece of work, with Starbuck having to torture a Cylon prisoner for information but ends up having her own soul stripped bare. Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down is the first season's only misfire, an attempt at a 'comedy episode' that doesn't work too well, although it does introduce the magnificent, Lady MacBeth-esque character of Ellen Tigh. The Hand of God is a simple balls-to-the-wall action show, with Galactica and her Viper squadrons having to launch a massive assault on a Cylon base. The CGI is astonishingly good and the tactical nuances of the planned attack are portrayed well. Colonial Day is another political episode, showing how the fleet's new administration is going to work. The assassin subplot is muddled and confused, and the resolution to the episode hints at a subplot that is never again addressed. Nevertheless, it's entertaining enough. Events culminate in the two-part Kobol's Last Gleaming, which mixes together the storylines from the entire season and delivers a succession of plot revelations and intriguing ideas culminating in a shocking cliffhanger twist ending that leaves the viewer eager to watch Season 2 immediately.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 1 (*****) is an excellent piece of work, establishing the characters and storylines superbly. It is available on DVD in the UK and packaged with the mini-series in the USA.

101: 33 (*****)
102: Water (****)
103: Bastille Day (****)
104: Act of Contrition (****)
105: You Can't Go Home Again (****)
106: Litmus (***)
107: Six Degrees of Separation (****)
108: Flesh and Bone (*****)
109: Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down (**½)
110: The Hand of God (****)
111: Colonial Day (***½)
112: Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 1 (****½)
113: Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 2 (*****)

Battlestar Galactica: The Mini-Series

When writer/producer Ronald D. Moore won a 2006 award in Los Angeles for his work on the 'reimagined' Battlestar Galactica, host and noted science fiction critic Harlan Ellison congratulated him for taking the 'worst SF TV show' of all time and turning it into the best. Perhaps hyperbolic - there's far worse shows out there than the 1978 iteration of Battlestar Galactica - but an increasingly common sentiment that has seen publications such as Time Magazine, Rolling Stone and the New Yorker declare the new BSG to be the best thing on television, in any genre.

Most of these comments stem from the excellent first and second seasons. Rolling back to the mini-series, it is a surprise to see how fully-formed this show leapt onto the screen. Ususally there is a long 'breaking-in' period that has to elapse before writers and actors really start to feel comfortable on their show. Here, however, the characters appear fully fleshed-out from the start, with Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell turning in sterling performances from the start, with James Callis also particularly worthy of mention. The plot is straightforward: the Twelve Colonies of Mankind are destroyed in a nuclear holocaust unleashed by the Cylons, killing machines humanity created fifty years earlier which rebelled and disappeared into deep space. 50,000 survivors flee to reach the safety offered by the last major warship to survive the attack, the battlestar Galactica, along the way generating plenty of conflict between the democratic, civilian viewpoint (espoused by McDonnell's President Roslin) and the military, pragmatic one (personified by Olmos' Commander Adama). A feeling of paranoia creeps in once it is confirmed that some Cylons now resemble humans and have infiltrated the colonists for their own ends.

At three hours long, the pacing in the mini-series is well-handled, although a couple of scenes near the end feel a bit superfluous. There is a lot of story to handle here and a lot of characters to introduce, however, and this fills the time admirably. The 'naturalistic' shooting is a success and the effects are superb, rivalling or exceeding most of their big-screen counterparts, although the jumpy camera work takes a while to adjust to.

There is little wrong with the mini-series. Perhaps some scenes are not explained well (a brutal murder near the start of the story is supposedly self-justified as a mercy killing by a Cylon agent aware of the imminent nuclear holocaust, but this excuse, feeble though it is, is never even voiced in the episode) and there are a few wince-inducing lines, but the uniformly good acting and writing more than make up for this. The semi-cliffhanger ending also leaves you eager to pick up the Season 1 DVD box set. Overall, an impressive and enjoyable work.

The Battlestar Galactica mini-series (****) is available on DVD very cheaply in the UK. In the USA, it is included on the Season 1 DVD box set.

The Legends of Dune Trilogy by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Way back in 1994, early in the lifespan of its line of Star Wars tie-in novels. Bantam published The Jedi Academy Trilogy by the then-unheard of Kevin J. Anderson. A fanbase invigorated by Timothy Zahn's enjoyable, excellently-paced trilogy featuring Grand Admiral Thraw eagerly seized on any new Star Wars fiction that was being produced (explaining why the so-so Truce at Bakura and the awful Courtship of Princess Leia became instant bestsellers). In the case of this trilogy, this proved to be unwise. Featuring morally corrupt would-be Jedi who kill billions and then get forgiven by Luke Skywalker because they felt bad about it, and a superweapon that makes the Death Star look pitiful (a ship called the Sun Crusher which can destroy star systems and is indestructible), The Jedi Academy Trilogy appeared to be the ultimate work of deluded fan fiction. Naturally, it sold huge amounts of copies.

Soon enough, Anderson was everywhere. He was writing X-Files novels. His own creations, utterly unremarkable with the exception of the mildly diverting Climbing Olympus, were soon spreading insidiously over bookshelves everywhere. Could he not be stopped? And then the final ignomy: he convinced Brian Herbert to help him co-write the books that would continue Herbert's father's Dune series.


Readers braced themselves for something horrifying, but unexpectedly the Prelude to Dune Trilogy (House Atreides, House Harkonnen and House Corrino) turned out to be okay. Not great, obviously, but readable. Naturally, the books contradicted established Dune canon all over the shop and the characters only really worked because Frank Herbert had already established them, but compared to other cash-in books out there these were definitely nowhere near as bad as they could have been.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the Legends of Dune Trilogy. Set ten thousand years before the events of Dune, roughly the same amount of time into our future, the trilogy chronicles how humankind freed itself from slavery at the hands of the 'thinking machines' and embarked on a bloody war that after a century saw the machines vanquished and the great Imperium founded. As with the earlier trilogy, Anderson and Herbert almost immediately started deviating from established Dune canon: the Butlerian Jihad is depicted in the original novels as a much more equal war, with the humans deciding to destroy the machines after a cult of humans worshipping the AIs as gods is uncovered (hence the whole, "You shall not build a machine in the likeness of a human mind," stuff). This is also the version of the struggle Frank Herbert depicted in the 1984 Dune Encyclopedia and formed the basis of the notes for his own planned prequel novel (which he was apparently planning to write following the seventh Dune novel). For reasons that are not entirely clear, Herbert and Anderson decided that was lame and went with their own, original creation.

It is difficult to describe how inept this series is. The Dune universe is one that is rich in fantastic and original concepts, worlds and characters. To make it appear to be bland and silly actually takes some skill, skills which the authors clearly brought to this project with enthusiasm. The characters are, at best, two-dimensional cyphers. The AIs are incredibly stupid and do not operate with anything approaching logic. The preponderence of force on the AIs' side is so ridiculous the human rebels should not even have the slightest chance of victory (hence why in Frank Herbert's original vision the two sides were equal to start off with), let alone the freedom to spend decades developing their Holtzman shields, las-guns, spacefolding technology and so forth. Also, we are led to believe that not just the Imperium and the Houses, but also the Bene Gesserit, the Suk School, the Spacing Guild, the Fremen, the swordmasters of Ginaz, the Mentats, the face-dancers and just about every single other concept in the Dune series was established simultaneously (in Herbert's original plan the Bene Gesserit had already existed for centuries, albeit with a different agenda) in an awe-inspiring display of pure fanwank.

Does this series bring any positive qualities to the table? No. The plotting is so mechanical it feels like it was procedurally generated by a computer algorithm. The characters are cyphers at best, who do not operate in accordance with generally-accepted principles of logic or intelligence. Vast reams of the three books are taken up by tedious info-dumping and exposition. This is a cold, cynical exercise in making money from fans starved of new material for too long by two authors who have lost whatever credibility they once had in the genre.

The Prelude to Dune Trilogy (*) is a work that can only justly be described in terms not appropriate for polite blogging. Whilst it is true that the original Dune novels by Frank Herbert themselves went off the boil in later years, even the worst of them is preferable to this drivel. Avoid.

A more concise review is given by the webcomic Penny Arcade at this location.

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

I think in recent years there's been a tendency to take Terry Pratchett for granted. He has consistently churned out, on average, two high-quality novels a year for the better part of a quarter of a century. His Discworld is one of the most fleshed-out secondary worlds in existence. Ankh-Morpork is routinely voted 'greatest fantasy city' ever. Out of 36 Discworld and a dozen non-Discworld novels, there are very few which can be said to be sub-par. There seemed to be this assumption that this was going to carry on for some considerable time to come. With the announcement of his illness last year that seems to have changed, and each new Pratchett novel is likely to garner more coverage and more interest than ever before.

Making Money is the 36th Discworld novel and its paperback release comes in the year that the flat world carried through space on the back of a giant turtle celebrates its 25th anniversary; The Colour of Magic, the first book in the series, was published in 1983. The book is also the sequel to an earlier Discworld novel, Going Postal. In that book, conman Moist von Lipwig was rescued from the gallows by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, and set to work restoring the Post Office to its former glory. He succeeded handsomely.

Making Money opens a year later. The Post Office is a roaring success, but Moist is feeling a little bored, and has taken to breaking into his own bedroom to keep his skills fresh. The Patrician seems to have concluded that Moist would make an excellent troubleshooter to sort out Ankh-Morpork's other failing public services and tasks him with getting the Ankh-Morpork Bank back on its feet after the former chairwoman passed away, leaving her dog, Mr. Fusspot, to inherit the role of chairman. Moist is initially reluctant, but soon relishes the new challenge. Unfortunately, a family who own a share in the bank, the Lavishes, are not so keen on Moist's appointment and are soon digging into his dirty past to find something to use against him. Thrown into the mix are lots of golems (including a gender-confused one), an undead necromancer with an eye for the ladies, a very dedicated bank clerk and a lot of clockwork items of an intimate nature.

As usual, the book is an effortless read. Pratchett's prose sparkles and flows as easily as ever, although careful reading is required to catch every observation and piece of satire as it flies past. Pratchett's typical approach of standing back, putting a mirror in front of something we take for granted (banking, in this case) and saying, "Look, this is a really daft system on quite a few levels," is again quite successful here. As with the other later Discworld novels, the broad out-and-out humour takes a back seat to more wry observations, although a comical interlude involving a dog becoming attached to a new 'rubber chew toy' that in this case has fallen out of a cupboard of erotica, and then playing with it in polite company, shows that Pratchett still has time for a good old-fashioned piece of outrageous farce. That said, as with a number of other Pratchett novels the ending is somewhat contrived and the characters get out of the various fixes they're in with some fast-talk, handwaving and a nod from the Patrician, which is a resolution that has perhaps been used a few too many times in this series.

Whilst it's not up there with the series at its best, and the tendency for characters who are intelligent and forthright in their own books to come across a bit as bumbling fools when appearing in cameos outside them (in this case various members of the City Watch) is a bit wearying, Making Money is a solid addition to the series and adds a lot to the evolution of Discworld and Ankh-Morpork (which is now starting to get its own underground rail network, the Undertaking). Somewhat unusually for the series, the ending also sets up a third Moist von Lipwig adventure, Raising Taxes, which is likely to be another two or three Discworld books down the road.

Making Money (****) is available now in the UK from Corgi Books and in hardcover in the USA from Haper Books. The US mass-market paperback is due out on 30 September 2008. Terry Pratchett's new, non-Discworld novel Nation will be released on 11 September 2008. He currently has three more Discworld novels on the go: Unseen Academicals, about the Unseen University's football team; I Shall Wear Midnight, the next Tiffany Aching novel for younger readers; and Raising Taxes, a sequel to Making Money. Expect to see them over the next year or two.

Richard Morgan Update

Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains is now on general release in the UK and is well worth a look, as per my review.

The author will also be signing copies of the book at Forbidden Planet, Shaftesbury Avenue in London on Thursday, 7 August at 6-7pm.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book III: Fire

The second season of Avatar ended on a downer: the city of Ba Sing Se has fallen to the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom is under enemy occupation and organised resistance to the Fire Nation has been reduced to a few guerrilla bands. However, the Avatar, Aang, and his companions are still at large and in possession of vital information: in a few short weeks there will be a solar eclipse, during which time the Fire Nation will be vulnerable to attack. A few weeks after that, Sozin's Comet will return, and the powers of the firebenders will be at their height. The Avatar must face and defeat Fire Lord Ozai during the eclipse if the world is to be saved.
The board is set for a grand showdown, but our heroes still need to prepare for the final confrontation. The early part of Season 3 has our heroes infiltrating the Fire Nation, having arranged a meeting place with some of their allies. One of the benefits of Ba Sing Se's isolationism during the war was that many of its armies were left to operate autonomously, and they have enough military force left to help with an assault on the Fire Nation's capital. However, the early part of Season 3 is surprisingly focused on stand-alone episodes as it treads water waiting for the eclipse. Luckily, few arc-heavy shows do stand-alones as well as Avatar, and episodes centering on Sokka's desire to find a mentor of his own or Katara trying to save a village from pollution caused by a Fire Nation factory are more effective than they might sound, with each adding an element of character growth or humour to the series' tapestry.

After a few stand-aloneish episodes, the arc reasserts itself. We learn vital backstory about the relationship between Sozin and Roku, the previous Avatar, and Katara discovers a powerful but deadly new form of waterbending. There is still time for the show's humour, however, as with the episode where Aang cannot rest before the invasion and starts having bizarre hallucinations (such as one where Momu and Appa gain the power of speech and fight a deadly sword duel whilst being cheered on by sheep). The invasion finally comes, but obviously the fact it takes place ten episodes before the end of the series is a sign that things are not going to turn out well. From this point, the former dynamics of the show reassert themselves, with Azula and her compatriots hunting down the Avatar and Zuko's torn loyalties again leading him down a different path. The second half of the season is more tense and more urgent, as the 'good guys' are reduced to little more than just our heroes and the imminent arrival of the comet inspires the Fire Lord to embark on a plan of mass destruction and genocide beyond anything we've seen before in this show. Events culminate in a massive showdown, unexpected (but cleverly foreshadowed) allies emerge and old mysteries are solved as the story reaches its epic conclusion.

The third and final season of Avatar draws the storyline to an action-packed conclusion which is extremely satisfying, with enough twists and turns to avoid being predictable. As usual, the character development is exemplery, the writing entertaining and the voice acting accomplished. Criticisms? Well, there is an element of deus ex machina in the finale, although closer examination reveals it was set up earlier (a fairly obscure reference in Season 2's The Library, though), and there are a few loose ends, with some characters' fates left murky or unresolved. With the promised Avatar spin-off series apparently going to be set in a different time period focusing on a different incarnation of the Avatar, it's unclear if these questions will be answered. But if not, they at least give the fans something to debate and argue over in the future.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book III: Fire (****½) will be released on DVD in the USA on 16 September 2008 (individual volumes are available now), although once again no word of an official UK release, although a Region 1 import will be available.

Wertzone Classics: Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Published in 1986-87 as a 12-issue mini-series, Watchmen is the most critically-applauded graphic novel of all time. The comic industry's answer to Citizen Kane, this is a complex, literate story that belies its premise and makes maximum use of its medium to deliver a story that couldn't be told any other way (although the forthcoming movie adaption promises to have a damn good try). As well as its impact on comics, Watchmen is one of the defining modern works of science fiction (winning a Hugo Award in 1988), and was rated as one of the one hundred most important novels of the 20th Century by Time Magazine.

The book opens in 1985 with the murder of Edward Blake, a government-sponsored crimefighter who worked under the alias 'The Comedian'. A masked vigilante known as Rorschach investigates. Rorschach, the Comedian and a number of other 'superheroes' fought crime together until the 1977 Keene Act outlawed heroes unless they worked directly for the US government. Most of the heroes retired, but Rorschach turned vigilante. Apart from the Comedian, the only hero left in government employ is Dr. Manhattan. Unlike the other heroes, who are simply well-meaning ordinary people, albeit with superior mental or physical training, Dr. Manhattan is the real deal. In 1959 an experiment with intrinsic field theory went catastrophically wrong, disintegrating Dr. Jon Osterman and transforming him into a being with total mastery over matter.

Rorschach continues to investigate the crime, but tensions are rising between the United States, led by President Nixon (serving a fifth term of office after the mysterious deaths of two Washington Post investigative reporters in 1971), and the Soviet Union. With the nuclear doomsday clock ticking ever closer to zero and other retired crimfighters either being killed or attacked, it falls to a select group of people to try and discover who or what is driving the world towards destruction.

It's a classic set-up, but you might argue not a revolutionary one. The trick is in the details. The world of Watchmen, which is on one hand close to that of the 'real' 1985 and on the other totally different, is meticulously constructed with every logical ramification of the existence of a genuine superhero pursued to its end. Thanks to Dr. Manhattan's scientific genius, the world is largely pollution-free, thanks to cheap electric cars and clean airships that provide international transport. Unfortunately, Manhattan's role as a nuclear deterrent and his assistance in helping the USA win the Vietnam War in just three months has also encouraged American imperialism and belligerence, slowly pushing Russia into a diplomatic corner from where it may feel it has no choice but to lash out. The other 'superheroes' are just ordinary people who like to dress up and fight crime, but largely they come to realise that their efforts are for nothing, since they cannot fight the underlying social and economic conditions that are the breeding ground for petty criminals.

As well as the characters involved in the story itself, the narrative spins backwards in time to investigate the prior generation of heroes and what role they are playing in events, and also encompasses a number of ordinary people on the streets of New York City who are witnesses to events: a newsstand vendor and his most regular customer, a young man obsessed with a pirate comic called Tales of the Black Freighter (which acts as a commentary and reflection on the main narrative, whose author plays a minor role in the story); a criminal psychiatrist driven to despair by his patients; and a homicide detective whose investigation of the Comedian's murder threatens his own career. It's a vast, dizzying web of storytelling with each storyline interconnected with many of the others in surprising and revelatory ways, and a commentary on superheroes and their psychology, capitalism, world politics and the morality of war.

As well as Moore's astonishing script, Dave Gibbons delivers excellent, detail-filled, rich artwork which captures the nuances of the story perfectly. Rereading the book, the reader discovers more details, more clues to the story that they missed on a first reading.

Watchmen (*****) is, twenty years after it was first published, still as astonishing, readable, entertaining and thought-provoking as ever, and still stands at the very apex of its approach to storytelling. The graphic novel is available from DC Comics in the UK and USA. A special edition of the comic book, Absolute Watchmen, featuring production notes and a new, clearer reprinting of the artwork, is also available in the UK. A movie adaption, directed by 300's Zack Snyder, is currently in post-production and will be released in March 2009. A trailer (set appropriately to the Smashing Pumpkins' 'The Beginning is the End is the Beginning') can be found here.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Graceling is the debut novel by American author Kristin Cashore. It is a stand-alone secondary world fantasy, although I'd hesitate to call it an epic fantasy. The writer is planning at least two more books set in the same world (the next one will be a prequel, called Fire), but Graceling is a single work mercifully lacking a cliffhanger ending. Interestingly, the American publishers are marketing it as a YA novel, although the British ones aren't.

Seven kingdoms sit uneasily alongside one another, constantly raiding and counter-raiding one another. A secretive organisation known as the Council is helping the common people of the lands survive in these harsh times. Meanwhile, certain people in the world are born with extraordinary abilities called Graces. Someone with the Grace of swimming can hold their breath for huge amounts of time underwater and swim like a fish, whilst someone with the Grace of swordsmanship is a brilliantly talented warrior, able to predict an enemy's moves with stunning speed.

Katsa, neice to King Randa of the Middluns, has the Grace of killing. She is the King's assassin, his enforcer and, when necessary, his torturer. She hates the role and yearns for a less violent existence. When her role in the Council leads her into a conspiracy over the kidnapping of the King of Lienid's father, she is forced into an uneasy alliance with Po, the Prince of Lienid, a Graced warrior of exemplery skill. The path they follow leads to startling discoveries over their own abilities, and their confrontation with someone whose Grace makes them almost unstoppable.

For a debut novel, Graceling is well-written, nicely-structured and easy to read. The characters are well-drawn and the storyline intriguing enough to draw the reader along at a good speed. The notion of Graces, although not hugely original, is nonetheless explored in-depth throughout the book with some nice, logical extrapolations of the abilities on show.

However, there are some issues. The names of the characters and kingdoms are all somewhat whimsical and occasionally distract from the seriousness of the tale. This wasn't a huge problem for me, but given that I know that some people pointblank refused to read The Red Wolf Conspiracy because of it, I know it will put some people off. Also, the ending feels a little bit too neat. True, the author throws a wrench into the final couple of chapters that was genuinely unexpected and means the ending is hardly all happiness and light, but still, all the storylines are tied off nicely. The only big unanswered question, the background and motivations of the main villain, will be explored in the next book.

Balanced against these issues is a well-drawn tale featuring interesting protganosits in a decently-realised setting. Whilst Graceling won't be generating Rothfuss or Lynch levels of excitement for a debut novel, it's certainly enjoyable and well worth a read.

Graceling (***½) will first be released by Gollancz in the UK as an export edition on 20 November 2008, followed by standard tradeback and hardcover releases on 22 January 2009 (by coincidence, my 30th birthday). The US edition will be published by Harcourt Books on 1 October 2008. The author maintains a blog at this location.

Update

I've revamped the blog list after the recent round-up of websites, and also added a list of all the author blogs I thought readers might be interested in. I daresay I'll find a few more to add in the near future.

I've spent a fair amount of time considering adding advertisements to the blog, but after learning that Pat (of the Fantasy Hotlist) makes about $50 a year max from his much vaster number of page-views, I decided it probably wasn't worth irritating my readers to introduce them. I am thinking about doing something about the look of the blog. I think it's too late to change the name, but certainly giving the blog a bit of a more distinctive look could be a good idea. It's been set at blogger's default scheme since I created the thing.

Currently reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore (ARC).
Currently watching: Avatar Season 3, The Wire Season 1, Babylon 5 Season 5 (rewatch).
Currently playing: Company of Heroes, Ground Control (replay).