The Blackbirder by Dorothy B Hughes
Good
We start the book in New York, in the company of Julie
Guille, an escapee from Nazi occupied Paris. She bumps into an old acquaintance
from her Paris days and when he is murdered outside her apartment she goes on
the run rather than get mixed up in any investigation. Julie entered the USA
illegally, via Cuba, and is a habituated fugitive. What follows is her trying
to cross the country to meet with the one man she feels can help her whilst
pursuit is always a possibility, from the law and from the Gestapo. This is a
book that from page one is tense with a goodly dollop of suspense and paranoia
& it has an utterly believable and sympathetic female protagonist.
Recommended for pulp & noir fans.
Overall – Good WW2 drama from the Femmes Fatales: Women
write pulp series
Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
Good
Miriam Black can see how someone dies just by touching flesh
to flesh. Obviously this has turned her into a pretty damaged character. From
trying to stop the deaths she soon becomes fatalistic and takes what she needs
from those destined to die soon in a peripatetic existence rattling round the
USA. When she is targeted by a con man and gets involved with an organised
criminal gang things start to go awry. This is a dark and bleak story but is
blackly amusing with some great turns of phrase, it’s what you’d expect from
Wendig really if you follow his blog or twitter. I enjoyed it but think it may
not be for everyone, there is also a strange lack of women populating the world
of Blackbirds, 90% of the people Miriam meets are men and Miriam and the other
main woman character are basically men with breasts which could piss you off.
I’m willing, based on the writing to forgive it some but this drop its rating.
She
puts her hands on her hips and cocks them this way, then that. With the back of
her hand, she wipes away a smear of lipstick from where Del kissed her.
“The lights need to be
on,” she says to nobody, foretelling the future.
She clicks the lamp by
the bed. Piss-yellow light illumines the ratty room.
A roach sits paralyzed
in the middle of the floor.
“Shoo,” she says. “Fuck
off. You’re free to go.”
The roach does as it’s
told. It boogies under the pull-down bed, relieved.
Back to the mirror,
then.
“They always said you
were an old soul,” she mutters. Tonight she’s really feeling it.
Overall – Smart, sassy first book in an interesting series,
I will read the sequels despite problems with the first
And God created zombies by Andrew Hook
Good
John has just been dumped by his girlfriend because he’s too
self-obsessed. He has few friends. Worked in finance, until the meltdown and is
now basically sat on his bum with nothing to do. When he does a favour for a
someone and they drive to his house they accidently run over a man in an
alleyway. When they discover that he is both already dead and also still moving
John is drawn into the usual zombie apocalypse story development. However that
is all well-trodden so Hook decides to go off-piste and treats us to something
a little different, something a bit more intelligent and interesting. This is a
very brief book, novella length really, and effective because it doesn’t feel
the need to belabour the point.
Overall – Interestingly philosophical take on the zombie
genre, something a little different
Soul Screams by Sara Jayne Townsend
Thirteen stories from crime and horror writer Townsend
covering 20+ years of published and unpublished stories. As with all short
collections there are stories that work for you, and ones that don’t. The first
story, the 13th floor is one of the better stories, although does
have a couple of flaws. I also really liked
Blue eyes, a story about passion and obsession as well as
Jimi Hendrix eyes, about betrayal and cigarette burns about abuse. Mainly because I prefer psychological to overt
supernatural there were a couple of stories that didn’t gel with me, especially
the guitar (about a haunted guitar, I just found that concept a bit silly
really), but thankfully the stories that were good far outweigh those I didn’t
get on with.
Overall – Mixed collection of shorts from 20+ years’ worth
of writing
Lost Cat by Jason
A private eye finds a lost cat and returns it to its owner
only to be drawn into a deeper mystery. Typical Jason art & odd story. Very
odd.
Overall – another wtf from Jason, this is one of his more
weird pieces, which is saying something
Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold
Good
Eveline Duchen - Evvie Duchen, sharp Evvie, Evvie
the sparrow, a spry little fringe-dweller alone in the crowd of them, always
scraping for a crumb, always with one eye open for a bigger bird, or a cat, or
a cruel boy with a stone is introduced to us whilst she is casing a
posh house for a possible burglary. She is working for a female Fagin figure
and feels it is much better to con and steal than it would be to sell her body.
How she ended up being an orphan and street urchin means that certain
gentlemen in the British government have taken an interest in her, and her
education, and how she can affect the fate of the British empire, and the
world.
A good blend of Dickens (you can’t help but compare to
Oliver Twist), Folk tales (always nice to see Chinese trickster foxes), spy
schools and a light steampunkness - there are steam hansoms, airships (of
course) and the plot revolves around “Etheric science”. However the steampunk
is very much a background, a plot device for sure, but this story is much more
a character journey and the character is really engaging. What was really
refreshing for me was that there were poor people in this & Sebold manages
to turn a story that is basically about a 15 year old girl going to boarding
school into an enthralling read. There are few off notes (although I think the
ending felt a little too neat) and I’d really recommend this to anyone, whether
you’re a fan of steampunk or not. There are hints that this is a world that the
author may visit again in the future and if she does I’d be willing to revisit
too even though I’m still hoping for another Babylon Steel book….
Overall – Intelligent & fun steampunk. Worth a visit.
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