“The Strain” by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan (Harper/William Morrow)

The start of the vampire apocalypse… It’s very well-written, but…

At New York’s JFK Airport an arriving Boeing 777 taxis along a runway and suddenly stops dead. All the blinds have been drawn, all communications channels have mysteriously gone quiet. Dr Ephraim Goodweather – head of a rapid-response team investigating biological threats – boards the darkened plane… and what he finds makes his blood run cold.

Meanwhile, in a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, aged Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian knows that the war he has been dreading his entire life is finally here.

Before the next sundown Eph and Setrakian must undertake the ultimate fight for survival. A terrifying contagion has come to the unsuspecting city – hungry, merciless, lethal… vampiric?

It took me so long to get around to reading this. And it’s taken me a few months to get around to writing the review. I’m not sure why, but there we go. The first in del Toro and Hogan’s trilogy, it chronicles the events that spark the outbreak of a vampiric plague in New York, threatening the country beyond, and the toppling of the status quo. It’s an interesting novel, but one that I struggled with a fair bit, given its pacing. Conceived as a trilogy, this novel is basically the set-up and that’s about it. We learn a little of the background – minor moments from the vampire’s history, and the former-concentration camp inmate who discovered that it was feeding on inmates; and then, decades later, tracking it across to the New World.

“NOS4R2”/“NOS4A2” by Joe Hill (Gollancz/William Morrow)

A slow-burning suspense

Summer. Massachusetts.

An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.

Anyone could be next.

We’re going to Christmasland...

I’m not a big reader of horror. I’m not really sure why, though, as I tend to be attracted to darker and more twisted tales. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed some of Hill’s previous writing, and after reading a little bit about NOS4R2, I eagerly awaited its arrival.

Despite that, and perhaps inevitably, I was not really in the mood for horror when I first started to read NOS4R2. Rather than letting this ruin it for me, I decided to put it aside and got back to it recently. I’m glad I did this, too: this is a pretty solid suspense/horror novel, sure to appeal to his existing fans and also new readers (with caveats). The novel is also, frustratingly, very difficult to review – and doubly so if I want to avoid any form of spoiler.

Once again, therefore, I find myself at a loss for how to review something by Joe Hill. Seriously. I’m completely stumped. His other work that I struggle to review is his Locke & Key comic series, a story that shares some similar sensibilities and aesthetics as NOS4R2. Both are heavily character-focused, with a slow-burning plot that allows for great tension and suspense to build brilliantly. It’s not action-packed (though there is some conflict), there are a fair few surprises, and some really creepy scenes.

I must admit that I did find the start a little slower than I would normally like, and this maybe influenced my decision to put it aside for a short while. Given how long the book is (the ARC is 700 pages, or there about), I think some people may not have the patience for Hill’s pacing. When I was about a third of the way through, even I couldn’t help but think, “When are things going to kick off?” However, when I allowed myself to just sit and read (recently, life has been very disruptive and stop-start), I found myself swept up by Hill’s prose and story, drawn on through the novel.

The author manages to make the mundane fascinating – the little details of these characters’ lives, their thoughts and every-day concerns… In many authors’ hands, this attention to detail would be suffocating and perhaps tedious, giving the novel a bloated feel. Not so for Hill; when added to the creepy goings-on related to Christmasland and its master, Charles Manx, he spins a fascinating, engrossing, suspenseful tale.

I found his characters all too realistic, in a way. This is, in my opinion, Hill’s greatest talent: despite writing creepy, weird, oft-supernatural stories, his characters have a vividly real feel to them. Victoria McQueen, the protagonist, feels complete, fully realised and familiar, and in some ways we grow up with her over the course of the novel: first meeting her as a child, when she first gets her special bike and stumbles across her strange ability. Then time jumps ahead to her rebellious adolescence and onwards, as her childhood brush with information of the Silver Wraith and Manx, and her confrontations with him later.

As I said at the start, I have no real idea of how to review Hill’s work. Nothing I try seems to convey the atmosphere and feel of the author’s work appropriately.

Needless to say, if you have any interest in classic, literary horror fiction, then NOS4R2 is for you. Recommended.

Also by Joe Hill: Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, 20th Century Ghosts, Locke & Key Vols.1-5

Also Try: Benjamin Percy, Justin Cronin, Stephen King, Adam Neville

UK vs. US Covers: James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell’s “Blood Gospel” & “City of Screams”

James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force scientific thrillers (which I’m rather fond of) has teamed up with Rebecca Cantrell to write a new series of thrillers, this time with a slight Dan Brown-Da Vinci Code slant to it. Only, hopefully much better. As I say, I’m fond of Rollins’s Sigma novels, so I have high hopes that he’ll do as good a job with this new venture. (I have a copy of the book, and it’s inching its way up the ever-growing Mt. TBR.) The series also includes an eShort prequel (of sorts), the artwork for which was recently unveiled. I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of the US and UK artwork for the two, as they are quite different.

Upcoming: “NOS4R2”/“NOS4A2” by Joe Hill (Gollancz/William Morrow)

This is next novel from the author of Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, and the ongoing Locke & Key comic series. The title is slightly different in the UK and US (as you can see in the title of this post).

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.

NOS4R2/NOS4A2 will be published in April 2013. In related Joe Hill news, Horns will be hitting movie theaters in 2013 and stars Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role, Ig Perrish.

An Interview with ROD REES

I heard of Rod Rees’s new series, The Demi-Monde quite a while ago. It has an intriguing and original premise and setting – a virtual reality “training” world that features some of the most difficult environments for warfare, populated by some of the worst of history’s psychopaths… Which is pretty cool. With the second book in the series now available, I thought it would be a good time to ask him some questions about his work. Turns out, he’s not a fan of the editing phases…

Influences & Inspirations: ROD REES

Rod Rees is the author of The Demi-Monde series – currently standing at two novels, Winter and Spring (published by Quercus in the UK and William Morrow in the US). With the release of the second novel in the series, I thought it a good time to invite him to talk about his influences and inspirations…

It’s an interesting question: what are the influences and inspirations that inform The Demi-Monde series of books, and it’s one I’ve never really thought about before.

But before I answer the question, maybe I should give a quick synopsis of what the Demi-monde is. It’s a virtual world, designed by the US army to train grunts in the art of urban guerrilla warfare, inhabited by thirty million digital duplicates of real people (none of them aware they are Dupes), who live in five city-states locked in eternal civil war (“the last thing we want is peace breaking out in the Demi-Monde”). It’s planned to be a dystopia so every city-state is overcrowded; linguistically, religiously and ethnically distinct; and led by a coterie of the über-psychopaths from history who, during their lives, visited such misery on humanity. Everything has been done to turn the DM into a living hell.

So what were the inspirations I drew on when designing the world?

“The Devil Colony” by James Rollins (William Morrow/Orion)

Sigma Force race to halt a potential cataclysm rooted in the history of America’s Founding

Deep in the Rocky Mountains, a gruesome discovery stirs international attention and controversy. Despite doubts about the bodies’ origins, the local Native American Heritage Commission lays claim to the prehistoric remains, along with the strange artefacts found in the same cavern: gold plates inscribed with an unfathomable script.

During a riot at the dig site, an anthropologist dies, burned to ashes in a fiery explosion in plain view of television cameras. All evidence points to a radical group of Native Americans, including one agitator, a teenage firebrand who escapes with a vital clue to the murder and calls on the one person who might help — her uncle, Painter Crowe, Director of Sigma Force.

To protect his niece and uncover the truth, Painter will ignite a war among the nation’s most powerful intelligence agencies. Yet an even greater threat looms as events in the Rocky Mountains have set in motion a frightening chain reaction, a geological meltdown that threatens the entire western half of the U.S.

I’ve long been a fan of Rollins’s Sigma Force novels, and being in the United States at the moment meant I could get my hands on Devil Colony months before its UK release date. Filled with intrigue, action and adventure – not to mention some great characters – The Devil Colony is an interesting, science-infused action-adventure.