This Mortal Coil, by Emily Suvada

If you can get past an early scene in which the heroine has to eat the raw flesh of a diseased victim in order to gain immunity to the same disease, then you should enjoy this book, but there are several scenes just like it which are not for the squeamish.

The story is set in a future where all the human population have a screen grown into their arms from birth, on which there are various apps which do various things such as help heal or augment sound and vision, as well as allowing you to experience VR.

Genetic research has also moved on to the extent that people can change their physical appearance, not by changing DNA itself but by expressing genes in different ways (at least that’s how I read it – when it gets to the nitty gritty in can be a bit complicated but this doesn’t detract from the story).

Our heroine is Cat Agatta (a clever use of the four nucleotide letter bases to create a character name), whose father is an amazing genetic scientist, but who has been living alone since he was abducted by Cartaxus in order to find a cure for the Hydra virus which is threatening to destroy humanity.

A soldier then appears at her house, who knows her father and breaks the news that he is dead. Between them they find out that her father found a cure, but that she must de-code it in order to release it to the world.

The story continues on at a great pace, with believable characters and believable motives, and contains more twists than a strand of DNA, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction.

The world it inhabits is probably a cross between Michael Crichton and Hunger Games/Divergent, and so if you have read and enjoyed those writers then you will enjoy this.

A great start to the trilogy, and I look forward to reading the next instalment. Click for Emily Suvada's website.

The Masacre of Mankind

A book I have been waiting for all my life, and a book written with both love and imagination.

In a lot of ways, I have lived with the Martians for more than thirty years now. I can still remember sitting on an old sofa with a bowl of shreddies in my lap, and hearing the voice of Richard Burton for the first time tell of the coming of the Martians. By the time the first cylinder had opened on Horsell Common and the pulsating wet leather of it's contents disgorged, my breakfast was sitting soggily on the floor with my appetite vanished, with the speed of a man turned to flame by a Heat Ray.

I was terrified, and I was thrilled and I was in love with War of the Worlds (at least the musical version).

That was before I read the book, which I soon also fell in love with, although perhaps not the cover depicting the brain and tentacle combination of the Martians, which always had to go face down before I fell asleep; I would always hurry back from the darkness of the bathroom in the middle of the night lest a tentacle grab me!

And every year at midnight on the 12th August my eyes would turn skyward for a flash of green, a puff of smoke, but thankfully none came and the Earth remained un-invaded (from space at least).

And so onto the sequel, published 120 years after the original, and a book I began with both excitement and trepidation. Having known of the publication in advance, I had already read some of Stephen Baxter's books, and enjoyed them. And knowing him to be a good writer, my excitement was greater than my trepidation, and I was not disappointed.

The original story has been cleverly used and enhanced, and in a style that flows neatly from one to the other. Neat references have been made to the original book, but also to 'unofficial' sequels that came out at the time, to Orson Welles radio dramatisation and to Jeff Wayne's Musical version.

And it is also noticable how Baxter has obviously taken as much pleasure in destroying various worldwide major cities, as Wells did in destroying much of Woking.

So, are the Martian's stopped for a second time? And how, for they will surely not succumb in the same way as before? You will have to read it to find out. And was the book any good? Well, I have read War of the Worlds more times than I can remember, and I think that this book will end up being read almost as many times in the future, and I can think of no better way of saying that I loved it, than that.

Beautiful

Just like the class of 2004,

They passed and played with aplomb.

Fast, complex and intricate moves,

Flowing with flair and creativity.

No hint of doubt; All confidence,

Incisive and decisive,

A directness that rents the defence apart.

Crosses met with volleys and strikes,

That snap off the crossbar and bulge the net.

A victory deserved for a manager much maligned,

Who has now taken six cup wins,

Through his refined tactics.

And though FIFA has blackened the name of football,

It’s Arsenal who have proved that the game,

Can indeed be beautiful

Due Date & Delicacy

Two films on review this time around since I only watched the first thirty minutes of one before turning it off in despair.

Due Date was that film which I had hoped would be entertaining, especially since the baby has its own due date before too long, however it started badly and began to get worse before it was untimely ripped from my computer screen.

Two single dimensional characters, both different in their own ways I guess, and yet also both so self absorbed that you really couldn’t care less what happens to them, with idiot prowess conspire to get themselves thrown off a flight and then have to share a road trip to get where they want to be...and that’s pretty much all I’m prepared to say...

So onto Delicacy with the gorgeous Audrey Tautou (my wife won’t mind me saying that I’m sure!) She plays a woman who falls in love but then loses her husband in a freak accident a couple of years into their marriage. In shock she shuts down and pours herself into work.

But after a couple more years without explanation she suddenly kisses one of her new co-workers, and as they begin to spend time together, an odd sort of romance ensues.

This is a very enjoyable and very cute film that leaves you with happy feelings, and yet there is a slight lack of substance too. The male lead is funny and a little gawky which makes the romance all the nicer (probably giving hope to some of us males out there), but for me at least the funniest thing about him was that he was meant to be Swedish.

There is a great line when he is asked why he left Sweden to which he replies “the question is why more Swedes don’t leave Sweden”. There is also a bizarre scene right in the middle conducted entirely in Swedish where his mother complains about him not eating enough Sill. This was not subtitled and so I wonder if many viewers got it.

I guess the story is about getting over loss and how it is still possible to find some sort of happiness even if the love of your life has gone forever, but the unexplained kiss which kick-starts it all has an air of unreality to it, an event unlikely to happen to most people.

As a feel good film however it should not be dismissed on that basis and in this world of austerity and continued bad news it might be enough to give us all the little glint of hope that we need.

Africa

The most recent wildlife series on the BBC to be presented by David Attenborough whose enthusiasm seems to increase, if that’s possible, for the natural world around us. The series travelled to different areas of Africa for each episode and has been fascinating to watch, and at times incredibly moving. It’s hard not to be amazed by the natural beauty within our world, and Africa’s diverse ecology seems to encapsulate it all. As such this has been one of the best nature series for a while.

Episode one in the Kalahari featured the ever popular meerkats, but also a fascinating battle between two giraffes who swung their long necks at each other like giants battling with tree trunks. Episode two hit the Savannah with bizarre looking birds, lizards stealing flies from the faces of lions, but also the most harrowing moment of the whole series with the death of a baby elephant.

This was an incredibly sad scene, but it made no sense that people complained about the BBC doing nothing to help. They are there to film nature as it is, not to intervene. Perhaps those people who complained should reconsider their consumerist lifestyle that has led to climate change and their own role in the changing weather patterns of Africa.

Episode three in the Congo was an eye opener as personally I never realised that Africa had tropical rainforest, although logically it makes complete sense. Here we saw honey eating chimps and a wonderful night time rhinoceros meet, which showed one of the most hilarious scenes; a male trying to woo a female with some extra antlers attached to his horns!

The fourth episode at the Cape showed scenes reminiscent of Blue Planet, with a feeding frenzy for birds and dolphins, but also a curious migration from some huge fish. And then there was episode five in the Sahara with some incredible ants who can survive the midday temperatures and also the footage of moving sand dunes which took about two years to create.

Before I move to the final episode I’d like to mention the music, which as usual for the BBC was excellent, but I wonder if there was a little too much of it. I’m not sure that something akin to Ennio Morricone was needed for the giraffe fight or any of the other music which told us how to feel. Somehow it felt like it was trivialising the scenes which stand out for themselves I think. Either that or it was like A-Level media students trying to look clever by editing wildlife scenes to match some music.

Now to the final episode which I thought was easily the best, probably because it featured more of David himself interacting with the animals and dealt with the future and the need for conservation. It’s fantastic that there is so much work going on in Africa to try to protect the most vulnerable animals, such as the elephants, lions, rhinoceros and sea turtles. And it proves that whatever we want to do from here in the west, it is impossible without the complete assistance of the locals as they know their animals and environment best.

Overall this was an amazing series and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has not yet seen it, especially if you like animal series. And I challenge anyone not to be moved by the sight of a blind baby rhino squeaking!

Pantheon, by Sam Bourne

Having read previous Sam Bourne novels, and as someone who enjoys historical thrillers, this book came as a big disappointment. Not only was the plot very shallow, but also the protagonist was a man for whom you found it very difficult to have sympathy.

In fact, it seems a common theme for Sam Bourne books to have very strong, very modern female characters, and yet the men are often self-obsessed, self-loathing and sadly for all their supposed academic prowess, are not too intelligent either.

The plot, for all that there is, runs as follows.  It is 1940 and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, James Zennor, who has been rejected for military service, returns home to find that his wife Florence and two year old child Harry are missing.  The rest of the novel concerns his attempts at trying to find them.

It turns out that they have been evacuated to Yale University in the United States along with other mothers and children, but because of his recent violent temper (it is intimated that Zennor is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress), he is the only husband not to have been told about it.

When he finally finds out, Zennor travels to Yale to get his family back and discovers a more sinister plot afoot concerning eugenics.  He then becomes determined, as a British patriot, to ensure that he puts a stop to it.

As I said before, the character of James Zennor is very difficult to have sympathy for.  He seems to be full of bitterness and self-loathing, and all his anger is directed at his wife and young son.  Compounding this is a self-obsession that stops him even seeing it until after his wife has left him.  You can begin to see why his wife left and even seventy pages in you want to say good luck to her.

There is no direct reason given for this man’s actions however.  Even the few chapters that deal with his experiences in the Civil War show that he was quick to anger, jumping to conclusions and not listening to others before his so called traumatic incident.  So this is clearly not an excuse.

The villains are sadly just as one-dimensional as the protagonist, seemingly giving themselves away with ease, and  a novel such as this does stand and fall on its major characters.  If you don’t want them to succeed, or at least don’t care, it becomes a bore to read and only a vague curiosity in the ending keeps you going.

But if the characterisation is poor, so is the writing itself.  Setting a novel in a historical period cannot be easy; however the section describing how the character learns to eat pizza, a food not common in 1940’s England, is clunky and over-elaborated.  Maybe it was designed to be funny, a joke on how our culture has become more americanised perhaps?  Either way it came across as confused and took attention away from the story at hand.

My only hope is that the writer goes back to the political fiction in which he has had success and leaves the historical thrillers to the likes of Robert Harris who do them best.