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WORK TITLE: Return of Souls
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.andyremic.com/
CITY: Lincoln, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/326992.Andy_Remic
RESEARCHER NOTES:
NOVELS by ANDY REMIC
(series overview)
THE SPIRAL NOVELS – SPIRAL (2003) | QUAKE (2004) | WARHEAD (2005)
COMBAT K NOVELS – WAR MACHINE (2007) | BIOHELL (2008) | HARDCORE (2010) | CLONEWORLD (2011)
NOVELS OF THE ANARCHY – THEME PLANET (2011) | TOXICITY (2012)
STANDALONE – SERIAL KILLERS INC (2011) | SIM (2012) | ROCKET CAT (2012/ for children)
THE CLOCKWORK VAMPIRE CHRONICLES – KELL’S LEGEND (2009) | SOUL STEALERS (2010) | VAMPIRE WARLORDS (2011) | THE CLOCKWORK VAMPIRE CHRONICLES (2012/ anthology)
THE RAGE OF KINGS – THE IRON WOLVES (2014) | THE WHITE TOWERS (2014)
NOVELLAS
A Song for No Man’s Land
Return of Souls
The Iron Beast
PERSONAL
Born in Manchester, England; married; children: two.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Anarchy Books, ebook publishing company, founder, 2011.
AVOCATIONS:Sword fighting, climbing, mountain biking, kick-boxing, Ducati motorcycles, and retro-gaming.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Andy Remic is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. A Civilian Reader Web site contributor offered a partially tongue-in-cheek description of the author: “Remic is an alien blob entity who’s been trapped in a bubble of gelatinous goo and forced to write hardcore fast-paced thrillers, SF and fantasy, sometimes mixing up all the genres in one big whisky barrel, whilst being prodded by an electrified titanium rod. Sometimes he shape-shifts into different types of aliens and appears in movies, and occasionally he is allowed to take human form for photo opportunities and signings. Mainly though, he likes being a blob.” In the same interview, Remic confided that he knew he wanted to be an author as early as primary school, when he penned a story about a four-headed man the size of King Kong. Remic credited a primary school teacher with getting him interested in reading all sorts of adventure and fantasy novels. By age seventeen, he had written what he called his first “proper” novel.
Spiral Series
Remic’s first book, Spiral, was also the first book of his “Spiral” series, about a secret group in the near future dedicated to battling criminals and terrorists who aim to destabilize the world. In the opening title, retired Spiral agent Carter is called back from retirement for one final job. Meanwhile, members of a conspiracy against Spiral plot to kill him. In a critical review at the Zone Web site, Patrick Hudson complained about the book’s many shortcomings, including “relentless obscenities, the stilted dialogue, the unpleasant sex, the witless humour, [and] the creepy sexism.”
In the second series installment, Quake, Carter is again on the job battling evildoers. Writing at the Reviews Page, Denis Bernicky found that the story, “like its predecessor,” heavily relies on readers being “willing to suspend disbelief to a shocking level.” Bernicky appreciated the plot’s pacing, though, and observed that “the strength of Remic’s stories [is that] they move with speed and they are very cinematic in the way the story progresses.” The series concludes with the 2005 novel, Warhead, in which Carter is tasked with finding a traitor within Spiral itself.
Combat-K Series
War Machine is the first novel in the Combat-K military science fiction series. The book, set far in the future, features Keenan, a former Combat-K soldier who makes a living as a private investigator. Then he gets a job offer he cannot refuse, one that may also enable him to discover who killed his wife and children. Keenan gathers his former military team in a what a writer for the Fantasy Book Critic Web site called a “testosterone-fueled” fantasy adventure. A reviewer for SFF World thought that “Remic does a very good job keeping the sense of urgency; throughout most of the novel, Keenan is desperately obsessed to find the identity of his family’s murderers.”
The series continues with Biohell and Hardcore. In the former, Keenan and his team are sent in to investigate a planet teeming with crime and corruption, where the denizens have been bio-engineered with nanotechnology. SF Site contributor Martin Lewis found little to like in this “witless” book, which he characterized as intended “for blokes who like to go down the pub on Friday night and have ten pints and a curry and then do the same again on Saturday.” Keenan and his team face their toughest fight yet on Hardcore, when they arrive at an abandoned hospital planet, Sick World, where medical mutation has led to a terrible threat. In a review at the SF Crowsnest Web site, Andy Whitaker found the novel this a “very enjoyable read with the usual amount of gratuitous violence and comedy moments.” The series concludes with Cloneworld, in which Keenan and his team must battle their own clones.
Clockwork Vampire Chronicles
Remic turns to fantasy in his Clockwork Vampire Chronicles, which opens with Kell’s Legend. Kell is a legendary warrior in the land of Falanor beset by the usual difficulties of age. However, he must once again take up his warrior’s axe when the albino Army of Iron invades the land. “If you like war, monsters and conflict and can handle a healthy dose of blood, guts and sex–covering the whole thing in a viscous mess–then this book is for you,” stated SF Signal Web site contributor Clifton Hill.
Falanor has fallen in Soul Stealers, and Kell is battling against machine vampires. Fantasy Book Critic contributor Mihir Wanchoo said that “this book delivers exactly what its predecessor promised: the ability to bewitch the reader and to turn your expectations upside down.” The series concludes with Vampire Warlords, in which Kell must decide whether to flee or to stay and fight the enemy in his beloved land, Falanor. “Remic lays it all on the line and the end result is a surprisingly touching novel lurking under all that cartoonish violence,” remarked Graeme Flory in a review at his blog, Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review.
Rage of Kings Series and Dragon Engine Series
Remic delivers an epic fantasy with numerous battle in his Rage of Kings series. The Iron Wolves focuses on those legendary warriors who three decades earlier defeated the mud-orcs, and are now called to do the same again, in a novel that “delivers the goods for fans of stark brutality and violence in a fantasy setting,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The series continues with The White Towers, in which the Iron Wolves must once again save the day.
Set in the same world as Rage of Kings, the Dragon Engine series, launched with The Dragon Engine, deals with the final quest of former war heroes of the mud-orc wars who want to save one of their friends. A contributor toi the Talk Wargaming Web site advised: “Remic once again proves that he is the Quentin Tarantino of Fantasy with The Dragon Engine, featuring infamous yet likeable heroes, plenty of visceral and uncompromisingly bloody violence, and Dwarfs and Dragons like you have never seen them before.” In Twilight of the Dragons, the war heroes must join forces with their enemies in order to end the power of the dragon lords and save the world of elves and men. Regarding this second series installment, a contributor to the Eloquent Page Web site observed: “Twilight of the Dragons is undeniably brutal and uncompromising, but it is also completely engrossing. I didn’t think it possible but I appear to have been proven wrong. Andy Remic has successfully out Remic’ed himself. Most impressive.”
Song for No Man’s Land Series
Remic blends historical fiction with horror and fantasy in A Song for No Man’s Land, which is set during World War I and features volunteer Robert Jones, who finds himself fighting an army of shapeshifting demons. A Reading Lamp Web site contributor offered a mixed assessment: “The anti-war message remains strong and the shrapnel cuts deep, but in the end the effects felt blunted.”
In Return of the Souls, Jones finds himself in a strange land and aided by a woman who tells him of an Iron Beast which might help stop the slaughter. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted of this installment: “Intricate battle sequences are interspersed with Robert’s diary entries, offering insight into his past and the utter brutality of trench warfare.” The Iron Beast is the concluding installment of the series, and here Private Jones struggles on to release the Iron Beast and end the carnage of war. A Rocket Stack Rank Web site contributor observed: “The meaning of the title is very inspirational: The Iron Beast is the iron reserve of all good men.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 18, 2013, review of The Iron Wolves, p. 36; April 25, 2016, review of The Lie, p. 71; April 25, 2016, review of Return of Souls. p. 74.
ONLINE
Andy Remic Home Page, http://www.andyremic.com (January 17, 2017).
BiblioSanctum, https://bibliosanctum.com/ (December 31, 2013), review of The Iron Wolves.
Bookwraiths, https://bookwraiths.com/(September 4, 2015), review of The Dragon Engine.
Civilian Reader, https://civilianreader.com/ (August 28, 2015), author interview; (January 14, 2016), review of A Song For No Man’s Land.
Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews, http://darkwolfsfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/ (January 20, 2010), Mihai A., review of Kell’s Legend.
Deviant Worlds, http://deviantworlds.blogspot.com/ (April 10, 2016), review of A Song for No Man’s Land.
Eloquent Page, http://www.theeloquentpage.co.uk/ (April 22, 2011), review of Vampire Warlords; (September 7, 2016), review of Twilight of the Dragons.
Fantasy Book Critic, http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/ (November 12, 2007), review of War Machine; (September 23, 2009), Mihir Wanchoo, review of Kell’s Legend; (September 21, 2010), Mihir Wanchoo, review of Soul Stealers.
Founding Fields, http://thefoundingfields.com/ (January 30, 2012), Larry Killian, review of SIM; (April 1, 2014), review of The Iron Wolves.
Geek Ireland, http://geekireland.com/ (August 22, 2016), review of The Iron Beast.
Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/ (January 17, 2017), author profile.
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review, http://graemesfantasybookreview.blogspot.com/ (August 25, 2011), Graeme Flory, review of Vampire Warlords; December 21, 2010, Graeme Flory, review of Soul Stealers.
King of the Nerds!!!, https://kingofthenerds.wordpress.com/ (February 10, 2014), review of The Iron Wolves.
Lynn’s Book Blog, https://lynns-books.com/ (September 5, 2016), review of Twilight of the Dragons.
Michael Patrick Hicks, https://www.michaelpatrickhicks.com/ (June 9, 2016), review of Return of Souls.
Mystery Sequels, https://mysterysequels.com/ (June 4, 2014), review of Serial Killers Incorporated.
Reading Lamp, https://reading-lamp.blogspot.com/ (May 8, 2016), Dark Chaplain, review of A Song for No Man’s Land; (May 22, 2016), Dark Chaplain, review of Return of Souls; (October 5, 2016), review of Twilight of the Dragons.
Reviews Page, http://www.thereviewspage.com/ (August 1, 2005), Denis Bernicky, review of Quake.
Rocket Stack Rank, http://www.rocketstackrank.com/ (July 11, 2016), review of Return of Souls; (November 21, 2016), review of The Iron Beast.
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews, http://sfandfreviews.blogspot.com/ (August 3, 2015), Chris Meadows, review of The Dragon Engine.
SF Bluestocking, https://sfbluestocking.com/ (August 16, 2016), review of Return of Souls.
SF Book Reviews, https://sfbook.com/ (October 10, 2010), review of Soul Stealers.
SF Crowsnest, http://sfcrowsnest.org.uk/ (May 2, 2014), Andy Whitaker, review of Hardcore.
SFF World, http://www.sffworld.com/ (January 24, 2008), Rob H. Bedford, review of War Machine.
SF Signal, http://www.sfsignal.com/ (January 10, 2011), Clifton Hill, review of Kell’s Legend.
SF Site, https://www.sfsite.com/ (2009), Martin Lewis, review of Biohell; (2012), Sandra Scholes, review of Theme Planet.
Speculative Book Review, http://speculativebookreview.blogspot.com/ (December 19, 2011), Tyson Mauermann, review of Serial Killers Incorporated.
Speculative Herald, http://www.speculativeherald.com/ (November 25, 2015), review of The Dragon Engine; (September 21, 2016), review of Twilight of the Dragons.
Talk Wargaming, http://www.talkwargaming.com/ (September 25, 2015), review of The Dragon Engine.
Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, https://theakersquarterly.blogspot.com/ (May 23, 2011), Stephen Theaker, review of Vampire Warlords.
Tor.com, http://www.tor.com/ (January 16, 2014), David Moran, review of The Iron Wolves.
Zone, http://www.zone-sf.com/ (January 17, 2017), Patrick Hudson, review of Spiral.
Andy Remic Goodreads Author
Born in North Manchester, The United Kingdom
Websitehttp://www.andyremic.com/
Twitterandyremic
GenreScience Fiction & Fantasy
InfluencesDavid Gemmell
Member SinceJanuary 2009
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Andy Remic lives in Lincoln, UK, although his heart and viking soul belong to the Scottish mountains. Married with two children, Andy has a variety of esoteric and sometimes contrasting loves, including sword fighting, climbing, mountain biking, kick-boxing, Ducati motorcycles and retro-gaming. He recently wrote the computer version of his novel Biohell for the 48K Spectrum, in which many people are still stuck. He writes in both SF and fantasy fields, and is sometimes accused of literature. Current novels include: Spiral, Quake, Warhead, War Machine, Biohell, Hardcore and the upcoming Cloneworld, Theme Planet and TOX for Solaris Books, and the Kell’s Legend trilogy, Kell’s Legend, Soul Stealers and Vampire Warlords for Angry Robot Books.
Andy Remic is the author of quite a few fantasy and SF novels, currently: Spiral, Quake, Warhead, War Machine, Biohell, Hardcore, SIM, Serial Killers Incorporated, Kell’s Legend, Soul Stealers, Vampire Warlords, Cloneworld, Theme Planet, Toxicity and the anthology, The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. His latest works are The Iron Wolves and The White Towers, along with The Dragon Engine and Twilight of the Dragons, all published by Angry Robot Books. He’s also got three novellas out, published by TOR US: A Song for No Man’s Land, Return of Souls and The Iron Beast.
Remic is a hard-talking, hard-fighting fluffy bunny rabbit of a man, who enjoys mountain biking, film making, mountain climbing, kick boxing and red hot chilli peppers! He has an unhealthy love of chainsaws, and some people like his books.
Andy can be contacted by emailing — andyremic [at] outlook.com.
QUOTE:
Andy Remic is an alien blob entity who’s been trapped in a bubble of gelatinous goo and forced to write hardcore fast-paced thrillers, SF and fantasy, sometimes mixing up all the genres in one big whisky barrel, whilst being prodded by an electrified titanium rod. Sometimes he shape-shifts into different types of aliens and appears in movies, and occasionally he is allowed to take human form for photo opportunities and signings. Mainly though, he likes being a blob.
An Interview with ANDY REMIC
August 28, 2015 Civilian Reader InterviewAndy Remic, Angry Robot Books, Blood Dragon Empire, Dragon Engine, Fantasy, Twilight of the Dragons
RemicA-AuthorPic2Let’s start with an introduction, for those who may not be familiar with your work: Who is Andy Remic?
Andy Remic is an alien blob entity who’s been trapped in a bubble of gelatinous goo and forced to write hardcore fast-paced thrillers, SF and fantasy, sometimes mixing up all the genres in one big whisky barrel, whilst being prodded by an electrified titanium rod. Sometimes he shape-shifts into different types of aliens and appears in movies, and occasionally he is allowed to take human form for photo opportunities and signings. Mainly though, he likes being a blob.
Your new novel, The Dragon Engine, will be published by Angry Robot in September. How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?
The Dragon Engine is a fast-paced dark fantasy novel. It’s about a group of Vagandrak heroes who get drunk and sign a contract to go on a treasure hunt in some ancient, abandoned dwarf mines. The adventurers believe there are jewels hidden there which give everlasting life. Only when they arrive, the mines are far from abandoned, and our heroes learn of three huge dragons held in captivity, enslaved by the dwarves, particularly Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate… things go downhill fast for everybody. This is the first of a two-part series – at the moment!
What inspired you to write the novel and series? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?
I’d wanted to write a novel about evil dwarves for a long time. After watching Jackson’s Hobbit films, with comedy beards and banter, I thought, Right, now it’s time to have some really evil dwarves! I’d also wanted to explore really nasty dragons, and so the two ideas came together in a pit of nastiness.
Inspiration in general? Wow. Dreams, people, whiskey, travel, conversation… so, LIFE. Nothing is as mad as the real world!
RemicA-TheDragonEngine
How were you introduced to genre fiction?
My primary school teacher, Mrs. Buono, used to read Roald Dahl books to our class. That got me interested in reading. I then devoured all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books – which got me into adventures! I love adventure stories. Then I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which got me into fantasy, and Phil Dick got me seriously into SF.
How do you like being a writer and working within the publishing industry?
I LOVE being a writer. I adore creating worlds and mad characters and watching them come to life, then sending them off into the world for more adventures. The publishing industry is great, once you understand it is a business like any other.
Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?
I like to write in my study, a glass of wine, lit candles, sometimes music (I was listening to the Inception soundtrack writing The Dragon Engine). I think most of my research comes from life, as I said earlier. Often people and conversations end up in my books. So be afraid.
When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?
I wanted to be an author since primary school. My first book, The Four Headed Man, was a about a giant four headed man (the size of King Kong) with planes swooping around him to shoot him down. Heh. Those were the days! I wrote my first “proper” novel when I was 17. It was comedy fantasy called Silkworm. I do not dare go back and read it.
What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?
I think the genre is thriving, with a wide range of fantasy styles available for the discerning reader. Where does my work fit in? It’s probably behind the bike sheds, have a sneaky cigarette and hanging out with the bad boys.
Do you have any other projects in the pipeline, and what are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently working on the follow up to The Dragon Engine, Twilight of the Dragons, plus three novellas for Tor US, beginning with A Song for No Man’s Land, a dark fantasy set in the trenches of WWI. Then I’m about to make my ZX Spectrum film. If you’re an old Speccy geek like me you can see more here. I also made a horror feature called Impurity.
What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?
I’m, currently reading the fantasy novel The Demon Lord by Peter Morwood, J. G. Ballard’s The Miracle of Life and I’m just about to start Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata.
What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?
I have two Collie dogs called Fizz and Tilly (we foolishly allowed the kids to name them – but I’m the one who has to stand out in the field shouting, “Here Fizz! Here Tilly!”). They are brilliant and clever and mad.
What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?
Writing Twilight of the Dragons for Angry Robot, my novellas for Tor, and working on my Speccy movie.
Thanks!
***
Andy Remic‘s The Dragon’s Engine is published by Angry Robot Books on September 1st, 2015. For more on his writing and novels, be sure to check out his website, and follow him on Twitter and Goodreads.
QUOTE:
delivers the goods for fans of stark brutality and violence in a fantasy setting.
The Iron Wolves
Publishers Weekly.
260.47 (Nov. 18, 2013): p36.
COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Iron Wolves
Andy Remic. Angry Robot (www.angryrobotbooks.com), $7.99 mass market (448p) ISBN
9780857663559
Remic (The Clockwork Vampire) delivers the goods for fans of stark brutality and violence in a fantasy setting. The
Iron Wolves are the stuff of legend. Their might and grit defeated the deadly mudorcs, saving Vagandrak and ending
the War of Zakora. Now, 25 years later, peace is threatened by Orlana the Changer and her inhuman army of beasthuman
splices, allied with ambitious King Zorkai of Zakora. Calling the Iron Wolves together, Gen. Dalgoran of
Vagandrak finds them lessened by age and their war experiences, "like bad and rotting apples from the bottom of a
broken barrel." Fighting Orlana's evil army and serving a king who's gone insane, the Iron Wolves must overcome their
personal issues and bond on the field of battle. A cliffhanger ending promises more gritty action in future installments.
(Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Iron Wolves." Publishers Weekly, 18 Nov. 2013, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA351611646&it=r&asid=230f48914672247cad6d22031075880f.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A351611646
2/2/2017 General OneFile Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486064620071 2/2
QUOTE:
Intricate battle sequences are interspersed with Robert's diary entries, offering insight into his past and
the utter brutality of trench warfar
Return of Souls
Publishers Weekly.
263.17 (Apr. 25, 2016): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Return of Souls
Andy Remic.Tor.com, $2.99 ebook (176p) ISBN 9780765384027
Fans of military fantasy with horror elements will find a lot to like as Remic returns to the bloody battleground of
WWI, which he first visited in A Song for No Man's Land (2016). Pvt. Robert Jones of the 3rd Battalion Royal Welsh
Fusiliers is still seeing the beings that he calls the walriders, terrible creatures with bodies that are "slick and black,
thick twisted coils like oiled tree roots," and with "long yellow fangs curling up from a disjointed jaw." In the midst of
an attack from one of these monstrosities, everything goes black and Robert finds himself in a different place, where a
deserted castle offers refuge and a beautiful woman named Orana Katella begs for his help in saving her people from
slaughter. Robert begins falling for Orana and developing hope for the future, but a walrider named Five Stripe is bent
on hunting him. Intricate battle sequences are interspersed with Robert's diary entries, offering insight into his past and
the utter brutality of trench warfare. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Return of Souls." Publishers Weekly, 25 Apr. 2016, p. 74+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450904567&it=r&asid=73b7898de872701dd7a1b81027df98b1.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450904567
QUOTE:
he meaning of the title is very inspirational:
The Iron Beast is the iron reserve of all good men.
Monday, November 21, 2016
The Iron Beast, by Andy Remic
Cover illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love
Find this story
(World War I Horror; No Man's Land) The three-part series concludes with Robert Jones fighting the Walriders in the other world. (28,417 words; Time: 1h:34m)
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended
This installment is unreadable without having already read A Song for No Man’s Land and Return of Souls. See related articles on Tor.com.
"The Iron Beast," by Andy Remic [bio] (edited by Lee Harris), published on November 8, 2016 by Tor.com.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: The story of Robert Jones does reach a conclusion. The battle between good and evil is joined, and, although Jones dies, his evocation of all the human soldier heroes of all the ages wins the day. The meaning of the title is very inspirational:
The Iron Beast is the iron reserve of all good men. It is the strength which binds us. . . . The Iron Beast is the pumping heart of every hero, every good man, every brave soldier who died giving his life for what he believes in. It is the greatest weapon we will ever have, because it's what powers humanity to fight against evil.
Con: As with the previous installments, the story is a long, dull slog. The battle scenes go on forever, and it is very hard to care about any of the characters.
Book Review: The Iron Beast by Andy Remic
BY CIARAN · AUG 22, 2016
The Iron Beast is the third and final installment in the thrilling A Song for No Man’s Land trilogy written by Andy Remic and published by Tor.com. Robert Jones, a young soldier, continues his harrowing journey to end the otherworldly war into which he has been plunged. Jones knows from his experiences in the trenches of the Somme that nothing comes without a price. But, the price of the Iron Beast may be more than he can bear.
A war is being waged in an impossible world.
The Skogsgra and the Naravelle have launched their final offensive, and Private Jones and his companions are caught in the melee.
Tens of thousands will die before the battle is over.
They travel deep underground, to find and release the Iron Beast… the one creature that can end not one world war, but two.
But at what cost . . . ?
The most immediately obvious and interesting aspect about this trilogy and about The Iron Beast itself is the style of writing. The books are broken into several parts, each consisting of diary entries by Jones or third person scenes that reveal the thoughts and motivations of a specific character. Normally, this would feel disjointed and maybe a little hard to follow.
However, they flow from scene to scene very well and the pacing never feels forced or unnatural. This allows the reader to get a deep and fascinating insight into the mind of Robert Jones and learn more about the wider world and characters in the story. In this novella and the previous in the trilogy, Remic manages to combine the world building benefits of the third person point of view with the character building benefits of the epistolary style. This is no easy feat and is definitely one of the best aspects of The Iron Beast and of the trilogy as a whole.
Jones, who is obviously still shell-shocked from the events of the previous books and the horrors that he has seen, is a very well-drawn character. His diary entries are especially useful in revealing his motivations and fears to the reader. So too are his little asides where he speaks to the voices of his dead comrades that continue to haunt him. His plight is one of the most compelling aspects of The Iron Beast.
Unfortunately, the side-characters of The Iron Beast are not as well written and often feel a little hollow. The most extreme case of this is Jones’ love interest Orana. Despite being integral to the plot, Orana’s motivations are unaddressed or simply left to one side after a brief mention. She knows how to free the Iron Beast and yet neither initially manages to persuade either the characters or the reader that this is a good idea. Essentially, she seems to just simply exist for large portions of the novella. This does not make for a very interesting character.
In contrast to the sparse motivations of Orana, the motivations of the villains are pretty much non-existent. The walriders, who are vampire-werewolf type things, and the Naravelle are evil and, despite glimpses of potential hidden depth, that appears to be it. There is some cosmic good vs evil reason for this hinted at from time to time but it is ultimately left unexplored. This is a bit of a let-down as there is a lot of potential for villainous character development in The Iron Beast and in the trilogy as a whole.
Despite this lack of character development, the writing in The Iron Beast is excellent. The writing for battle scenes and sequences is frenetic and fast-paced and just really well done. The diary entries are both sparse and vivid and are fantastic pieces of short writing in themselves. Overall, the quality of the writing allows the atmosphere and tension of the story to whirl off the page and infect the reader.
The Iron Beast is a really well-written novella with an intriguing main character and some cool world building and concepts. However, the plot is ultimately a little thin on the ground due to the lack of character building overall. But, the novella does leave the reader with a few unanswered questions and a big hook. While this is the last book in this trilogy, it’s possible that more might follow and build upon this solid groundwork.
The Iron Beast will be published on 8 November 2016
3/5 stars
BOOK REVIEW: RETURN OF SOULS BY ANDY REMIC
AUGUST 16, 2016 SF BLUESTOCKING LEAVE A COMMENT
I won’t be reading anything else by Andy Remic. I didn’t care for most of his first Tor.com novella, A Song for No Man’s Land, but it got interesting right at the end. Unfortunately, Return of Souls doesn’t deliver on what little promise its predecessor held. Instead, it doubles down on everything I didn’t like about the first book in this planned trilogy and adds a heaping dose of blatant misogyny that makes it a deeply unpleasant read.
Spoilers at the end, so beware.
Once again, we’re following Robert Jones through his time in World War I, only he’s come somewhat unhinged since the events of the first book and we’re now navigating his deteriorating mental state and his journeys through a sort of dark, war torn Wonderland, still pursued by the walriders that were introduced in A Song for No Man’s Land. Though all his friends died in the last book, this time around Robert is joined by a mysterious young woman named Orana who also seems to be running from the walriders. I’m sure that there are other things going on in this novella (I think I remember Bainbridge’s ghost showing up at least once), and I still get the feeling that Remic has some point that he’s trying to manfully make about war or something, but all of that is eclipsed by the sheer disgustingness of Robert’s relationship with Orana.
I mean, come on.
First off, Orana is barely even a character at all. Instead, she seems to be a sort of generalized embodiment of Remic’s ideals of womanhood, created to both tempt Robert and to motivate him to new acts of chivalrous heroism. Over and over again, Orana is described in infantilizing and fetishistic terms as childlike, naïve and in need of protection. When Robert and Orana finally have sex, even Robert feels as if he’s raping her, and indeed it’s difficult to understand exactly how this strange child-woman in need of rescue could be truly consenting. Either way, it’s gross to read.
But, wait! It gets worse. After about a hundred pages of detailing Robert’s creepily paternalistic relationship with Orana, the final revelation of the book is that Orana was a walrider all along and was, I guess, using Robert Jones to help her reach her home? Or maybe she was just tricking him deep into walrider territory? Or maybe Orana’s transformation really is just a misogynistic commentary on the inherent duplicitousness of women? I don’t even know, and it’s hard to care very much. Robert Jones is a highly unlikeable and, frankly, boring character, and honestly, by the time I got to the end of the book I was just ready for it to be over. Unfortunately, there’s no real ending here, just this major revelation and a sort of teaser for the trajectory of the final book in the trilogy, which I just don’t think I can bring myself to read.
I’d like to say that it’s not Return of Souls, it’s me, but I’m having a hard time even thinking of reasons why other people might enjoy this title. Its pace is slow, and its prose is only workmanlike. Its horror elements are sloppy, and its fantasy elements, drawn from real-world mythology, are poorly researched and badly implemented. Robert Jones is a character in turns profoundly dull and remarkably despicable, but he’s at no point enjoyable to read about. There’s no humor to speak of in the book, no spark of fun or joy to speak of; rather, it’s just unrelentingly dark and almost nihilistic in tone. But, hey, maybe that’s your thing. I won’t be back for more, though.
Review: Return of Souls by Andy Remic
Labels: Andy Remic, Fantasy, Military Fiction, Novella, Review Copy, Reviews, Tor Posted by DarkChaplain at 5/22/2016
A Song for No Man's Land had me intrigued, but Return of Souls has me wondering. I hope things get clearer in the final novel. Either way, here's my review.
The Story:
"If war is hell, there is no word to describe what Private Jones has been through. Forced into a conflict with an unknowable enemy, he awakes to find himself in a strange land, and is soon joined by young woman, Morana, who tends to his wounds and tells him of the battles played out in this impossible place.
She tells him of an Iron Beast that will end the Great War, and even as he vows to help her find it, enemy combatants seek them, intent on their utter annihilation.
Return of Souls is the second volume of the trilogy Andy Remic began with A Song for No Man's Land."
Disclaimer
The publisher offered me an ARC of the novel. I was highly intrigued by the predecessor when I read it earlier this year, so I jumped at the opportunity.
The Review:
As with A Song for No Man's Land, Return of Souls performed the best for me when it was dealing with Robert Jones' life in the trenches of the Great War. His mental health is rapidly declining, spiralling out of control to the point where the lines between reality and hallucination, or fantasy, are blurring.
On many occassions, I found myself questioning just what was really going on. What did Jones go through, compared to what he felt and saw. And I loved that. The war has ground him down, and the loss of his friends weighs heavy on his chest. The delivery was fantastic in those early chapters, up to the second third.
And then things changed drastically. The multi-dimensional war that was hinted at in the previous installment moved onto the stage, and Jones finds himself in a different place entirely, the only familiar things being the Walriders that have haunted him all along, and the ever-present threat of war. About halfway through, Return of Souls had crossed the line from dark military fiction with a heavy psychology angle into fantasy, albeit still with a psychological angle.
When the girl Orana entered the picture and Jones quickly fell for her, things started to drag a little for me, and again I started questioning what was going on. That is a major theme of the novel, as it answers few questions while posing countless new ones. Aspects of A Song for No Man's Land that I was hoping would be elaborated on were seemingly forgotten, or at the very least left for the third novel to connect to the ongoing narrative.
One disappointment for me was that there was only one single chapter delving back into Robert's childhood, back to the sanatorium that the first book showed as more than just a little traumatic for the bloke. That chapter was very short, but to the point. It had me put the book down and update my Goodreads status with a resounding "What the ——?!". The absolute disgust and pity I felt after that chapter got to me - as it was supposed to, so Remic scores a big point here.
At the end of it all, I enjoyed the adventure with Jones and Orana, even though it left me a bit dissatisfied for answers. Thankfully, it looks like Robert is as lost as me, and all too willing to trust strangers in that strange place. I'm definitely on board to find out what is going to happen next, after some big twists in the final chapters.
If Andy Remic can manage to tie everything together and elaborate on the situation in The Iron Beast, I'll salute him. I have my ideas about what is going on already, but I clearly need the third installment to make proper sense of it. For what it is, though, Return of Souls is a solid psychological mystery that makes me yearn for more.
June 9, 2016
REVIEW: RETURN OF SOULS BY ANDY REMIC
Books, Reviews
Review: return of souls
We are now two books into Andy Remic's ongoing A Song For No Man's Land series, and I have to admit that I'll be taking a pass on the rest. I'm just simply not connecting to the material and will have to chalk it up to the old 'it's not you, Mr. Remic, it's me' excuse.
You see, I'm not much for traditional fantasy. I slogged my way through Tolkein's Lord of the Ring series and felt rather unrewarded (the movies are better, as far as I'm concerned), and forced myself to make it through Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon because of all the praise that Malazan series has garnered. There are exceptions of course - I'm a giddy sucker for George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and am always on the lookout for new R. Scott Bakker books. I have a much easier time with urban fantasy series, like Chuck Wendig's Miriam Black novels.
All of this is a long-winded way of my trying to explain that I thought Andy Remic's latest novellas would be up my alley, with their heavy on World War I and light on fantasy elements approach. Alas, it's not meant to be...
Although Return of Souls, and it's predecessor, A Song For No Man's Land, are novella length stories, I've felt they were both too long and unnecessarily plodding. Each book has been divided into four parts, with the first 3/4 devoted to Jones and his time on the frontlines fighting German soldiers and beastly creatures known as walriders. The last quarter, though, is when Remic decides to take a sharp and sudden turn, introducing new characters to eat up the page count, hopping back and forth in his narrative between newbie cast and the old-hands, in order to set up the next book. This is a pet peeve of mine.
When I finished the prior entry in this series, I was curious to see where the story would go. Unfortunately, I found myself hitting a wall before the half-way mark into this latest entry and was ready to move onto some other book instead. Remic introduces a new love interest for Jones to pine after, and it mostly serves to grind an already slow narrative to a near halt. I finished it, merely because these are short books (even if they subjectively feel much longer to me), but can't muster up the enthusiasm to rate it any higher than a 3-star read - it's an OK story, and while I certainly didn't hate it, Return of Souls failed to connect with me in any way past a bit of a time killer.
Fantasy fiends may have a better time with it, or those who don't mind a war story with rather languid pacing. This book, and this series taken as a whole thus far, just isn't for me.
[Note: I received an advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.]
Monday, July 11, 2016
Return of Souls, by Andy Remic
Cover illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love
Find this story
(World War I Fantasy; No Man's Land) In 1917 Flanders, private Robert Jones lives the daily hell of trench warfare. But something much worse than Germans is hunting him. (36,201 words; Time: 2h:00m)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average
This is the second novella in a series, but it does have a complete plot inside it. See related articles on Tor.com.
"Return Of Souls," by Andy Remic [bio] (edited by Lee Harris), published on June 14, 2016 by Tor.com.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: The main plot of the novella is Jones attempt to get Orana safely home. He does accomplish that (even though it appears to have been a mistake) so the story really does have a plot.
Once Jones reaches the "Castle Shell," the story becomes interesting.
Con: The introductory sections with WWI battles are tedious, and they go on and on and on.
Quick Review: A SONG FOR NO MAN’S LAND by Andy Remic (Tor.com)
January 14, 2016 Civilian Reader ReviewA Song For No Man's Land, Andy Remic, Fantasy, Horror, Myth, Novella, Tor.com, Urban Fantasy, War, World War I
RemicA-WWI1-ASongForNoMansLandA weird, imaginative World War I urban fantasy tale
He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.
But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.
He’ll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn’t exist.
This novella is the first in a projected series by Andy Remic. It is a really interesting, creepy take on the First World War. Told from the perspective of a volunteer, alternating between narrative and diary entries (for the main). The novella recounts the difficulties and horrors of the Front, the and the intense confusion warfare.
Add to this, though, a touch of horror and fantasy myth, and Remic has come up with an original take on war fiction. There were a few times when the story felt a little confusing, but I think that was intentional — our hero doesn’t always know what is actually going on, and the creatures he believes he keeps seeing are monstrous. Is his mind just creating a lie to explain the nature of war? Or is he really faced with monsters from childhood myth and nightmare?
A Song for No Man’s Land is a really interesting start to a new series. This novella is very much setting up the world and premise for the series to come, and ends on quite a tantalizing moment. I think this should have pretty broad appeal. Recommended.
Review: Twilight of the Dragons by Andy Remic
Labels: Andy Remic, Angry Robot, Fantasy, Reviews Posted by DarkChaplain at 10/05/2016
Oh boy, remember the ultra-vulgar, bloody entertaining, almost pornographic novel The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic? Its sequel was recently released and ended up on my desk. I read it, and I hugely enjoyed it despite its flaws. Here's why.
The Story:
"During a recent dwarf civil-war deep under the Karamakkos Mountains, the magick-enslaved dragonlords have broken free from centuries of imprisonment and slaughtered tens of thousands throughout the Five Havens before exploding from the mountain and heading in fire and vengeance for the lands of Vagandrak. Two once-noble war heroes of Vagandrak - Dakeroth and his wife Jonti Tal, an archer and scholar, the Axeman, the White Witch and a Kaalesh combat expert find themselves in a unique position: for they have discovered the ancient dragon city of Wyrmblood, and a thousand unhatched dragon eggs. Dakeroth and his companions must work with their enemies, Skalg and the Church of Hate, in order to bring down the dragonlords and save the world of men and dwarves. But there is no bartering with these ancient dragons; for they seek to hatch their eggs and rebuild the cruel Wyrmblood Empire of legend."
The Review:
Twilight of the Dragons is an oddly entertaining book. It is still vulgar, "offensive" and unrecommendable to younger readers, but also in many ways different from The Dragon Engine. Not in a bad way, however.
Where with The Dragon Engine I was utterly unprepared for the vulgarity, sex jokes, assault, torture and what have you, having me wince at the ideas presented by Andy Remic (reading about "ball crushers" was pretty grim!), I was definitely prepared for more of the like in Twilight. To my surprise, those aspects were tackled to a lesser degree here. Instead the book focused more on the characters' resignation, fears, trauma and the rampage of the dragons in Vagandrak.
Surprisingly, this novel also throws a crossover with Remic's Iron Wolves novels at us: The heroes from The Iron Wolves and The White Towers appear here, stealing a lot of the spotlight. This, of course, includes spoilers for their own novels, seeing that this is a sequel, chronologically.
I honestly wish I had read those novels before I did Twilight, but after the fact I cannot say that, while I was initially not so keen on it, I disliked their inclusion. In fact, I liked all of the crossover-characters a good bit. They were easily relatable, had a decent amount of comedic relief (one part of which even crops back up in the epilogue and had me laughing out loud!), and gave a much-needed perspective of the dragon rampage outside the mountains that the heroes are stuck in for pretty much the entire novel.
Disappointingly, the heroes, that is, Beetrax, Lilith, Sakora, Dake, Talon and the boy Jael, are stuck underground until the very end, and as a result don't even encounter Volak and her sisters for most of it. I had expected them to be the driving force when it comes to subjugating the dragons again, but instead the futility of that task was tackled via the Iron Wolves chapters. For the original heroes from The Dragon Engine, oddly little happens in terms of external threats, comparatively. There is one battle against a dragon-splice which I liked a lot, and some dwarf-killing, but until the climax chapters (and I don't mean those involving past romance scenes between Beetrax and Lilith with that!) they're fighting themselves and their own insecurities more than anything else.
Which, as a theme, I liked. None of them were left unaffected by the preceding events, the torture, the lack of sunlight, and most notably the death of Jonti Tal, Dake's wife. They're traumatized, growing in apathy and start turning on one another. Of course, equiem magic plays a role in it as well, raising the stakes to a higher point. The point stands, however: Their quest to find and destroy the dragon eggs of Volak isn't easy, and that is more down to their own sensibilities and fraying nerves than to outside forces.
In a way, this made the inclusion of the Iron Wolves inevitable. The action against Volak was necessary to the book, both to get the tension up and to balance the depressing nature of the other parts of the book. Remic nailed the conflict on the surface very well, too; Narnok, Dek, Trista and co were all amusing to read about, and their struggles to somehow manage to harm and/or kill Volak were offering up cool setpieces. Narnok especially had me chuckling over how absurd it was for him to constantly taunt the mighty dragon queen.
“I’m Narnok. Don’t forget it. It’s a name I’m going to carve on your arse.”
It was a massively entertaining romp of thrilling action, with ever-growing desperation and things just got better and better. I was incredibly sad when, inevitably, heads began to roll (or ashes got blown into the wind, eh?). Andy managed to make me care about characters that came out of the blue and stole the fireworks show, giving them a personal background that I enjoyed and made me curious about the rest of their story. Yes, I was definitely disappointed that it wasn't down to Beetrax and co, but what I got instead was no less entertaining than what I expected.
The dragon rampage itself is worth noting too. The prologue kicks it off, set right after the end of The Dragon Engine. Volak, Kranesh and Moraxx are free to do as they please: which just so happens to be slaughtering humans. If you're not a fan of seeing children die, then you might want to back out of this one, because the story starts right with that; it gets us to care about a little girl who finally made a friend and has fun playing around, just to be eaten alive. That had me gulp - I didn't expect that kind of thing within the first 5 pages! But damn if it didn't set the scene for just how terrible a renewed Blood Dragon Empire would be!
Multiple similar scenes of disaster are featured throughout the book, up until the dragons get their dues through no other than Skalg. Where in The Dragon Engine I had nothing but disdain for the fucker, here I actually cared for him as an individual. The author managed to humanize him a great deal, giving him a layered personality and personal dilemma. He is made relatable in his role, and showcases how mountains of frustration and pain can come tumbling down and break our own backs.
In a way, Skalg is the real hero of the book, which surprised me. He is still a megalomaniac and doesn't get off lightly, but he definitely pulls more than his own weight to resolve the looming doom. Remic definitely addressed Skalg's situation in a satisfying way.
If you're a fan of the sexual themes from The Dragon Engine, the book has you covered too. Not only does it have some orgies going on involving Vagandrak royalty, involving an arrogant princess trying to rape her soldier-become-servant, but it also has some more romantic flashbacks for Beetrax and Lilith.
I honestly cannot believe how well-done the romance in the latter actually was. It was actually nice, and sweet, and made me care even more about the couple. It wasn't blunt and on the nose, and instead reinforced their relationship as a whole.
More than anything, those scenes were relatable, authentic and respectful. They hammered home just how much of these two books was actually about Trax and Lil and their reunion. Those heartwarming scenes raised the stakes for the depressing underground excursion tenfold, and had me raging as the climax came about.
My regrets about the novel, after all is said and done, boil down to the original heroes taking a bit too much of a step back. While I liked the themes and execution, I figured they'd be more prominent here. It wasn't a dealbreaker by any means, but I was wishing for them to be more involved.
On top of that, there are various plot nuggets that weren't resolved, and deliberately left open. The epilogue makes it pretty clear that there is room for sequels yet, tying all the way back to the Iron Wolves books (and I'll damn well read those before I get into the next one), but there's more to be said about the Dragonheads, King Yoon, the remaining Splice in Vagandrak and a bunch of side characters who I figured would contribute a bit more yet.
Be that as it may, I think I enjoyed Twilight of the Dragons even more than I did The Dragon Engine. It flowed well, I cared for the whole, larger cast and the dragons were magnificent to behold. The action was great, the personal drama high, and I'd like to read more about all involved.
If you've read The Dragon Engine, you owe it to yourself to read this one as well.
Review: Twilight of the Dragons by Andy Remic
SEPTEMBER 21, 2016
Review: Twilight of the Dragons by Andy RemicTwilight of the Dragons by Andy Remic
Series: The Blood Dragon Empire #2
Published by Angry Robot on May 3rd 2016
Genres: Dark Fantasy
Pages: 336
Our reviews of this author: The Dragon Engine, A Song for No Man's Land
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Thanks to Angry Robot for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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three-half-stars
Part two of the high-octane fantasy series, from the natural successor to David Gemmell. A group of heroes makes dangerous bargains in order to overthrow the dragonlords and their Dragon Engines.
I have to admit, I’m of two minds regarding Twilight of the Dragons. Yes, it’s a fun, foul-mouthed, frantic sequel to both The Dragon Engine and The White Towers, but its narrative quality is all over the place. Much of it reads like a first draft manuscript, awkward and juvenile in places, that somehow sneaked past the editor. Structurally, it feels like it’s one step removed from being polished as well, jumping between storylines, with random flashback chapters interspersed, and some definite pacing issues. It made for a frustrating read, which (unfortunately) took something away from the enjoyment.
Having said all that, this is a bold, brash, bloody story in which Andy Remic returns to the world of grimdark fantasy. One story thread catches up with the survivors of the The Dragon Engine, following their war-weary, emotionally exhausted descent into the bowels of Wyrmblood. These are adventurers who suffered greatly in the last book – beatings, torture, and even rape – and it weighs heavily upon them. As depressing as it made those scenes, I admired Remic for not just shrugging off the pain and going all gung-ho with the heroics.
The other story thread catches up with the survivors of The White Towers, drawn into the story when the escaped dragons of Wyrmblood attack the town, interrupting their own bitter infighting. Not surprisingly, the Iron Wolves have some of the best scenes in the novel, although the constant bickering between Dek and Narnok wears a bit thin. Again, Remic deals with the aftermath of heroic deeds, catching our heroes at their lowest, and allowing them the chance to deal with both past and present. There’s a lot of bad blood and tainted motives here, but Nanok’s suicidal challenges to the dragon are probably the high point of the book.
As for the dragons, they are every bit as fearsome and horrific as you’d expect from Remic. Their attacks upon villages and towns are beautifully choreographed, with equal parts fear and awe on those unlucky enough to be torn apart, chewed in half, roasted alive, or buried beneath rubble. Both angry and clever, they’re not only out for revenge, but enjoy verbally baiting their victims. We don’t see as much of the dwarves this time around, but they are still mean, miserable, and malicious, with Crayline challenging Skalg for the title of most monstrous. As for Skalg, his story arc was interesting, but I didn’t feel the pay off was nearly worthy of his legacy – one place where the story itself faltered for me. Similarly, I thought the Splice were wasted a bit here, especially given the new twist put on them by King Yoon, but it was immensely satisfying to see them take on a dragon.
Despite its flaws, this is still no-holds-barred epic fantasy for a mature audience, with the reappearance of the Iron Wolves definitely kicking it up a notch. There’s very clearly a door left open at the end of Twilight of the Dragons, so here’s hoping there’s one more adventure to come.
3.5/5 stars
QUOTE:
Twilight of the Dragons is undeniably brutal and uncompromising, but it is also completely engrossing. I didn’t think it possible but I appear to have been proven wrong. Andy Remic has successfully out Remic’ed himself. Most impressive.
Twilight of the Dragons by Andy Remic
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 | BY PABLOCHEESECAKE
Please note Twilight of the Dragons is a direct sequel to The Dragon Engine so it is highly likely that this review may contain minor spoilers if you haven’t read that first. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
During a recent dwarf civil-war deep under the Karamakkos Mountains, the magick-enslaved dragonlords have broken free from centuries of imprisonment and slaughtered tens of thousands throughout the Five Havens before exploding from the mountain and heading in fire and vengeance for the lands of Vagandrak.
Two once-noble war heroes of Vagandrak – Dakeroth and his wife Jonti Tal, an archer and scholar, the Axeman, the White Witch and a Kaalesh combat expert find themselves in a unique position: for they have discovered the ancient dragon city of Wyrmblood, and a thousand unhatched dragon eggs.
Dakeroth and his companions must work with their enemies, Skalg and the Church of Hate, in order to bring down the dragonlords and save the world of men and dwarves. But there is no bartering with these ancient dragons; for they seek to hatch their eggs and rebuild the cruel Wyrmblood Empire of legend.
I’ll begin this review with a warning. Those of you delicate disposition probably don’t want to read any further. Andy Remic novels have a tendency to be bloody, brutal and extremely adult. This book is no exception. Firstly, it contains a bucket loads of bloodletting and violence. I suppose that is to be expected really; there are lots of axes, and what with dragons about, people bound to get bitten in half from time to time. There are also a whole host of swears. Seriously, I’m not joking here, there are a lot. I just wanted to get that out the way before we begin. I don’t want to hear any whiney complaints of people being shocked or offended.
Now that I’ve done my due diligence, and it’s only those of us who relish the chaos and mayhem who remain, we can proceed.
Forget what you may have read elsewhere. All that sentimental brouhaha about the nobility of dragons is utter tosh. Andy Remic puts it as plainly as possible. To paraphrase The Dark Knight – some dragons just want to watch the world burn. Freed from the confines of the dwarven mines, the three dragons, Volak, Kranesh and Moraxx, who were part of The Dragon Engine have taken to the skies. They are intent on reestablishing their bloody reign on the world and reaping their revenge on just about everyone. It is up to our band of motley heroes to try and stop these killing machines from regaining power. Our group’s first task? Stop the dragons from reaching their hatchery in the ancient city of Wyrmblood. Three dragons is bad, hundreds of dragons would be a damn sight worse.
In the aftermath of the events in book one, all of our heroes are broken in one way or another. Dake and Beetrax are both at a particularly low ebb. Everyone has suffered greatly, and the bad news is that things are only going to get worse. These are heroes who have to fight tooth and claw for every victory. Andy Remic never goes easy on his protagonists.
What of the bad guys? Well, there is a new female dwarf character called Crayline Hew, who is a complete and utter sociopath. I liked her immediately. Cardinal Skalg also remains thoroughly loathsome. His part in the narrative veers off on a wholly unexpected tangent, as brilliant as it was unexpected.
I’ll admit to a little whoop of delight when I spotted characters from The Rage of Kings books also pop up in some of the chapters. The Iron Wolves are great fun and I love it when Dek and Narnok are bickering with one another. Drinking, fighting and causing all manner of chaos is always the order of the day whenever the Iron Wolves are concerned.
As some of you have spotted, I like to try and find a complimentary soundtrack to listen to whenever I read a book. In this instance, I think I’ve found an absolute corker. Dragon Age: Inquisition by Trevor Morris lends itself perfectly to Twilight of the Dragons.
There is a visceral rawness to Andy Remic’s work that I have enjoyed for a long time. His heroes and heroines aren’t perfect. They are flawed, but always compelled to try and do what is right. When violence does occur it is never sugar coated or dumbed down, it’s swift and extreme. If that sounds like your idea of literary heaven then I suggest giving this book and its predecessor a try. In fact, you really can’t go wrong with anything this author has written.
Twilight of the Dragons is undeniably brutal and uncompromising, but it is also completely engrossing. I didn’t think it possible but I appear to have been proven wrong. Andy Remic has successfully out Remic’ed himself. Most impressive.
Twilight of the Dragons is published by Angry Robot and is available now.
Twilight of the Dragons (The Blood Dragon Empire #2) by Andy Remic
Posted On 5 September 2016
Filed under Book Reviews
Comments Dropped 6 responses
twilightofdragonsTwilight of the Dragons is the second in the Dragon Empire series by Andy Remic. This series is very dark and I will say upfront that it certainly won’t be for everyone. I have to say from the outset that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first, but, first things first – to the review and please note that there will be spoilers below in terms of the first book.
This story sets off almost immediately where the Dragon Engine concluded and there are a number of threads to follow. The three dragons being held captive beneath the mines have been let loose and are terrorising the countryside burning down villages and killing people. Meanwhile, back at the mine our would-be heroes are now on a revised mission, no longer a treasure hunt, but a quest to save the world from the disaster that has now been released (although if the opportunity comes along the way to snag a few precious stones then so be it). We have a storyline that sees Skalg in a far different role than I ever expected and we have the inclusion of the Iron Wolves.
Firstly, what did I enjoy about this. Well, I haven’t previously read Remic’s Iron Wolves and this series can be read without having done so – however, it was great to make their acquaintance here – in fact, truth be told I thought they stole the show a little.
I thought the dragons were just marvellously nasty. Nothing to like here. Fire breathing maniacs who own the skies and swoop down dramatically to leave death and destruction in their wake.
Then we have our motley crew – yes, they’ve escaped, but they’ve been brought low by the treatment they received at the hands of the dwarves. Led by Lilith they are journeying through the mines to an unknown goal. They still make a great bunch of characters – especially Beetrax who is just a gloriously larger than life character.
So, why didn’t I enjoy this book as much as the first? It has the feel of a book with second in series syndrome, the plot jumps about a lot and is interspersed with flashbacks. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the flashbacks as it was good to learn more of the background to some of the characters, but, it interrupted the flow somewhat. And, even though I say this feels like a book with middle book syndrome, I’m not entirely sure that this is the case as this feels like a conclusion. Granted, there is room for manoeuvre to continue but I’m not sure if that’s planned or not. On top of that, and this is still puzzling me, but in spite of what seems like a lot of action on reflection the story doesn’t go a whole lot further. I’m probably not articulating that very well but it has a feel of lots of dashing about with bloodshed and fighting, all really well described, but it somehow doesn’t have the scale of the first book and indeed the flashbacks almost feel like book filler. Finally, I think I mentioned in the last book review that Remic doesn’t shirk from the gritty in fact he paints his story quite liberally with it. But, I felt that in some respects this book just went too far for me. I got to a point where I was thinking ‘okay, I get it’ – leave something to the imagination.
I hope this doesn’t sound too critical. I think Remic is an excellent writer. He brings these scenes alive on the page. He can create an atmosphere of light hearted camaraderie and banter in one paragraph and then go to overwhelming despair the next and he is an expert at putting your emotions through the wringer.
Overall I enjoyed both books in the Dragon Empire series and if the author intends to write more I would definitely read on.
I received a copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.
Review: The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic
NOVEMBER 25, 2015
Review: The Dragon Engine by Andy RemicThe Dragon Engine by Andy Remic
Series: The Blood Dragon Empire #1
Published by Angry Robot on September 1st 2015
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 267
Our reviews of this author: A Song for No Man's Land, Twilight of the Dragons
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Thanks to Angry Robot for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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four-stars
Although it shares the same world as The Iron Wolves and The White Towers, Andy Remic’s first book in The Blood Dragon Empire is an entirely different. While those books were very much high-stakes epic fantasies, complete with massive battles and bloodshed, The Dragon Engine is more of a traditional quest tale – albeit one that subverts the usual tropes.
For starters, our heroes seem to be the typical gang of adventurers – complete with barbarian, archer, cleric, assassin, and more – but they’re actually retired war veterans whose quest days are comfortably behind them. As it turns out, one of them is dying of cancer, one is drinking his sorrows away, and several are nursing broken hearts. While all but one would have turned down an adventure based solely on greed, they find a common purpose in seeking out a magical cure for their dying companion.
While you don’t need any prior knowledge of the two Rage of Kings novels to enjoy this, fans will be pleased to discover that King Yoon is still in control, and as debauched as ever. He has serious competition for the most over-the-top, scene-chewing villain however, in the form of First Cardinal Skalg, High Priest of the Church of Hate. While the Dwarves here are hearty and stoic, as you’d expect, they’re also sadistically prejudiced against the surface, exceptionally cruel, and on the brink of civil war. They’re also presumed long-extinct, which poses a challenge for our heroes, who intend to help themselves to their forgotten treasures.
Where the story takes a sharp left turn in terms of both plot and tone is in the second half of the novel, following the heroes arrival beneath the mountain. What began a fun adventures becomes very dark, very quickly, as our heroes are taken captive. Without saying too much, the torture they endure at the hands of the Dwarves is not for the squeamish – it’s cruel, it’s painful, and it crosses lines that will make some readers very uncomfortable. What’s important is that it’s not done merely for shock value. Remic has established his heroes, exposed their faults and their flaws, and also pointed out their all-too-human weaknesses. It’s important that they be tested, if not broken, if they’re to shake off the complacency of retirement and become the heroes that the world needs once again.
The final chapters are some of the most powerful Remic has ever written, with the core conflicts coming together in a climactic clash. It is here that the true significance of the The Dragon Engine comes clear, leaving us with a cliffhanger that poses a dire threat for the world above. It is a very different story arc than the Rage of Kings, but readers who appreciate a more mature, more adult, no-hold-barred kind of fantasy that rivals any big screen R-rated action flick will once again find a lot to enjoy here.
Bring on Twilight of the Dragons!
4/5 stars
QUOTE:
Remic once again proves that he is the Quentin Tarantino of Fantasy with The Dragon Engine, featuring infamous yet likeable heroes, plenty of visceral and uncompromisingly bloody violence, and Dwarfs and Dragons like you have never seen them before.
[ORIGINAL REVIEW] The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic [Lord of the Night]
0 Comments Andy Remic, Original Review 9/25/2015 02:36:00 pm
Lord of the Night reviews the epic and brutal first novel in The Blood Dragon Empire duology, The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic.
"Remic once again proves that he is the Quentin Tarantino of Fantasy with The Dragon Engine, featuring infamous yet likeable heroes, plenty of visceral and uncompromisingly bloody violence, and Dwarfs and Dragons like you have never seen them before. Forget Joe Abercrombie, Andy Remic is the true Lord Grimdark!" - Lord of the Night @ Talk Wargaming
I have been a huge Andy Remic fan ever since I read The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles and found it to be the bloodiest, most brutal fantasy series I had ever had the pleasure of reading. Since then I have made it a point to read whatever Fantasy novels he releases, and thoroughly enjoying The Rage of Kings duology only cemented my like of his gritty and truly grimdark fantasy. Remic doesn't shy away from the worst kinds of violent and depravity, his characters are wonderfully flawed human beings that despite often being truly horrendous people that you wouldn't want to be in a country mile of, you still find yourself liking them, and his worlds delightfully subvert the traditional tropes of fantasy in very inventine ways (after all; Clockwork Vampires? Mud-Orcs? Elf-Rats? Brilliant.) So when I saw that he was writing a new series with Dragons and Dwarves, I couldn't wait to see what he would make of these two classic Fantasy races, and Remic did not disappoint in any way.
The lost Five Havens of the Dwarves is a legend across the realm of Vagandrak, a realm of treasure and the ancient Dragon Heads that can supposedly grant immortality. When a group of six war heroes of the Second Mud-Orc War drunkenly swear a contract to find the Dwarf kingdom in the forbidding Karamakkos mountain range, they believe it will be the adventure that will make them rich, famous and restore their zest for life. But neither the Dwarfs or the Dragon Heads are quite what these daring adventurers think they are, and as they are plunged into a subterranean hell it will take all of their skill at arms and inner strength to survive both the cruelty of the Harborym Dwarves and the awakening of the Dragon Engine, but whether or not the world will survive the coming cataclysm is another question entirely.
The story in The Dragon Engine is clearly half of a wider adventure, maybe less than half if this series becomes a trilogy. Remic uses the early chapters to establish the characters, but does this much more quickly than he did in The Iron Wolves, gathering the protagonists together within the first two chapters and introducing the main Dwarven character immediately after. Once this has been done Remic starts the quest off with no delay, which to me was a great improvement over the two-thirds of the book that it took to gather the Iron Wolves in their own novel. At first The Dragon Engine seems quite different from Remic's previous works, much more traditional (think Lord of the Rings) and less grimdark, but as the protagonists reach the Dwarven holds the book quickly turns into classic Remic; lots of cruelty, horror, blood and cursing. The mystery behind the Dragon Heads and the titular Dragon Engine was another great part of the story, it quickly became apparant that neither were what we were led to expect by the knowledge of the characters and the reveal of the true nature of both of them was stunning, and led to an incredible scene in the final act that very clearly drew a lot of inspiration from a recent movie (you'll know which one when you read it.) The novel uses a number of POVs ranging from any of the six heroes, and the ally they gain along the way, to the important Dwarven characters that show how certain parts of the plot actually occur, and a very enjoyable perspective at the end that very nicely sets up the premise and danger that is coming in the second book. Overall I found the story in The Dragon Engine to be engaging and gritty as all of Remic's stories are, but a bit more focused in direction than his previous Fantasy works.
The characters in the novel are one of the biggest differences from Remic's previous heroes; the cursed and violent alcoholic Kell and the rampant womanizer Saark, or the despicable Iron Wolves whose ranks included a drug addict, a serial killer, an insane torturer, a pit fighter and a brothel owner. Beetrax, Dake, Jonti, Talon, Sakora and Lillith read much more like traditional fantasy heroes rather than subversions on the idea; they are war heroes who care about each other, act like brothers and sisters (or husband and wife in one case), and they lack the cruelty or moral dubiousness of Remic's other characters. But that said, none of the cast are two dimensional fantasy stereotypes, rather than facing the challenges of insanity, drug addiction, betrayal by friends and PTSD from torture like the Iron Wolves, Beetrax and his comrades face challenges perhaps more relatable to the average person; growing old, relationships ending and not understanding why, losing the zest for life, longing for a real challenge, and illness and mortality. This, combined with their inherent likeability, makes them easier to read than Remic's more damaged and sadistic characters, simply because it's easier to read about someone when you like them. My favourite character story was the relationship between Beetrax and Lillith, it was quite nice to see a couple who actually cared about each other and whose love was based in real appreciation and admiration of the other, who made each other better people by being around them. The real star of this book though, to me, was Cardinal Skalg, a Dwarf who is definitely a villain, but whether or not he's the villain is a trickier question; Skalg is a rapist, a murderer and a petty tyrant and those qualities are shown early on so that there is no question that he is a bad guy, yet he showed some interesting depths later in the book and acted much differently than I expected him to based on my understanding of his character in a few scenes, which actually made me like him a little. The only issue I took with the characters was that a few felt underused, I would have really liked to see more character scenes and development for Sakora and Talon, who I felt were the least utilized of the group, which was a shame because both felt like interesting characters and what we did get to see about them only reinforced that. Overall I found the characters in The Dragon Engine to be compelling, likeable and relateable, yet still very clearly creations of Andy Remic.
The action is great, no question or doubt about it. On the back of the novel there is a quote from Sharon Reamer, author of the Schattenreich novels, and it reads; "Remic has a very precise way with descriptions of battles and fights and weapons of every type. The scenes leap and snort off the page, making the heart race with anticipation about their outcomes..." and that is exactly right. More than other authors that I read, Remic seems to instinctively understand the motions of violence and the momentum of battle; his scenes are not only visceral and gory (which in his works is a given) but flow from the page, the reader being drawn very easily into the savage fight scenes and brutal executions while also understanding clearly what is happening in the fights and why it is happening. Remic utilizes different styles of combat quite well from Beetrax's axeman type, Dake's swordplay, Sakora's empty-hand style to Talon's archery; the characters complement each other in battle with each member of the group fulfilling a different but necessary part of a dynamic that allows them to face much larger groups of foes and come out victorious. The Dwarves were also portrayed quite well in the battle scenes, their culture may be a subversion of the Tolkein ideal, but the Harborym Dwarves retain the durability, solidness and boulder-like strength that we associate so closely with the idea of a Dwarf; and Remic used it quite well giving the adventurers foes that didn't go down easily and posed a real threat to the group. The final scenes were absolutely action-packed and I particularly enjoyed a showing of just how dangerous the foes revealed in the end really were, yet at the same time showing that they were vulnerable and could actually be hurt with great effort; something that made the ending a cliffhanger but also one with hope in it. Overall I found the action in The Dragon Engine to be pulse-pounding and exciting, but most importantly of all (to me) I found it understandable and easy to read.
The pacing of the book was well done, and in my opinion an improvement over Remic's previous work. Where the Iron Wolves dragged somewhat due to more than half the book being devoted to actually gathering the cast, The Dragon Engine dispenses with that and focuses more on the actual adventure than the prelude to it. The cast gathers quickly and set off just as quickly, the book focuses on their adventure, how that adventure goes horribly wrong, and how it puts them right in the middle of the latest cataclysm to come to the lands of Vagandrak. No part of the book felt dragged out or too short to me, each of the chapters read very easily and I was engaged from start to finish. The worldbuilding was also very nicely done, Remic subverts the typical Fantasy ideal of a Dwarf, the creatures here felt more like the brutally evil Chaos Dwarfs of Warhammer Fantasy, while at the same time avoiding making them into evil caricatures by showing hints that a lot of what we see in the book is because they are interacting with humans or because the particular Dwarfs we are seeing are simply scum. One thing did puzzle me however and that was the period the book was set in; conversations between the characters reveal that the novel is set after The Rage of Kings duology, yet that series ended with certain characters still around, yet in this book they are not mentioned in a present-tense context, leaving me to wonder if either a third Rage of Kings book has yet to be written or if Remic is holding onto some events in the overall story of this world for a later book. Overall I found the pacing of The Dragon Engine to be well-written and flowing, and the worldbuilding to be interesting and rich with potential for more stories and series.
My favourite quote, or at least my favourite quote that wasn't nearly a page long and very very spoilery for the twist and cliffhanger at the end, I think it had to be this one;
"Make it count, Irlax. Because i'm going to f**king slaughter you, in this life or the next! You hear me, you hateful piece of donkey-s**t?"
The ending was very enjoyable and set up the scene nicely for the second book in the series. As I said above The Dragon Engine reads as one half, or less maybe, of an adventure rather than a self-contained adventure that tells a story with a group of characters with the next book moving onto a new story as The Rage of Kings series did. I feel that this will make the series more enjoyable as it makes the story a bigger one and allows for events to be more connected to each other. It does mean that by the ending however you'll be dying to read the next book, simply because (like me) you absolutely have to know what happens next! Some people may not like the sense that the story pauses halfway through as the first book ends to be picked up in the second book, but I feel that Remic did it well enough that it doesn't feel tacked on or as if the story is being milked. I also very much enjoyed the second to last chapter that showed one particular character is still in the game and also shows a very tantalizing, and at that moment very sad if you really think about it, hint that perhaps some of the answers about the mysteries in the story were not as concrete as they appeared. Overall I found the ending to The Dragon Engine to be quite satisfying and that it guaranteed I would buy the next book.
For a great story that had me hooked on every page, likeable characters that were one of the best parts of the book, and action scenes that were exciting and uniquely Remic; I give The Dragon Engine a score of 9.1/10. This is a Great book that I would suggest to anyone who wants to read an epic new fantasy or is tired of the same kind of fantasy stories being re-told over and over again, or if you enjoy seeing the traditional fantasy tropes being subverted in ways that you would never expect; if any of those things are true for you, then Andy Remic is an author you really should check out. However if gratuitous violence and profanity and scenes of intense cruelty and grimdark are not your bag, then I wouldn't recommend this book or the works of Andy Remic to you. There is actually a pretty good litmus test; watch a Quentin Tarantino movie (I.E Kill Bill, Django Unchained or Reservoir Dogs) and if you have no issue with the content (the violence, cursing and general atmosphere) and like what's there, then Remic is an author that should be added to your To-Read lists as soon as possible.
That's it for this review. Thanks for reading, until next time;
AVE DOMINUS NOX!
- See more at: http://www.talkwargaming.com/2015/09/original-review-dragon-engine-by-andy.html#sthash.5emsT0lp.dpuf
Monday, August 3, 2015
The Dragon Engine - Andy Remic
The Dragon Engine is a fantasy novel by Andy Remic. It’s got some interesting world-building, a party of squabbling misfits, high stakes action, and… quite a lot of blood.
The novel takes place as a party of heroes come out of retirement, heading into a mountain range in search of riches. Remic does a decent job of building out his initial world. The kingdom that these heroes inhabit is only sketched out, but depth is added in incidental dialogue between characters.
There’s mention of villains from the past, wars which are slowly being forgotten, loyalties and betrayals bubbling under the surface of the world. Whilst the attention paid to this initial setting is a bit sparse, what is in place manages to feel vivid and alive.
The setting shines, however, when it explores the Dwarven caverns that our party of heroes are planning to loot. There’s a cavernous claustrophobia to the underside of the mountains, a feeling of a society turned in on itself, self-contained and self satisfied. At the same time, there’s a wonderful sense of scale – the towering gates of the Dwarves, the intricacy and baroque nature of their works, is emphasised in a narrative style which otherwise feels very spare and clean. There’s a grandeur in the Dwarven city, but also a sense of statis, and Remic manages to tease these out and combine them without overwhelming or browbeating the reader.
The characters are an interesting conundrum. They seem almost designed to fill roles – the axeman, the archer, the assassin, and so on. An adventuring party, off on a dungeon crawl. But the nature of these old heroes, the bonds that tie them together, are inferred and unspoken, and so we get hints of a more complex set of relationships through the cracks in the narrative. There’s moments of sparkling humanity in between the banter and the action. The axeman’s relationship with his ex-fiancée is particularly well done, given a sense of emotional freight and a level of nuance that it would have been nice to see explored further, across all the character relationships. There are other quiet moments between the characters of course, and it seemed like they had a lot of room to grow, if given the chance – hopefully that’s something we might see in later books in the series.
The villains are a mixed bag. There’s a couple who feel a tad flat, more evil-for-the-sake-of-it than anything else. But there’s also a couple with more complex histories, especially once the Dwarven plot gets rolling. Whilst there’s still a lot of evil minions, there overlords have a bit more heft behind them. Much like the heroes, I’m hoping that this level of depth is something we might see strengthened and further explored in any later novels.
That said, the lion’s share of the book, when it’s not sliding character complexity in behind the reader’s back, is the plot. The quest into the mountains, to retrieve a mountain of dwarven gold, is wonderfully self interested. It also, of course, doesn’t go even slightly to plan. Remic manages to pace the opening of the story perfectly, dropping the reader enough context not to feel lost, then ramping up into moments of action which are genuinely gripping. As the text progresses, and the reader picks up more of the world, the action sequences become grander, and the stakes higher.
There’s some great stuff here – Remic’s fight scenes are elaborate, visceral, and gripping. Sometimes it feels like they go a bit overboard – but at the same time, this is a story which knows what it’s providing, and is hitting that mark. There’s sword fights. Bowshot. At one point someone steps on a spine. There’s blood everywhere, and most of the people who get an axe deserve it. The stakes for the characters gradually increase, and Remic certainly had me invested by the end.
The novel as a whole is rapid, unrelenting, gleefully bloody, and happy to occasionally subvert expectations. I’d like to see the characters explored a little more, but was typically distracted by this when someone’s head fell off, or a chase began, or someone did a bit of cool magic, or…well, you get the idea. This is unreformed fantasy, filled with treasure, violence, the odd bit of magic – heroes you can understand, and villains you can hate. It succeeds very well at doing what it wants to do – and I’m hoping it’s going to expand on that as the series continues.
Posted by Chris Meadows at 1:08 AM
THE DRAGON ENGINE by ANDY REMIC
Posted on September 4, 2015 by Bookwraiths
THE DRAGON ENGINE
The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic
Genre: Fantasy — Grimdark
Series: The Blood Dragon Empire #1
Publisher: Angry Robot (September 1, 2015)
Author Information:Website | Twitter
Length: 384 pages
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
If J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin had gotten together to write a grimdark interpretation of The Hobbit, The Dragon Engine would have been what they came up with. Centered upon a quest to dwarven halls filled with mounds of gold and once inhabited by mighty dragons, it is a tale filled with pulse pounding combat, explicit sex, cringe worthy torture, and plenty of vulgar language. Literally, it is a story that gets your attention the simple, old-fashioned way.
loki slap
For lovers of Andy Remic’s The Iron Wolves and The White Towers, this is a continuation of that series in that The Dragon Engine takes place in the same world several years after those stories. The mad King Yoon is still in control, swimming in absolute depravity and allowing the whole Kingdom of Vagandrak to go to hell. Meanwhile, a group of war heroes from the time of Orlana the Changer have grow bored of their fame and riches and determine to set out on one last, grand adventure together. Their destination the frigid, nearly inaccessible Karamakkos, where legends hold that the ancient Dwarven Lords ruled the Five Havens under the mountains, hoarding untold wealth as well as the three Dragon Heads — jewels claimed to grant everlasting life and great power to those who wield them!
Immediately upon starting this one, a long time reader will see that the main characters here are a bit different than those from the Rage of Kings series. Where Kiki and her friends were some of the most despicable pieces of human filth to ever grace the pages of a grimdark, Remic’s latest group isn’t quite so repugnant. Sure, they are still disgruntled war veterans, even though they are wealthy heroes, and they each have their own issues, but not one of them rivals the drug addicted, serial killer excesses of their predecessors. Rather Beetrax the Axe-Man and his friends struggle with more ordinary issues like growing old, loved one dying, relationships ending, and losing the zest for life.
Since this is begins as a classic quest tale, each of the Beetrax’s group seems designed to fill typical dungeon crawler roles. Beetrax is the damage dealer; Lillith is the healer; Talon is an archer; Dake and Jonti experts with the blade . . . You get the point. But it really isn’t the roles they play that makes Beetrax’s gang so fun to read about. Nope, unlike the Iron Wolves, these guys actually seem like old friends. There is plenty of playful banter. Occasionally their conversations will sparkle with feelings, revealing their past history together and the fragile sides of their nature. Old sorrows from romantic splits or new problems from being together will arise and be explored. Each interaction slowly revealing how close, how devoted these old friends are to one another, no matter the danger to themselves.
Every hero needs a villain however. And in today’s literature, it isn’t satisfactory to have nameless enemies or the shadowy of a dragon lying over the horizon. Nope, readers want to get to know their heroes’ nemesis, experience their evilness, and decide for themselves whether they love or hate this person. And so Andy Remic quickly splits the narrative into Beetrax and his friends quest and the life of one Cardinal Skalg of the Church of Hate, religious leader of the Harborym dwarves.
As you’d expect, the dwarves here are fairly standard fantasy versions: strong, stoic, and prejudiced against outsiders. (Beetrax’s group also believes they are long-extinct, which is why they are on their way to collect their long used and forgotten treasures.) Skalg, however, is an especially vile avatar of his race. Maybe, his maiming, torturing, and killing doesn’t reach Orlana the Changer levels, but he is still a fairly disgusting dwarf, no way around it, willing to rape innocent girls or do anything else to get what he wants. And his bad qualities only grow as the political struggle between himself and King Irlax of the dwarves grow. For, you see, in this kingdom under the mountains, king and cardinal are equal; each tasked with different things, but fated to eternally clash about everything. Skalg and Irlax’s constant bickering and machinations quickly growing into a societal revolution that will see either the crown or the church consumed in its flames.
Once our heroes arrive under the mountains and encounter Skalg’s dwarves is where the grimdark really shows up in our grimdark story, for the initial encounters are graphic, brutal affairs. Cruel, painful, cringe worthy even. In fact, many readers might believe Remic has gone too far in some cases, that these episodes are merely for shock value alone. I can understand why some would feel that way (even if I saw the horrible events fitting into the narrative), and I felt I should, at least, warn prospective readers about this section.
Thereafter follows a deluge of death, destruction, and betrayal as Remic concludes this opening chapter of The Blood Dragon Empire in classic grimdark style. Climatic clashes occur. Combat rages. Characters and civilizations end. And the real meaning of the dragon engine comes into focus, ending this first installment with a cliffhanger that will make grimdark lovers begin clamoring for the next book.
Since beginning to read Andy Remic, I’ve come to appreciate two things about his writing. One, he has a raw, visceral style that slaps you right in the face. No sugar coating the vulgar nature of humanity and the horrors of combat and war. No, they are vividly portrayed upon the pages, daring you to look away. Curse words abound. Buckets of blood and gore are tossed around indiscriminately. And, two, he creates vivid characters that never bore. I don’t always like these guys. Many times I actually despise them and want to personally decapitate them, but they definitely evoke a deep emotional cord with me, which means it is never a chore to flip to the next page.
I’d love to be able to sum The Dragon Engine up into a nice paragraph, but I really can’t. (Hey, I did try at the beginning, right?) This book dug its claws into me on so many levels it is hard to isolate what exactly made it a 4 star novel. Perhaps it was the complex but flawed heroes. Maybe the familiar Hobbit-esque quest morphing into a grimdark nightmare did it. The wonderfully paced story and realistic action definitely entertained. No matter the ingredients though, Remic casted a spell with this one, and if you haven’t experienced his take on grimdark, you really should give this one a try.
Angry Robot and Netgalley provided this book to me for free in return for an honest review. The review above was not paid for or influenced in any way by any person, entity or organization, but is my own personal opinions.
My Kingdom For a Horse: The Iron Wolves by Andy Remic
David Moran
Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:00pm 3 comments Favorite This
At first I thought it was me. I couldn’t understand the sensations I experienced as I read through Andy Remic’s new novel, The Iron Wolves, the first book of his Rage of Kings series. It took me quite a long time—it was somewhere around the third gushing artery or fourth shattered nose—to realize that I was reading a book written in a foreign language.
Story-wise the novel is reasonably apprehensible. Years before the events depicted herein there was a Battle-of-Thermopylae-esque showdown at the Pass of Splintered Bones (and if you’re going to have a grisly, violent showdown, that sounds like the right place to do it), between the forces of evil, represented by the wizard Morkagoth and his mud-orcs, and the forces of not-evil, represented by the military company known as the Iron Wolves.
In the end, the Iron Wolves emerged as victors and legendary heroes. The political and historical landscapes of this fantasy world are unaddressed in the narrative, but I am going to assume Wolves’ victory is supposed to be understood as having been a good thing. Though I tend to be of the opinion you must ask what political grievances the orcs had that were not solvable through diplomacy.
As this tale begins, a sorceress named Orlana the Horse Lady stalks the land, using her magic to create a vast army of twisted animal men, mostly by merging horses with their riders and creating weird body-horror centaurs, but on occasion also turning men into weird slavering Ron Perlmans. Orlana marches her army on Vagandrak, where King Yoon is busy doing all the debauched behaviors you typically do when you’re a mad king.
Old General Dalgoran goes about putting the band back together, seeking out the Iron Wolves for one last hurrah. There’s a bit of Magnificent Seven or Dirty Dozen thrown in—though maybe the most apt comparison is the menagerie of meatballs grimacingly assembled in The Expendables—as the Wolves turn out to be a ragtag band of dissipated misfits, drug addicts, pimps, and gamblers, all difficult to rouse. But somehow they pull it together and ride out together once more. As the Iron Wolves return once more to the Pass of Splintered Bones, they find themselves outnumbered approximately 100,000 to 1, under the rule of a blundering Hannibal Lecter as played by Robin Williams, and fighting against an army of what are basically just scary horses.
The Iron Wolves is pulp fantasy. And I like pulp fantasy, but this is extra pulp. This is a bucket of hot, wet, bloody pulp. It is grimdark to the max. That the word “grimdark” is not infrequently used to describe Remic’s prose, but describes also a particularly violent genre of fanfiction is perhaps not coincidental. There are some ineffable qualities of “bookness” that you expect the stories you read to possess, and when a book lacks these one can only be puzzled at the fact that the thing in your hands is, in fact, a book. You can see it is with your eyes.
Remic’s writing has the shambolic violence and gearstuck pottymouth of Quentin Tarantino but unfortunately none of the humor, sensitivity to character, or formal playfulness. And while he’s clearly reaching for a sprawling, interconnected web of multi-character personal strands in the vein of George R. R. Martin, the only parts of that toolkit he’s really comfortable with are the parts where characters get horribly tortured from time to time. Two thirds of the way through the book the reader is still being introduced to brand new main characters, and still struggling to distinguish those introduced already.
I’m not sure I can say whether I liked or disliked this book. And by that I don’t mean I’m conflicted or indecisive on the subject, I mean it’s maybe not an answerable question. There are books that you think are bad books, and there are books that may or not be bad books but are simply for an audience different from yourself, and then there are books so alienated from your experience and expectation as a reader that it’s difficult to even imagine how they can be approached. This book is like that. This book does not speak my language.
Like the vast phalanges of book reviewers who for hours sullenly stared at a blank page trying to imagine something meaningful they could say about Fifty Shades of Grey after it became a blockbuster hit too big to ignore, I find myself in the position of having to review an almost foreign work without a translator. As with Fifty Shades, the reviewer is rendered almost irrelevant in the equation, the discernment (one hopes) one has developed and honed to a keen edge is like a scalpel brought to a gun fight.
This is not so much to mourn once more, tediously, the death of the book, nor to eulogize its gatekeepers. There is and always has been a place for folk art, which, in effect, is what this is. That place is probably not in the canon, unfortunately, but who reads the canon anymore really. I do look forward to the day when the bestseller lists are mostly dominated by Supernatural slashfic and a random assortment of creepypasta, though I will understand most of those about as much as I truly understood The Iron Wolves. I think every reader needs occasional encouragement to get down off their high horse.
The Iron Wolves is available now from Angry Robot.
Review: The Iron Wolves by Andy Remic
ON 10 FEBRUARY 2014 BY MIKEIN BOOKS, FANTASY, REVIEWS
The Iron Wolves by Andy Remic | Angry Robot, 2013
I went into The Iron Wolves with the expectation that it wouldn’t be exactly my cup of tea. I’ve been feeling a bit burned out on the whole “grimdark” thing and I figured The Iron Wolves would continue that trend. Much to my surprise I found Remic’s latest fantasy novel to be an engaging, almost hypnotic, opus of foul sorcery and violence. I mean that in the best way possible. The Iron Wolves, a titular squad of heroes have since disbanded and most have fallen on hard times. Of course, there is trouble brewing as the sorcerers creature Orlana the Changer has flesh-crafted horrific creatures to serve her and has set about raising an army of vicious Mud Orcs. So it is that the Iron Wolves are needed once again.
Listen if you don’t like the whole grimdark think I don’t think The Iron Wolves isn’t going to change your mind. Few, if any, of the characters (heroes included) are very likable. This isn’t a book about nice things being done my nice people. This is a book about violent things being done by violent people. It isn’t as nuanced as Glen Cook’s Black Company nor is does it have the humor of Joe Abercrombie. However, if you love the grim and gritty and found yourself longing for fantasy fiction reminiscent of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber then really The Iron Wolves is well worth your time.
There is an energy and vitality to the prose in The Iron Wolves that makes some of it’s weaknesses a bit easy to swallow. Remic is a very kinetic writer and his action scenes have a visceral punch; the man can absolutely paint a strikingly vivid set piece from a ridiculously tall Tower of Babel type structure built on the Emperor’s orders to the subterranean lair of a psychopathic serial killer. Even the novel’s opening seen as The Iron Wolves leader Kiki defends herself against members of the City Guard has a certain visual flair that absolutely compelling to read. If you like violent action written well The Iron Wolves is definitely right up your alley.
That being said Remic is less adept at fleshing out the world of The Iron Wolves and nowhere is that more evident than in both the group themselves (the titular Iron Wolves) and in the novel’s closing chapters. The world feels very much like a blank slate and elements of the story, especially the novel’s conclusion, reads more like deus ex machina than the revelation it is likely intended to be. While the Iron Wolves do a lot of cool and exciting things over the course of the novel I can’t really tell you so anything about where they did it or about the culture that produced them.
In the end The Iron Wolves is a gritty, violent, action fantasy that works as a stand alone novel. However, as the opening novel to a series I am not quite sure it works quite as well. There is a lot of potential in The Iron Wolves and the world it depicts but much of it unrealized and while the remainder is certainly exciting it doesn’t feel fleshed out enough to work in the long run. If you like your fantasy really really dark wherein the only vibrant color is blood red than you should definitely give The Iron Wolves a shot.
THE IRON WOLVES BY ANDY REMIC – REVIEW [LORD OF THE NIGHT]
APRIL 01, 2014 LORD OF THE NIGHT NO COMMENTS
A simple cover, but one that will go nicely with the second book that completes the image.
Lord of the Night reviews the brutal and epic first novel in the Rage of Kings series, The Iron Wolves, by David Gemmell Legend Award nominated author Andy Remic.
“A high-octane dark fantasy adventure filled with broken heroes, sociopathic villains, hideous monsters and the horrors of dark magick. A must-read for any fans of brutal and uncompromising fantasy.” – Lord of the Night @ The Founding Fields
Andy Remic is an author that i’ve been a fan of ever since I discovered the epic Clockwork Vampire Chronicles, and when I found out he was writing another fantasy series about a group of ex-soldiers called back into service, I was intrigued. Sadly there were no vachines, a machine-vampire for those who aren’t familiar with his work, but instead Remic creates a whole new world, albeit with some overlap with the CVC world, and fills it with the most unlikely heroes possible, villains that will make your stomach turn and a story that I enjoyed from start to finish. Admittedly Remic’s writing style is violent, very very violent, and this means that not everybody will enjoy it, but it’s all down to your taste, and I for one really enjoyed The Iron Wolves and found it not only to be full of exciting action and dark humour, but also some impressive character development and surprising story twists.
Thirty years ago the legendary Iron Wolves saved the land of Vagandrak from the Mud-Orc hordes of the sorcerer Morkagoth, and became heroes across the land. But that was then and this is now. The dreaded Orlana the Changer has escaped from the Chaos Halls and has created an army of the deviant Splices, but even these monsters are not enough and soon the Mud-Orcs are returned to rape, pillage and kill in her name. Only the Iron Wolves can save Vagandrak once more, but as the aged General Dalgoran sets off to find these living legends he starts to find out that the Iron Wolves themselves have fallen far from the heroes they used to be, and that the legends have been exaggerated. Now broken by the world, the Iron Wolves must find the heroes within themselves to save the day once again. But maybe, they were never truly heroes to begin with.
The story in Iron Wolves feels like both a part of a wider story and it’s own self-contained one, the former more than the latter. The key premise of the story is the re-uniting of the Iron Wolves and putting them back into battle once more, and while it does also focus on the current invasion of Vagandrak by the Mud-Orcs and Orlana the Changer, I felt that the book was primarily about the characters of the Iron Wolves, the fallen men and women that were once heroes and have now become either outright villains or shells of what they once were, and showing how they work to become heroes once again and find salvation. But things are never that simple and as the plot proceeds along the secrets of the wolves begin to come out, and we learn a great deal more about what happened thirty years ago and we gain hints as to what is truly happening now. Remic doesn’t rely on a great deal of exposition to reveal secrets, rather allowing twists and surprises to come out when they are most natural in the flow of the story. While not everything is explained fully, likely we’ll learn more in future installments of the series, Remic reveals enough to make sure that the story told in this book is understandable while holding enough back that we feel compelled to read the next book, at least that’s how I feel.
The characters are, at first glance, a collection of scum, villains and madmen. Remic doesn’t rely on the traditional idea of fantasy heroes, instead he goes as far from that as possible. The cursed Iron Wolves are a drug addict haunted by her dead sister, a whoremaster burning with bitterness and betrayal, two brothers as likely to kill each other as they are the enemy, a woman scorned with murder in her heart, and a sadistic torturer obsessed with fire. But as the story goes on we learn more and more about these characters and see that each one of them has hidden depths and the things in their lives that made them what they are in the story, and each and every one becomes a deeper and more sympathetic character for it. One in particular, the character Trista, at first I thought she was scum but by the end of the story I pitied her as her tragic story actually felt like something that could happen to a real woman. The villains do not disappoint either, the antagonist Orlana the Changer to me felt like an extremely disturbing creature who oozed unnaturalness and malevolence on every page she was in. She looked human, but right from the start it was clear she wasn’t one. And the insane King Yoon actually did feel like an insane character, someone whose actions couldn’t be predicted, which made his scenes quite tense right from his first appearance. If you are looking for white knights and honorable heroes, you won’t find them here, but you’ll find something a lot more interesting. Flawed men and women, looking for a second chance.
A simple cover, but one that will go nicely with the second book that completes the image.
A simple cover, but one that will go nicely with the second book that completes the image.
The action scenes are glorious, Remic writes brutal and epic battles as well as he does personal fights and intimate duels. The gore and brutality in battle are not shied away from when Remic writes, especially the battle scenes at Desekra which were great fun. Each and every scene is choreographed wonderfully, making it abundantly clear to the reader what is happening and how, and allowing the reader to picture clearly the soldiers of Vagandrak battling against the Mud-Orcs and the deranged Splices. But the scenes are also believable and Remic is careful to make the Iron Wolves powerful without being ultimately powerful, and by the end we get to see a lot of them in battle and in ways that I never saw coming and was stunned by. The final confrontation of the book was nothing short of epic and was a great way to close off the book’s battle scenes. One thing that I really enjoyed was that Remic has his characters use all kinds of weapons, including one character whose fists and forehead are as dangerous as any sword, and that each character fights differently in accordance with their weapons; Kiki who moves like a dancer of death with a sword, Zartaste and Trista whose rapier and knives combo made them feel like the fastest of the group, and Narnok whose powerful presence and battle-axe was a nice contrast with the rest of the group.
The pacing of the book is quite good. Admittedly the book does feel quite fast, Remic starts the blood and battle right off the bat with no time wasted, and as the Iron Wolves reassemble we get POV switches from numerous secondary and antagonistic characters to move the main story along. The book is fast-paced and I think that is fitting as we move from one battle to another, even the travelling scenes are action-packed which I loved because travel scenes are 99% of the time the most boring parts of a book, whereas the travelling scenes in this book were some of the best because they took the Wolves into strange, mysterious and terrifying places. The world that Remic builds here is a very interesting one, and rather than explain all of it’s history/rules/etc in info-dump paragraphs, he lets what is necessary come out through the story and what is not be left in the background for later. And somethings that don’t need explaining, I.e the Furnace and the Hall of Heroes, are not given explanations because it’s obvious what they are. There is some overlap with the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles world but only in some little ways, the world in Iron Wolves feels a bit closer to High Fantasy but with a wicked dark fantasy twist. Mud-Orcs, Elf-Rats, Horse-Wolf-Men Splices and all the other horrors that appear in the book or will appear in the next one, it really feels like a world covered in Remic’s signature. The only flaw in the layout of the book is that quite often the paragraph breaks that are used to switch scenes or POVs in books did not have the double-line space to mark them, which made the scene and POV switches feel abrupt and crushed together, hopefully that will be corrected in the next book.
My favourite quote, without a doubt it’s this one that made me laugh for quite a bit, though it makes more sense and is funnier in context;
“YEAH! THAT’S THE SOUND YOUR SISTER MAKES WHEN I GIVE IT HER GOOD!”
The ending is surprising to say the least, and it sets up part of the next novel very nicely. The Iron Wolves is, in my opinion, part one of a wider story and because of that feels a bit more like reading part of a much larger novel than reading a self-contained one that happens to be part of a trilogy. The best way I can say it is that the book focuses more on a wider series story than a single one per novel. Some may not like that but I find it to be a different experience and one that makes reading a whole series much more rewarding and engaging when you have them all together. Remic leaves some plot-strands in the novel unexplained and unfinished, and likely those are what the next book will explore in more detail as the story of the Iron Wolves continues. The only thing that bothered me about the ending was that it felt a bit too easy for that one protagonist to do what she did, but since things are far from finished hopefully we’ll learn more about what exactly happened there and what it means for the characters.
For a great story that promises to be a part of something bigger and greater, flawed and fascinating characters that are far more than they appear on the surface, and the visceral and uncompromising action scenes that Remic does so well, I give The Iron Wolves a score of 8.4/10. This is a book that I would recommend to any fan of dark fantasy or epic fantasy in general, hopefully you will find something you’ll quite enjoy here. However that said, Remic’s style is very bloody and he doesn’t hold back when it comes to violence and gore, so if you are squeamish about those things or you don’t care for large degrees of them, I don’t think you’d enjoy The Iron Wolves. But I think that to be sure you should try and read some extracts or ask a friend who may have read it for their opinion, taste is after all subjective and The Iron Wolves may be something you will like once you really get into it. The series will be continuing later this year with The White Towers, a book I cannot wait to read and review for myself, i’m not sure how many books will be in the series but hopefully it’ll be a fair few.
That’s it for this review, thanks very much for reading. Until next time,
AVE DOMINUS NOX!
Book Review: The Iron Wolves by Andy Remic
The Iron Wolves by Andy Remic
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of The Rage of Kings
Publisher: Angry Robot
Date of Publication: December 31, 2013
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars – “Full of unlimited energy and madness, this book is perfect for readers looking for a stronger, headier kick to their epic fantasy; fans of bloody battles and gritty anti-heroes are in for a real treat”
I have not had the pleasure of reading Andy Remic’s Clockwork Vampire Chronicles yet, but hearing about how those books have earned the author the nickname “Tarantino of epic fantasy” has gotten me mighty curious. Being compared to the great QT is high praise indeed! How then could I possibly say no to The Iron Wolves?
This book has it all: bloody fight scenes and explosive battles, psychopathic villains and twisted, gritty anti-heroes. Oh, and mud-orcs. Mustn’t forget the mud-orcs. Needless to say, I am happy to report that Andy Remic’s title is well-deserved; we’re talking no-holds-barred dark fantasy, of the faint-of-heart-need-not-apply variety. We’re talking graphic violence, explicit sex scenes, and a truly astounding number of decapitations within these blood-soaked pages.
If this sounds like your kind of novel, then you’re in for a real treat. Andy Remic has taken the classic “gather your party and go forth on a quest of epic proportions” objective, and so generously wrapped it all up for us in a nice grim package. To stop an invading army of horrors, the great general Dalgoram sets out across the land to reunite his band of veteran warriors for one last stand. Having been estranged for years, the members of the Iron Wolves have all either fallen on hard times or have turned to lives of deviance and corruption. But together again, they find they can transform their shared curse into something so much more.
By the way, my description of “twisted, gritty anti-heroes” was in no way an exaggeration. With perhaps the exception of the old man Dalgoran, I was hard pressed to name a single admirable soul in this group of vile, despicable Iron Wolves. But that’s what I signed up for so I can’t complain too much, especially since Remic delivers exactly what was promised. The only downside I could see to this is finding enough to set some of these characters apart, which gets a little difficult when almost all of them are defined by broken pasts, foul mouths and violent tendencies.
Also as I’ve noted before, at times a novel’s “epicness” can be something of a double-edged sword, as it can do a number on pacing. This story stumbles a bit due to the sheer size of the cast and their multiple points of view, especially when a couple more Iron Wolves are still being added to the mix at about two-thirds of the way through the book. As maniacal as they are, I wish we’d gotten a chance to know Zastarte and Trista a bit better, though I think this will mean a much smoother ride for the next installment now that the scene has been set and all the introductions have been made.
Speaking of which, I’m excited about book two, and if you’d seen that ending, you would be too. I have to say I felt the final showdown scene was over way too quickly, though this probably had less to do with the pacing and more to do with how much I enjoyed the climax and conclusion. Andy Remic is in his element when it comes to writing big battles and fight scenes, and he graces this book with a lot of them. It would be easy but disingenuous to brush them all off as an excuse to provide gratuitous violence, because I actually found many of the scenes of war and fighting to flow and fit exceedingly well within the context of the story.
After all, this is The Iron Wolves, folks. A great choice for readers looking for a stronger, headier kick to their heroic fantasy, just remember to steel yourselves for the unlimited energy and madness this book will unleash upon your lives!
3.5 of 5 stars
A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
SIM BY ANDY REMIC BOOK REVIEW [DJINN24]
JANUARY 30, 2012 LARRY 'DJINN24' KILLIAN NO COMMENTS
sim_cover-final-july2011-500
Larry Killian reviews SIM by Andy Remic, a fast paced science fiction eBook set in the future, published by Anarchy Books.
Reading SIM is like reading Robocop meets Ash from Evil Dead. ~The Founding Fields
I just finished this book and I have to say I have not been more confused, excited, and thrilled about a book in a long while. Maybe confused is a bad word to describe how I feel about this book. There are things that I am still do not understand about the story, but that did not detract from what I read, and honestly makes me want to read it again! The story is about a war vet turned into a government police officer, only known as Justice D through out the book. One day while out on a mission in the dregs hunting the humans who are breaking LAW by going against the GOV Justice D’s life is saved by a little cat with green eyes that he takes it home and names Emmy short for emerald because of her green eyes.
Justice D is a drug addict, using it to see colors, since humans eyes do not work and have to be replaced by eyes that only see in black and white, to relax, and to sleep but he notices the more he is around his new cat Emmy, the less he is having to use narcos. While owning a pets in his world is frowned upon, he does not car, as the cat becomes his closest friend. Everything seems to be going quite well until a doctor discovers that dog are the cause of human blindness, and whats worse the disease, called canker, is mutating and getting worse. But Justice D is not bothered but this news as long as no one messes with his Emmy!
I have to say this was an awesome book to read, at times you could guess where the book was going, but that is fine, how you got there is a total mind trip of carnage, explosions, death, and love for ones pet. Its like when you are on a road trip with your buddies, you know you are going to Florida, but you have no idea the crazy stuff you are going to get into on the way down there. You really start to root for Justice D early in the book but by the middle you can not wait to see what in the heck he is going to do next in his psychotic trip through sociopath-ville. The book kept me on the edge of my seat, the definition of a page turner. I read it in 3 sittings as I did not want to put it down, sleep finally winning out and forcing me to put the book down. The action is fast passed but it still tells the story of what is happening well. The plot keeps up it space pretty much through out the entire book but takes some serious lefts and rights all throughout the book to keep you on your toes, guessing or trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
I think Andy did a great job of putting the story together, painting Justice D as the psychotic bastard he turns into. The action scene paint a nice sick picture of what is happening in the story as he is sweeping his way across the land and as the story is being told. Several times the only thing that kept me from thinking the book was about to end was the fact that there where pages left in the book.
While the book was a great read there where several things that I found to detract from the book. I think more time could have been used explaining the interaction between Emmy and Justice D. There was an insanely strong bond between the two characters but I do not know if enough was told as to why he was so hooked on his cat. I have been told, even though that this book is not part of a series, that is continues from previous books which left me, as a new reader wondering why some things happened the way that they did.
I would highly recommend this book with a slight warning: this book is NOT kid friendly, the language and violence was rough and coarse. But this did not detract me from reading the book, but to let you know there is some graphic sexual scenes, graphic violence, and quite a few curse words.
Overall I would give this book a 7.5/10
SIM
by ANDY REMIC
Released Friday 26th August by Anarchy Books
321 pages
SIM, an EBOOK original novel by ANDY REMIC, author of Spiral, Quake, Warhead, War
Machine, Biohell, Hardcore, Cloneworld, Theme Planet, Kell’s Legend, Soul
Stealers, Vampire Warlords and Serial Killers Incorporated.
Check out www.andyremic.com.
DEC
19
REVIEW: Serial Killers Incorporated by Andy Remic
Serial Killers Incorporated by Andy Remic
Publishing Information: Kindle Edition
Publisher: Anarchy Books; 25 March 2011
ISBN 10: 1908328045
ISBN 13: 978-1908328045
ASIN: B004TTX5SM
Series: Book One
Copy: Provided by Author
Reviewer: Tyson
Synopsis: "Meet Callaghan, a hard-drinking, drug-fuelled, womanising no-good son-of-a-bitch. He's the amoral hardcore photographer for Black & White, the tabloid rag that tells it as it is. Or at least, how it should be.
Callaghan's in way too deep with Mia, his Mexican stripper girlfriend... and even deeper with Sophie, estranged wife to Vladimir "Vodka" Katchevsy, infamous Romanian gun-runner and self-eulogising expert at human problem solving. People start to die. And Callaghan's caught in the middle. A situation even his Porsche GT3, Canary Wharf Penthouse suite and corrupt politician contacts can't solve.
At the nadir of his downward spiral, Callaghan is approached by a man: a serial killer who brings him a very unique and dangerous proposition..."
It is no secret that I am a fan of Remic's work. He does a great job of creating very visceral scenes and situations. Not to mention in his latest novel he takes a new direction and goes for a well done mystery. There is a lot of murder and mayhem in Serial Killers Incorporated. In fact, the mystery is what made it such a hit for me. Remic is known for his Clockwork Vampire trilogy (Kell's Legend and Soul Stealers reviews), which is in a similar vein to Gemmell and his military sci-fi novels which I have yet to get to. With this novel we see a different side of him, and it is a side that I want more of.
Callaghan is not the most likable character. He likes designer drugs, fast women, and fast cars. To make matters worse he is part of the paparazzi. He finds the recently deceased and takes the pictures that end up on the front page of London's most successful tabloid. While he is very self-centered in the beginning, he does show some signs of becoming more human towards the end of the book, and maybe something else. The people he surrounds himself are not very likable either. From the married woman he is seeing on the side to his estranged stripper girlfriend. Things get even more strange when he is approached by a serial killer with a job. To document and report on the killers' activities.
The story takes place in modern day England. Callaghan and his report friend do there best to uncover the underbelly of the streets of London and beyond. Of course Callaghan and his buddy do very well for themselves and live a lifestyle most would only dream of. Between his stable of exotic cars and motorcycles and bevy of beauties, Callaghan is lost. He is constantly finding himself on the wrong side of trouble and barely squeezing by when he gets out of each scrape.
As the story progresses things are not as they seem and Remic does a great job of hiding the truth from the reader, while at the same time building up suspense and ratcheting up the action. Just when you think you have all of the pieces figured out and the book is coming to a close, Serial Killers Incorporated throws you for a major curve. To tell you would spoil the entire book. The book also leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions. Which admittedly, I liked. It could be read as standalone, but rumor has it that Remic has the next book outlined and ready to go once he finds the time to work on it. I for one, am very glad to hear there will be a sequel. Serial Killers Incorporated is Remic at his best. If this does not make you a fan, I don't know what will. Highly recommended, the perfect stocking stuffer.
Plot 9/10
Characters 9/10
Style 9.5/10
Overall 9.5/10
Posted 19th December 2011 by Tyson Mauermann
Serial Killers Incorporated by Andy Remic
Written by Mystery Sequels on June 4, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Serial Killers Incorporated by Andy RemicSerial Killers Incorporated by Andy Remic
Published 2013
Genres: Horror, Paranormal Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 481
Source: Purchased
Buy On Amazon
three-half-stars
Serial Killers Incorporated is the first book in a new series by the author Andy Remic. Currently it looks like a standalone, however it has big chances of being turned into a supernatural thriller series.
To be honest, I find it quite difficult to review it, not even sure where to start. I liked it, could have loved it, but I found it way too strange and confusing for my taste. Even now that I finished the book, I’m not quite sure what exactly did I read and who were indeed the main characters.
The story is about Callaghan, a very wealthy guy who literally wastes his life away on purpose by drinking, smoking, having relationships with married women, being a paparazzi of the worst kind, driving only fast cars, using the f word way too much, and just not caring much about the world he inhabits. He is a very unlikable character, at least at the beginning. One of those guys that you invariably think are a waste for this planet.
Things start to change, however, when some extremely sadistic murders occur whereby the killer involves Callahan in his killings for some strange reason. Volos, the serial killer has a special place for Callahan in his large scheme of things, he has chosen him for a very specific purpose and won’t let go of his target, involving him every step of the way.
Soon things become really dire for Callaghan, who is now not only “admired” and pestered by a truly vicious serial killer, but also chased by Vladimir “Vodka” Katchevsy, the husband of the woman he has an affair with, a Romanian mafia guy who takes no prisoners if you happens to get into his bad side.
Soon Callahan has to made a decision that will change his life. It is not an easy decision and it’s made most of desperation than anything else, but it seems that it’s the only way for him to finally grow up and behave less than the spoil kid he thinks he is, and more like the man he is.
There is lots (and really lots) of action in this book, suspense is a killer and there are hardly any moments where something violent is not happening. The killings are truly gruesome and you should make sure you are not eating when reading the book (I made the mistake of reading while having my breakfast – big mistake). The bodies are viciously savaged in a way that not even the CSI TV series can come up with.
By the end of the book I realized that nobody is what they initially seem – with the exception of Callahan himself. Everyone has some big secrets that they keep hidden from Callahan, and poor guy seems to have lived a life of lies – at least concerning his friends and loved ones.
I am not even sure what genre to classify Serial Killers Incorporated into – thriller for sure, murder mystery for sure, but with a hint of supernatural, which was more apparent towards the end of the book. I’m sure if there is a second novel in the series, the supernatural aspect will be more predominant, but right now all was too confusing as it were.
I enjoyed reading the book, in fact for themost of the part I couldn’t put it down. However I didn’t “enjoy” it as much as other novels. There was a sick pull to keep reading, although I was cringing at every swear word (and boy there are many of those, especially the “f” word) on every page.
When I finally finished the book, it was like a heavy stone lifted from my chest. I was glad to have read it. Probably I’ll buy the second one when it comes out, only to see if I was right about the supernatural aspect of it and what will really become of Callahan, but I’ll be definitely not pushing the author to come out with the second book NOW.
Btw, the author should really research better the names, as Vladimir Katchevsky is definitely not Romanian, it’s Russian. Having lived in Romania for the first 20 years of my life, I’ve never heard this name before (sure Vlad is common, although not so much used with its full name ‘Vladimir”, but not with the Katchevsky last name, which not Romanian at all). And vodka nickname? C’mon that’s again as Russian as it goes…if the author said ‘tuica’, I might have bought it…
Overall a good read, if on the heavier side, especially if you like books that remind you of “sick”, and I don’t mean here hospitals and ailments.
To read more about Serial Killers Incorporated or get the book, head over to Amazon.
Vampire Warlords by Andy Remic
PUBLISHED APRIL 22, 2011 | BY PABLOCHEESECAKE
They came from the North, and the land fell.
Kell’s resistance is driving the fiends from the land.
But now a far greater power has come into play.
Please note this review contains some minor spoilers if you have not read the first two parts of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles.
I have thought about this long and hard and I have come to a shocking conclusion – I hate Andy Remic. Why? Because he is just such a supremely talented sod. He has proven that he can turn his hand to science fiction, horror and fantasy. As an aside – I have a sneaking suspicion that he is attempting to become the king of all genre fiction. Every time I think he can’t possibly top his last literary effort he goes ahead and does just that. Recently I read and reviewed Serial Killers Incorporated, and was impressed with its dark brutality. A scant few weeks has passed and he has yet another novel ready to assault the senses of an unsuspecting public.
The latest addition to his ever-growing canon of work, Vampire Warlords, is the third book in The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. This novel picks up the story in the aftermath of the cliffhanger that occurs at the end of book two, Soul Stealers. General Graal has succeeded in unleashing the warlords but they are not interested in doing his bidding. Various power struggles erupt and this leads to an all out war.
Kuradek the Unholy, Meshwar the Violent and Bhu Vanesh, the titular vampire warlords, are fantastic creations and prior to their introduction into the series, the main villains of the piece where The Vachine. Though I enjoyed the clockwork vampires’ particular brand of evil, I always wanted them be a bit less civilized and a bit more raw and savage. The warlords achieve this and then some. They really are vile, nasty, arrogant creatures. Whole populations are decimated under their vicious rein of terror. By the point where Kell confronts them all you will be cheering for him to tear them apart.
The core relationship between Kell and his now long suffering companion Saark is still a joy to read. They bicker and curse but it is obvious that there is a grudging respect between the two warriors. Kell remains as stony faced as ever, and Saark is still an outrageous womanising dandy, but the two have become genuine friends over the course of their travels.
While Kell the man is old and tired, Kell the warrior is a force of nature. The battles he fights in are vivid, bloody affairs. The vampire warlords face off against albino armies, Vachine, convicts and retired soldiers. Andy Remic’s writing style lends itself well to the almost hypnotic flow of action. There are dismemberments and amputations galore, and hardly a page goes by that isn’t drenched in blood. Kell strides through this all like an angry berserker god.
I was also pleased to finally discover more of Kell’s backstory and to read about the Days of Blood and the origins of Illana, his blood magick infused axe. This has always been hinted at in the previous novels but this time out, the reader gets some real insight into Kell’s history.
The legend of Kell may have started out as a homage to the work of David Gemmell but I’m pleased to see that it has surpassed that and become something more. The characters are memorable and the action is as good as it gets. The Vampire Warlords is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. I certainly hope that I get the opportunity to read more of Kell and Saark’s adventures in the future.
Damn your black heart Remic! You and your intensely compulsive, darker than dark fantasy.
Vampire Warlords is published by Angry Robot Books and is due for release on 5th May 2011.
QUOTE:
Remic lays it all on the line and the end result is a surprisingly touching novel lurking under all that cartoonish violence.
THURSDAY, 25 AUGUST 2011
‘Vampire Warlords’ – Andy Remic (Angry Robot)
Without going into too much detail about my life right now (I mean, you’re here for the books... right?) I’m absolutely shattered right now and very much looking forward to a long deserved holiday. It’s not here yet but it’s so close that I can almost taste it. As far as my reading goes, this tiredness has meant that I’ve either been looking at comfort reads or books that will wake me up with their sheer energy. A shot of genre Red Bull if you will :o)
Andy Remic’s ‘Clockwork Vampire Chronicles’ is by no means a comfort read (seriously, check out my reviews for ‘Kell’s Legend’ and ‘Soul Stealers’), and I’ve had my issues with the first two books, but the series thus far has never failed to wake me up and get me moving. I have to wonder where Remic gets all that energy from for his novels, I want some of it!
When I saw that monster of a cliff-hanger scene at the end of ‘Soul Stealers’, there was no doubt that I would be around to see how things ended in ‘Vampire Warlords’. Given what happens in those final few pages there’s no way that it could end well... could it? Well, we’re talking about Kell here so that in itself should give you some ideas about how it all ends; in a tide of blood and severed limbs...
The Vampire Warlords walk the earth once more, summoned to be slaves of the Vachine but far too powerful to ever obey the commands of a lesser species. There is a world out there to be conquered and remade in their own image; the three Vampire Warlords cannot wait to get started.
As city after city falls to the newly birthed vampire hordes it becomes all too clear that the only person who stands any chance of stopping the Warlords is the axe man Kell. Kell may well be beginning to doubt himself but there is still enough strength in his arms to take up his axe for one final push at an enemy he has been fighting for almost his entire life. It’s not just the vampires that Kell has to worry about though, another army is marching out of the north and an enemy thought long dead is finally beginning to stir once more. Could these late developments be too much even for Kell? One thing is for sure; while Kell is still standing the fight isn’t over yet...
‘Vampire Warlords’ brings the first arc of Kell’s adventures to a close with things left open enough for more books to come (in the interview at the back of the book, Remic confirms that he plans to write more about the adventures of Kell and Saark). It’s all done in fine style as well with a series of climactic events that leave you in no doubt where things stand not only for Kell but for the land as a whole. We’re talking about the kind of book where you finish the last few chapters at such a rush that you have to remember to take a breath. Well, I did anyway.
‘Vampire Warlords’ does suffer some of the problems that I saw in the previous two books. Reading the book, I got the impression that Remic was basically saying, ‘you should know what I’m about with this series by now and you’ve come this far, just go with the flow and keep reading’. I think this approach is fair enough to an extent, writers should be able to set their stall out and let the readers decide for themselves whether they carry on reading or not.
Having said that though, ‘Vampire Warlords’ ended up suffering for the same kind of reasons that the last two books did. What I read was a book that sought to define itself as ‘gritty’ by being a book with more swear words in it than any other. Seriously, I defy you to find a book that swears at its readers more. The thing is though, copious swearing doesn’t make a book ‘gritty’ in tone, it’s just a book with a lot of swear words in it... This is a real shame as Remic does a lot of work in other areas that makes the book a very gritty read indeed (more on that in a bit) but the overload of swear words gives the proceedings a comedic air where there really shouldn’t be one. There is also that sense of enemies being lined up just so Kell can kill them and move on, an approach that has made the pacing stumble in past reads.
Despite all that though, ‘Vampire Warlords’ is the best read of the bunch and for very good reason.
Despite having a cast of characters who will use ten swear words where only one is needed, ‘Vampire Warlords’ is a dark and very gritty read to the extent where I found myself sucked into that darkness just to see if there was any light at the end of it. Remic has spent the last two books raising the stakes for Kell and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse... it does. The Vampire Warlords are vicious individuals, even by Remic’s standards, and he doesn’t leave any stone unturned in showing us just what life is like in their cities under their rule. Squeamish readers might want to skip those pages...
A tough world just got a whole lot tougher and characters are faced with hard decisions that they cannot ignore. Remic lays it all on the line and the end result is a surprisingly touching novel lurking under all that cartoonish violence.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Kell himself, a character moving out of the shadow of Gemmell’s Druss and becoming an engaging character in his own right. Kell is not only faced with the fight at hand but also the terrible mistakes that he has made in the past and must find some way of dealing with this all at once. The way in which he manages (whilst taking on all comers) made me feel more than a little respect for an old warrior trying to do the right thing against all his instincts. I even enjoyed the banter between Kell and Saark in that it signalled a development in their relationship rather than just hurling insults for the sake of it. I’d like to see more books featuring Kell and Saark, just to see where they go next.
If that wasn’t enough, you’ve got Remic’s natural talent for throwing everything (including the kitchen sink) at ‘Vampire Warlords’, resulting in a book that hurtles along at a breakneck pace but never falls over once. You’ve got to admire a writer that can keep control of things like that.
The villains are even bigger than before but Kell isn’t ready to lie down just yet. The resulting clash makes ‘Vampire Warlords’ the best book in the trilogy and the best way for Kell and Saark to bow out, for now...
Eight and a Half out of Ten
Posted by Graeme Flory at 00:46
Monday, 23 May 2011
Vampire Warlords, by Andy Remic – reviewed by Stephen Theaker
The events of a previous book freed the three Vampire Warlords from captivity. While Kell (basically Druss the Legend with a Stormbringer axe) goes on the run to find allies, the ferocious warlords make themselves at home in Jalder, Vor and Gollothrim, eating babies, siring vampire minions, and building ships to spread their curse across the world. Kell's quest will take him to a mountain prison and then the stronghold of his bitterest enemies, accompanied by womanising popinjay and new-made clockwork vampire (and yes, that does seem as silly in the book as you might think – cogs fall out of them when they get injured!) Saark, Kell's granddaughter Nienna, and Myriam, another clockwork vampire.
This is a book that takes a long time to get going, the first half reminding me of nothing so much as the Twilight films, with their interminable chats punctuated by fleeting, very welcome bursts of violence. The journey from Skaringa Dak to the Black Pike Mine prison is essentially a long camping trip, and how much readers enjoy it will depend on how they like the company. Saark and Kell are grudging friends in the buddy cop mould, the one who gets annoyed and the one who is annoying – Gibbs and DiNozzo. But their banter is not as funny as it thinks, and goes on for far too long. "But enough talk, " says Kell at one point, only for the conversation to go on for pages more. By the midpoint of the book I was regularly yelling "Shut up!" at it. But beyond that point it gets better. From the arrival at the prison until the final battles Kell and Saark are often separated, or have more important things to do than bicker.
Kell's plan to recruit warriors from the prisoners is pretty daft – I think the book underestimates the Sariah Gallego factor – and the scene in which he wins them over – like too much of the book – has a distinct whiff of "Will this do?" But in a funny way the sillier the novel got the fonder I became of it. Words are italicised for emphasis in the goofiest way, and there's a definite touch of the Fanthorpes to Andy Remic's writing style: "Kell filled the space. He was vast, a giant, a titan, a god. His face was bathed in shadows, gloom was his mistress, darkness his master, and Kell stood with Ilanna lifted against his chest and Saark felt fear, knew fear, for this was it, the end, his death come so soon and for what?"
Less welcome were the Guy N. Smith style sex scenes: "she shivered in anticipation and thrust herself painfully against him, in need, in lust, and his hands came to rest on her buttocks, firm and hard from so much travelling in the wilds." And some writing that was just plain bad: "You’re carping on like a fishwife on a fish stall selling buckets of fish to rank stinking fishermen" or "The vampires watched in silence, like kicked dogs licking their wounds. Licking their balls." Eh? When faces were ripped off and heads twisted off, when eyes popped out on stalks, the book almost had me – it almost had a purpose – but I couldn't quite forgive it those tedious fireside chats and the perfunctory plotting.
I think the stupider this author's books get, the more outrageous, ludicrous and laughable they become, the more I'll enjoy them, but I couldn't recommend this one unless you've already read every single book Joe Abercrombie has written, or for that matter William King's Gotrek and Felix novels, which have a similar tough guy/dandy relationship at their heart but are much better. About the best I can say of this one is that if you excised the first half of this book you'd be left with a novel Thongor or Kyrik wouldn't be too embarrassed to appear in.
Vampire Warlords, by Andy Remic. Angry Robot, epub, 7654ll. Reviewed from epub ARC. Amazon US. Amazon UK.
QUOTE:
This book delivers exactly what its predecessor promised: the ability to bewitch the reader and to turn your expectations upside down.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
"Soul Stealers" by Andy Remic (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)
Official Andy Remic Website
Order Soul Stealers HERE
Read FBC Review of Kell's Legend
Read FBC Review of War Machine
Read FBC Interview with Andy Remic
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Andy Remic is a British author who lives in Manchester, UK. He used to teach English however now is writing full-time. He has a variety of interests such as sword fighting, climbing, mountain biking and kick-boxing. He is also an amateur filmmaker who loves to dabble in short films. He also helped develop a videogame based on one of his earlier titles.
PLOT SUMMARY: In Kell’s Legend, the Albino army led by General Grall invaded from the north, and the city fell. Kell, Saark & a couple of others barely escaped with their lives. It is a time of brutality it is a time for warriors, a time for heroes.
Kell is not a hero and even though Kell’s axe howls out for blood. Kell has to be circumspect, he is being hunted. The vampires are fighting back against him, and the mighty hero finds himself the prey of two beautiful but deadly vampire assassins. The SOUL STEALERS!
Their bronze fangs are coming for him. With the life of his grand-daughter Nienna at stake as well the Kingdom, can Kell overcome his brutal dark past or will he choose to embrace it and become the Dark Legend of the past!
FORMAT/INFO: “Soul Stealers” stands at 309 pages divided over sixteen named chapters and a prologue. Narration is in the third person via several characters including Kell, Saark, Nienna, Anukis, Graal, Jageraw, Myriam, Queen Alloria etc.
“Soul Stealers” is the sequel to “Kell’s Legend” and is a continuation of the story. The overall plot arc will end with “Vampire Warlords" the 3rd book in The Clockwork Vampire trilogy.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Soul Stealers is the sequel to Andy Remic’s first fantasy foray and it offers more of what we got in the first book; lots of gory action and snappy dialogue. While “Kell’s Legend” had a pretty linear plot, Soul Stealers takes those plot elements and turns them sideways.
The novel begins with the predicament that Kell and Saark found themselves in. They find out that the place where they are facing the Cankers has something even more deadly. The duo get a entity with its own agenda to join them, while they soldier on towards the Black Pike Mountains as per the events of the last book. Different things seem to be occurring with the Invaders. General Graal turns out to be his own man and sends out a pair - the titular characters - to hunt Kell. With this move and some others, Graal seems to be intent on heralding his own machinations circumventing the plans of the Vachine royalty.
On another front Anukis reaches her nadir and discovers that there is more strength in her than even she knew. She journeys on towards a place of legends in search of her father and in the process discovers that she might be something entirely different than anyone could ever think. In captivity, Nienna learns there are different sides to her captors and the anger she feels might not be entirely misplaced. Thus with such a jumbled up cast and a rapidly twisting storyline, Andy Remic once again dips the readers in to the world of Kell. The ride is a bit bumpy as the story rapidly shifts from the first book's linear plot and newer sub-plots are inserted, while the background of the story is widened considerably.
Andy Remic has to be given credit for his unflinching style which is certainly not for everyone. The action and gore levels are increased , while the characters are all tested and reveal more about themselves. Saark and Graal are both given major roles in this book. Especially Saark whose reason of his treachery is revealed. Andy Remic further inserts his trademark tropes in the story as there are intricate and multiple action sequences throughout the book.
People who are looking for a long drawn out series with hidden meanings will be disappointed. Andy Remic has said that this book/series was about “a big f***-off Axeman with a big f***-off axe”. This is essentially what the series is about: Kell the Axeman’s saga. You get what is written in the plot synopsis along with a few nasty twists.
My single major complaint with the novel is the twist in the ending. When I read it, I was immediately confused and wondered if I have missed something in this book or in Kell’s Legend. However by checking with earlier sections, the ending comes out as a very twisted thing with no explanations. I’ll give the author the benefit of doubt as it looks like this plot discrepancy will be addressed and most likely explained in Vampire Warlords.
Overall, Soul Stealers is a better book than Kell’s Legend in the sense that it takes the same formula employed in Kell's Legend and then overrides it to give us a hyper-fast story with multiple twists and mayhem. The action and snappy dialogue are all here. This book delivers exactly what its predecessor promised: the ability to bewitch the reader and to turn your expectations upside down.
TUESDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2010
‘Soul Stealers’ – Andy Remic (Angry Robot)
I read ‘Kell’s Legend’ way back in September last year and came away feeling a little... well, I don’t know really. Remic’s bid to seize the throne sadly vacated by one David Gemmell was a book crammed full of a lot of things all driven by an undeniable power and energy; a book that slammed its foot on the accelerator and left you scrabbling to hang on in its wake. The stakes were high and we got a hero who could deal with it all accordingly; that for me though was where the book fell down in my eyes... It was all just a little too full on for me, to the point where it felt more like a Saturday morning cartoon than the story it wanted to be. And don’t get me started on the homage to Druss that felt like far more than a simple homage...
So why am I back for the second instalment then? It’s been a long old time since I last read ‘Kell’s Legend’ and I couldn’t really remember how it all went down. What I could remember though is the mother of all cliff hangers and I really wanted to see what happened next. I was also after something fun (it’s the end of the year and I’m tired...) and that was the impression I came away with after reading ‘Kell’s Legend’ so... :o)
If you read and enjoyed ‘Kell’s Legend’ then you’ll be pleased to know that ‘Soul Stealers’ offers more of the same. I’m still undecided on the whole thing though, one way or the other...
The whole world is going to hell but as far as Kell is concerned, that can all wait until he has rescued his granddaughter from kidnappers seeking to manipulate him for their own ends. The war just won’t wait though as the Army of Iron steps up its invasion from the North; harvesting human blood for the purposes of the clockwork vampire Vachine Empire. What are those purposes though? It seems that factions within the Empire, and its army, have their own plans for this monstrous harvest; plans that will drag Kell back into the game once his own quest is over. Kell is having a bad day and it’s about to get a lot worse before the day ends...
‘Soul Stealers’ was an entertaining and fun packed read but, by the time I’d finished reading, I couldn’t help but wonder ‘was that it?’ In the same way that a MacDonald’s meal will still leave me hungry (and wishing I’d forked out the extra for a nice juicy steak), ‘Soulstealers’ left me feeling empty and wishing that I’d picked up something a little more substantial.
The funny thing though is that the approach taken by Remic initially offers the book a lot to recommend it. ‘Soul Stealers’ is a ‘hack and slash bonanza’ where endless enemies line up to present themselves to Kell’s axe so he can kill them and make his way towards his objective. The ensuing scenes come across as predictable (it’s the second book in a series; you just know that Kell is going to be around for a while yet...) but you will be sticking around for the raw power in the writing. When Remic has Kell hit someone with his axe you’re left in no doubt that they’ve been hit! When you factor in the urgency of what’s going on you’re left with a story that rockets along. Except for the little intermissions between fights that is... The bickering between Kell and Saark felt, to me, like it dragged out just that little bit too far and I was left wondering if said bickering was ever going to come to anything. They both had their say and then just started saying the same things all over again... That really didn’t do anything for me.
What was interesting though is the direction that Remic seems to be taking Kell in. I’ve said before that I’m not quite comfortable with how similar Kell is to Druss the Legend and I’ll still stand by that. There’s no ‘almost’ about it, I would always rather read about an original character than one based on another character. Kell though... he proved to be a rare exception on this occasion.
While Remic still very much riffs off Druss here, this time we get to see how Druss might have turned out if he had allowed himself to go off the rails and go beserk. Instead of a good man fighting that tiny bit of bad, Kell is a self confessed bad person trying very hard to nurture that tiny flame of good inside him. Fantasy literature is full of bad people trying to do the right thing but it is rarely done on such a personal level as it is with Kell. Kell’s ferocious honesty really lays him bare in a way that you wouldn’t normally get to witness and Remic’s constant use of coarse language (maybe a little overdone, less sometimes really is more) leaves you in no doubt as to what Kell really thinks of himself. I will be back for the next book, just to see where Kell’s character goes next.
What ultimately let the book down for me though was the very ‘hack and slash bonanza’ that kept things moving to begin with. Midway through the book, it really did feel that the enemy were lining up to provide a spectacle for the reader (in terms of fights with Kell) rather than have the story move anywhere really interesting. This kind of affair would look great on the big screen but on the page it needs to be going somewhere else other than the next person to fight. The pacing fell into a rut (fight bad guy, kill bad guy, walk for a bit, fight bad guy... and repeat) and the villains of the piece lost any of semblance of evil; becoming cardboard cut-outs to be knocked down by Kell. The way that the plot dragged, because of this, turned a days read into a book that lasted longer and not for good reasons.
You know what though? Another massive cliff hanger means that I will be back for the third instalment, even though I know I’m going to encounter the same issues that I had this time round. ‘Soul Stealers’ is an entertaining read but perhaps a little too lightweight in plot to really make the impression that its language suggests that it wants to.
Seven out of Ten
Posted by Graeme Flory at 00:25
Soul Stealers by Andy Remic
Clockwork Vampire Chronicles
a review by Ant, in the genre(s) Fantasy, Heroic Fantasy . Book published by Angry Robot Books in October 2010
Soul Stealers is the sequel to the Andy Remic Epic novel - Kell's Legend, and the second volume in the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles.
The indomniable Kell is still being hunted by the evil clockwork vampires and to make matters worse, he is now being tracked by two beautiful but deadly female vampire assassins.
To say I have been looking forward to this book would be a vast understatement, after the fantastic cliff hanger ending in Kell's Legend, i've been waiting to see just how Andy Remic would manage to extract Kell and co from what appeared to be a very sticky situation.
Soul Stealers begins right where Kell's Legend finished and continues in the same fast, unrelenting pace with even more spectacular fight sequences and unflinching no-holes barred action. Kell and Saark continue their journey to rescue Nienna and prevent Kell's untimely demise but it's clear that there's a much bigger stake at play.
There is a good deal of broader world building along with more understanding of the events at play, and we get more back-story of Saark's hedonistic history along with a greater insight into Kell's dark character. An ageing warrior who's psychotic temper is barely kept in check and who just isn't really a very nice person but is constantly striving to be better. We also get a greater understanding of his bond with the living weapon Ilanna and the influence this has over Kell. This dark hero / anti-hero role is just great and a nice change from the whiter than white antagonist so often found in fantasy fiction. Even better is the clear animosity between Saark and Kell and the caustic wordplay is great.
The fairly straight forward plot of the first novel joins a number of sub-plots with plenty of twists and turns however it's still a fairly uncomplicated story at heart, as intended and which works very well. A mention also has to go to the fight scenes and gore level, this was one of the best parts of the last book and it's been taken up a notch here - the fight scenes are just superb. In the last book we had a pretty severe cliffhanger ending, here we have a cliffhanger at the end of just about every chapter, and a seriously big finally that means I am eagerly anticipating the continuation of events in the next volume - Vampire Warlords.
Soul Stealers is fast, brutal and above all unmissable, there is quite simply nothing out there that can currently compare to Andy Remic's unrelenting, unforgiving and unflinching style. The new King of Heroic Fantasy has arrived.
Written on Sunday 10th October 2010 by Antony.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
“Kell’s Legend” by Andy Remic (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)
Official Andy Remic Website
Order "Kell's Legend" HERE
BOOK & AUTHOR INFO: This is Andy Remic's 6th novel after three previous near future military tech-thrillers and two far future hardcore mil-sf novels. This is also his first fantasy effort. The book is being published by Angry Robot & is released in UK under this imprint in paperback form. The novel has a prologue & fifteen chapters. There is also the entire poem of Kell's Legend given in the end. Each chapter features various characters & the story is narrated in third person. This is book one of the Clockwork Vampire chronicles.
BOOK OVERVIEW & ANALYSIS: The book title and cover will make all David Gemmell fans nostalgic as well as curious. My interest was also piqued when Andy Remic's book was announced by Angry Robot & I jumped at the opportunity to be able to read it. Andy has dedicated this book to David Gemmell whom he considers one of the finest fantasy writers [an assumption which I heartily agree with].
Most David Gemmell fans will instantaneously draw similarities in Andy Remic's fantasy debut & with David Gemmell's Drenai books. The 1st similarity would be with the title, next the titular character as depicted on the cover & in the book is rather cut close to the character of Druss. However if one can look past these connections Kell's Legend turns out to be an enjoyable, fast paced & visceral read.
The primary characters that are featured as POVs are:
Kell, grizzled war veteran & fabled hero, who is forced to reexamine his past as he deals with the invasion of his homeland & other events in the book.
Nienna, Kell's granddaughter who along with her friend Katarina flees her college in rather unfortunate circumstances
Saark, fabled sword master, disgraced hero & who is currently living out life as a thief & gigolo. He then meets Kell & agrees to his plan for his own purpose.
Anukis, a Vachine who is deemed impure by her peers due to her ability to drink pure blood & not the blood oil which sustains all other vachines.
Kat, Nienna's friend who escapes along with her & is forced to re-evaluate the past, as concerning Kell.
There are other POVs as well which are present in the novel however to reveal their names would be a bit too spoilerish. These characters however are few in between the major characters mentioned above.
Andy Remic has to be credited for creating a steampunk-like world within a fantasy setting. His concept of the race of Vachines is a combination of Vampire & clockwork machines, while their nourishment is via a substance called "blood oil". This brings a new twist on familiar tropes. The Vachines are shown to be of a higher technological setting than the other races appearing here.
The main character of Kell is a rather darker shade of Druss, with roughly the same amount of strength & formidable will but with a murkier past. He even has a butterfly bladed axe (which is homage to Druss's axe Snaga) however with the difference that this axe is black to Snaga's polished steel & also has a voice which speaks rather too clearly for Kell's comfort. The author has not clarified much about his origins and this rather heightens the intrigue in the tale as you read snippets of information about him and his past deeds which will leave you wanting more.
The character of Saark is somewhat secondary as we are given a slice of his past but nothing concrete can be processed from it. He might feature prominently in future books as his past comes back to haunt him. Anukis is from a rather prestigious lineage but faces a lot of abuse & humiliation due to her nature & heritage. Nienna & Katarina are forced to go alongwith Kell as they escape the invasion and they have to face a lot of tests in order to survive and along the way they also become acquainted with the unspoken part of the epic poem about Kell.
This novel if approached as substitute for David Gemmell's book will lead to great disappointment. Instead of this approach readers might like to look upon this book as, Remic building his own tale using a template created by David Gemmell. He has even peppered it with several of David's trademarks like the words "Laddie, old horse" etc. & with nicknames like "Black Axeman of Draanach" to get a Gemmellian flavor; however this tale is entirely his own.
There are a few negatives in this book. The dialogue seemed clunky in lots of places & the prose could have been better. The world-building is done to benefit the story & is not deep enough to satisfy world-building junkies, however works within the premise of the story. Alas no map is provided & this can be distracting in course of the story as the characters move from place to place & with a map being provided, the travels of the characters & of various situations which are geographically linked would have been clearer.
The novel is extremely fast paced & will keep the readers on their toes with constant action & mini-cliffhanger chapters. The action sequences & chapter endings reminded me a lot of Matthew Reilly & his books so if you are a fan, you are definitely going to enjoy this book as well. The body count is high as Remic often brutalizes his characters, even the primary ones. The action & gore is also very visceral and stakes in this tale are often kept high & bloody [Joe Abercrombie, you have a competitor now & a British one to boot!].
In the end I would like to reiterate, though this tale will remind you a lot about DG & his books, keep in mind it is Andy Remic who is writing it & based on this foundation he's extrapolating his own story. To compare it, would rob you of the vivid pleasure found in this story. This is an epic tale with lots of violence & Gemmellian characters. It remains to be seen how Mr. Remic develops this saga forward as the last few chapters do leave the readers with trepidation for almost all the POV characters. However it will be fun to read about Kell, his past & his family in the future. Andy Remic you got me hooked old horse! I'm eagerly awaiting the 2nd chronicle of the Clockwork Vampire series.
QUOTE:
If you like war, monsters and conflict and can handle a healthy dose of blood, guts and sex–covering the whole thing in a viscous mess–then this book is for you.
REVIEW: Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic
Posted on January 10, 2011 by Clifton Hill in Book Review // 2 Comments
REVIEW SUMMARY: Vivid, compelling, and destructive, this book still manages to perplex; as it sometimes meanders aimlessly, like a drunk–unsure where home, or that next drink is.
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Kell is a retired warrior of legend, suffering from arthritis and the sluggishness of age, until a bloodthirsty army descends upon his town to lay destruction.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Vivid descriptions; imaginative monsters.
CONS: A plot that seems to meander; inconsistent characters.
BOTTOM LINE: If you like war, monsters and conflict and can handle a healthy dose of blood, guts and sex–covering the whole thing in a viscous mess–then this book is for you.
Kell is a retired warrior of legend, suffering from arthritis and the sluggishness of age, until a bloodthirsty army descends upon his town to lay destruction. He takes up his dreaded butterfly axe named Ilanna to do battle. Fleeing an enemy that proves too strong, Kell sets out with some lone survivors on a journey that becomes nearly forgotten amidst an onslaught of horror and bloodshed that unfolds in their path.
In Kell’s Legend, Remic pulls out all the stops to make sure that his characters are challenged. At times you may wonder if he is going down a checklist of torturous torments to visit upon these hapless souls fleeing for their lives.
For those of iron composure, forging forward anyway, plot lines are often chopped short–bereft of the space they needed to breathe. Some may point to this being a good way to move the story forward without bogging it down, but every climactic moment needs time to build and a moment of silence to appreciate it in full.
Amazingly, the story can be very narrow, despite an invading army and widespread bloodshed. The reader is confined to a small space and just a couple characters for much of the book. The fact that there is a larger conflict going on all around seems to be forgotten and has to be periodically reminded to the characters and the reader.
Inconsistencies crop up, with Kell’s single true flaw of age talked up as a problem and then proven time and time again to be mere window dressing. Saark’s selfish, hedonistic character was one of the few that seemed to hold true and had the best character arc. The side character of Anukis, with her repugnant suitor Vashell, were perhaps the most irritating. Yes, they explain more of the enemy Vachine, and there are probably more important things to come for Anu, but her storyline is so mired in needless conflict that the impact was mostly lost. Vashell was both horrible, wonderful and crazily erratic. I can see what Remic was trying to do, but I don’t think it came across. To be fair, it was an odious task to create one so incredibly conflicted. I wish it had worked. Why Anukis ever gave into him at all is a wonder, and to see her sister turned as well–that was just ridiculous.
The Vachine race was interesting, but I couldn’t help but wonder at the clockwork inclusion. It seemed a bit of a stretch and too arbitrary at times to truly be a part of the story; as if it were thrown in as an afterthought. I accepted it, but often wondered: Is that really possible? I think Remic brought it all together, later in the story, to make a broader, greater, relevance; but it was less of an “Ah, hah!” moment and more: about time. The same was true for the blood-oil drinking. I wanted to see the purpose, I wanted to see how this gruesome concoction was made, and I just wanted to know…more. Maybe this is a good thing, especially if the next book in the series delivers. Or, perhaps I’m too inquisitive…
I’ve heard that Remic’s writing is reminiscent of his hero David Gemmel. I don’t know, because I haven’t read any of Gemmel’s work (I know. Fifty lashes for me), but he may be channeling a little of George R.R. Martin’s special kind of talent. Characters die and go through trials that, I have to admit, I assumed they would have been free of. This ruthlessness is one of the high points of the book as it keeps the reader guessing.
My biggest qualm is what becomes one of the biggest subplots of the book about two-thirds of the way through, when a random appearance of some unruly bandits introduces a problem that requires Kell’s attention. The amount of foresight that goes into this random occurrence by the bandits jumps well past the border of reason. These characters were planted without the necessary foreshadowing necessary to make it work and all it seems to be is an anti deus ex machina to up the plot conflict, instead of solving it, and left me with a foul taste.
Would I recommend this book? Ultimately…yes, for one interested in war, monsters and conflict, that doesn’t mind a healthy dose of blood, guts and sex covering the whole thing in a viscous mess. I’d give it 3.5 stars, as a book with promise, excitement and something deeper, that just needed a little more time to shine.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2010
"Kell's Legend" by Andy Remic
"Kell's Legend"
by Andy Remic
Format: Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot Books
Review copy received through the courtesy of the administrators of the David Gemmell Awards
The land of Falanor is invaded by an albino army, the Army of Iron. A small group set off to warn the king: Kell, ancient hero; his granddaughter, Nienna and her friend, Katrina; and the ex-Sword Champion of King Leanoric, Saark, disgraced after his affair with the Queen.
Fighting their way south, betrayal follows battle follows deviation, and they are attacked from all quarters by deadly albino soldiers, monstrous harvesters who drain blood from their victims to feed their masters, and the twisted offspring of deviant vachine, the cankers. As Falanor comes under heavy attack and crushing invasion, only then does Nienna learn the truth about grandfather Kell – that he is anything but a noble hero, anything but a Legend.
The David Gemmell Award was established last year and started with a debut year that gathered fans and critiques of the fantasy genre alike around it. In the second year of the awards, looking over the nominees it is easy to spot one title, Andy Remic’s “Kell’s Legend”, because of the homage it pays to the author who names the awards, David Gemmell.
“Kell’s Legend” is a worthy praise offered to its source of inspiration, fully packed with action and fighting scenes and flavored with an amount of violence and gore that will put even some of the horror novels to shame. The pages fly past the reader, because Andy Remic sets a very fast rhythm from the first chapter of the novel. Speaking of chapters, each one of them ends in a peak of action teasing my curiosity to the point that I could hardly resist not to jump over pages just to find out the conclusion of that action sequence. And that is the case with the end of the novel as well, the final page leaving the characters frozen in a battle scene until the next novel of the series will put them into motion.
The central stage of the Andy Remic’s novel is occupied by Kell, as the title suggests it. Together with Kell I could follow three other characters, but also a few characters from the other side of barricade and also on a few places we shift the perspective to the king and queen of Falanor. However, I have to be totally honest and say that besides Kell and Anukis, who plucked moments of sympathy from me, the other characters fell heavily under my attention and I ended up not carrying too much about any of them. Kell and Anukis are not perfect characters either, but they show feelings and memories that make them more vivid and interesting for me. I really liked however the relationship between Kell and Saark and the resulting dialogues of this relationship. These dialogues offered me delightful ironies and welcomed effervescent moments between blurring motioned scenes.
The other character that drew my attention is Anukis and she is the one that introduces to the story the vachine society. I really liked how Andy Remic imagined and pictured this side of the world, but in the end is this part that left me disappointed. The combination between a religious society, isolated by mysterious mountains and with heavy clockwork involved in its ranks and members appealed greatly too me. But, and there is a but, I felt only teased by the image of the vachine society present in “Kell’s Legend” and I was left with a great number of “whys”. As mentioned in the novel the vachine is a religious society with its structures and rules, but not even once a deity is mentioned or why it is structured that way. How did this society come to exist? Why the connection between the vachine, the albino army and the Harvesters? Why the Black Pike Mountains that surround Silva Valley are so dangerous and mysterious? Add to this the questions raised by Kell’s past and regrets and I was left wondering if not too many whys unanswered would not make me indifferent to the answers that might come in the sequels of the novel.
On one hand I have “War of the Worlds” meets David Gemmell’s “Legend” in a clash of action, violence and bloodshed. On the other hand I have some aspects and ideas that do not reach half of their potential. So, in conclusion although rarely I end up with a reading that leaves me totally neutral, such is the case with Andy Remic’s “Kell’s Legend”. And I can only ask myself if I pick the next novel in the series would my opinions change?
POSTED BY MIHAI A. AT 12:40 PM
QUOTE:
very enjoyable read with the usual amount of gratuitous violence and comedy moments.
Hardcore (a Combat-K Novel) by Andy Remic (book review)
May 2, 2014 | By AndyWhitaker | Reply
OK, I’ll admit I’m a fan of the two previous ‘Combat-K’ novels, ‘War Machine’ and ‘BioHell’, so I was looking forward to ‘Hardcore’, the third instalment of the series. I’ll say one thing for Andy Remic, you get a lot for your money with this book costing a penny short of eight quid for 652 pages. That works out to be just over a penny a page and is well worth it!
Hardcore (a Combat-K Novel) by Andy Remic.
Hardcore (a Combat-K Novel) by Andy Remic.
Anyway, ‘Hardcore’ reunites the Combat-K team of Keenan, Pippa and Franco on what looks to be like a simple routine information gathering mission to the planet Krakken IV. As the planet has three continents, Keenan, Pippa and Franco have been promoted to Squad Captains and will each take a squad of three down to one of the continents for a five day mission. Simples, huh? Well, actually no. They seem to have been singled out to receive the most inappropriate squad members imaginable given their individual characters. In addition to the misfits, the inclusion of a health and safety officer in a combat team is a stroke of genius. Andy Remic pens a superb line for Keenen, ‘He couldn’t help but feel he’d been lumbered with a party bucket of idiots.’ Looking around me now, I know exactly how he feels.
Another little detail is the fact that Krakken IV is also known as ‘Sick World’ and for good reason. Hundreds of years ago, when mankind ventured out into the wilderness of space and started to pick up ever more interesting diseases, Krakken IV was turned into a hospital world for the study and treatment of the new interspecies ailments. Unfortunately, something catastrophic happened, although nobody seems to know the details, prompting a mass and total evacuation of the planet. Now uninhabited, Sick World has been in effective quarantine for almost a thousand years.
Regular robotic scans keep reporting that there is no life left on Sick World. Even before I got into the meat of the novel, I didn’t believe this. It’s a ‘Combat-K’ novel for goodness sake, so there has to be something to shoot or blow up or both. It turns out that there is something – quite a lot of something – very sick on Sick World. Not everything made the evacuation points in time and those that were left behind have not fared well.
The backstory to ‘Hardcore’ is the Quad-Gal is under attack from a new threat called the Junks. They are swarming over Quad-Gal territory, corrupting everything in their path and must be stopped. The assignment to Sick World is an attempt to find evidence of the aliens origin, although Quad-Gal Corps senior command seem to know more about Sick World and the Junks but inexplicably don’t mention anything in the briefing notes to Keenan and the team before they disembark on their mission. While the main focus of the book is quite rightly on the Combat-K squad, there is a bigger picture concerning the Junks and how they were created. There are also the events on Sick World with hints that the two events may be related.
If I was to say one thing about ‘Hardcore’ it would be the title should be Sick World! ‘Hardcore’ is only used once in a description of VOLOS, who is the controlling force behind Sick World. For a large part of the novel, Keenan, Franco and Pippa operate independently with their own squads, which give an opportunity for their characters to be developed. They are all brought together towards the end as they battle towards the big boss fight, only things don’t turn out as I expected. It’s an interesting ending which has a lead in to the next book in the series, but how can it be a ‘Combat-K’ novel without [REDACTED].
To gain the most from ‘Hardcore’, you are advised to have read the two previous books as there numerous references to previous events and characters. Some of these are fully explained but others are not, so it’s best to be as clued up as you can. I found ‘Hardcore’ a very enjoyable read with the usual amount of gratuitous violence and comedy moments. The thought of Franco Haggis dressed in a PVC outfit but with only one sandal, attacking an enemy squad shall live with me forever.
Andy Whitaker
April 2014
QUOTE:
This is a book for blokes who like to go down the pub on Friday night and have ten pints and a curry and then do the same again on Saturday.
wiless
Biohell
Andy Remic
Solaris Books, 651 pages
Biohell
Andy Remic
When not motorcycling, mountain biking, snowboarding or climbing, there's little Andy Remic likes better than writing.
Andy Remic Website
ISFDB Bibliography
Past Feature Reviews
A review by Martin Lewis
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Military SF has never been as popular in the UK as it is in the US. Perhaps it is the fact that the British aren't very good with guns, as evidenced by scores of implausible Mockney gangster films. Perhaps it is a question of politics since British science fiction is often seen as monolithically liberal. That isn't the whole story though. After all, the considerably conservative Peter F. Hamilton is the best selling SF author in the UK. More recently and more conservatively, Neal Asher has carved out a popular niche writing violent reactionary adventure SF. Andy Remic takes this one step further.
Biohell picks and chooses from the grab bag of SF tropes -- a bit of cyberpunk here, an alien invasion there -- but it most clearly fits into the post-Andy McNabb publishing world, piggybacking on the glut of British special forces novels that followed the publication of Bravo Two Zero in 1993. Remic is slightly cruder and slightly funnier though. This is a book for blokes who like to go down the pub on Friday night and have ten pints and a curry and then do the same again on Saturday. On the very first page we are introduced to the main character thus:
Keenan revved the bike hard, 1250cc LC12 titanium lekradite single-cyclinder engine growling harsh, like a caged SPAW before its alloy breakfast. Sunlight glimmered on Keenan's piss-lot lid with raised black visor, and he lit a home-rolled cigarette and breathed deep on Widow Maker tobacco.
Remic is very much a nuts and bolts type of guy; at one point, he even refers to a spaceship as having "pistons." His characters take after him. Keenan is the sort of bloke who thinks the Marlboro Man is a pouf (although, of course, he would spell it "puff"). He is a man's man and this book, with its casual misogyny throughout, is not one you can imagine many women picking up. Even if you can put aside this machismo though, even if all you want is a book about blowing shit up, there is still not much to recommend Biohell.
You can't imagine Remic sitting down at his desk, rolling up his sleeves and getting down to some methodical plotting. The result is that this stubby brick of a book lurches around rather uncertainly for the first couple of hundred pages. When it does settle down on its path it soon becomes clear that Remic is just making it up as he goes along. There is no attempt to make the plot believable or, even, coherent, let alone concentrating on niceties like structure and pace. Characters flail from plot coupon to McGuffin to deus ex machine without any real direction. It is just an excuse for Keenan and his best mate Franco to go round killing people and gawking at cool stuff. Except the cool stuff isn't even that cool. It feels secondhand, lacks in any wow factor and betrays a writer with limited horizons. Half way through the book a minor character passes on some information to Keenan:
"Cristiane Solomonsson. That's right. A real crazy name; even against the craziness of The City."
This illustrates two things: Remic's terrible ear for naturalistic dialogue (everything after that semi-colon is a really bad idea) and the impoverished world view and stunted imagination he and his characters share (that just isn't a crazy name). The book is set thousands of years in the future but it could be set last week: there are references to Nazis, Arnie and even Ronan Keating. A particularly insular Britishness is on display here which might be a good corrective to the parochial American world view so prevalent in SF except for the fact that two wrongs don't make a right.
When I opened this book I was hoping for something like David Gunn's Deaths Head series: gung ho adventure SF with the wit to know its strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately this is just witless.
Copyright © 2009 Martin Lewis
QUOTE:
testosterone-fueled
Monday, November 12, 2007
"War Machine" by Andy Remic
Official Andy Remic Website
Order “War Machine” HERE
Read An Extract HERE
Read SFX’s Interview with Andy Remic HERE
Every once in a while a novel comes along that surprises the hell out of you. That was the case with “War Machine” by Andy Remic. All I really knew about the book going in was that is was classified as military science fiction and that it was the fourth novel by an author I had never heard of. So imagine my surprise when “War Machine” became my favorite science fiction novel of the year. Yes, you heard correctly. Gary Gibson’s “Stealing Light”, Peter F. Hamilton’s “The Dreaming Void”, Neal Asher’s “Hilldiggers”, Josh Conviser’s “Empyre”, Richard K. Morgan’s “Black Man/Thirteen”, Matthew Jarpe’s “Radio Freefall”; “War Machine” topped them all and no one is more shocked than I am!
The first thing that jumped out at me was the tone of the book. In spirit, “War Machine” hearkens back to the good old days of action films when guys like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon), Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and yes, even Dolph Lundgren ruled the box office. A time when heroes always managed to survive despite impossible odds; where villains were triumphed over and dispatched in a spectacular manner; when cheesy one-liners were fashionable; and the good guys got the hot girl. “War Machine” embodies those types of flicks. From the unrelenting action, impressive body count and death-defying predicaments to the witty comebacks, droll humor, prolific swearing and hot n’ heavy sex, “War Machine" is an action junkie’s wet dream come to life ;)
At the same time though, reading “War Machine” was also like playing a videogame. Specifically, I was reminded of another military SF novel—David Gunn’s “Death’s Head” (Reviewed HERE)—which I compared to such games as Halo, Gears of War, StarCraft, Doom & Half-Life, and in this case, I’d also throw in a little Final Fantasy. Basically, here’s the premise: Keenan is an ex-Combat K soldier living out his days as a private investigator. Then he gets an offer he can’t refuse—steal the Fractured Emerald, a treasure that “can look into the future and see into the past”. For Keenan, it’s the ultimate opportunity to finally discover the murderer of his wife & children and gain retribution. First though, he’s going to need to assemble his former team, which is a problem itself. Not only is there a GroupD prohibition out on the team—means instant termination if the CK squad reassembles—but Keenan will also have to rescue Franco Haggis from a mental institution and Pippa from a high security prison. From here, “War Machine” is essentially broken up into a series of increasingly dangerous missions—break out Franco; extract Pippa from the non-policed moon prison Hardcore, home to some of the galaxy’s most vilest criminals; get outfitted on The City, a lawless planet-sized city where almost anything goes; survive the planet Ket which is inhabited by seven-foot-tall Ket-i warrior tribes who have declared war against all other races/species; and infiltrate the Metal Palace, a consistently shifting, giant maze-like machine—kind of like from those Cube horror movies—which houses the Fractured Emerald. Now if that doesn’t sound like a script straight out of a SF action-shooter videogame, I don’t know what is and I haven’t even talked about the incredible arsenal of weaponry that is used in the book, or the vehicles, or the different alien races, not to mention an excellent cast of villains—bosses and mini-bosses if you will—including an unkillable assassin; Teller’s World, a Forbidden planet fabled for its treasure and danger—no one in a million years has left the place alive; and Leviathan, one of the GodRace, also known as the Devourer of Worlds…
Admittedly, the action/adventure elements in “War Machine” take precedence over everything else in the book, that the plot is not very complex, and an open mind is required to enjoy the novel’s fantastical scenarios, especially when the Combat K team survives one miraculous escape after the other. However, unlike most action-oriented movies or videogames, “War Machine” possesses surprising depth which prevents it from falling into that trap of one-dimensional escapist entertainment. Essentially it is the characters that make the difference, specifically Keenan, Franco and Pippa. Individually, each soldier is uniquely written, with his or her own distinctive personality and troubled past that is explored through flashbacks—Keenan harbors a powerful hatred against society’s deviants; Franco is a depraved, alcohol/sausage-loving, sexual maniac; and Pippa is a dangerous, ass-kicking, man-hating, psychotic sexbomb. Together they make a great team and I absolutely loved the chemistry & camaraderie between the three—Franco, demolitions expert, is the comic relief; Pippa, pilot/weapons guru, provides the sexual tension; and Keenan is the leader, the guy that steps in when Franco & Pippa are bickering like schoolchildren, the kind of person that you follow anywhere…even into the depths of Hell. That’s Combat K in a nutshell. They’re all a little crazy—which makes sense considering their history and the kind of missions they’ve been through; dangerous as hell and a whole lot of fun to read about. In fact, I was really surprised by how emotionally invested I became with the characters, especially at the thought of one of them possibly dying and I was blown away by the shocking betrayal at the end… The supporting cast isn’t too bad either. There’s Cam, a tennis-ball sized Security PopBot with “advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3150” who is pretty amusing; Dr. Betezh, Franco’s nemesis who you can’t help but feel sorry for; and did I already mention the wonderful bad guys ;)
In retrospect, “War Machine” is not the kind of novel that’s going to win any Hugo or Nebula Awards. It’s not going to challenge readers’ with thought-provoking socio-political, moral or spiritual issues. The writing isn’t what you would call ‘literary’—Andy Remic’s prose is edgy, assertive and reflects the more masculine nature of the book. And because “War Machine” skews towards a certain kind of audience, a lot of people probably wouldn’t like the book and some may even hate it. Fortunately, I’m not one of them. What can I say ;) I love those 80s/90s-era action movies, videogames set in a futuristic milieu where you get to go around blowing up things and killing bad guys, and reading books that has characters you can really connect with. Basically, for me, “War Machine” had it all. In fact, my only complaint is the cliffhanger ending since I have to wait now to see what happens :) I guess that’s not entirely true. I was also a bit annoyed at how some of the lingo, quips and weaponry seemed pretty outdated for a story that takes place thousands of years in the future, but who am I to nitpick when I was having so much fun ;) In the end, I loved every testosterone-fueled second that I was reading Andy Remic’s “War Machine” and the sequel is easily one of my most anticipated new releases…
8:52 AM | Posted by Robert |
QUOTE:
Remic does a very good job keeping the sense of urgency throughout most of the novel, Keenan is desperately obsessed to find the identity of his family’s murderers
War Machine by Andy Remic
SFFWorld January 24, 2008 0 Comment
Published by Solaris
November 2007
ISBN 1-88416-522-1
392 Pages
Andy Remic: http://www.andyremic.com/
The statement atop Andy Remic’s War Machine bills the author as “The new master of rock-hard military science fiction.” Bold words, but Solaris is new hungry publisher and Andy Remic’s novel is indeed a solid ‘rock-hard military science fiction.’ Not having read all the military science fiction on the shelves, I can’t possibly judge the veracity of the “master” statement on the book. All I can do is set down my thoughts about the book, so here we go.
By the by, the novel takes place in a very distant future, with Earth existing only as a distant memory. In this far future we meet our three protagonists, Keenan, Franco, and Pipp. These three are remnants of Combat K, what amounts to a military Back Ops outfit. At the outset of novel; however, they have been split up, for a time, after a mission gone bad; Keenan seemingly the only one with something of a normal life, despite the seething anger he feels over the murder of his wife and children. Franco is confined to a mental institution and undergoes mental and physical torture by a madman named Betzeh while Pipp was dropped on a prison planet with little more than her wits and drive to survive against the savage inhabitants.
Combat K is brought back together by the promise of finding out who murdered Keenan’s family. A mysterious benefactor tells of a mythical artifact, the Fractured Emerald that can provide the answers to all questions, including Keenan’s question. With this, the heist is set in motion as Combat K traverses the Quad Galaxy for the famed Fractured Emerald. Remic does a very good job keeping the sense of urgency throughout most of the novel, Keenan is desperately obsessed to find the identity of his family’s murderers.
Over the course of the novel, Remic reveals much of each character’s past – what led them to the first incarnation of Combat K, how they feel about their comrades. Though not fully seamless, Remic’s backstory narratives don’t interfere with the overall flow of the plot too much. Franco, perhaps, shined the most. Though his character was partially that of comedic relief, he was still drawn well enough to rank beyond just funny one-liners.
The pacing that keeps Combat K moving across the galaxy, as I said, is maintained quite well until the latter chapters of the novel. It probably isn’t too much of a spoiler to reveal that Combat K arrives in a strange world to retrieve the Fractured Emerald and then are required to bring it to an even stranger world. This last world was provided a real nice sense-of-wonder; the type many readers of science fiction seek when opening a book in the genre. Though reminiscent slightly of Peter Hamilton’s recent Pandora’s Star, Remic created a world and Big Dumb Object that works as his own.
The novel did have some problems, though. Although the far-future setting is detailed and fully realized, there were far too many references to 20th / 21st Century popular culture and society for a galaxy supposedly thousands of years out of a habitable Earth. References to the Hobbit and other elements of today’s culture rang a bit hollow. On the other hand, I can’t quite argue with a far-future where one can easily find a perfectly poured pint of Guinness.
The one character I found a bit frustrating was Betzeh. I hesitate to reveal too much of later elements of the story but I found his continual ability to survive all the physical damage a bit much to fully buy, despite his welcome presence in later parts of the novel.
I found myself turning the pages pretty briskly and was wondering how so much could be resolved as I was drawing near the end of the book with so few pages remaining. With a cliffhanger ending, I was no longer surprised. Back to what started this review, the statement atop the cover of the book – it might be a bit of an overstatement. For example, I don’t think Remic’s work is better than that of another “current/new” writer of Military Science fiction – John Scalzi. However, War Machine is still a very entertaining novel and on the whole, I enjoyed despite the above-referenced problems.
© 2008 Rob H. Bedford
Theme Planet
Andy Remic
Solaris Books, 413 pages
Theme Planet
Andy Remic
When not motorcycling, mountain biking, snowboarding or climbing, there's little Andy Remic likes better than writing.
Andy Remic Website
ISFDB Bibliography
SF Site Review: Biohell
A review by Sandra Scholes
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Just when you thought you had your fill of comedy science-fiction, Andy Remic throws this novel into the public eye. It is a self-confessed novel of the anarchy that shows what humanity is capable of if it is given anything and everything it wants. Dexter Colls is a policeman on holiday with his family on Theme Planet. He thinks he has found a great place to take a break from Earth life, but when his family goes missing, he doesn't know where to look until he unearths a conspiracy. This is what gets his policeman's instincts off and running, and this is also where he is out to find the culprits come hell or high water.
Remic's story has all the ingredients for its own thrill ride of corruption, danger and excess in an anything goes future. Dexter and his family are the average types who go through their lives scrimping and saving, but they have kept their humour despite their father risking his life every time he has to chase down a criminal. Days before they leave for Theme Planet, Dexter has to arrest someone for murder, someone he considered a friend more than family, and even if he swears he did not commit the crime, all the clues point out that he did.
The story is decidedly over the top and controversial, it throws out its obvious shock tactics and that is what gives it the kick it needs to make it into a prime story, one that isn't to be forgotten. What happened before leaves a dark cloud hanging over their holiday, and even if they want to have fun while they are there, the chances are, they won't be able to for long. The dark science-fiction element in this is equalled by the dark humour in it:
"NO STROKING OF CHEST HAIRS, said the flashing sign. STROKING OF CHEST HAIRS LEADS TO SNOGGING AND SNOGGING LEADS TO SEX. THIS IS A NO SEX SHUTTLE...UNLESS YOU WISH TO UPGRADE TO FIRST CLASS +++, ONLY AN EXTRA $15,000 AND HAVE YOUR VERY OWN SEX SUITE! YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE."
The humour does not end there; it runs through the novel like veins through Stilton. Amba Miskalov, the Anarchy Android is on her mission, her last one that means she can retire after it is completed, but she did not plan Dexter would be caught up in it. She though isn't the bad girl, she is trying to find out what is behind Theme Planet's supposed good nature, and she will stop at nothing to find out.
Readers will like how the story develops from a fun-filled holiday of a lifetime into a run for your life conspiracy when Dexter gets framed for a murder he didn't commit, and for the kidnapping of his wife and children. He discovers that even though Theme Planet has been created on an alien world, the race called Provax inhabit it behind the scenes, not liking the off-worlders coming to their planet and having too much of a good time there. There is a conspiracy, but it takes a while to find it. Readers won't mind it a bit as it is just as much a roller coaster ride of terror as the one Dexter rides with his kids. There is a lot to laugh at, but an equal amount to laugh with; Lex the PopBot, The Seeding Theory of Dr, Chaos, The Cool Kid Zone, Dr. Narcissist's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Kiddy Kid TV, Spunky Spunk Chocolate, and while you're at it, eat at the Japachinese restaurant. Theme Planet is to be enjoyed and it is as much fun as it's outrageous, and readers will find that Dexter is the only sane one there.
Andy Remic has written other SF novels including; The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles, Cloneworld, Kell's Island, Quake, Serial Killers Incorporated, and War Machine. More can be found about his novels at www.andyremic.com.
Copyright © 2012 Sandra Scholes
Sandra has drawn up a series of goals to achieve this year and has only managed to do two of them -- yippee! In other news she has also completed a few reviews for the likes of Love Romance Passion, Love Vampires and Fantasy Book Reviews.
QUOTE:
It is like its predecessor reliant on a generous reader willing to suspend disbelief to a shocking level.
the strength of Remic’s stories they move with speed and they are very cinematic in the way the story progresses.
Paperback: 573 pages
Publisher: ATOM (August 1, 2005)
Andy Remic’s Quake is true to the legacy of his earlier novel Spiral. The reader is returned to a world in extreme conflict sometime in the not too distant future where national boundaries are almost meaningless and the fight between good and evil is for the very safety of the planet. While you could conceivably read Quake without reading Spiral there would be so much that you would be missing in terms of back story that it probably isn’t the best approach to take.
Despite weighing in at 573 pages Quake is a fast summer read. It is like its predecessor reliant on a generous reader willing to suspend disbelief to a shocking level. It’s not so much that the premise of human/insect hybrids attempting to take over the world is hard to take as it is that people could talk and think the way they do at times in Quake. Sometimes it is like reading an old time Hollywood action serial script that never got shot for obvious reasons. That too is the strength of Remic’s stories they move with speed and they are very cinematic in the way the story progresses. It is easy to visualize the people, places and weapons in the story because Remic has a gift for description. That gift for descriptive text is sometimes over used though and occasionally boarders on the trite.
Given that he can write in such a voluminous fashion you would expect that there would be more variety in some descriptions. I don’t know how many times the hero Carter “palmed” his gun but it had me chuckling every time the word recurred in the text. Just once I wanted him to pull, draw or yank his gun but Carter is a palming kind of guy.
Just as SPIRAL is the last line of defense for humanity, Carter is the last line of defense within SPIRAL. When everything is going into the toilet there is Carter to pull the nuts out of the fire and get things back on track for the world. One of the most interesting characters in SPIRAL, Jam reappears in Quake but his role as a SPIRAL operative is eclipsed by the introduction of two new and interesting characters Simmo and Mongrel. Will Simmo and Mongrel become recurring characters? Only time will tell but this is one reader who will pick up the next novel to find out.
Denis Bernicky
Other Andy Remic Reviews
Spiral: When the governments of the world need military help and support there is only one place they can go - Sprial - and Spiral calls on Carter.
QUOTE:
I really can't be bothered enumerating Spiral's many other faults - the relentless obscenities, the stilted dialogue, the unpleasant sex, the witless humour, the creepy sexism - but for the first time ever I have read a book without redeeming feature.
Spiral
Andy Remic
Orbit paperback £5.99
[no star rating]
review by Patrick Hudson
Sometime in the near future, Spiral is a super-secret organisation that combats terrorists and criminals that threaten to destabilise the world. Working outside of national and legal constraints, Spiral teams wipe out the scum of the Earth with hi-tech weapons and extreme prejudice keeping the unknowing masses safe from harm. However, mysterious and invulnerable black-clad assassins with identical copper-coloured eyes are wiping out the uber-capable Spiral tough guys and there seems to be a conspiracy to destroy Spiral from within. When retired super-agent Carter (no first name, apparently) is summoned for one final job, the anti-Spiral conspiracy tries to kill him and he vows revenge against them at any cost.
The freewheeling adventure that follows is high on action and hardware, but low on writerly technique. The story chugs along from gunfight to car chase without any twists or turns along the way and Carter's eventual victory is never in doubt. That's par for the course, for this sort of thing, but the poor quality of the prose renders even the frenetic violence uninteresting.
The clichés come thick and fast throughout - characters are either large men, big men or bear-like men, or women with athletic figures, such as hacking genius Jessica who "didn't work out often but when she did gave 200 percent - and this had provided her with a well-formed athletic figure that was the talk of the programming department." (This followed by the immortal lines: "She patted her belly. Still firm and strong, she sighed.") They say things like "And further moves have been placed across that great gaming board we call Earth," while another ponders "a feeling of melancholy... as she watched these tiny people in their tiny houses with their tiny lives."
When not relying on clichés, Remic resorts either to the abstract ("They fumbled on, stopping at an insanely ambitious outpost.") the tautological ("The panoramic scene was colourless, bleached, a picture in black and white.") or the downright bizarre ("The Grey Death had spread like Godsfire... Paris had been wiped clean - ironic. Berlin had suffered a human enema.") All the description relates to how things look, and the other senses are left unexplored. Spiral is obviously heavily inspired by the ultra-violent action movies of the 1980s, and is written as if describing a film rather than experiencing any of the action firsthand.
When he finds what he considers to be a handy metaphor, Remic is in the habit of repeating it, often within a few pages. So, the "startled 'O'" of sexual ecstasy on page 230 becomes "a silent 'O' of shock" on page 237. In fact, long stretches of the novel read like an unrevised first draft, which would explain odd character transformations such as the sudden appearance of the villain's tombstone teeth about two-thirds of the way through, and the lumbering (indeed, "bear like") Slater's mental aberration in chapter 13 which makes him talk briefly like the incredible Hulk before reverting back to the cardboard tough-guy talk used by everyone else in the novel.
Much of this might be forgivable if Spiral had anything of any interest to say, but the SF elements are secondary to the action set-pieces (although this is identified as an Orbit Thriller rather that the usual Orbit Science Fiction). The plot Mcguffin - the QIII, a revolutionary computer processor ("The first ever cubic processor. The first ever cellular processor."), which can predict the future, infiltrate banks and military computers, take over battleships and bombers, and presumably slice, dice and julienne - doesn't really have much to do and is technologically unconvincing. Indeed the techno-thriller gadget fetish amounts to little more than a few brand names chucked around and the author's assurances that these are the best, fastest, most lethal etc without any technical detail to back the assertion up.
I really can't be bothered enumerating Spiral's many other faults - the relentless obscenities, the stilted dialogue, the unpleasant sex, the witless humour, the creepy sexism - but for the first time ever I have read a book without redeeming feature. I guess this novel is aimed at the Tom Clancy/Lee Child/Andy McNab techno-thriller crowd, and I admit I'm not sure what the standard is in this market, but surely it cannot be as low as this? I seriously urge readers of The ZONE to avoid this novel at all costs, and just wish there was a way to anti-buy a book so that we could send a message to Orbit letting them know that we (and they) deserve better than this.
April 10, 2016
A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
“I was going to write down my experiences during the assault, but what’s the point now? It’s all been written before, so many glorified accounts, soldiers, warriors, heroes. No matter how grim a picture I paint, there will always be those who have bright excited eyes, who think War is romantic, exciting, a beast to be tamed.” -Andy Remic, A Song for No Man's Land
Blurb: He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.
But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.
He'll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn't exist.
Format: A Song for No Man's Land is the first in a trilogy. I am reviewing the Kindle version of the novella which was 208 pages in length. The novella was originally published in February 2016 by Tor. The tale is told in limited 3rd person POV between a couple characters and also has some 1st person diary entries that are interspersed throughout.
Setting: The novel is set in 20th century Europe during the Great War (WWI). The novel takes place both in the United Kingdom itself as well as the Battle of the Somme in France. The author succeeds in making the WWI setting feel both authentic and gritty as the tale takes place with a soldier on the front lines. Andy Remic does a good job with reminding readers with the setting that war is not as romantic as it is made out to be.
Characters: There are three primary characters throughout this novella. The main character is Robert Jones, a drunkard and gambler that is rescued from debtors by Charlie Bainbridge. Bainbridge gets Jones to enlist in the Great War and together they forge a brotherly friendship. Later in the story they are joined by George Webb, a childhood friend to Jones who also begins to share POV time.
Plot: After being rescued from debtors and enlisting with Bainbridge, Jones learns firsthand the horrors of war. In the battle of Somme, the casualties are great and Jones himself gets wounded. Being plagued by nightmares and memories of his childhood, Jones begins to see that not all of his enemies are human. Nightmarish demons hunt him and things that shouldn't be possible begin to alter the way Jones and his friends will see reality. The main task though, is for him and his friends to survive the horrible war.
My Thoughts: I've never read a WWI fantasy novel before. This novella doesn't seek to be overtly fantasy at first, and throughout the elements that are introduced are blended well within the realm of what we would consider normal. Dreams and reality mix a little at times and it isn't always immediately apparent if the main character Jones is dreaming, which was actually an interesting twist in the style. The author tried hard, and succeeds, at creating an authentic feeling WWI setting with characters whose brotherhood created a solid attachment with me. As the nightmarish creatures and background story was introduced, I really enjoyed the way the author chose to make the creatures mysterious and there's never really a point in the novella when someone sits down with the main POV and explains it all. This was left open and as there are more entries in this trilogy, I am eager to see what else Jones will have to face and what exactly these nightmarish creatures are. I also enjoyed the author's choice of creating 1st person POV diary entries with Jones to better dive into his thoughts and feelings. This was a great novella and I definitely would recommend it to every kind of fantasy fan.
About the Author: Andy Remic lives in Lincoln, UK, although his heart and viking soul belong to the Scottish mountains. Married with two children, Andy has a variety of esoteric and sometimes contrasting loves, including sword fighting, climbing, mountain biking, kick-boxing, Ducati motorcycles and retro-gaming. He recently wrote the computer version of his novel Biohell for the 48K Spectrum, in which many people are still stuck. He writes in both SF and fantasy fields, and is sometimes accused of literature. Current novels include: Spiral, Quake, Warhead, War Machine, Biohell, Hardcore and the upcoming Cloneworld, Theme Planet and TOX for Solaris Books, and the Kell’s Legend trilogy, Kell’s Legend, Soul Stealers and Vampire Warlords for Angry Robot Books.
QUOTE:
The anti-war message remains strong and the shrapnel cuts deep, but in the end the effects felt blunted.
Review: A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
Labels: Andy Remic, Fantasy, Military Fiction, Novella, Reviews, Tor Posted by DarkChaplain at 5/08/2016
Starting in January 2016, I went on a bit of a novella-binge. I picked up a bunch of them, and found some gems in the process. A Song for No Man's Land is one of those.
The Story:
"He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.
But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.
He'll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn't exist."
The Review
A Song for No Man's Land truly is an odd one. It is far more of a historical soldier's tale set during World War I than a fantasy, and yet a fantasy story it is. I somehow wonder if it had to be, though.
The supernatural elements only really creep in as part of the reality of the plot in the final chapters, and personally, that was too late. I would have been fine without it, or having them be down to the characters' deteriorating psyche and closeness to death's door. But then things moved quickly, and I scratched my head. Things came out of left field, and somehow it tainted some very strong scenes that had me captivated already.
And yet still it held a certain charme, and I want to know where this series will be going with it all. The characters of Robert Jones, George Webb and Charlie Bainbridge all had a good amount of depth and development to them, and a sense of humanity. They all brought the desperation of being involved in the Great War to the fore in different ways. They all were broken, both by the war and their prior life experiences. And yet they were all sympathetic in my eyes, at least most of the time.
It is down to the gritty trench warfare that focused so much on the characters, their mental state, their behavior under unsurmountable stress, and the repetitiveness of their lives in the army, that my rating is the way it is. I liked it, I did very much. It clicked for me, and I even enjoyed the traumatic flashback sequences throughout.
But I also believe that this could have easily been a better story had it been a one-shot, without the supernatural spin. Up until the finale, few changes would need to be made at all to turn this from a good into an excellent novella. The anti-war message remains strong and the shrapnel cuts deep, but in the end the effects felt blunted.
Either way, I'll be reading the sequel.