Company of Heroes: Tales of Valour & Eastern Front

I previously reviewed Company of Heroes and its initial expansion, Opposing Fronts, here. In that review I noted that since its initial release in 2006, Company of Heroes has become the definitive WWII real-time strategy game and a compelling multiplayer experience, in the latter case becoming the finest RTS since StarCraft. This review focuses on the two subsequent expansions for the game, the official Tales of Valour (or Valor for those of an American persuasion) and the unofficial Eastern Front.


Tales of Valour is very odd. The expansion adds a couple of new units to the established four sides (the Wehrmacht, the Panzer Elite, the British and the Americans) but most of these are useless. The only really successful addition is the new American light tank, the Hellcat, which is more versatile and impressive than the previous tank-destroyer and, when properly used, can help overcome the Wehrmacht domination of the early game through the spamming of armoured cars. The (very few) new maps are okay, but the game focuses a lot on the new multiplayer modes which are, to put it mildly, utter drivel. The new single-player content borders on the laughably pathetic, with three insanely short campaigns focusing on new control methods and experimental ideas that are less effective than controlling the game the traditional way. Combined, the three single-player mini-campaigns will take you less than two hours to complete, and that's being very generous. Tales of Valour, thus is really not worth bothering with unless you can pick it up for a couple of quid.

Eastern Front, on the other hand is much more impressive. First off, it's free. You can download it from here with no charge whatsoever. It isn't made by Relic but a team of fans of the game who have put many months of work into designing new units, doctrines and making sure everything is balanced with the existing sides. There is no single-player content (so far; a single-player campaign is in the works), but instead the mod adds the USSR's Red Army to the game, along with a jaw-dropping TWENTY new maps to the multiplayer mode. The maps are very well-designed, tightly balanced and entertaining to play, and frankly the mod is worth getting just to get access to the new maps with the existing sides.


Of course, the addition of the Red Army is the mod's main selling point. Relic previously claimed that they couldn't add any more sides to the game due to programming limitations, so the fact that the mod-makers have had no problem expanding to six sides (a future patch for the mod will also add the Osteer, the German's Eastern Front-focused army) is impressive to start off with. The Red Army faction is a different sort of beast to the existing sides, focusing on cheap, easily-replaceable infantry units, an impressive mixture of tanks and light artillery and some extremely formidable heavy units which appear later on to make mincemeat of the German Panthers and Tigers. WWII games usually struggle to encompass the full development of the Red Army throughout the Second World War, which started off armed with rifles and wooden planes and ended as a lethal fighting machine which drove the Germans all the way back to Berlin. The existing sides put an emphasis on preserving your units and reinforcing in the field, but the Red Army faction is almost designed for its lower-end units to be disposable, with you feeding troops into the mincer to hold back the Germans long enough for the T-34s, Sturmokovics and Katyushas to enter the field in force.

Once you get used to the Red Army's foibles, they make an excellent and viable faction. In fact, they are a notably superior faction to either the Panzer Elite or British and are well-balanced against the Wehrmacht. A possible weakness is that once they acquire large funds they become almost unstoppable, particularly due to the population cap-free Conscript infantry and the easily-summonable T-34 tank-rider units which are not only formidable tanks in their own right but can also capture territory and transport infantry units into battle. Balancing of the Red Army faction against the existing sides continues (one patch has already been issued addressing some of their problems), and after a good couple of years of apathy it's great seeing the player-base for the game brought to life again by the introduction of this new side.

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valour (*) is pretty weak and not worth bothering with, unless you really want that new light tank unit for the USA. Company of Heroes: Eastern Front (****) is markedly superior and makes for an entertaining and highly intriguing addition to the game's multiplayer mode. Plus, IT'S FREE!

Ashes to Ashes: Season 2

It's 1982 and Britain is at war. Whilst the nation cheers on its soldiers and sailors fighting in the Falklands, life back in London carries on as normal for DI Alex Drake. Well, as normal as it can do when you're really from 2008 and your entire life appears to be a fictional construct within your own mind as you suffer from a bullet-induced coma. Having failed to avert her parents' death, Alex is now unsure what it is she must do to return home, until the rising tide of police corruption within the Met becomes clear and she and Gene Hunt make it their mission to bring the bent coppers down. But as their dangerous game of cat and mouse with their corrupt superiors unfolds, Alex starts getting odd messages and hints that she might not be the only temporally-displaced person in this world...


After an initially shaky but eventually compelling first season, Ashes to Ashes returns firing on all cylinders for its second. Learning from their experiences, the writers have put together a much more compelling season-spanning story arc than either the first year of Ashes or both seasons of its predecessor series, Life on Mars, with Gene and Alex leading an attempt to bring down their corrupt bosses in the Met. This storyline takes up the first half of the season, but no sooner is that out of the way than Alex is confronted with the notion that she might not be alone, and has to find out who is sharing her 'hallucination' and why they are there.

The writing is tighter this time around, the characterisation stronger and, in particular, the writing for Alex Drake is much improved, making her a more sympathetic figure than the arrogant know-it-all who dominated the first half of Season 1. There's also a nice subplot for the hitherto under-utilised Marshall Lancaster and Montserrat Lombard as Chris and Shaz, whose engagement provides a nice undercurrent of humour to the proceedings (and unexpectedly ties into the main storyline later in the season). Keeley Hawes and Philip Glenister are still impressive as the leads, with Dean Andrews continuing to provide solid support as Ray Carling, who shows some interesting character growth this season. We also have two recurring characters, Charlie 'SuperMac' Mackintosh (Roger Allam) and Martin Summers (Adrian Dunbar), who act as antagonists through much of the season, both well-played and nicely developed as characters.

The mystery element, namely why did Sam Tyler and now Alex Drake find themselves in the past, is also developed with some intriguing new clues hinting that what the audience previously assumed or thought they knew is completely wrong. Events culminate in the final few moments of Season 2, which rival episodes of Twin Peaks or The Prisoner for sheer surrealism and bemusement-inducing incredulity. What is going on? The third and final season of Ashes to Ashes, which will also mark the final appearance of Gene Hunt and the end of the five-season arc begun at the start of Life on Mars, promises to hold all of the answers.

Ashes to Ashes: Season 2 (****½) is a superior slice of SF-tinged crime drama. It is available now on DVD in the UK, with a US release planned for next year. Season 3 starts airing in the UK in April.

THE HOBBIT movies delayed by a year

According to executives at New Line Cinema, that two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit are being pushed back by twelve months. The movies were supposed to enter production in Spring 2010 and be filmed back-to-back over twelve months, with the first film being released in December 2011 and the second in December 2012. However, New Line execs have reported that delays resulting from a restructuring of the company will see shooting delayed until the summer (British and American time, winter in New Zealand) or even later in 2010. That makes the fourth quarter of 2012 a more attractive release date.

Smaug will have to wait another year before waking up.

The news is disappointing, but also understandable from a business perspective. The Lord of the Rings trilogy shot over a year with a full year allotted to post-production and re-shoots on each movie, but even this proved extremely tight, particularly with The Return of the King, the final cinema edit of which was delivered just hours ahead of deadline in 2003 and just days before the film was supposed to be in cinemas. The Hobbit movies also have a year-long shooting schedule, and shooting from summer or autumn 2010 to summer or autumn 2011 leaves an uncomfortably short period for re-shoots or post. Of course, the first film could instead air in summer 2012 rather than the winter, but the winter is a more lucrative time period for film releases and New Line see The Hobbit films as major 'tent-pole' films which will hopefully regain them a lot of box office clout that they have lost after a recent string of flops. In addition, this move allows Weta to have more post-production time on the two films than they did on the three Lord of the Rings films, which was restrictive (although they did produce successful results).

This news will presumably mean that the second film is also pushed back a year to December 2013.

The Total War Series

War is fun! Okay, no it isn't. It's dangerous and terrifying and cold and often quite spectacularly boring. But human beings seem to enjoy the prospect of pitting two large bodies of men against one another armed with bits of metal over some philosophical/ideological/religious/monetary point of of dispute and letting them have at it. Of course, war also results in mounds of corpses and lots of letters that need to be written to parents back home, so as early as the 9th Century AD certain board games had been developed which simulated the art of warfare without having to deal with troublesome issues such as supply lines, latrines or corpse removal duty. Of course, with modern computers, the recreation of war has become ever more complete and thorough.


The Total War series of games first appeared in 2000 from a British company, the Creative Assembly. Formerly known for ports various Electronic Arts sports simulations from PC to console or vice versa, the Creative Assembly had decided to break out with an original title that would much more realistically simulate the art of war than ever before. At that time the most popular series of historical wargames was probably the Age of Empires series which, whilst entertaining, consisted more of building tons of men and hurling them blindly at the enemy than any viable use of real strategy or tactics. Age of Empires and other medieval or fantasy-based games like WarCraft II were fun but their simulation of real military tactics was remote at best. On the other side of the coin, games like the Civilization series were great at providing a context for warfare but reduced the battles to the comparisons of stats, removing the ability of players to swing a desperate battle against a much larger force through the use of superior tactics.


Shogun: Total War, which was published in June 2000, successfully solved the problems. Using a combination of rolling 3D terrain and sprite-based units, it allowed for the realistic depiction of a combined-force army consisting of thousands of cavalry, archers, pikemen and swordsmen, allowing them to be moved and positioned flexibly. Much of the game took place on a map of feudal Japan, with the player taking the role of a clan-leader determined to conquer the other provinces and become the shogun, the ruler of all Japan. On this map the player could assemble armies and position them to defend provinces and castles, or take to the sea and mount sneak invasions behind enemy lines. Agents like assassins could take out high-ranking enemy generals, whilst spies could provide intelligence on enemy troop numbers and movements. In effect, Shogun provided the player a way of following the maxims of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in a manner not before achieved.

Given the specialist nature of wargames, it was a bit of a surprise when Shogun crossed over into the mainstream and became a significant success story, its mix of Civilization-style turn-based plotting and realistic real-time battles providing a heady brew for strategy gamers. 2001's The Mongol Invasion provided new units and factions to the game, including the ability to have the Mongols invade Japan by sea and change the course of history. This 'counterfactual' angle (what if history went down a different path?) soon became appealing to players as well.


The Creative Assembly's success soon saw them conceive of a way of delivering exciting new Total War games to players at a steady clip. Their idea was to divide their games into 'revolutionary' and 'evolutionary' categories (each with expansions). The revolutionary games would feature new engines, graphics, ideas and concepts, whilst the evolutionary ones would build on the success of the revolutionary one. Meanwhile, the revolutionary team would begin building the next revolutionary game in the series whilst the evolutionary team was developing their next title, meaning that the two teams would be required to only deliver a new full game every four years, with a new full game coming out every two years and an expansion falling inbetween. This would allow a fresh Total War game every year and a constant source of income for the small company.

This process soon kicked in. Medieval: Total War, which used a souped-up version of the Shogun game engine, was published in 2002 to critical acclaim. It's much more popular depiction of medieval European warfare saw its sales radically eclipse those of Shogun, and its expansion, The Viking Invasion (2003) saw the game focus on a much smaller theatre of war (the British Isles) and a smaller number of factions, to great success.


The revolutionary team delivered the next full game in the series, Rome: Total War, in 2004. The game went full 3D, removing the 2D sprites of the previous titles and replacing them with individually-modelled 3D units. Through clever programming, it was possible to send a full army of 10,000 3D units into battle without onerous system requirements. The graphical results were so good that a BBC history-based gameshow, Time Commanders, started using the game engine for its graphics a full year before the game was even released. Rome also featured a major shift in gameplay, with the turn-based campaign map now employing small tiles in a 3D-rendered battlemap rather than large provincial squares. This made the placement of units, the importance of ambushes and interceptions and the vital importance of intelligence and spies all the more important, and added huge amounts of strategic depth to the game.

Unfortunately, this is where the first problems with the game's AI came into play. The first two games, being based on provinces, didn't require huge amounts of computer intelligence on the positioning of armies. If they could only move into one province and attack it, there wasn't much else for them to do. In they went. In Rome, however, it wasn't unusual to see multiple AI-controlled armies marching around consisting of a few small units rather than amalgamating into one large force, allowing you to destroy them piecemeal, whilst the AI's ability to use ships to launch seaborne invasions was almost non-existent. During sieges it wasn't uncommon to see the enemy AI drop their siege weapons and run around confused in front of your city walls whilst your archers turned them into pin-cushions. Various patches and Rome's two expansions, The Barbarian Invasion (2005) and Alexander (2006) did eventually solve many of the AI problems. Rome was also the first game in the series to permit fully-comprehensive modding, with amateur programmers retooling the AI and making it far more impressive.


The Total War series proceeded with the release of Medieval II: Total War in late 2006. Featuring an upgraded version of the Rome engine, it was assumed that Medieval II would build on the patched-up version of the engine from the expansion. Instead, it very oddly returned to the basic engine of the original Rome release, just with more impressive graphics and obviously a shift in factions and units. Lots of bugs not seen since the early days of Rome returned and, unlike Rome, were never fixed through patches. Some features, such as the implementation of the New World across the ocean, were half-assed at best. The game was also not well-optimised, requiring radically higher system requirements than Rome to work despite using the same engine. Medieval II's failings saw the first signs of real discontent from the fanbase. The Creative Assembly did win back some loyalty with the release of the excellent Kingdoms expansion in 2007, and Medieval II's modding capabilities were (eventually) better than Rome's, paving the way for excellent mods such as Third Age: Total War (a Lord of the Rings-based game, more coverage of which is coming soon), Stainless Steel (a much more hardcore and historically accurate version of Medieval II) and our own in-development Westeros: Total War.

The Creative Assembly soon revealed that the next game in the series would be the next 'revolutionary' title, Empire: Total War, which took the franchise into the 18th Century, focused on gunpowder-based warfare and, for the first time, depicted 3D naval battles. Worked on by the same team behind Shogun and Rome, the assumption was that this would be another strong game in the series.


Instead, it was pretty much lambasted on release in February 2009 by the fans, even whilst the computer game magazines gave it high scores. Very rarely has there been such a disconnection between official reviews and public opinion. The game was shipped in an incomplete state, rife with graphics bugs, memory leaks and crashes to desktops, whilst the game's AI was in an even more woeful state than Medieval II's on release. The game also required the use of Steam, Valve's digital distribution service. Whilst Steam is excellent at delivering downloadable game content, its use as a form of DRM (Digital Rights Management) without which it is impossible to play a game, even in offline single-player mode, has long been highly controversial. On top of all of these problems, the Creative Assembly took the decision to make Empire effectively unmoddable. Whilst unit states could be tweaked, full-game modifications like those available for Medieval II and Rome were simply impossible to implement. CA several times promised to release development software making modding possible, and never did so. They also promised that the game would feature a multiplayer campaign mode, but over a year after release it has still not been implemented.


The Total War fanbase, long loyal to the franchise, was understandably annoyed. There were even more annoyed when CA announced the next game in the series, Napoleon: Total War, for release in the spring of 2010, whilst the problems in Empire still had not been sorted out. Even worse was the news that Napoleon would be a stand-alone game, not an expansion as previously thought. The prior Total War expansions had shipped with major patches which usually improved the original game at the same time as delivering new content (the Barbarian Invasion and Kingdoms expansions both removed the most outrageous bugs in their parent games, for example), whilst this was not going to be the case for Napoleon, which will continue to make use of Steam and would also not permit modding.

At this current time it is difficult to say what the future holds for the Total War series. The Creative Assembly's actions over the last two games of the series have been pretty much lamentable (although Empire is now, more or less, in a reliable state after several new patches, although the AI remains deeply problematic), but at the same time the Total War series' combination of tactical and strategic warfare remains ambitious and enjoyable, and in an age of ever-declining PC games sales the series' impressive sales performance is enviable. What the CA really need to do with the franchise now is to stop pissing off the fans, allow modding once again and look at fixing the long-standing problems with AI in the games. If this can be achieved, the series could regain its place as one of the better PC gaming franchises around.


June 2010 Update
The next full game in the series will be Shogun 2: Total War.


The Total War Series

Shogun: Total War (2000)
Shogun: Total War - The Mongol Invasion (2001)
Medieval: Total War (2002)
Medieval: Total War - The Viking Invasion (2003)
Rome: Total War (2004)
Rome: Total War - The Barbarian Invasion (2005)
Rome: Total War - Alexander (2006)
Medieval II: Total War (2006)
Medieval II: Total War - Kingdoms (2007)
Empire: Total War (2009)
Empire: Total War - The Warpath Campaign (2009)
Napoleon: Total War (2010)
Napoleon: Total War - The Peninsular Campaign (2010)
Shogun II: Total War (2011)

Completion announcement of THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES imminent?

Scott Lynch's The Republic of Thieves, the third book in his planned seven-volume Gentleman Bastard series, is one of the most eagerly-waited books in the fantasy genre at the moment. The previous volume, Red Seas Under Red Skies, was published in June 2007, and the series was expected to progress at the rate of one book a year. However, the third book has been repeatedly delayed since then due to various reasons.


According to Suvudu/Bantam USA blogger Shawn Speakman, Lynch's editors are expecting the completed manuscript of The Republic of Thieves to be delivered imminently, and have already set January 2011 as the provisional date for publication. Since Gollancz have the first-print rights to the series, I imagine this means that that UK publication will precede this by a couple of months or so.

The book is finished and edited. Now his editor will read it again next week, make sure it is right, and then the book will go to the production team.

So far this late-breaking news is unconfirmed by my UK sources but I'll try to get more news on this soon.

KJ Parker's ENGINEER TRILOGY re-released.

KJ Parker's Engineer Trilogy is actually quite a recent series, but Orbit have nevertheless chosen to reissue the books in the UK and Australia with new covers. The new UK editions should be out now, and will hit Australia in March.


Devices and Desires (2005), Evil for Evil (2006) and The Escapement (2007) have all been very-well-reviewed, although I'm still a way behind on Parker. I enjoyed the Fencer Trilogy back when it was first released, but haven't picked up either the Scavenger or Engineer series. Parker's new novel, The Folding Knife, which is apparently a departure for her, is also published on 4 February in the UK and 22 February in the USA.


The blurb sounds most intriguing:

Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer. The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man. He is ruthless, cunning and, above all, lucky. He brings wealth, power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic. In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he's only ever made one mistake. One mistake, though, can be enough.

Very good. I'll have to rectify my lack of Parker reading this year, I think.

Wertzone Classics: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

The Battle of the Blackwater has radically shifted the balance of power in the War of the Five Kings. The Lannisters and Tyrells are now allied together, granting the boy-king Joffrey a vast army against which it appears that Robb Stark, the King in the North, and his allies cannot stand. In the distant lands beyond the Wall, Jon Snow has infiltrated the wildlings to learn more about their plans and objectives, but finds his loyalties torn when he learns that even the free folk have their own codes of honour. And, far beyond the eastern seas, Daenerys Targaryen attempts to hire an army of warriors to her cause from the stinking cities of Slaver's Bay, and decides to bring justice and freedom to these lands, despite it delaying her return home to Westeros.


A Storm of Swords is both the third volume of A Song of Ice and Fire and, individually, the finest work of epic fantasy published since at least The Silmarillion in 1977. George R.R. Martin's writing skills in the first book were good, better in the second and hit impressive new heights here in the third, with growing layers of description and writing giving the Seven Kingdoms more colour and more depth with each passing volume. The characterisation remains strong, and in A Storm of Swords Martin delivers one of his masterstrokes by upgrading the hitherto villainous and reprehensible Jaime Lannister to full POV status. By taking us into the head of one of the 'bad guys' and showing us what makes him tick without descending into cliche (Jaime is still a dangerous and somewhat unpleasant character), Martin achieves some very fine character description and growth.


Elsewhere, Swords gives us some of the most out-and-out memorable moments in fantasy fiction in a long time. The duel between the Red Viper and the Mountain That Rides, several confrontations between Tyrion and his father, two certain weddings, the epic battle of the Wall, Bran and his companions' journey northwards and much more all resonate very strongly indeed. There is also some very nice subtlety, such as Meera's 'story' which is clearly not just a story, and Daenerys' realisation that having royal blood isn't enough, she must also earn her crown through experience and wisdom nicely subverts some of the more dubious cliches of fantasy fiction centering on noble families ruling through 'divine right' alone.

There is one slight cause for concern: Martin's writing definitely becomes more descriptive with each passing novel, contributing to their growing sizes and page-counts. Arguably not much more happens, in terms of sheer important incidents, in Storm than in Thrones, but the book is over a third longer. Whilst the pacing and writing quality remains superb in this volume, this growth in size and depth does evoke troubling memories of what happened to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series around its sixth volume. Also, whilst it's not a problem for Storm, the decision to hold back some story developments from the end of Storm (where they chronologically belong, such as the ironborn kingsmoot and so on) for the then-planned five-year-gap (and later inserted into Feast instead) does contribute to some of the writing issues in the two subsequent novels, and their resultingly epic writing times. On the plus side, this does result in Storm having a very strong and somewhat final ending. It's certainly not a full resolution of all the stories in progress, but those stories are 'plateaued' or put on hold in a manner that does not demand immediate resolution (probably why the wait for Feast was not as onerous for many fans as the one for Dance is at the moment). For those put off from reading A Song of Ice and Fire so far due to its incomplete status, the fact that you can read the first three books alone and reach a natural pausing point rather than a cliffhanger may be useful information.


A Storm of Swords (*****) is an excellent fantasy novel, rich in memorable characters, classic moments, fierce battles, quieter moments of reflection and some almost stomach-churning moments of genuine shock and betrayal. It remains unmatched among modern epic fantasy novels (although some have come close to unseating it) for combining a sheer epic scope and a real sense of humanity at the same time. It is available now in the USA. Annoyingly, in the UK it was split into two volumes for paperback publication, entitled Steel and Snow and Blood and Gold.

New sample from GRRM's THE MYSTERY KNIGHT

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has published an exclusive extract from The Mystery Knight here. The third and latest tale of Dunk 'n' Egg, the hedge knight and his unusual squire adventuring in the Seven Kingdoms eighty-five-odd years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire, will be published in the Warriors anthology due from Tor USA on 16 March.

The Prestige

At the end of the 19th Century, two stage magicians working in London become bitter rivals: Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman), performing under the name 'The Great Danton', and Alfred Borden (played by Christian Bale), known as 'The Professor'. They each seek to upstage the other, and when Borden develops a seemingly impossible trick that has him apparently teleporting across the stage in a second, Angier becomes obsessed with finding out how he did it, an obsession that leads him to Colorado and a meeting with a man named Nikola Tesla...


The Prestige, released in 2006, is an adaptation of the excellent Christopher Priest novel of the same name, directed by Christopher Nolan of Memento and Batman Begins fame (his subsequent project to this movie would be The Dark Knight) and sharing several cast and crew with the comic book movies, including Christian Bale and Michael Caine. The Prestige is a superb film which may actually be the finest translation of a work of literature to the screen that I've ever seen. The film is incredibly faithful to the themes and spirit of the novel, but not slavishly so. Ideas from the book that would not work well on-screen have been jettisoned, whilst the novel's modern-day framing device has been removed and replaced with a new one that focuses the story much more closely on the rivalry between Borden and Angier. At the same time, the novel's conceit of taking place entirely through the pages of the two men's diaries is actually translated successfully to the screen, and the changes made to the central twist of the novel actually make the idea even more disturbing and horrific than in the novel. As with the novel, upon finishing the film the viewer may be tempted to immediately watch it again in full knowledge of the secrets revealed at the end, whereupon it turns into a different movie.

The film's success is built around its two protagonists. Bale and Jackman turn in supremely accomplished performances (the latter possibly in a career-best performance), each having to play a complex, driven character each of whom is carrying weighty secrets and mysteries. Their escalating rivalry is particularly well-handled. Some may feel that the two characters are too obsessed with their rivalry and we don't see many other facets of their personalities, but given that the entire movie is driven by their rivalry, this is understandable. The supporting cast is also excellent, particularly Michael Caine as Angier's assistant, Cutter, Scarlett Johansson as Olivia and the curiously effective partnership of David Bowie (yes, that David Bowie) as Tesla and Andy Serkis as his helper, Alley. In fact, it feels like there's a whole other movie Nolan could go and make about Nikola Tesla that would be as fascinating to watch.

Nolan's direction, having to handle a complex, non-linear narrative and not lose the audience in confusion, is very good. At one point Olivia tells us that once you know the secret of the trick, it becomes rather obvious, and the film is like that. Rewatching the movie, it's almost incredible that you missed all the (in retrospect, obvious) clues pointing to what the truth of the story is. This is where the real success of the movie lies. Most of Priest's novels have a moment which is known as the 'Priest Effect', where the reader feels a trapdoor has opened beneath their feet and they realise everything they thought they knew was not only wrong, but perhaps never existed in the first place. The idea that this could be translated to cinema seems unthinkable, but Nolan delivers it here with considerable success. This is a movie where the rules are fluid and shift, but once you know what is going on, it all makes sense.

The Prestige (*****) is a most accomplished film, well-paced and dramatic, with a tremendous sense of mystery. It is a puzzle box of a story where all the pieces fit together satisfyingly at the end, and rewards repeated viewing. It is available on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

British readers can now pay the Long Price

Orbit Books have completed the UK publication of Daniel Abraham's very fine Long Price Quartet this week. They have decided to publish the books as two chunky omnibuses, with A Shadow in Summer and A Betrayal in Winter being published under the title Shadow and Betrayal and An Autumn War and The Price of Spring being combined as Seasons of War. Shadow and Betrayal was previously released in 2007 (and reviewed here) with a rather dubious brown fog cover. Realising this wasn't helping the book much, Orbit have reprinted the original omnibus alongside the publication of the new with much better cover art*.


Orbit have a huge amount of faith and excitement for Abraham's career, and will also be publishing his new series, The Dagger and the Coin (summed up as a cross between George R.R. Martin and Joss Whedon set against Medici-eseque backdrop) in both the UK and USA, starting in 2011.

* Better than the brown fog UK cover, not the jaw-droppingly amazing US covers.