The collapse of the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath the city. Langdon St. Ives sets out to explore it, not knowing that a brilliant and wealthy psychopathic murderer is working to keep the underworlds secrets hidden for reasons of his own. St. Ives and his stalwart friends investigate a string of ghastly crimes: the gruesome death of a witch, the kidnapping of a blind, psychic girl, and the grim horrors of a secret hospital where experiments in medical electricity and the development of human, vampiric fungi, serve the strange, murderous ends of perhaps St. Ives s most dangerous nemesis yet. Last week I found myself stuck betwixt the horns of the trickiest dilemma. I really, REALLY, don’t like jumping into a series on the third or fourth book. I’m always worried that I will miss out on the subtle nuances of the characters, and in doing so, I will fail the author. I’m constantly concerned that any review I write will ultimately be a dis-service to the contents of said novel. I have politely declined requests whenever I spotted that the book in question was part of an on-going series if I hadn’t read the…

In the darkness of a underground cave, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, voices, and they feed… Swarming from their prison, the creatures thrive; to whisper is to summon death. As the hordes lay waste to Europe, a girl watches to see if they will cross the sea. Deaf for years, she knows how to live in silence; now, it is her family’s only chance of survival. To leave their home, to shun others. But what kind of world will be left? For me the best, most effective horror comes when ordinary people are forced into extraordinary inexplicable circumstances. How they react, and the choices that they make are endlessly fascinating. Ally is an average girl. She has many of the same problems, hopes and dreams as any other teen you’re likely to meet. Her parents, her grandmother and her brother are much the same. They are normal people who you would more than likely walk by on the street. When a plague of vicious creatures, quickly nicknamed vesps, are unleashed on an unsuspecting world the family are forced to confront a horror that is so entirely alien it threatens to destroy them all. The descriptions of…

Kell is one of the last Travelers—rare magicians who choose a parallel universe to visit. Grey London is dirty, boring, lacks magic, ruled by mad King George. Red London is where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire. White London is ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne. People fight to control magic, and the magic fights back, draining the city to its very bones. Once there was Black London – but no one speaks of that now. Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, personal ambassador and adopted Prince of Red London, carrying the monthly correspondences between royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell smuggles for those willing to pay for even a glimpse of a world they’ll never see. This dangerous hobby sets him up for accidental treason. Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs afoul of Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She robs him, saves him from a dangerous enemy, then forces him to another world for her ‘proper adventure’. But perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, Kell and Lila will first need to stay alive — trickier…

Alex Locke is a reformed ex-con forced into London’s criminal underworld for one more job. He agrees to steal a priceless artefact – a human heart carved from the blackest obsidian – but when the burglary goes horribly wrong, Alex is plunged into the nightmarish world of the Wolves of London, unearthly assassins who will stop at nothing to reclaim the heart. As he races to unlock the secrets of the mysterious object, Alex must learn to wield its dark power – or be destroyed by it. I’m incredibly lucky that from time to time, publisher see fit to send me books and I get to read them and waffle a bit about my opinions of their contents. That said, there is little I love more than a good rummage around in a book shop. Last week I was doing that very thing and I suddenly found The Wolves of London by Mark Morris in my hands. I can’t really tell you how it got there, all I can confirm is that as soon as it was in my hands I knew I was going to read it. My cleverly monitored review spreadsheet was immediately ignored and my previous commitments…

Legend holds that when Britain is in its darkest hour, King Arthur will return to save the country, if not the world. That legend is dead wrong. When a Grove of Druids sacrifices the lives of a group of innocents, including the fiancée of a member of SEAL Team 666, the ancient king is brought back from the dead and sets his sights on subjugating humanity and cleansing his land of all who are not true Britons. Because of political sensitivities, Triple 6 is ordered to stand down, but that order is ignored when one of the team seeks his own vengeance. Now, the members of America’s elite supernatural-hunting force must decide what is more important: their orders or their loyalty. With its plethora of supernatural and otherworldly myths and legends, I suppose it was only a matter of time before SEAL Team 666 set foot on good old Blighty’s shores. Britain has such a rich mythological heritage to pick from, I’m sure Weston Ochse was spoiled for choice. Like the other books in this series, Reign of Evil is all about the ride. Don’t over think what’s going on. Just sit back, relax and prepare for the mayhem. As…

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date. But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard. Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension? After an explosively rip-snorting prologue, to confirm our protagonist’s suitably heroic credentials, there…

Quarry doesn’t kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them…and then removing that problem as well. So far he’s rid of the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman’s hitman have the wrong quarry in his sights? Quarry, that’s as close as you’ll get to a name for our enigmatic protagonist, is something of an anti-hero. He’s a hitman who has developed a bit of a conscience, and has taken it upon himself to deal with those that used to be his competition. Don’t get all slushy and sentimental though, he still expects remuneration for his work. He has a hard-bitten, gritty approach to life, hardly a surprise really based on his chosen line of business, and his voice acts as our guide through his latest adventure. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call him a likable character, if you met him then something has probably gone badly wrong in your life, but he’s undoubtedly interesting. He lives by his own…

When a Senator’s daughter is kidnapped by a mysterious with ties to the supernatural, it’s clearly a job for SEAL Team 666. As Triple Six investigate, they discover links to the Zeta Cartel, a newly discovered temple beneath Mexico City, and a group known as followers of the Flayed One. But international politics. cross-border narco-terrorism, and an insidious force operating inside the team soon threaten to derail the mission. Forced to partner with several militant ex-patriots and a former Zeta hitman-turned-skinwalker, SEAL Team 666 is the world’s only hope to stop the return of the Age of Blood. Normally I tend to actively avoid starting a book when I know that it has predecessors that I’ve not yet read. I don’t like the idea that I’ve missed out on important character developments or plot points that may have an impact on what I’m reading. That said, there are always exceptions to every rule and in this particular instance I found myself powerless to resist the draw of this book. What a stonking premise, bonkers in the extreme – a group of hard-as-nails Navy SEALs tasked with taking on supernatural threats. The characters are all larger than life. Each of the…

Ecko Burning is a direct sequel to Ecko Rising. Beware! If you haven’t read the first book this review may contain potential spoilers. Just sayin. The Bard is gone, and with him Ecko’s only possible way home. Told the grasslands are diseased and the blight is spreading, his companions demand his help. Together they seek weapons in a ruined city where both nightmare and hideous truth await them.  Ruthless and ambitious, Lord Phylos has control over Fhaveon city, and is using its forces to bring the plains under his command. Back in London, the Bard is offered the opportunity to realise everything he has ever wanted – if he will give up his soul. As the blight spreads, Phylos’s brutality escalates. When the people’s anger finally erupts, the force of the violence threatens to destroy everything.  At the tail end of 2012 I read Danie Ware’s debut, Ecko Rising. I’d heard lots of good buzz surrounding the novel but nothing could have adequately prepared me for the marvellous mash up of science fiction and high fantasy that it turned out to be. The sequel is now upon us and the good news is that it’s just as good, if not better,…

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura. Skyler Luiken has a rare immunity to the plague. Backed by an international crew of fellow “immunes,” he leads missions into the dangerous wasteland beyond the aura’s edge to find the resources Darwin needs to stave off collapse. But when the Elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler is tapped—along with the brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma—to solve the mystery of the failing alien technology and save the ragged remnants of humanity The arrival of mysterious technology has managed, in a short period of time, to move humanity forward and then stop it almost dead in its tracks. Briefly, the Earth experienced a golden age and then suddenly a disease has put pay to all that. Society has effectively split, becoming two distinct groups – the haves and the have-nots. Those that live off planet in a series of space stations that connect via the elevator to Earth. Meanwhile, those…

In the tiny English village of Alder, dreams and nightmares are beginning to come true. Creatures from local legend, science fiction and the dark side of the human mind prowl the town. Paul, a young academic composing a thesis about the end of the world, and his girlfriend Hazel, a potter, have come to stay in Alder for the summer. Their idea of a rural retreat gradually sours as the laws of nature begin to breakdown around them. Paul and Hazel are drawn into a vortex of fear as violent chaos engulfs the community and the village prepares to reap a harvest of horror. Alder is just like any other village, everyone knows everyone else’s business and some of the families have lived there for countless generations. To an outsider, life would appear wonderful in this rural idyll, but bubbling just beneath the surface lies a whole host of repressed emotions, violent tendencies and age-old lusts. Right at the centre of all this pent up frustration and angst is the local manor house, Agapemone, home to Anthony William Jago and his followers. Jago is, as you might expect from the leader of a religious cult, suitably enigmatic. His presence is…

In Kuwait, American forces are locked and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a covert agent is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a sailboat manned by a drug runner and a pirate is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the world, everything will change. A wave of inexplicable energy slams into the continental United States. America as we know it vanishes. From a Texas lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time to an engineer in Seattle who becomes his city’s only hope, from a combat journalist trapped in the Middle East to a drug runner off the Mexican coast, Without Warning tells a fast, furious story of survival, violence, and a new, soul-shattering reality.  Genre wise, Without Warning could probably best be described as a bit of a hybrid. It takes the best elements from a standard Clancy-esque thriller as well as a nice, inexplicable science-fiction macguffin and throws them together to create a page turning mash-up of the two. Events begin to unfold in an alternate 2003. Large portions of the US Military are poised to invade Iraq when in a…

Ecko is an unlikely saviour: a savage, gleefully cynical rebel/assassin, he operates out of hi-tech London, making his own rules in a repressed and subdued society. When the biggest job of his life goes horribly wrong, Ecko awakes in a world he doesn’t recognise: a world without tech, weapons, cams, cables – anything that makes sense to him. Can this be his own creation, a virtual Rorschach designed just for him, or is it something much more? Ecko finds himself immersed in a world just as troubled as his own, striving to conquer his deepest fears and save it from extinction. If Ecko can win through, he might just learn to care – or break the program and get home. Imagine taking a character from a cyber-punk thriller and transplanting them wholesale into a fully fleshed out fantasy novel. Danie Ware’s debut novel, Ecko Rising, does just that. Ecko is terrifically smart, more than a little inquisitive and great at what he does. So good in fact, that he is a trifle cocky about it. Does this make him a bit irritating/smug at times? Perhaps, but that’s all part of his quirky charm. Ecko’s journey is the core of this novel and it’s a…