As the sand pours through Sir Terry Pratchett’s gilded hourglass I find myself again honoured to be able to review his latest work of craft; Snuff.

The Discworld collection is comprised of several mini-series and several one-off novels; each has emotion and plot that comes together to make a meta-series that has allowed fantasy to become more than just swords and sorcery. In fact for the most part Pratchett’s works have been almost completely deprived of the traditional elements of the fantasy genre; sure it has dwarves and trolls, witches, wizards and the undead, but for the most part race has been more about background colour than overarching plot. Ankh-Morpork is home to any species with money in their pocket.

Over the last few years Pratchett has worked very hard to bring each of his mini-series to a satisfactory conclusion; not an easy task with a world as large as the Disc.

The Rincewind series, beginning in 1983 with The Colour of Magic, came to an end with Unseen Academicals, thirty-six Discworld books later.

The Witches series, beginning with Equal Rites in 1987, became the Tiffany Aching series, and was finally brought to a conclusion in 2010 with I shall Wear Midnight, encompassing a total of ten separate novels.

And in 2011 Pratchett brought his longest running, eleven novels, and probably best loved story arch to a conclusion that was both emotionally moving and extremely satisfying.

The City Watch series began in 1989 with Guards! Guards!; a film-noir style police drama full of intrigue and dragons. This book had everything you could want from a crime novel; hard-boiled cops, suspense, a little romance and even more dragons.

As the Discworld became more developed the stories became deeper, the characters more detailed and the context heavier.

Many of the City Watch books covered racial prejudice, corruption and the lengths and depths people will go to in order to survive. And while the subject matter itself was heavy the storytelling has always been light enough that the reader is not overwhelmed with what is occasionally Orwellian content.

Snuff is everything special about Discworld rolled into a novel that melts into your mind like the finest meringue and sits in your stomach like a concrete bowling ball.

As with most of the City Watch novels the protagonist is His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Anhk; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes (Blackboard Monitor). The rest of the City Watch makes occasional appearances, providing necessary background to the main plot, but this is a Vimes story through and through.

Sam Vimes goes on holiday for the first time to his estate in the country with this wife and son. And while his wife would rather he leave his work back in Ankh-Morpork it doesn’t quite work out as planned.

Vimes quickly gets swept up in a conspiracy surrounding the genocide of a race deemed “vermin” by society, smuggling of both contraband and slaves, and a magistrate of wealthy land-owners taking the law into their own hands.

This book answers questions so far ingrained in the world of the Disc that it’s almost shocking to learn the truth; the biggest being ‘What exactly is Nobby Nobbs?’

Outside of that there is little to say without ruining one of the most carefully woven tales ever to come from Pratchett’s own word processor.

The writing is superb, the characters deep without being overly detailed, and the setting so colourful you could use it as a box of crayons.

To say that Snuff is a must have for every Discworld reader is an understatement. Get it, read it, read it again and then you can say your life is complete.

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062011847
• ISBN-13: 978-0062011848

Occasionally it is good to see someone doing something different with an established medium, seeing things from a different perspective, retelling in a different direction, or just focusing on an element that is usually ignored.

Allison Hewitt is Trapped manages this with surprising agility.

While most zombie media focuses purely on the survival side of the theme, Madeleine Roux approaches the story from a different angle and hits up the human interaction side of the whole outbreak process. She also tells the story in a way that separates it from its fellows in much the same way that an axe separates a zombie from its head.

AHiT started life as a serialised story in blog form, inviting others to supply their own snippets of imagination to the story. The audience was kept on the edge of its seat waiting for the next update. The novelisation tells the complete story with the inclusion of the comments that helped the tale progress, and it’s easy to see that, without the assistance of the supporters and their many comments, certain elements would not have come to fruition.

Story wise the plot is the usual survival tale, with narrow escapes, vicious fights with the undead, friends becoming zombies and scrounging supplies to survive another day. There is enough gore and shifts in the plot to keep you interested even if you are just in it for the action.

What really hooked me, though, was the character development. The protagonist – Allison – is emotionally stripped to the bone and put in situations far too dire for most of us to comprehend but, due to the unique perspective, you get this great firsthand view of how desperate situations change us. She is pushed into uncomfortable relationships, forced to act in ways that previously would have been against her nature and generally tortured by the author in a way that I find most entertaining.

This is a novel that hangs perilously close to the Young Adult / Adult borderline. It is often violent, frequently filled with abusive language and includes quite a few sexual references. But then it is a zombie novel so it wasn’t likely to be a PG affair in any case.

Allison Hewitt is Trapped: A Zombie Novel – Madeleine Roux

Published January 18, 2011, by St Martin’s Griffin

Paperback, 352 pages

Chasers, the first book in James Phelan’s macabre Alone series, is a sad, yet thrilling, tale of the lengths a person will go to in order to survive in a hostile environment.

Jesse, the story’s protagonist, is on a subway ride through New York with his new friends from the UN Youth Ambassadors when their train is overturned in an explosion that shakes the city. When they climb out of the tunnel they emerge into a city that has been devastated by what seems like a massive terrorist attack.

Soon after they are accosted by a gang of people who have been infected with something that makes them forever thirsty; and it appears that their favourite drink is blood. They soon name these predators “Chasers”.

Survival becomes paramount for the four survivors. They hole up inside a restaurant in one of the few surviving skyscrapers, stockpiling supplies and awaiting rescue that looks never to come.

What sets Chasers apart from most post-apocalyptic novels is the focus on the characters as opposed to the setting. Jesse is made to come to terms with the prospect of sharing the city with only those around him, fear of the same thing happening to his own country (Australia), the impossibility of escape and dreams that hint at more going on than he suspects.

The writing in Chasers is simple yet effective; settings are described with little detail in order to let the reader build their own world. This both helps and hinders the story; those who have knowledge of New York will quickly build a mental image of the city as imagined by Phelan, those without will be forced to piece together somewhere completely alien.

Dialogue is more often internal than external, without punctuation to denote conversation versus thought. To begin with, this is a little confusing but makes sense as the story continues.

There is still plenty of story left to tell from this series. The second is already being published and the third is on its way. The first novel really just sets the scene for what is to come.

James Phelan—Chasers

Published 27 May 2010, by Hachette

Paperback, 272 pages

ISBN: 9780733624797

Ship Breaker is a cautionary tale of both climate change and class disparity, both of which it handles masterfully.

Plenty of novels have emerged over the last several years predicting just what kind of change will befall the earth due to the climate change we – and nature itself – has wrought.  Few have held my attention as well as Bacigalupi’s work, Ship Breaker.

The novel starts strong, with the protagonist – named Nailer for reasons known to his father – stripping wiring from a salvaged ship in order to sell for scrap. Much like my earlier review of Trash by Andy Mulligan, the setting of Ship Breaker is one of a community of scavengers. In this case an entire beachfront society in North America is devoted to the salvaging, smelting and recycling of ships in a world run short of raw natural resources. Oil is all but gone; fossil fuels are banned throughout the world for fear of future flooding; most of the world’s major ice shelves have already melted; many of the great cities are already undersea.

Luck plays a major part of this story, or, as the characters put it, “luck and smarts.” Nailer falls into a compartment flooded with waste oil and is abandoned by one of his work crew with whom he had shared a blood oath so she could quietly sell the oil off herself. And it is with both luck and smarts that he saves himself from drowning.

Soon afterward he stumbles across a wrecked clipper ship with another of his crew and discovers, amongst the many treasures worthy of salvaging, an injured girl who is either their key to freedom from a life amongst the ship breakers or a terrible accident waiting to happen.

The story of Ship Breaker stays strong throughout the length of the novel, with vibrant characters and well written action from cover to cover. This isn’t a story that grows cold in your hand; you will want to keep turning the pages to see what the plot holds.

Paolo Bacigalupi—Ship Breaker

Published 9 May, 2010, by Little Brown

Paperback, 323 pages

Mad cow disease, an immortal lawn gnome and a punk angel with a hatred of snow globes. All the makings of a Viking epic…

This book is a deranged ride across America that combines a desperate search for a cure with a philosophical crisis.

Cameron is a Texas teen outcast drifting without a cause until he is diagnosed with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy – mad cow disease – and he is forced to flee the hospital and those who care about him in order to find a cure with his companions: Gonzo, a hypochondriac Little Person, and Dulcie, an angel who has involved herself personally with Cameron’s plight.

Their goals? To find the elusive Dr. X before a hole in space time destroys the universe and to find a cure for Cameron on the way. Not the easiest of quests when you are being pursued by police, giants made of fire and an armoured man with plans to end everything.

The writing in Going Bovine is obscure in its design; the style changes as the book gains confidence. It starts off a little confused and unsure, but within a few chapters, the author has latched onto the storyline and lets it evolve naturally. And it does evolve, as do the characters.

The characters put on a brave face throughout the novel but underneath is a pretty serious message: live your life the best you can, you don’t know how long you have.

There’s plenty in Going Bovine to keep you entertained and confused: a snow globe empire conspiracy; flashes of alternate realities; a cult of bowling-obsessed happiness junkies; and a lawn gnome who believes he is a Norse god.

This is really a love it or leave it kind of book; I loved it, and, at nearly five hundred pages, there was plenty to love. But there really is a lot in here that is a matter of taste; there is some sex and alternate sexualities, some theological questioning, and plenty of reflection on the nature of television and the human condition.

As one of the few stand-alone novels I’ve read this year Going Bovine stands strong in its message and characters. And one that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Going Bovine – Libba Bray

Published: September 28, 2010 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Paperback – 496 Pages

ISBN: 978-0-385-73398-4

Ta daaaa… Burn Bright moves into video reviews today with our first sound bite from Jamie Marriage. I think you’ll agree that Jamie does a brilliant job. Also stand by for Bec’s Big 4 interview with Kristen who is touring Australia soon, and a second review from Cecilia Jansink.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oEiD8-H9FI&feature=youtu.be

Cultural difference can be a rather heavy subject, one that Killing Honour by Bali Rai tackles with surprising diplomacy.

The urban England location sets an emotive scene for racial and family tensions and a rather adult plot that takes some understanding. The novel is based around Sat, a young man from a lapsed Sikh household, and his search for his sister who went missing in questionable circumstances.

The foundations for this kind of tale have long been set (some may say overused) so it surprised me that I could find the story told in such a way as to leave me turning the page in anticipation. There is much within the covers that is controversial; there is quite a bit of drug use, sexual references and acts and several references  to long-held cultural beliefs that would be seen as questionable in today’s world. That being said the content is controlled beautifully; this isn’t a book of  ’shock horror’. The graphic imagery manages to emphasise the story where another author may have let it overwhelm it.

There is no way that a story like this can completely escape bias from its author; the novel jumps from character to character in intervals within the story, including from the viewpoint of several women in the midst of abuse, but the writing is such that it doesn’t feel like any particular view is being pushed. As such, it takes the reader on a visceral ride into places that they would not have expected to go.

“Nice” is not a word I would use to describe this book, and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. This book is about as far as you can push an M15+ rating in literary form. Approach it with caution but don’t shy away from it; the tale within is more than worth the occasional queasy feeling you might experience while reading it.

Bali Rai — Killing Honour

288 Pages

Published January 8, 2011, by Random House

ISBN: 9781409026747

Don’t judge a book by its cover; that’s a point I learnt long ago. Some covers are an exact representation of what is in the book, some are so clearly divorced it boggles the mind, and some are just following the trend of what gets books sold.

The first thing I thought when I picked up this book was “Oh, Two men in hoods on the cover, how original.” To be fair, this is due to a discussion I had with a few high-end editors about what kinds of images sell books. Read the rest of this entry »

Trash is in no way a pretty book; the cover is an illustration of a landfill of Himalayan proportions. The setting is in essence a community built around a pile of, as the inhabitants call it “Stuppa”, what we would politely call human waste. And the main characters are garbage sorters of the kind that is all too common in third world countries.

Beneath the filth that is part and parcel of the story reside some very human characters: Raphael and Gardo, two somewhat emotionally scarred teenage trash sorters, and Rat, a young man that starts off alone and grimy but proves to be a creature of natural instincts within.

This story is not an overly complex one. Raphael recovers a discarded bag during his usual day salvaging what he can from an endless field of refuse; the money within promises short lived luxury, the map and key a mystery. A confusing but fortunate find for the boy, until the corrupt police arrive to look for the bag in order to solve a crime. Read the rest of this entry »

Having the opportunity to review a new Terry Pratchett book is akin to getting up close to a terminally endangered species; there is that moment of awe and then sadness that this may be the last time you see one in the flesh.

Terry does what in most cases is considered impossible; not only does he persevere through his illness but he consistently produces works that challenge the reader. This is doubly true for his most recent young adult novel, I Shall Wear Midnight. Read the rest of this entry »