It was just another school trip… When their ski-coach pulls up at a cafe, and everyone else gets off, new girl Bobby and rebel Smitty stay behind. They hardly know each other but that changes when through the falling snow, they see the others coming back. Something has happened to them. Something bad…

Soon only a pair of double doors stand between those on the bus and their ex-friends the Undead outside. Time to get a life. Author Kirsty McKay is a major new horror/thriller writer for ages 12+.

There, now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with the review.

Let’s face it, we’re all in love with zombies. From Night of the Living Dead to World War Z, we can’t get enough of those ugly, brain-munching monstrosities. Hell, even my own comic series, Gangrene, politely tips its hat to decades of zombie lore.

But what of this latest entry in the zombie stable? Kirsty McKay’s Undead is a young adult horror in which a group of teenagers find themselves caught up in a full-scale Z-Pocalypse. Thrown together, the teens must learn to overcome their differences if they are to have any chance of surviving and finding out who – or what – is responsible for the onslaught of the living dead.

So far, so familiar, and this is the problem with the book in general. We’ve seen it all before.

The teenagers are little more than stereotypes – the bitchy good-looking girl, the computer geek, the handsome rebel with a heart of gold, they’re all here. The protagonist, Bobby, is new to the school. Having moved from the US, she feels like an outsider, but watching your former classmates become zombies turns out to be quite the bonding experience, and soon she is more or less leading the group in their attempts to survive.

The zombie scenes are effective enough – no more, no less. There are scenes you’ll have seen in almost every living dead film ever – the blood-streaked hand at the window, the hordes of zoms shuffling along the moonlit road – but it is all handled reasonably well so that you don’t ever quite become bored.

In fact, I found myself sitting up well into the night reading the book, which is more a testament to McKay’s writing than to the concept itself. Occasionally I found some of the dialogue a bit clunky – particularly Alice, the bitchy blonde – but other than that this is a well-written story and a quick read. That said, the twist at the end of the story is actually a massive coincidence that I don’t remember being foreshadowed at any point prior to it happening, which was disappointing.

I can’t help but wonder how good the story could have been if it had a unique hook, like Charlie Higson’s The Enemy series, for example. As it is, this book almost reads like a checklist of what you’d expect in any other zombie story. Brain-eating monsters? Check. New fangled viruses? Check. Conspiracy theories? Shady corporations? ‘Heroic’ characters meeting a grisly doom? Check, check and check. Without a unique hook it’s a book that will likely only appeal to existing fans of the zombie genre, and they’re going to have seen it all before.

Yes, the protagonist is female (Bobby is short for Roberta) but that isn’t enough to make this sufficiently different from virtually every other zombie tale we’ve seen in the past. On the Romero scale, it’s nowhere near as good as Dawn of the Dead, say, but it’s no Land of the Dead, either. It’s Day of the Dead – solid enough, with some memorable scenes, but ultimately not as good as what’s come before.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just old and jaded, and this might turn out to be the perfect introduction to the genre for those who haven’t yet dipped their toes into zombie horror.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Publisher: Chicken House
Published: 1st September 2011
Buy now on Amazon.

Hush Hush

I have a confession to make. When I picked this book off my pile of review books my heart sunk. First off, I’d scanned the promotional material and knew it was yet another high school teenager falls for inappropriate male story. Then there was the small matter of the black feather that had fallen out of the envelope that accompanied the promotional material. So, there was no doubt about it. I wasn’t going to enjoy this.

Yeah, well, OK.

Approximately 150 pages in and I had to put it down because the kids were screaming to be fed, and that’s pretty much how it carried on until I had reached the final page.

So what makes Hush Hush worth reading? To start with, there’s the two lead characters. Leaving aside the problem of their names (Nora and Patch! I ask you. Those names might work in the US but in England I have an image of a decrepit and irritable old woman getting down with the dog. But I digress), these two are as well-drawn and attractive as any. Nora is a feisty number. She is self-reliant and not easily spooked and no one could be more surprised than she when she finds herself drawn towards the mysterious new boy at school. Indeed, she refuses to give in to the inevitable, does her utmost to avoid Patch and even starts dating another boy, until she comes to suspect that he may have been involved in the death of another girl. All of which makes the final submission to Patch all the more convincing.

Patch, too is a multi-dimensional creation, no mean feat given he’s the supernatural one. He remains difficult to read, right up to the end. Yes, he’s the fallen angel and yes, he fell, we learn, for all the right reasons. But there are hints a many of the evil he has perpetrated in the past and neither Nora nor the reader can be sure that in the end the evil side of his nature will not triumph.

And then we come to the writing style. This is lean and pacy and dominated by sassy and believable dialogue. Hush Hush is a book you can read quickly, indeed that you want to read quickly. It’s fun and exciting, intriguing and not a little bit sexy; it’s a different twist on the high school romance and a stupendous first novel.

I gather Becca Fitzpatrick is now working on a sequel. I won’t be picking that one up with a sinking heart, but I do hope I don’t get another black feather.

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpartick, published by Simon & Schuster, October 29th 2009

Wicked: Witch & Curse

Wicked:Witch and Curse is something of a double whammy of a book. For starters, it comprises the first two novels, Witch and Curse, of the Wicked series. And then there is the small matter of the novels having two authors.

Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié met at a Maui Writers’ Retreat some years ago. Holder will be familiar to many of you as the writer of no small number of Buffy, Angel and Smallville books. Viguié was her student at the retreat. They clearly hit it off and the five novels (to date) of the Wicked series are the result.

Witch was first published in 2002, and Curse the following year. The next two novels in the series, Legacy and Spellbound, also came out in 2003 but readers have had to wait until this July for the fifth novel, Resurrection. In the meantime, no doubt in an effort to drum up a little interest, the first four have been re-packaged into two two-novel volumes which were issued in late 2008. Still, I shouldn’t be too churlish about that: two novels for £6.99 is a pretty good deal by anyone’s standards and when the novels are this readable…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to business.

Witch opens with turmoil. Holly Cather’s parents have taken Holly and her best friend on a white water rafting trip on the Colorado river. They have also taken their argument; one of those weeks-long arguments that can only end in catastrophe. So it doesn’t really come as a huge surprise when the weather starts to imitate Holly’s parents, turning the river into a swirling hell from which Holly alone emerges alive.

Orphaned, and best-friendless Holly finds herself dragged from her beloved San Francisco to chilly, and infinitely wetter Seattle, to join two cousins, Nicole and Amanda, and their mother, and Holly’s father’s sister, Marie-Claire. These are relations she never knew she had and as the novel progresses we realise why her father had cut all ties with his family: the Cathers are witches, descended from the ancient family of Cahors in France and the sworn enemies of the equally ancient and French Deveraux witches. And therein lies the problem, because the leading member of the 21st Century Deveraux family, Michael, is alive and well and living around the corner in Seattle.

In Witch, Holly starts to discover her heritage. She begins to settle into her new family, slowly becoming aware of her own and their abilities. At the same time she also starts to understand the powerful link that exists between herself and her 13th century French ancestor Isabeau de Cahors, an understanding which is enhanced when she meets Michael Deveraux’s son, Jer, who is himself drawn back to the 13th Century through his links with Isabeau’s lover, Jean de Deveraux.

What follows is partly the traditional battle between good (female) and evil (male) and partly a Romeo and Juliette style love story. (The reference is deliberate, by the way. Nicole is actually starring as Juliette in the school play during the ferocious final battle of the novel!) On the way there’s also a fair bit of self discovery (not just on the part of Holly and Jer) and challenge to the stereotypes, most notably the ‘male=bad’ one, you’ll be glad to hear.

Curse picks up from Witch a year later. By then Jer is a physical mess hidden away on a mythical island and kept awake by goodness knows what magic, Nicole has run away to Europe to escape her destiny (yes, you knew that would be a mistake) and Holly has become Coven Mother back in Seattle. Needless to say the battle between the Cahors and the Deveraux reaches a further stage, this time accompanied by pyrotechnics that leave the reader gasping for breath. The two harbour scenes are stunners and would look great in CGI.

I won’t say more about the plot, for to do so would take me into spoiler territory. These are both fast paced, page turners of books and I was left at the end of Curse wanting more. This is not just because so many questions are left unanswered, nor because of all the hooks into the next novels. I had also grown fond of the characters and I want to know whether they survive and in what mangled emotional and physical state.

And so, you may ask, was there anything I didn’t like? Well, yes, actually, there was. You see Holder and Viguié consistently use a particular collective noun for a group of covens. It’s Coventry! I can’t imagine that bothers the original American readers a jot, but every time I hit it, an image of a dull Midlands city would swim before my eyes. And apart from wet weather I really could not see what Coventry had to do with anything.

But that’s a pretty niggling criticism. I found both Witch and Curse hard to put down. You may have the same problem.

Wicked by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié, published by Simon and Schuster, September 2008

As the book’s blurb tells us:

Sixteen year old Nick knows that demons are real. Magicians call up demons in exchange for their power. The demons can appear in any shape, show you marvels, promise you anything – until you invite them in and receive their mark. What happens next? First you get possessed. Then you die.

Nick’s been on the run his whole life, ever since his mother stole a charm from the most feared magician of them all, and the only person he trusts is his brother Alan. Alan’s just been marked by a demon. Only Nick can save him, but to do so he must face the magicians – and kill them. The hunt is on. And Nick’s going to discover things he never dreams were out there…

Nick is the original dangerous male: he has impenetrable, dark eyes and a lithe, muscular body and he can do things with knives and swords that would strike fear into a Samurai’s heart. Worse still, he feels no fear. Or pity. So, when his soft-hearted brother agrees to help pink-haired Mae and her demon-marked brother Jamie, he is disgusted.

Mae, however, is no Bella. She is a tough, feisty number, whose ability to look after herself is only marred by her inexperience in wielding weapons. Indeed, the reader senses that she grows in stature as the novel progresses. And this may explain why the follow-up, The Devil’s Covenant, gives her the major role.

From the beginning, you know that these two are destined for each other. But as the blurb indicates, this is no love story, rather a quest to save Nick’s brother Alan (and Mae’s brother, Jamie too). And as a quest, it works well. There’s no shortage of action, a fast pace and plenty of spooky, even stomach-churning scenes. (A particular favourite is when someone’s eyes turn to black beetles and run out of his eye sockets, down his body, and across the room to take a closer look at Nick!)

Nevertheless, love, in all its forms, is a powerful theme in the story. Alan’s love for Nick governs all his actions. Mae’s love for Jamie enables her to undertake tasks that horrify her. And clearly, love is the key to rescuing Nick when he discovers the secret his mother and brother have been keeping from him.

And this was the one thing that bothered me: it seemed to me that Brennan had set up her world of magicians and demons so well that it is impossible to see a way out of Nick’s predicament at the end. She has set herself a huge task in the sequel and I will be very intrigued to see if she can pull it off.

Shadowmagic

Once upon a time John Lenahan was a magician. Then he revealed the workings of the 3-card trick, got expelled from the Magic Circle and began a successful media career, starring in his own BBC series, fronting a series for ITV and making untold other assorted TV and stage appearances.

He still follows that career but a few years ago he decided to write a novel as well. He spent several months, writing 1000 words a day, and then… Shadowmagic was finished.

Now I would not usually begin a book review with a potted bio, but this book is different.  You see, John quickly realised that the route to market is fearsomely tricky, even for someone with a substantial reputation for comedy and magic. So he decided that the best way to get his book out to the public was to record himself reading it, chapter by chapter, and then publish it on podiobooks.com.  Clearly, all his experience as a performer helped and within a short while Shadowmagic was voted number one out of the 300 books on the web-site and John had 20,000 subscribers.

And then the publishers started to call him.

Shadowmagic is still available free as a podcast. But now (for a reasonable £6.99) you can get your hands on an old-fashioned printed copy and listen to the voice in your head instead of John’s mellifluous tones.

So what’s it about? Here’s how John introduces it on his web-site:

“Hi, my name is Conor.  Other than my father being a bit of an eccentric lunatic, my life was pretty normal until I got attacked in my living room and whisked away to Tir na Nog, the mystical land of the ancient Celts, where it turns out Dad is the usurped heir to the throne and everybody wants me dead because of some prophecy.  Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

In essence Shadowmagic is a quest.  Conor is dragged off to Tir Na Nog, discovers the truth about his father, meets the rest of his family (not all of whom are friendly and none of whom are entirely reliable), makes friends with a banshee called Fergal, an Imp called Araf and an exquisite princess called Essa, and with their help, attempts to find his way back home, whilst, at the same time, being side-tracked into saving Tir Na Nog from an evil tyrant .

But what makes Shadowmagic such fun is Connor’s voice. The whole story is written in the first person and within the first few pages the reader realises that this particular first person is a cocky, somewhat glib kid with an inflated sense of his own comic genius, but also with an ability to smile in the face of adversity which can only come from a level of courage the reader would not expect. He is also deeply rooted in modern day culture and technology, which provides Lenahan with endless opportunities to play games with the both mediaeval and magical sensibilities of Tir Na Nog’s residents.

Add to this the fact that every chapter ends with a hook (That’s when the bus hit me. I had just met another member of the family. That’s why we didn’t hear him approach.) that lures you into reading the next chapter, and the next one, and so on until, breathless, you have reached the final page, and you have a very readable, very enjoyable and very magical tale indeed.

It’s out now. So why not pick up a copy? You won’t be disappointed.