dark matter is a ghost story with a reality twist from michelle paver

Subtitled “A Ghost Story”, Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter is a clever book that takes an historical story and adds a supernatural twist.

Set in 1937, Dark Matter followers a group of young Englishmen who attempt to winter in the arctic circle for purposes of scientific research.
Based on the Oxford University Arctic Expedition of 1935, the book attempts to be as authentic as possible when it comes to describing everything from the type of “chaps” who went on these types of adventures to the technical details of their equipment, and even what they did to entertain themselves.
Paver includes reference material at the end of the book, highlighting that some of the concepts which you may have thought creative licence really occurred.
What she doesn’t know is true or not is the central theme of the haunting – although she does point out in the support material that many of the men who went on the real expedition mentioned an uneasiness about the area of the base camp.
What makes Dark Matter a truly gothic horror story is the creeping sensation of depression, being watched and the possibility of going mad in the long, long night of winter in the Arctic.
Jack is not the same as his companions on the trip; he’s poor despite his education, he’s got a bit of a death wish and hates his life. When the opportunity for this expedition arrives he’s oddly reluctant to take it and escape his horribly boring life.
But agreeing to go, Jack decides he’s going to do his utmost to squeeze every ounce of experience from the trip.
Is it his obsession to survive and succeed over his richer teammates or his innate depression that leads to the terrible things that Jack actually experiences in the ice?
It’s only Paver’s skill that allows the reader to make up their own mind about what really happened up there in the dark.
Dark Matters is an interesting read; while it might not make you scared of the dark, it will certainly make you think.
And should you ever find yourself lost in the snow somewhere and remember reading this book, it will make you shiver.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver is published by Orion Books and is available from good book stores and online.

quirky new idea in classic fantasy novel

Every so often a fantasy novel comes along that offers lovers of the genre something new and exciting; an idea or series of ideas that don’t seem to have been thought of before.

Anna Kendall’s Crossing Over is one of these books. The central premise – a boy is able to crossover into the afterlife through the application of pain – is different enough to stand out.
Roger lives a truly wretched life, forced to use this “gift”, which he sees as being more of a curse, by supposed relatives who inflict pain on him nightly in order to get money from those missing their dead.
Finally after seemingly endless passages of despair and depression – almost enough to make one give up reading, but not quite – Roger finds himself first free of the horrible relatives and then “saved” by mysterious woman.
Eventually, of course, Roger gets himself into trouble by telling the wrong people about his skill and before he realises it he’s the pivotal point for politics in his land.
Kendall has a great turn of phrase, her pacing is a little slow at first but gets better as Roger makes his way through his world. And her descriptive passages are very good.
Roger is the sort of character that most people can related to, he’s not perfect – despite, or because of his terrible upbringing – he’s quite weak and easily manipulated.
But throughout the story you feel that he’s at least trying to do the right thing, even if he gets caught up in his own power at times.
Crossing Over is a tightly written piece of dark fantasy – it would make a great present for anyone interested in the genre but looking for something a little different.

Crossing Over by Anna Kendall is published by Orion Books and is available from good book stores and online.

another delicious dark dexter story from jeff lindsay

Dexter is Delicious is the fifth book in the Dexter series from Jeff Lindsay, and yes, these are the books the award-winning TV show Dexter is based on.

The serial killer as hero premise seems old hat now, but when the first book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, was released, the concept was constantly being debated by everyone from high-brow critics to bible-bashing mid-westerners. How dare Lindsay make the hero a psychopathic serial killer? Shocking!
With an award-winning TV show and a heart-throb actor in the central role, the Dexter franchise has become practically mainstream.
Luckily the books are still as well-written as they always were; the structure of the internal monologue continues to work, and the reader still wonders just how Lindsay knows so much about how a serial killer thinks.
In the TV series, Dexter is a father, and in Dexter is Delicious his daughter Lily Anne is also the one thing that’s keeping him on the straight and narrow and out of the electric chair.
At least until he realises that someone from his past, someone who knows rather too much about what really makes Dexter tick, reappears in his life.
If Dexter is threatened, then Lily Anne is threatened; and that is not something you want an accomplished murderer like Dexter thinking about.
To complicate matters, Dexter’s job as a blood spatter analyst gets him involved in the disappearance of an 18-year-old girl who may have been abducted by vampires – who could also be cannibals.
Lindsay’s books are so much more detailed than the TV show, although the voice-over used in the show mirrors somewhat the internal monologue of the character in the novels.
Still, you can read the books and watch the show without too many discrepancies cropping up, which isn’t always true.
For lovers of crime thrillers and murder mysteries or lovers of novels about psychopaths, you can’t go past the Dexter novels; they are a unique twist on a great genre.

Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay is published by Orion Books and is available at all good book stores and online.

final instalment in brandon sanderson's the mistborn trilogy; the hero of ages

Brandon Sanderson's The Mistborn trilogy comes to an end in The Hero of Ages, as the true hero is revealed and the cryptic words of the Lord Ruler are finally explained.

Sanderson's first two books in this series – The Final Empire and The Well of Ascension – built the backbone of the plot. A world overcome by volcanic ash, a serfdom of Highborn and Skaa and an immortal ruler coming together in violence, rebellion and myth.
Centred on the street girl Vin, her inborn 'mistborn' powers – an ability to use various metals to become faster, stronger and smarter than the average person – leading to her becoming first involved in rebellion and later to kill the undying Lord Ruler.
Despite killing off the supposed source of all their woes, Vin, her Skaa companions and her Highborn husband, new emperor Elend Venture, discover that by killing a god and releasing the power of the Well of Ascension, they may just have made things worse.
Finally, the story focuses on what exactly caused the Mists that have taken over the world, blocking the sun, killing the plants and causing illness to exactly 16 per cent of the population. The group realise they have to discover why the Lord Ruler hid caches of food, water and tools across the country and what they have to do to save their world.
Cleverly Sanderson has created a world that is not to dissimilar from ours so that readers can easily identify with the protagonists, but it's different enough to be interesting. The plot twists right to the end of The Hero of Ages – there's a surprising denouement right at the end that one doesn't see coming at all.
Sanderson is clearly an author on the way up. After Robert Jordan's death in 2007, Sanderson was chosen to complete the final book in Jordan's epic The Wheel of Time series based on just the first in The Mistborn trilogy, The Final Empire. He has already released The Gathering Storm – the first in the three-part culmination of Jordan's series – to thunderous applause from both fans and critics including Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal.
In The Hero of Ages, Sanderson shows exactly why he was chosen for such an important task in the world of fantasy fiction. His characters are well-developed, his plotting is fantastic and his imagination runs wild yet is still accessible. In fact, the book has been shortlisted for the David Gemmell Award.
However the pace of his books needs to pick up a little. All three of The Mistborn books suffered from slow starts, a little too much detail – The Hero of Ages alone is 748 pages – and a tendency towards too much pontificating.
But despite this drawback, Sanderson's works are classic fantasy fiction and enjoyable reading. He's an author to watch.

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson is published by Gollancz, which is owned by Orion Books and is available from good book stores and online.

the things that keep us here scares the reader out of complacency with its real life look at bird flu

This is one of the scariest books I've read recently, and there's not a single zombie, vampire, genetically modified creature or mass murderer in sight.

Like Stephen Baxter's Flood, The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley is scary because it could really happen. In Flood, global warming destroyed the world; in Buckley's book, bird flu does.
And like Flood, it's not really the flu that we have to be worried about – sure, it kills lots of people and is terribly contagious – it's the people we know that we have beware of.
The book opens reasonably enough; Ann Brooks is an ordinary mother of two middle-school aged girls, her marriage is dissolving and she has to start work again. Sure, she's a got a bit of a skeleton in the closet but it's nothing particularly terrible.
Her husband, Peter is a research veterinarian, who – surprise, surprise – works with wild bird populations. There's bird flu around, particularly in parts of Asia, but it's not yet reached America. Then, it does.
In a matter of days, hours even, the world that Ann knew comes crashing to a halt, and she has to worry about more than just getting a divorce.
What makes The Things That Keep Us Here so compelling are the small details of how one would survive if the modern world suddenly just stopped.
In Ann's town it's the weather that has the greatest impact as a massive snow storm brings down electricity and phone lines. Then the mobile service disappears and news becomes scarce.
In our world of instantaneous communication and too much information, it's scary to realise just how terrible it would be to have to live as our ancestors did – chopping wood for fires, washing irregularly, seeing and talking only to those who live in our homes.
It is also scary to realise that none of us is really prepared. Do you have canned goods, fresh water, a way to heat things, candles and endless batteries in your house? Not to mention basic medical supplies and the knowledge of how to use them.
As Ann's world becomes more and more circumscribed she has to make difficult choices about who is more important: her own children or their father, the man she never stopped loving and who is now back in her life.
Then, of course, there are the terrible things that people do when pushed to the edge. Quite early in the story Ann comes up against the worst of human nature as two people help themselves to others' shopping in the frenzy started by the closure of the schools.
Later, as life becomes more and more difficult and supplies dwindle, Ann discovers that no only is she tougher than she thought, but that she can be as hard as the worst among us.
The Things That Keep Us Here is a great book. Although a little slow-paced at the outset, it soon heats up and the everyday quandaries of people trying to survive keep you glued to the pages. You want to know who survives, and just as importantly, how they do it.
If you're even slightly paranoid, this book is going to make it hard for you to sleep at night. The recent round of H1N1 should have been warning enough, but sometimes, it's not enough just know about something. The Things That Keep Us Here shows us what could really happen – it might be fiction at the moment, but you just never know.

The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley is published by Orion and is available from good book stores and online.