“Fade to Black” by Francis Knight (Orbit)

The first Rojan Dizon novel

Mahala: a city built in the dark depths of a valley. A city built up in layers, not across – where streets are built upon streets, buildings balance precariously upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from its lofty perch at the sunlit summit & where the forsaken lurk in the shadowy depths of the Pit.

Rojan is a bounty hunter trying to make his way in the city. Everyone knows he’s a womaniser, a shirker of all responsibility, but they don’t know he’s also a pain-mage: able to draw magic from his own & other people’s pain. He’s not keen on using it (not least because it’s outlawed), but when his niece is abducted and taken to the dark depths of the Pit, he may just be forced to unleash his power…

Ever since I first saw the artwork for this novel, I’ve been dying to read Fade to Black. I was lucky enough to get an early copy, and damn did it live up to my expectations! Actually, it exceeded them. Given how much I enjoyed this novel, writing a review for it is unlikely to be easy, or do it justice. Part of me wishes to go ahead and write a calm, collected (translation: bit staid) review, while the other just wants to type “ZOMG! This is amazeballs!” and leave it at that. [Incidentally, does anyone know what the “Z” stands for…? Apparently, I am i-leet-arate.]

This is a great fantasy debut, introducing us to an intriguing new character, and the beginning of something really quite brilliant.

“Wolfhound Century” by Peter Higgins (Gollancz/Orbit)

An intriguing new voice in… well, a number of different genres all at the same time…

Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist – and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown terrorism with an iron fist.

But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

I didn’t know what to expect from this novel. I didn’t know a whole lot about it before I read it, either, save for the excellent cover artwork. What I found was a really interesting mélange of genres, mixed together to create an original, compelling and atmospheric whole. Wolfhound Century excellently bridges the gap between a speculative urban fantasy and a crime thriller. With a great Russian-flavor, too, this novel stands out even more. This is a really strong debut novel.

“Judge Dredd: Year One - City Fathers” by Matthew Smith (Abaddon)

An eNovella Introduction to Mega City’s finest

The Making of the Lawman...

Mega-City One, 2080. It is Joe Dredd’s first year as a full-eagle Judge – he may have been created from the genes of Eustace Fargo, the ‘Father of Justice’, and thus part of an illustrious lineage, but right now Dredd is not long graduated from the Academy, and yet to establish himself as the metropolis’s toughest, greatest cop. His reputation will be moulded in the years ahead, but at the moment he’s a young lawman, fresh on the streets.

The brutal murder of a Justice Department-sanctioned spy sparks an investigation that will see Dredd trawl the criminal underworld in the hunt for the killer – and he will discover that all is not what it seems in the sector's murky black market. Something new has entered the system, and unless Dredd can stop it, chaos will be unleashed...

This novella, which was released just before the new Dredd movie hit cinemas, is a great story of Mega City’s most bad-ass of cops. Set in his first year, it serves as both introduction and refresher course, for new readers and lapsed enthusiasts (the latter including yours truly). I really enjoyed this story, and I hope there are more on the way. City Fathers is a great dystopian sci-fi crime thriller.