Heroes: Season 2, Episodes 1-11

TV shows very easily become victims of their own success. Lost, for example, suffered a severely disappointing second season following its impressive debut and it was a long time before the show got back on track halfway through the third year. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica has come in for a lot of flak for its third season.

Heroes, having emerged onto the scene firing on all cylinders last year, was widely anticipated to avoid the same mistakes these other shows had made. The show's ability to set up a mystery and then resolve it just a few episodes later and its use of short-term story arcs supporting a much larger narrative would seem to be able to support many different kinds of stories and characters, and as a result the second season was widely anticipated as one of the highlights of the 2007-08 season.


Things get off to an intriguing start. It's four months since the events of the Season 1 finale. Peter Petrelli is missing, presumed vapourised, but his brother Nathan is still alive and well (it isn't explained how, at least not yet). At first it appears that other characters have gone back to their old lives, but gradually it becomes clear that several of the existing heroes have formed a conspiracy to bring down the company which caused so much trouble for them last year. At the same time, several new heroes are introduced and a lengthy subplot takes us to feudal Japan, where Hiro has inadvertantly thrown history off balance by his interference and is working hard to restore the proper timeline.

All of this sounds fine, but in practice Season 2 of Heroes opens far too slowly and far too quietly. A lot of time is spent on new characters who are not especially compelling (despite some great ideas for their powers) and some established characters have all but disappeared. The writers also seem to delight in being obtuse for the sake of it, as it's not until eight weeks in that we finally find out what happened after the events of the Season 1 finale. As when Battlestar Galactica did this in its third season, it's built up to be a huge revelatory episode which doesn't tell us anything that couldn't have been explained verbally in about five minutes.

That isn't to say the actors are doing a bad job or the story itself isn't compelling, merely that the pacing is seriously off this year. The major threat the heroes have to avert isn't introduced until quite late in the day (the seventh episode, in fact) and the misdirection games that are played about the identity of the main villain only serve to make it blatantly obvious who the main villain is before he turns up. There are also several seriously unconvincing romances and some bluescreen work which is utterly atrocious.

Things pick up after the eighth episode. With an identified villain and goal, things kick into gear and some of the intensity of late Season 1 returns. We also see how the new heroes fit into the overall story arc a little better. But just as things get going, they suddenly stop again. Thanks to the American writer's strike, Season 2 ends with the eleventh episode. Although a reasonable job is done of making this an end-of-season finale, there are still some major plot elements left unexplained and unresolved, and the introduction of a deus ex machina plot device in the form of 'magic blood' that can heal anyone of any trauma, even death, leeches a lot of suspense from the Season 2 cliffhanger ending.

There is no denying that Heroes remains watchable, but the second season falls distinctly flat when compared to the first with some very poor writing decisions made. Whilst still enjoyable, the second season is something of a letdown when compared to the first. When Heroes returns, I hope the producers learn from their mistakes and can come up with something more impressive.

Heroes, Season 2 (***) will be released on DVD some time in 2008. The fate of the latter half of the season seems unclear at the moment, but most likely it will be held back until late 2008 and will now serve as the opening half of Season 3.

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

Last Argument of Kings is the third and concluding volume of The First Law Trilogy, following on from The Blade Itself (reviewed here) and Before They Are Hanged (reviewed here). Those who have not read the first two volumes may wish to skip the plot summary as it does contain spoilers of events in those books.

In the frozen wastes of Angland, the army of the Union and its allies continues to wage war against Bethod and his forces. The Gurkish, having retaken Dagoska, now develop new and more bold plans to continue to wage war against the Union from the south. And, having failed in their quest to the far side of the world, Bayaz and his companions return to the city of Adua to make new preperations for the conflicts to come. But in this struggle it becomes clear that different factions are scheming for power, that those who are allies one day may be bitter foes the next, and that the price of victory may be far too high...

The First Law has attracted a great deal of praise since the publication of The Blade Itself a little under two years ago. Abercrombie's clear style delivered an apparently 'straightforward' fantasy tale with some interesting ruthless edges to it. Before They Are Hanged forced the reader to revise a lot of what they thought they knew whilst putting several key twists into the story that were unexpected. Last Argument of Kings delivers exactly what this trilogy needed: a no-holds-barred war story in which secrets are exposed, mysteries are explained and the author resolutely refuses to pull any punches. Those expecting a gloriously happy, neat ending to this trilogy best look elsewhere.

Instead, we get huge battle sequences, including one that threatens to displace the supremacy of Steven Erikson's siege of Capustan from Memories of Ice as the greatest epic fantasy battle this century. We get more intricate, devious politics. We get more torture, courtesy of our friend Glokta (whose character arc remains the most vivid and engrossing of the series). The deepening of the character of Bayaz, who first turned up looking like a jovial Belgarath-style wizard and is now revealed to have a lot more going on to him than just that, is also tremendously satisfying. To those who have taken part in debate on various fan forums (particularly on Westeros.org) some plot elements may emerge as rather predictable, at least until Abercrombie pulls the rug out from under your feet and, just for giggles, does it again a few chapters later. Best of all is the way quite small storyline elements from the previous two books are revisited and minor charaters of no great significance are now revealed to have their own important roles to play.

The ending is superb, particularly the tremendously satisfying epilogue and the final scene. Enough loose ends are left that Abercrombie could revisit the storyline in future books or series, but not to the extent that it is a necessity. Life goes on, albeit in a manner which some characters (and perhaps some readers) find criminally unfair. We also get enough clues laid about other, hitherto undeveloped parts of the world such as Styria that the news that the author's next novel, Best Served Cold, will be set there is most welcome. However, for the time being at least, we must bid a fond farewell to Superior Glokta, the redoubtable Jezal, the secretive Bayaz, the proud Ardee, the solid Colonel West and, of course, the Bloody-Nine. I look forward to the day when we catch up with them and their adventures once more.

Last Argument of Kings (****½) is a more than worthy conclusion to this trilogy. The novel will be published by Gollancz in the UK on 20 March 2008 in hardcover and trade paperback and by Pyr Books in the USA in September 2008.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick

The world of Alifros is dominated by two mighty nations. The Empire of the Mzithrin lies in the west, unified under the rule of its five kings and in the worship of the religion of the Black Casket.
In the east, proud Arqual extends its powers over vast regions of land and sea. Forty years have passed since the last, bloody war between these two superpowers and an uneasy peace lingers between them, whilst the small, independent kingdoms of the Crownless Lands lie between them as buffers.

It is a time of great change, however. His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Arqual, has decreed that a lasting peace shall be forged between Mzithrin and Arqual and his greatest military commander, Admiral Isiq, has agreed to give up his only daughter, Thasha, in marriage to a royal prince of the Mzithrin. It is only fitting that the greatest ship in the Arquali navy, and the most infamous ship in the world, should be given this task. The I.M.S. Chathrand is the last of the Great Ships, heavily armed and crewed by a thousand souls, the only ship capable of crossing the vast Ruling Sea. But on this mission the Chathrand takes a strange assortment of passengers and crew, from the delusional Captain Nilus Rose to Pazel Pathkendle, a tarboy with many secrets, and from the sickly Admiral Isiq and his proud daughter to the dimunitive ixchel or crawlies, the little people whose presence on ships is taken as a sign of doom. As ancient secrets are revealed and dark conspiracies are unmasked, the crew and passengers of the Chathrand come to realise that they are at the centre of events that will reshape their world.


The Red Wolf Conspiracy is the opening volume of The Chathrand Voyage, a fantasy trilogy by debut author Robert V.S. Redick. Gollancz's pre-publicity draws comparisons with Scott Lynch and Philip Pullman, and I suspect over the coming months a similar word-of-mouth pre-release excitment will build that is comparable to Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora or Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. Certainly The Red Wolf Conspiracy is an exceptionally fine novel and more than worthy of such comparisons.

With this book, Redick creates an incredibly rich fantasy world where familiar archetypes like wizards and scheming nobles are given fresh spins, and where every chapter seems to deliver a new idea, concept or race. Redick creates vivid images in the reader's mind, from the disturbing Flikkermen with their glowing innards to the hordes of scurrying ixchel to the towering augrongs and the 'woken' animals who have spontaneously developed sentience (I suspect this is where the Pullman comparisons come from). His core characters are similarly varied and intriguing, although our two central protagonists, Pazel and Thasha, are perhaps a bit too familiar as archetypes. Whilst they are well-drawn as characters, arguably it is the secondary cast that draws more attention. The crew of the Chanthred in particular are an intriguing bunch, especially as we discover more about them through their log entries and Suzanna Clarke-style footnotes (though nowhere near as numerous or long). Fans of nautical fantasy will find much to their liking here, but whilst Redick has clearly done his homework he doesn't let the minutiae of shipboard life detract from the story, and I suspect those who normally dislike martime tales may find this story much more enjoyable.

With such a vivid world to bring to life, Redick could perhaps be forgiven for relaxing on the plot side of things, but instead the storyline fairly rips along, packed with excitement, incident and humour which builds to a conclusion that, whilst certainly leaving the reader wanting more, could perhaps be said to be anti-climatic. With two more books still to come, perhaps this is unavoidable.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy (****) is an extremely enjoyable epic fantasy tale set in a vivid , constantly inventive world. The Chathrand itself comes across as the ocean-going equivalent of Gormenghast, whilst its crew seem to have assembled variously from the works of Charles Dickens, Jack Vance and Scott Lynch, but with a style that is undeniably Redick's own. I suspect that Redick will be 'the' big new fantasy author of 2008, and deservedly so.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy will be published in hardcover and trade paperback in the UK on 21 February 2008. The UK Gollancz editions are also freely available for pre-order in the US. Gollancz have a page on the book here, including a map of the world of Alifros.

The Wertzone is a Year Old!

When I started this blog a year ago, my first thought was merely to provide another outlet for my Amazon.co.uk reviews. I was pleasently surprised to quite quickly (within about four months) be getting advance reading copies from publishers (thanks to Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist for that!) and getting good feedback from readers. I'm particularly happy with the thanks I received from Polish readers for pushing Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish to Western audiences. I'm also pleased to have been able to update the blog fairly regularly despite a personal life that could be called 'hectic' this year, incorporating a 500-mile house move to another country and two changes of occupation. 2008 I hope will be more settled and allow me to develop the blog and site more thoroughly, although I also hope to attend at least one of the major SF&F cons in 2008 as well (Worldcon or World Fantasy) and provide some interesting commentary on that experience.

Many thanks to readers regular and otherwise for providing feedback, either here on the blog or by email or on other forums I frequent. It is all much appreciated.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

With Battlestar Galactica's fourth season delayed until April and its full run likely to be interrupted by a year-long break due to the ongoing Writer's Strike, the Sci-Fi Channel has seen fit to deliver us an extra treat, namely a special episode or TV movie delving deeper into the show's backstory.

Razor takes place at the end of the second season, shortly after the events of the episode The Captain's Hand. Lee Adama is now commander of the battlestar Pegasus, but as an outsider he finds himself not entirely trusted by his new crew. Lee decides to appoint a former favourite of Admiral Cain's, Lt. Kendra Shaw, to the position of XO, in an attempt to 'build bridges' with his new subordinates. Interestingly, the plot doesn't dwell on this idea. We know the fate of the Pegasus and Lee's command of her from other episodes and seeing him do a 'winning the respect of the crew' plotline would have been redundant. Instead we see much of the story through Kendra's eyes. Lengthy flashbacks take us back to the day of the original Cylon attack on the Colonies and we see Kendra rising through the ranks and observing Cain's gradual moral erosion as the tensions of command take hold. A present day storyline, which is little more than a subplot, sees the Pegasus crew stumble across a bunch of obsolete Cylons from the First Cylon War and have to eliminate them.

Razor straddles two stools. On the one hand, it is a balls-to-the-wall action story with huge, epic CGI battle sequences and lots of emotional intensity which is designed to appeal to newcomers as well as established fans. On the other, it features a lot of fan-pleasing asides and references to the original series. This is a somewhat odd idea (going for newbies and hardcore fans at the same time) but just about works, with the new character of Kendra providing a worthwhile 'in' to this story and universe for new viewers but at the same time allowing established fans to see stuff they've wanted to see since the series began. Kudos for the writers for managing not to make a total hash of this.

The TV movie lives or dies on the performance of actress Stephanie Chaves-Jacobson as Kendra Shaw and thankfully she delivers a competent performance. She tended to mumble a fair bit, however, which resulted in much rewinding of scenes to make out what she was saying. The actress has a great rapport with Katee Sackhoff and Michelle Forbes, and in these scenes she is extremely good. The other actors are as trusty and reliable as ever, although some have very little screen-time (Athena and Tigh get a single scene each, President Roslin three short scenes and Dr. Baltar is totally absent).

Overall, Razor (****) is an enjoyable slice of Battlestar Galactica and just about fills in the yawning gap between Seasons 3 and 4 (which will have been an endurance-testing 13 months long). Some elements misfire a bit (the "By your command," moment, although amusing, totally breaks the fourth wall) and the resolution's dependence on yet more BSG mysticism is mildly exasperating, but overall the TV movie fulfils its remit of being both entertaining and restoring faith in the show after a patchy third year.

Razor will be released on DVD in the United States on 4 December, and in the UK on 26 December. The DVD edition will be extended by some 15 minutes and will feature a lengthy flashback to the First Cylon War (complete with another huge battle sequence) as well as other new scenes.

Forthcoming: Battlestar Galactica returns with its fourth season premiere, He That Believath in Me, in early April 2008.

Swiftly by Adam Roberts

I am moving again, so I'll be offline for a while. So here's some reviews to be going on with:

The year is 1848. 122 years earlier a mariner returned to England speaking of fantastical lands he claimed to have discovered in remote corners of the globe. Whilst dismissed as a madman, some took note of what he was saying and the Royal Navy sent ships to investigate. The lands of Lilliput and Blefuscu were conquered, its dimunitive inhabitants enslaved and put to work as servants and engineers, whilst Brobdingnag was bombarded and its giant inhabitants subjected to genocide (out of fear they discover gunpowder and attack England). The flying island of Laputa was captured and subjected to examination, whilst the English army now employs a regiment of sentient horses.

The English are now poised to take Paris and become the dominant power in Europe, but the tide of the war is already turning, with the few surviving Brobdingnagians now in the employ of the French. In England itself, Abraham Bates is championing the rights of the Lilliputian slaves, whilst a young woman named Eleanor Burton dreams of escaping her hideous marriage and being allowed to pursue her dreams of science.


Swiftly is an impressive book. Roberts has clearly carefully read Gulliver's Travels and in this sequel he uses some of the same diction and language of Jonathan Swift, whilst simultaneously pursuing some of the same themes and ideas (there is a lenghthy digression related to faeces, which is highly reminiscent of Swift's own use of dubious imagery in the original). It's certainly a 'killer concept' (although other sequels to the book exist) and the action unfolds in a manner that the reader is probably not expecting at all.

Whilst the book is engaging and certainly contains a lot of humour, there is a fair amount of ambiguity to the tale, particularly the climatic events outside York, with the reader forced to draw their own conclusions to what is going on and how events unfold after the narrative. Those who hate ambiguity in their fiction may find the book not to their taste because of this, whilst those who like stories which require them to use their brains somewhat will find it much more to their liking.

Swiftly (***½) is a book I suspect will divide readers, but I found it intellectually stimulating and a rather different take on the story and world than I was expecting, which is a good thing. Some may find the longeurs in the book distracting and the pacing variable, which means the story doesn't flow as well as it should. Nevertheless, the book is worth reading despite these minor weaknesses. The book will be published in hardcover on 20 March 2008 in the UK by Gollancz. No US publisher is yet listed, but an earlier edition of the story can be found as a novella in a collection of stories published by Night Shade Books in 2004.

Happy Birthday, Doctor Who

Doctor Who, the longest-running SFTV show in the world, turns 44 today. Launched on BBC-1 on 23 November 1963, the series was not an immediate hit, its opening episode delayed and overshadowed by news coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy a day earlier. Designed as an adventure series with an educational slant (mixing SF tales of aliens and monsters with historical adventures), the show took off massively with its second serial, which introduced the Daleks. It became a mainstay of BBC-1's Saturday night schedule and was soon attracting regular audiences of 10 million plus. The series survived numerous complete changes of cast and crew, thanks to the titular main character's ability to 'regenerate' into a new form whenever the old one was badly injured (or when the previous actor wanted to leave).


In 1989, after seven Doctors, thirty other regular characters, 26 consecutive seasons, 158 serials and over 700 episodes, the series was indefinitely 'rested' by the BBC. There was a one-off TV movie in 1996, co-produced by the BBC, Universal and Fox, which was successful in the UK but less so in the USA and failed to result in a regular series. Finally, in 2005, Doctor Who finally returned to Saturday nights on BBC-1 and was a smash hit, winning huge ratings and becoming a popular part of the USA's Sci-Fi Channel line-up as well. The 'new' Doctor Who returns for its fourth season around Easter 2008.

Sadly, this event coincides with news that the very first producer of Doctor Who, Verity Lambert, recently passed away at the age 71. A tremendously respected British television producer, Lambert won the job on Doctor Who at a very young age (27) and was the only female producer at the BBC at the time. She worked on the show for its first three seasons and then moved on to other popular British series, including Adam Adamant Lives!, Rumpole of the Bailey, Minder and Jonathan Creek. In 1985 she founded Cinema Verity, a production company with a number of film and television credits to its name. She was awarded the OBE by the Queen in 2002 for services to film and television production. Earlier this year, the Doctor Who episode Human Nature paid tribute to her by giving the Doctor (whilst temporarily transformed into a human) memories of a mother named Verity. Many condolences to her family and many thanks to her for creating such a huge body of work that was enjoyed by countless millions for many decades. SFX has a tribute to her here.

Dreamsongs, Volume II by George RR Martin

Following on from my earlier review of Dreamsongs, Volume I, this entry covers the second volume of Geore R.R. Martin's collection of short fiction. Whilst Volume I covered GRRM's work from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Volume II focuses more closely on his work as a scriptwriter and editor (on the popular Wild Cards series of superhero anthologies) and includes what for many people will be the primary draw of the collection, a novella set in the world of GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire novels.


As with Volume I (as this is one huge book broken in two for US publication), Volume II is divided into sections, namely four sections containing stories and a bibliography of GRRM's published work.

The first section focuses on one of GRRM's several signature characters, namely Haviland Tuf, the vegetarian, bald and somewhat eccentric master of the ancient seedship The Ark, who proclaims himself the last of the long-extinct Ecological Engineers. Tuf was designed to be the hero (if that's the right word) of a series of stories set in GRRM's Thousand Worlds mileu, and these stories were collected into the popular 'fix-up' novel Tuf Voyaging. Two stories are presented here. A Beast for Norn (1975, published 1976) is the earliest Tuf story and was revised for its appearance in Tuf Voyaging, so it's the original version that appears here. It's not a particularly original tale and the well-worn SF reader will see the 'moral' coming from halfway through the story, but it's still exceptionally amusing to watch unfold. Guardians (1981) is much stronger, with Tuf a more sophisticated, well-developed character by this time and the story more intriguing, as the colonists on a remote ocean world are being attacked by increasingly savage creatures and Tuf has to find out where they are coming from and how to defeat them.

Around the time that Tuf Voyaging appeared, GRRM was invited to submit scripts for The New Twilight Zone, the resurrected mid-80s version of the classic Rod Serling anthology series. After some rather hectic re-jigging of the credits (including Harlan Ellison storming off the show after one of his scripts was messed around with by the studio) GRRM landed the job of script editor and worked on several episodes of the short-lived show. The Road Less Travelled (1986) was GRRM's only original contribution (the rest being adaptions or developments of other people's ideas), a somwhat curious tale which combines GRRM's trademark melancholy and musings on missed opportunities with a more optimistic ending. This script was filmed by Wes Craven and is reputedly a superb episode, but when it aired it had been butchered with nearly a third of its original material edited out, and due to legal reasons it cannot apparently be released or seen even today. A shame as the script is very interesting indeed. Also included is GRRM's pilot script for Doorways (1991), an alternate-reality show about a girl who passes from world to world and inadvertantly drags a native of our world along for the ride. This was also filmed, but again the filmed version is difficult to find and reportedly not as strong as the original script as several elements had been radically changed. The script included is very atmospheric and disturbing, and the reader may or may note the similarities to another series which aired a few years later called Sliders (purely coincidental, no doubt).

The next section takes us to the world that made George R.R. Martin an SF&F household name long before A Song of Ice and Fire took off. In 1987 GRRM and several close friends and collaborators began work on the Wild Cards universe, which postulates the existence of superheroes following the release over New York City in 1946 of an alien virus. 90% of those affected by the virus die; 9% become 'Jokers', horribly disfigured by the illness; and 1% become 'Aces', superheroes wielding incredible abilities. The Wild Cards series of anthologies became one of the biggest 'shared world' phenomenons of the 1980s, rivalled only by the Thieves' World series, eventually reaching fifteen volumes before petering out. However, the series was resurrected seven years later and several new volumes appeared, with the eighteenth and latest, Inside Straight, due out in the next couple of months in the USA. GRRM presents two of his Wild Cards stories here: Shell Games (1987) introduces another GRRM signature character, the Great and Powerful Turtle, and the role he plays in restoring the self-respect of Dr. Tachyon, the alien genius who created the Wild Card virus in the first place. From the Journal of Xavier Desmond (1988) is the framing story from the fourth volume in the series, Aces Abroad, and is a more familiar story of melancholy and musings, but is nevertheless exceptionally well-written as a dying Joker gets to see some of the world before he passes, and finds much that is worthwhile and beautiful in the world, but also sees some of its darkness as well.

The final section is called 'The Heart in Conflict', based on Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner's statement that, "the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about." This appears to be GRRM's philosophy and lends itself to his 'furniture rule', that a story is just a story and is an SF tale or a Fantasy or a Western purely due to the 'furniture': a guy riding into a frontier town to settle a score or anothe man riding into a castle to challenge the wizard who wronged him or another person flying his spaceship in pursuit of an alien who has a grudge against him. The stories that follow seem to particularly respond to this, defying easy genre categorization or limitations: Under Siege (1984) is a 'remix' of GRRM's much earlier historical story, The Fortress (printed in Dreamsongs, Volume I), this time with added time travel and the suggestion that pinning the hopes of the world on one small group of people might not actually be a good or healthy thing to do. The Skin Trade (1988) is somewhere between a horror story and a thriller, featuring werewolves and private detectives and rich old men harbouring secrets. It won GRRM a World Fantasy Award and deservedly so. Unsound Variations (1982) focuses on GRRM's history as a chess tournament organiser and those not particularly interested in the game may find this tale of obsession a bit odd, but GRRM captures the game as a fictional device quite well and the melding of chess with quantum theory is well done. The Glass Flower (1986) marks GRRM's last visit (for now) to his Thousand Worlds and brings in Kleronomas, one of the signature legendary characters of that setting. The story is rather downbeat and to be honest I found it even depressing. There is a tremendous depth of character in the story, however.

The Hedge Knight (1998) is a prequel to A Song of Ice and Fire, taking place eighty-nine years prior to the events of A Game of Thrones. At this time the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are still unified under the rule of the Targaryen kings and seeing the realm at peace and shorn of the political machinations of court is interesting and somewhat refreshing. The protagonist is Dunk, a hedge knight who risks everything he has to ride in the great tourney at Ashford Meadow, but instead finds himself caught in the grip of history with a squire named Egg joining him for the ride. The first of a planned series of 'Dunk & Egg' stories is nothing short of a masterpiece in itself, expertly timed with terrific character-building and a depth of detail to the setting that is remarkable. If it wasn't for the A Knight's Tale movie a few years later, I imagine that Hollywood would have snapped this up by now. A sequel followed in 2003, The Sworn Sword, although it appeared too late to make it into this collection (the original version of which was published in 2003). A third Dunk & Egg tale will appear late next year (or early the next), in the Warriors anthology edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois.

The final story is the Nebula Award-winning Portraits of His Children (1986), which is an obvious story to end on but still a fine piece of work. The story comes across as a modern take on Dickens, with an author visited by his creations and haunted by the decisions he made about their fictional lives. It doesn't take too huge an imagination to cast George in this light, enjoying a beer and a lively discussion with Tyrion or comparing notes on living in Brooklyn with the Turtle.

Dreamsongs, Volume II (*****) lives up to the promise of the first volume and is an essential read for any GRRM fan. The book will be published on 27 November in the United States in hardcover. The one-volume UK edition is out now in hardcover and trade paperback.

Update

The next book review will be Dreamsongs, Volume II by George RR Martin, which I hope to finish in the next few days.

The planned Tower of Reading currently consists of:

The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston.
Swiftly by Adam Roberts (a sequel to Gulliver's Travels).
The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick (hot new debut from Gollancz).
Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott.
Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley.
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson.
The Helliconia Trilogy by Brian W. Aldiss (re-read).

Although there's one or two ARCs on the way which could rise to the top of the list quite handily.

On the TV front, Battlestar Galactica: Razor airs this week in the USA and Heroes continues through its highly variable second season, although the first signs of a more permanant return to its Season 1 quality are appearing.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Having enjoyed putting together the C&C3 review yesterday I've decided not to rest on my laurels and immediately proceed with another PC games review. At some point I will actually review truly classic games that everyone should play immediately if they have not done so previously (Freespace 2, Hostile Waters, Planescape: Torment etc etc), but frankly it's more fun to look at those games which everyone has heard of but which actually aren't all that. Hence:


Halo was first unveiled circa 1999 as a major first-person shooter from the makers of the classic Marathon series on the Apple Mac and the Myth series of strategy games on the PC. Halo promised to combine a solid SF setting (basically an Orbital from Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, althouh lazy reviewers referenced the more obvious titular construct from Larry Niven's Ringworld books) with equally-good vehicular and personal combat all set against a solid storyline. However, a bump appeared in the road during development, namely a large, misshapen, three-times-too-big bump called the Microsoft X-Box. Before you could say "Killer App!" Halo had been gagged and dragged screaming off to the land of Console Exclusive Releases, leaving PC players feeling vaguely cheesed off, but the developers immensely richer. Anyhow, Halo came out for the X-Box, made a tremendous wad of cash, got lots of people to buy the thing and was praised by all and sundry as the Best Thing Ever, with even the usually-more-difficult-to-excite-than-Al-Gore Edge magazine getting unseemingly excited and awarding it maximum points, which felt rather wrong, a bit like Barry Norman giving a five-star review to Debbie Does Dallas.

Meanwhile, the PC community had basically forgotten that their promised classic had been carted off to the land of mass appreciation, mainly because Half-Life 2 had just been announced, Doom 3 was on the way and something called Far Cry was looking a bit tasty as well. When Halo therefore arrived on PC at the end of 2003 like an overeager puppy anxious to please its new owners, it was rather cruelly ignored and reviews were less than stellar. No doubt some of this can be put down to PC owners generally believing that console games are unchallenging sacks of crud and console conversions are very disappointing (although if the game in question is developed by BioWare, this rule no longer applies), but most of it can be put down to the fact that Halo is in fact a bit (but not totally) crap.

Things get off to a solid if unoriginal approach when your spaceship detects a huge alien artefact in space and your captain decides to check it out. Your ship then gets borded by what appears to be a bunch of gibbering monkeys wearing brightly-coloured spacesuits, giggling like lunatics and running around like a bunch of five-year-olds on acid. These turn out to be the primary recurring footsoldiers of the Covenant. They are the worst enemy ever conceived for a first-person shooter. Shooting them is satisfying, but would be more so if your collection of weapons weren't entirely inspired by the Super-Soaker 5000. Things obviously go pear-shaped and you end up stuck alone on the huge alien construction, at least for about ten minutes until you meet up with some of your mates and engage in squad-based combat with the Covenant.

This takes up the first third of the game and is actually enjoyable. There's some nice non-linearity to the game, combat is generally okay and Halo's approach to grenades is, if massively overstated, nonetheless a welcome innovation in the staid FPS genre. Much respect to the vehicles. If there is one thing Halo gets right, it's the vehicles and vehicle combat, which are fun throughout the game. Also, whilst the gibbering Covenant monkey grunts remain infuriating, more challenging opponents turn up who are more interesting to fight.

You may suspect a huge "BUT" is coming and you would be correct. About a third of the way through the development of the game Bungie apparently checked in on the gametesters and realised that people were having fun fighting in outdoor environments with vehicles and alongside NPC allies and against a reasonably decent opposition. Bungie apparently decided that it would make perfect sense to therefore kill all of the NPC allies, take out the vehicles, set the second two-thirds of the game almost entirely indoors on the same map just repeated over and over and replace the Covenant with The Flood, the Flood being basically the headcrab zombies from Half-Life with the added bonus that they sometimes explode when standing right next to you and they never appear in numbers of less than four trillion. I can only assume that Bungie had a moment of rebellion against their evil corporate overlords at Microsoft and tried to sabotage their own game, but it didn't work because it came too late in the day and all the previews had enthusiastically widdled on about the great part of the game and not even mentioned the large chunk of it that sucked donkey legs.

Towards the end of the game, around the time you've slaughtered your sixty quadrillionth Flood creature and passed through the same room eighty times, things do get vaguely interesting again and you experience an enjoyable jeep ride along the spine of an exploding starship. However, given that the game ends three seconds after this, this turns out not to be the return-to-form you were hoping for but rather a rather cruel way of the developers telling you they could have made the whole game as fantastic as that, but chose not to because they were too busy spending their development budget on beer and pizza.

Of course, Halo (**) wasn't a total write-off. As I said, the first third of the game is still fun, the multiplayer is okay (if nothing special by PC standards) and it did give us the superb Red vs Blue Internet comedy series, which is a Good Thing. However, it doesn't really make up for the fact that nearly two-thirds of the game is unplayable by all but the terminally stubborn and the ending is so blatantly sequel-incurring that they may as well have just demanded your credit card number before running the final cut scene.

Halo is available for the X-Box (USA, UK) and the PC (USA, UK) and has been out for ages, so should be quite cheap on both systems. There are sequels which are apparently far superior, but given that the PC port of Halo 2 was apparently a total disaster, I am not in any hurry to play them.