Category: Reviews

I was thrilled to learn FableCroft Publishing had picked up Book Three in Jo Anderton’s Veiled World Trilogy – Guardian.

I’d already read and loved books one and two– Debris and Suited—and was really looking forward to finding out how Anderton would manage to tie up such a complex storyline. But before I begin, a little disclaimer–I’m intentionally vague with this review. Being the last in the series, it’s all too easy to drop spoiler-bombs for the first two books, and these stories are far too good for that.

The Veiled World trilogy is big. I don’t necessarily mean in page numbers (though they’re all decent sized books, just not door-stops), I mean in the sheer scope of story. I’ve mentioned before that Anderton is a master world-builder, and she well and truly proves it here in the final instalment when protagonist Tanyana begins to slide across the veils–or through the doors–to even more worlds: worlds that are still connected to the one she shares in Movac-under-Keeper with Kichlan and her Debris collection team–Tanyana’s home.

As with Suited, Jo Anderton kicks this novel off with a deft recap of the last book. Rather than a “Previously…in The Veiled Worlds” type of summary, she manages to give the reader swift and unique catch-up by means of a report from a character whose thoughts we don’t usually get much of. Not only is this a clever tool to jog the reader’s memory, but it places the story smack into what we once believed was nothing more than the mythology of the Veiled Worlds.

In my review of Suited, I wrote about the fantastic character development from book one to two. So many novels with complex world building drop the ball when it comes to giving the reader characters they can really care about. Anderton has again pushed further than I expected. I felt comfortable with both Tanyana and her supporting cast–maybe too comfortable–and loved the way I was propelled forward alongside the characters as they were forced to keep moving, keep fighting, with little more than hope to keep them going. The Veiled World trilogy is written at a frantic pace, and the character development keeps up with the plot. These are people who can’t be unchanged for what they have seen and endured, both mentally and physically (oh, the physical!) Even after a long break between reading books two and three, I slipped straight back into an emotional investment in Tanyana and…and I’m so not going to say who else (I did say no spoilers).

Tanyana herself undergoes the biggest changes, and it is her strength and growth of character that impressed me most. Over the course of three books, she has grown from a talented and privileged member of society (though maybe a little too privileged?), to scraping the bottom of that same culture, to becoming the strong and deserving champion.

I felt Guardian was more science fiction than fantasy, and definitely more cyber than anything else. This is a little change from the first two books, though the mythological elements still hold this story together at the end of the day. Jo Anderton slips the reader information like jellybeans (or Lindt chocolate–whichever is your poison), only the smallest morsel at a time, which makes it hard for the type of reader who likes to problem solve ahead of time. I found the author to have great control over what she wanted us to know and when we could know it.

My single frustration with Guardian was with the evil Puppet Men. As antagonists, I found them to be a little too nebulous–though that could well have been Anderton’s intention, as I’m sure Tanyana felt the same.

There’s tragedy, relief, and still plenty of ‘a-ha!’ moments. I’ll give fair warning…there will be tears, so have the tissues handy. After three books, it’s impossible not to lose it a little when a story like this comes to an end. For this reason, even though Guardian could possibly be read as a stand-alone novel, to get the most from it, I recommend reading Debris and Suited first if you haven’t already done so.

Guardian

Book Three of the Veiled Worlds Trilogy

By Jo Anderton

Fablecroft Publishing 2014

ISBN – Print: 9780992284442 (RRP: $16.99)

ISBN – ebook: 9780992284459 (RRP: $7.99)

Dystopia is a prevalent theme in the modern world: environmental collapse, political upheaval, economic degradation, and uncontrollable technological evolution. These topics are difficult to ignore, and even more difficult to acknowledge.

Wolves isn’t a novel about the Big Bad Wolf coming to gobble up fairy-tale animals and children; it is about far darker creatures…the black prowling creature that lives within us all, awaiting the opportunity to escape, awaiting release–lies, misdeeds, hidden truths that lurk and feed in the dark.

Set in a real world on the brink of collapse, Wolves is a novel about how change is both beautiful and sad, euphoric and brutal, afraid of the dark but turning to face it head on. The setting of a placid English town is already fractured for the young protagonist, Conrad, and his father. Living in a hotel purchased by his bi-polar and financially incompetent mother, Conrad and his father Ben are trapped in a life of inconsistency. Conrad tries to live his adolescence through his best friend Michael. He seeks a sense of stability, something he doesn’t receive from a father caught up in his work running a hotel and assisting with the recuperation of soldiers blinded in a unexplained military conflict; and a mother who spends half her time creating commercially un-viable products to sell to hotel patrons, and the other half in a women-only protest camp.

Conrad is soon confronted with the suicide of his mother in bizarre circumstances, and in his panic he commits guilty acts that stalk him for decades to come.

The story often flashes between Conrad as he ages, and himself a young man–a flowing narrative that builds his own story and that of those around him. We see Michael and his growth from paranoid survivalist to celebrity author, cashing in on his fears of the coming apocalypse; Hanna, Michael’s partner, who Conrad spends a night of uncontrolled lust with after being abandoned by Michael at a party and the unexpected child that results; and the world itself, as it comes to term with evolving technology that changes both how humanity perceives the world, and how it perceives itself.

Nothing is simple in the world of Wolves. Simon Ing has drawn a world complicated in the extreme, with layers of depth under every paragraph and within every conversation. Yet the difficulty is not in understanding the tale, but in the realisation in that we are already on a course similar to that which Ing has penned, on a ship impossible to steer.

Wolves is a dark book; it’s not friendly. It’s not a tale of non-stop action or steamy romance; important plots are not met with a grand upheaval, but rather with an uncomfortable feeling in the gut. Sexual encounters between Conrad and other characters are awkward and confused. Conversations are raw, emotional, and realistic affairs that more often than not, leave the characters worse off.

This being said, it is also deeply enjoyable. Realism and speculation meld beautifully in this novel; each character is deep, and sadness is often drawn tight with a silver lining. This is a tale with a message that needs to be fully absorbed before it can be comprehended: a message of loss, and hope, and change, and fear.

A message of the future, for the future.

The short story collection Last Year, When We Were Young, by Andrew J McKiernan, shines a unique light on classic horror. The sixteen tales in the collection draw inspiration from a variety of genres and styles, with the magically humorous juxtaposed against the frightfully repulsive, but each story has something in common: they are all hauntingly clever.

Each twisted tale is striking and features an assortment of fascinating characters. From a mute mime to a woman in search of a second chance, from a teenage boy to a young country girl, the individual voice of each protagonist is expertly carried through the narrator, granting each story a distinct tone. Language is used skilfully to completely change the atmosphere of each story and to construct the identity of each character.

Creating three-dimensional characters in short stories is a difficult task, but McKiernan succeeds time and again. Although each protagonist is identifiably different from those in neighbouring stories, they all have traits that resonate. Being able to relate to and sympathise with this diverse range of characters makes these tales even more confronting and thought-provoking.

This short story collection is filled with surprises. With darker ideas littered between more light-hearted stories, it is impossible to guess what is waiting on the next page. The constant curiosity of what the next story might contain makes Last Year, When We Were Young difficult to put down.