‘Girl Meets Boy’ is a relatively eclectic selection of short stories focusing on teens from diverse walks of life all caught up in youthful relationships, where perceptive is everything and the simplest exchange of words can so easily be misread and misconstrued. Written by a diverse mix of established and up-and-coming authors, each tale is split into two stories: One from a male author from the guy’s point of view, while the other sees a female writer telling the girl’s point-of-view.

Unfortunately, Girl Meets Boy never really embraces the concept set up in its introduction, and the actual stories mostly just use the dual-perspective concept as a way to simply tell a longer story rather than offering up any real Rashomon-style cleverness or revealing insight into gender dynamics in relationships. The opening story – a tale of an abnormally good looking boy and a rebellious foster home girl with a history of abuse – does the most with the ‘people aren’t what they say or seem on the surface’ dual narrative, as does the closing story (even if the big twisty reveal is very clumsily delivered).

Like any anthology, the stories can be hit-and-miss, but there are notable standouts, with the best being James Howe and Ellen Wittlinger’s tale of a troubled gay kid trying to find love online. On the whole, they’re an entertaining selection, with no truly bad or boring entries. The diversity of the collection is a definite upside, too, and focusing on kids from a wide variety of sexual and racial backgrounds, from gay, straight and transgender to white, African-American, Native American and Muslim teens helps provide a welcome variety of social and cultural flavour to the stories.





But not only do the majority of the stories neglect to deliver on the he-said/she-said insight and intrigue, many fail to really delve more than surface level with its culturally diverse characters, who feel trite as a result. Rebecca Fjelland Davis and Terry Davis tell the story of a Muslim boy dating a white farmer girl, but the racial conflicts and family drama presented feel like territory that’s already been explored to death in the years following 9/11, and here it’s all barely explored and without anything remotely new to say. The short length means that many of the stories sacrifice a lot of character development in the same way and feel a bit too truncated and unsatisfying.

As a collection, it’s a fast and easy read (though the often abuse-themed content is significantly darker than the wistful summer romance cover implies) and the stories all entertain and prove interesting and diverse in their own ways. Unfortunately the authors don’t really get the most out of the short story structure or the collection’s concept, never quite delivering on the ‘he said/she said’ set-up and not always fleshing their characters out as well as possible. It’s a hit-and-miss anthology, but overall it’s an engaging enough collection for fans of relationship drama.

Rating:

‘Girl Meets Boy’, Edited by Kelly Milner Halls is out now in hardback format through Chronicle Books, with a Kindle version due on 1st April 2012.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

If you’ve yet to read Lauren Oliver’s wonderful teen dystopian novel Delirium, you might want to get on that. Set in the not-too-distant future, Oliver’s novel centres around a world where love has been declared a fearsome, contagious disease responsible for all manner of criminal acts, mental illness, violence and bloodshed. It’s vaccinated against when children turn eighteen, turning people into passionless, docile drones. But when Lena – a naive young girl quickly approaching her cure date – starts fall in love, she begins to question the system, embarking on a dangerous journey to hold on to her love and cling to her identity.

Delirium washed up on bookshelves amongst a veritable ocean of dystopian Young Adult novels (much like Twilight, the success of The Hunger Games triggered a wave of inspiration and imitation) but Lauren Oliver’s novel stood out from the pack thanks to her exquisite writing, sharp, well-developed characters, the fascinating, beautifully realised world she’d constructed and the spellbinding love story at the heart of it all.

Fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of Delirium’s sequel Pandemonium for the past year, giddy with anticipation to find out what happened after that cliffhanger ending. If you’ve been camped out in front of the letterbox waiting for your long-ago pre-ordered copy to show up and put you out of your misery, then you’ll be happy to know that Pandemonium is a gripping follow-up filled with suspenseful action and an engrossing story.

But while Oliver uses the book to expand her dystopian world in interesting ways, evolving Lena into an even more captivating, substantial character, and her prose still proves to be just as gorgeously written, Pandemonium isn’t quite as fantastic a book as Delirium thanks to a few too many predictable moments and a romance that’s far less interesting in comparison to that of Lena and Alex.





(Spoilers for Delirium follow, so look away now if you haven’t read it yet!) Picking up directly after the ending of Delirum, Pandemonium finds Lena on the other side of the fence in the outskirts of the Wilds, having narrowly escaped the regulators who gunned down Alex. The narrative dovetails between the past and present as chapters alternate between the “Then”, where Lena integrates herself into the Wilds and the “Now”: a time several months later when she’s a full-fledged member of the resistance living back in society, covertly posing as one of the cured.

In the Wilds, she’s struggling to adjust to a far harsher and less forgiving new life than the one she’s used to, unable to ever return home and still reeling from the loss of the boy who was supposed to be the bridge between those two worlds and her reason for escape. In the city, she’s working for the resistance, keeping tabs on Julian Fineman – the charismatic teen poster child for the cure and propaganda tool for the DFA (Deliria-Free America), But when the two are captured by a dangerous faction and their lives thrown into jeopardy, Lena is shocked to find herself falling for a boy who represents everything she should be fighting against.

The book’s time-jumping chapter structure can take some getting used to, and it can be a little jarring and dissatisfying to flit between the two; the world of the Wilds is an incredibly interesting one, and seeing Lena grow and adjust to that life is far more gripping than a future we haven’t been fully caught up to yet. After a while, though, the zig-zag framing starts to make more sense: Lena and Julian spend a large portion of the book languishing in captivity, so jumping between there and the action and character growth of the wilds provides a better sense of pace rather than having it front-loaded with “the good stuff” before focusing on one hundred pages of slow-paced, cell-dwelling romance.

The NYC resistance segments expand on the world of Delirium even further, adding another layer of political strife and introducing us to more factions beyond the cured and those in the Wilds, like those born with birth defects, cast aside and forced to live underground, or the feral, nihilistic Scavengers – violent, chaotic and murderous uncureds who prove equally dangeous to society’s cured and the people of the Wilds. But even so, the “Then” sections which cover Lena’s induction into the Wilds are infinitely more engaging than her life in the “Now”.





The freedom of being able to express emotion in the Wilds comes at the cost of the basic necessities of society, which quickly hardens people’s spirits as they live day-to-day with precious little food or supplies. As Lena’s forced to earn her place in the Wilds under the wing of hard-edged leader Raven, we see her grow from sheltered, fragile girl to tough, strong-willed, self-reliant survivalist, shaping her into an even more likeable and substantial protagonist. The world of the Wilds introduces us to a group of interesting and well-developed new characters who we then follow on a harrowing, riveting journey of loss and survival as they struggle to endure a harsh and unforgiving winter fraught with dwindling supplies and the ever-present threat of Regulator attacks.

The future segments, though filled with plenty of plot and thrilling action, aren’t half as interesting as those set in the Wilds, the problem being the romance that fuels much of the book. To Oliver’s credit, Lena’s such a well developed character that even the rather dull Julian becomes a great catalyst for her character’s continued growth and inner turmoil, and her moving on from dead first love Alex is handled well enough that it doesn’t feel too jarring or unnatural. And it’s clever and interesting to be seeing the gender flip-side of Alex and Lena’s relationship: Lena is now the hardened, independent survivalist, Julian the sheltered, naive one falling for someone from the Wilds.

But Julian proves to be such a bland character, and it’s tough to shake the mechanical nature of having another star-crossed romance in the series so soon, as if it’s there purely because that’s what every Young Adult book is supposed to have to be successful. And stemming from that, having a romantic lead who’s the polar opposite of Alex makes it far too easy to see the big, surprise cliffhanger ending and the set-up of the third book coming from a million miles away. That unsurprising twist signposts yet another obligatory and all-too-familiar Young Adult genre cliche, which doesn’t exactly end the book on the most original high point or hint at an especially promising third entry. Predictability rears its head surprisingly often, and you’ll frequently find yourself at least a step or two ahead of the story, which is a huge shame.

The quality of Lauren Oliver’s prose is often unsurpassed by the majority of her Young Adult peers, and that’s no different here, but it’s a shame that such beautiful writing is laid on a sometimes predictable and formulaic framework. But while Pandemonium doesn’t quite live up to the immense promise laid out by its fantastic predecessor, on the whole it’s still a gripping, beautifully written, action-packed read which offers up substantial character growth, introduces us to some great new characters and provides an enticing wider glimpse of the captivating world we saw in Delirium.

Rating:

‘Pandemonium’ by Lauren Oliver is out now in hardback and ebook format.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

When Graham Yost set about transplanting author Elmore Leonard’s character Raylan Givens from the printed page to TV screens, he had the writing team for Justified famously wear plastic wristbands emblazoned with the letters ‘WWED’ – ‘What Would Elmore Do?’ – in order to keep them true to the spirit of the character and Leonard’s writing style. It’s probably time for the crew to cut those bracelets off. Leonard’s third Raylan Givens novel, simply titled ‘Raylan’, is far from the writer’s strongest work and helps prove that Yost & Co. have a much better grasp on the character and the backwoods criminals of Harlan, Kentucky than Elmore himself does.

Reading ‘Raylan’ is a strange experience if you’re up to date with the show. After seeing his character portrayed so wonderfully by Timothy Olyphant in Justified, Leonard was apparently inspired to write another novel in the series. He then gave the show’s writers an early draft of the book and told them to mine it for parts if they liked. They did, the book’s plot and characters serving as inspiration for significant chunks of the series’ second and third seasons. As a result, reading ‘Raylan’ (which gets its release after those episodes have aired) makes the book feel like Elmore’s alternate reality ‘What if?’ version of Justified: Season Two.

The book plays out like three episodes of the show as Raylan, a former Florida Marshal forced to transfer to his rural hometown of Harlan County after roping a Miami gun thug into a showdown and shooting him dead, tackles a trio of unrelated cases. A pair of kidney thieves are stealing organs and ransoming them back to their victims, Raylan gets tied up with the corporate spokeswoman for a major coal company looking to gut Harlan’s resources after a townsperson with a grudge winds up murdered, and a fugitive college girl with a knack for gambling appears to be involved in a string of bank robberies pulled off by a trio of young, beautiful women.





Major moments and chunks of dialogue from the TV series dovetail through the book but events and characters then veer far from the events of the show, their fates often radically different. Dim-witted criminal siblings Dickie and Coover figure prominently in the first third of the book, but they’re transplanted from the Bennetts onto the Crowe family in Leonard’s story. Their father Pervis Crowe now the head of Harlan’s hillbilly weed empire in place of the series’ menacing matriarch Mags Bennett, while Loretta, who was the driving force behind much of the show’s second season, is only around for a few pages. Raylan is forced to serve as bodyguard for scheming coal company spokeswoman Carol, but the mining dispute unfolds differently and isn’t as major a plotline as in the show. It all leads to a bizarre sense of deja-vu, but the ways in which the series diverge from the book’s story only serves to highlight that Justified’s writers have managed to beat Leonard at his own game.

Leonard has a particular writing style that’s an acquired taste, if you’re not familiar with it. Tossing grammar aside with wild abandon, his stories are peppered with broken sentences, light on grammar and punctuation and heavy on slang and sharp dialogue. It’s a casual, colloquial style that’s as perfect a fit for the rural underworld and southern drawls of Kentucky as any, but that dialogue-heavy, description-free style help contribute to the fact that Raylan and Harlan lack the rich texture that they have on the show. Without description to rely on, Raylan Givens is much less the captivating, cooler-than-a-cryogenically-frozen-eskimo character he is when channeled through Timothy Olyphant. Leonard doesn’t have quite the same finely-tuned grip on his own character and feels the need to have him shoot his mouth off to fill pages, sometimes making the character feel more like a mouthy, clichéd tough guy than the nuanced badass he is on the show.

Perhaps its a little unfair to square the book up against a series which has 20-something hour-long episodes a year in which to develop its story, but Leonard’s very episodic pacing and structure make it almost impossible not to. And whether you’re a die-hard fan of the show or only know Raylan from Leonard’s novels, the ‘three separate cases’ structure doesn’t lend itself to the most satisfying package, primarily because the second and third vignettes end so anticlimactically. Without fail, every chunk of plot or character Yost and co. borrow from ‘Raylan’ is moulded into something far greater on the show than in the source material.





‘Raylan’s’ coal mining plot, a thinly-plotted story which ends as limply as a wet noodle, on the show became the backdrop for an intense, gripping Winter’s Bone-inspired backwoods crime saga shockingly rich in character, story and sense of place. The book’s throwaway characters like Loretta McCready or Dickie Bennett/Crowe (who, in the novel, is little more than a hick defined largely by his affectation of wearing big-collared shirts and collecting Elvis memorabilia) become two of the strongest, most captivating the series has, while those created by the show (like country crime lord Mags Bennett) manage to be greater characters than any in Leonard’s novel by a wide margin. Even the stronger, more satisfying parts of the book, like the opening kidney-thieving story, become the inspiration for far richer, deeper material on the show, as Yost and his team transformed a solid little crime romp into a fantastic vehicle for series scene-stealer Dewey Crowe and one of the sharpest, funniest hours of television this year.

‘Raylan’ is by no means a bad book and certainly has its moments. There’s a reason the show took the bare inspiration and whole chunks of dialogue from the novel – though the follow-through on the trio of vignettes isn’t always the strongest, there’s the seeds of great little crime stories dotted throughout, and Leonard’s flair for breezy, crackerjack dialogue is still unsurpassed by most in the crime fiction world. But while the opening story works incredibly well, the pacing and character soon go askew and the scattered narrative doesn’t make for the most satisfying package.

It’s punchy pulp peppered with dynamite dialogue, but ‘Raylan’ often feels more like Leonard had a few vague ideas for episodes of the show and half-heatedly stretched them out into a full-length book. The amount of overlap between the book’s events and characters and those that pop up in seasons two and three of the TV series makes ‘Raylan’ an interesting curio for fans of the show, but it’s pretty telling that the series takes the world of Raylan Givens and Harlan, Kentucky and translates it into a meatier, more substantial and satisfying work of fiction than Leonard manages.

Rating:

‘Raylan’ by Elmore Leonard is out now in hardback and ebook format.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s true, a hell of a lot of filmmakers must be blushing after reading Joe Schreiber’s ‘Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick’. Once you get past the fact that a massive portion of Schreiber’s book is shamelessly borrowed or stolen from other, much better works of fiction, it’s a fast-paced, propulsive and gripping little young adult action book. But that’s still a hell of a lot to get past.

The book follows soon-to-be college student Perry, an aspiring musician who’s planning to skip his senior prom to play his band’s first major gig in New York City. Unfortunately for him, his controlling father pushes him into taking Gobi, the frumpy Lithuanian exchange student staying with them, to the prom. Even more unfortunate, under the sullen attitude and drab fashion sense, Gobi reveals herself to be a smoking hot contract killer. Held at gunpoint, Perry is forced to act as chauffeur as Gobi drags him on a blood-soaked, bullet-ridden tour of New York, with five people to kill by dawn – if the two of them can survive that long.

If the plot doesn’t sound familiar, you might not have seen Michael Mann’s Collateral. In the film, cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) is taken hostage by contract killer Vincent (Tom Cruise), who has five kills to pull off in the city over the course of one night. ‘Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick’ flagrantly steals almost the entire plot of Mann’s film, from the central concept, to major story beats. Perry, like Max, makes an ill-fated attempt to flag down help while the assassin leaves him in an alley cuffed to the steering wheel. He destroys Gobi’s kill list, only to be forced to pose as hitman to recover a back-up from Gobi’s intimidating contractor – a situation which is resolved in the exact same way as the movie, with almost identical dialogue. The book’s shoot-out finale even takes place in a deserted office building in the middle of the night.





That’s not all, though. Even the parts that aren’t yoinked from Collateral conjure up a hefty sense of deja-vu. Perry is essentially Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – taking his father’s prized car into the city without permission, he’s dragged against his will on a coming-of-age whirlwind trip of the city by a dynamic companion which ultimately inspires the passive kid to finally stand up to his controlling dad. The last act veers dangerously close to the plot of Taken, too, along with countless other ‘it all happened during one crazy night’ movies.

On the whole, the Young Adult genre is a naturally derivative one, with most new titles borrowing heavily from the last big success; throw a rock in a bookstore and it’ll rebound off at least three novels featuring the dystopian trappings of ‘The Hunger Games’ or the brooding, melodramatic, star-crossed supernatural romance of ‘Twilight’, themselves owing huge debts to decades of fiction before them. In many cases, writers work within those borrowed conventions and find some new ideas to offer, engaging characters to present, or a unique spin on a tired concept. The trouble is, once you remove all the pilfered elements from Schreiber’s book, there’s not really anything new to find. Both Perry and Gobi never evolve beyond hollow, paper thin characters, while the obligatory romance never rings remotely true.

But what it lacks in depth, it certainly makes up for in pace and action. It won’t take you much longer than the length of your average action movie to speed through all of ‘Au Revoir’, and it’s just as full of entertainingly violent havoc and destruction. Whether it’s brutal fist-fights, car chases or shoot-outs, there’s never a dull chapter as Schreiber keeps things speeding along with an explosive, break-neck pace, Perry flitting from one perilous predicament to the next. Schreiber’s chapter openings are a fun touch, too, each one beginning with a college application essay question which mirrors the events of that chapter.

Ultimately, ‘Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick’ is the Young Adult lit equivalent of a fun, but forgettable late action movie. A less-than-original blend of Collateral, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Taken, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and more, Schreiber’s book is so derivative it’s practically begging for a lawsuit. But while it’s nothing remotely new, it’s never less than entertaining, with a rollercoaster pace and enough action to distract you from the fact that you’ve seen it all before.

Rating:

‘Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick’ by Joe Schreiber is released in paperback format on 5th March 2012 from Egmont Books’ Electric Monkey imprint.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

‘Spartacus: Blood and Ashes’ by author J.M. Clements, the tie-in book to Stars’ epic swords-and-sandals series, hits bookshelves this week. To celebrate the release, we have a guest blog from the author himself here, but we also have three copies of the book to give away courtesy of the fine folks at Titan Books!


Some legends are written in blood.

In the arena blood and death are primetime entertainment. But not all battles are fought upon the sands…





To be in with a chance of winning, simply email us here and include the following:

1. Your full name and mailing address.
2. The answer to the following: Which actor plays Batiatus in the TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand?

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Competition ends 3rd February 2012.)

Julie Cross’ debut novel ‘Tempest’ hit bookshelves worldwide this month. A fun, fast-paced action/romance for young adult readers, it’s a mixture of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Jumper and The Bourne Identity.

You can find my full review here, but the folks at MacMillan were kind enough to send along a clip from the audiobook version so you can check out a little of the book for yourself.

‘Tempest’ by Julie Cross is available to buy now in audiobook, hardback and ebook format.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

Spartacus: Swords and Ashes, the tie-in novel to Stars’ epic swords and sandals TV series arrives on bookshelves in the UK on 27th January from Titan Books (Priced £6.99).

You can out find more about the book at Titan Books’ website here, and to celebrate the release, we’re pleased to host a guest blog from Swords and Ashes author J.M. Clements!

JUPITER’S COCK!

Author J.M. Clements on the language of Spartacus

The language was the first thing I noticed about Spartacus: Blood & Sand. While everyone else was trilling about the blood and the gore, the crotch-shots and the knockers, I heard the distinct sound of scriptwriters who loved language. Slaves from the provinces spat recognisable modern dialogue, effing and blinding, often with clear Antipodean accents. But when Batiatus first swans into view, John Hannah speaks in elaborate trimeters and tetrameters, full of classy poise and archaic charm.

Writers have long struggled with the problems of conveying the attitudes and ideas of a different time or place in the same language that readers use to write their shopping lists or shout at their kids. Tolkien invented an entire world in order to justify the authorship of a single sentence in a language that didn’t exist. Numerous science fiction authors have posited the use of an English that is decayed or mutated, each demanding new exercise on the part of the reader before they get a sense of the world they see. The same applies to historical fiction.

Derek Jarman found a way around it by having everyone speak Latin in his film Sebastiane. But even though his actors rose to the task, their argot sounds strange to modern ears. In the most memorable line, a man onscreen calls out “Oi! Oedipe!” The subtitles gleefully translate it as “Hey! Motherf*cker!” Roman insults and oaths didn’t draw on vernacular concepts – more often than not, they drew classical allusions, to Hercules and Venus, Vulcan and Jupiter. And their body parts.

In Spartacus, the writers embark upon an extended exercise in capturing the sense of how ancient Romans communicate. Dialogue is as carefully Latinate as possible, to the exclusion of much earthy Anglo-Saxon. No, not the f-word and the c-word, both found in abundance, but little touches like hello, goodbye and thank you, banished from hearing in order to up the sense of a different world. “Gratitude” is itself an anachronism, not found in Latin until long after the time of the Republic, but its use in Spartacus sets a tone throughout, and matched by much other dialogue.

When Craig Parker, as Glaber, says: “What promises have you made Batiatus and his faded bitch?” there is a music and a rhythm to his words. Even in English, the script conveys the sense of a language carefully conjugated almost into poetry, heavy with alliteration and assonance, even as it launches an insult.

That’s one of the reasons why I leapt at the chance to write the first Spartacus tie-in novel Swords & Ashes, because it was a chance to play with those ideas for a whole book. I took things the other way, as well, with chapter titles in real Latin, often with strong resonances with modern English: “Posteritas”, “Reconciliatum”, or “Argumenta”. I get a real kick out of words like miscellanea (a gladiator’s porridge) or spoliarium (the room where they dump the dead). I think it’s sweet that a gladiatorial groupie is called a ludia (literally “schoolie”) or that the gladiators used to call their pre-game warm-up routine numeri (“the numbers”). Such ideas can impart a real sense of time and place by their presence.

There are also some that need to be absent. When my first draft came back from approvals, it was missing three thousand words, most of them “the” and “a”. Latin doesn’t have definite or indefinite articles, and while the producers are happy to have them in the text, they are reluctant to hear them in dialogue. The pseudo-Latinate dialogue of the show is jarring when you first see it on the page, but you soon get used to it. It’s not long before you hear Batiatus bellowing in your ear about wine, women, and the arena. I was very surprised that I was able to last a whole 28 pages before his first outburst of “JUPITER’S COCK!”


J.M. Clements is the author of Spartacus: Swords & Ashes, available now in the US in paperback and on Kindle. It is released in the UK on 27th January.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

It’s 2009 and 19-year-old college student Jackson Meyer can jump through time. His abilities aren’t quite as impressive as they might sound to begin with: He can only make short trips into the recent past and he can’t poke around and change history. When two armed men break into his apartment in an attempt to kidnap him, his girlfriend Holly is shot and panicked Jackson instinctively jumps into the past, but without control of his abilities, he ends up stuck in 2007.

Stranded in a time he doesn’t belong, he finds himself beginning his relationship all over again with younger Holly while trying to hone his powers enough to leap back to the present and save the future her. With a shady government agency desperate to harness his gift for their own means and the sinister time-travellers behind Holly’s shooting following him into the past, Jackson’s life becomes more dangerous than he ever thought possible as he struggles to save the girl he loves.

After the success of the Twilight books, young adult fiction has become a potential cash cow for movie studios looking to option the ‘next big thing’ franchise. With a huge marketing push and promo ads airing on UK TV (quite a rarity for books over here), it’s no surprise that Tempest is being groomed for movie success, too, with YA film factory Summit Entertainment optioning the rights. Unfortunately, though, Tempest often feels like a book awkwardly written with a movie adaptation in mind, with franchise-friendly tropes, subplots and mysteries shoe-horned in to fuel future books/films. It’s a shame, because those clunky, underwritten elements aside, Julie Cross’ debut novel is a fast-paced and entertaining romantic adventure with surprisingly likeable, well-written lead characters.





It’s incredibly refreshing to see a realistic, well fleshed out guy character at the centre of a young adult novel, which makes a nice change from the usual clichéd dark, broody, borderline abusive bad boys or bland, perfect Prince Charming caricatures who’re usually the male lead. Time-travelley protagonist Jackson Meyer proves to be a likeable, believable character; he’s intelligent and good natured, but occasionally self-involved and short-sighted, which helps make him and the relationship at the centre of the story feel realistically flawed and rather engrossing one. The same is true of love interest Holly, and while she’s not given quite the same amount of character development as Jackson, she’s a cute, strong-willed and well-written character, and their enjoyable dialogue flows naturally and believably.

The major problem is that it often seems like Cross is putting together a supernatural trilogy just because that’s what’s popular and expected of YA authors now (unsurprisingly, Tempest already had a movie adaptation in the works even before the book hit shelves), and the story and writing are far more natural, entertaining and impressive when the book focuses on the real-world relationship drama than the other-worldly sci-fi elements. She crafts believable lead characters and an engaging romance, with both Jackson and Holly being likeable, realistic characters, and their relationship and the dialogue that propels it is natural, sweet and often funny.

Unfortunately, when the book steps outside the lines of that simple, down-to-earth romance, it feels like Cross gets bored and rushes through the convoluted sci-fi elements as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort to get back to the relationship drama. The natural, realistic dialogue that drives the central relationship vanishes whenever the story has to focus on its big mysteries and time travel elements, where every bit of new information about Jackson’s abilities are clumsy thrown at us with lazy exposition and major, life-changing secrets about his past are just blurted out in stilted ‘Oh, and by the way, you also have this power now, and you’re also adopted, see ya!’ fashion by his father or doctor.





It’s a problem that’s even more noticeable when you throw in the rather rote, generic elements of the time travel story as it feels like Cross is just ticking off boxes on a checklist of familiar tropes. Jackson naturally has a teen hacker sidekick who can hack into any government system with zero effort, there’s a shifty government agency on the trail of those with special abilities and there’s an ages-old race of evil time-hoppers dubbed ‘The Enemies of Time’ (or EOT for short) out to destroy the world. If you’ve ever read/seen teleportation YA book/movie adaptation Jumper, the entirety of Tempest will give you a huge sense of deja-vu, and far too much of the sci-fi story is an unfortunate mixture of convoluted, clumsy and derivative.

But even amidst the often clunky and potentially confusing sci-fi elements, Cross crafts some engaging action scenes. The bursts of violent energy that pop up as Jackson learns some Bourne Identity-style martial arts and puts his powers to use are fairly gripping and Cross writes action in a simple, dynamic and easy-to-follow way which helps keep the pace as propulsive as the action. She also throws in some interesting ideas when toying with time travel: Jackson can perform half-jumps, where his actions in the past have no consequence and part of him stays rooted in the present, as well as full leaps, where he propels himself through time completely, able to change things. Unfortunately those ideas aren’t always used to their full potential, but it’s a unique mechanic all the same and sows the seed to hopefully be used to better effect in later books.

Tempest is a fast, action-packed, breezy read, and a largely enjoyable one, with a sweet, natural core romance and charming, well-written leads. Sadly, its sci-fi elements give way to plenty of clumsy, unnatural dialogue, paper thin supporting characters and convoluted, derivative chunks of plot. It’s an entertaining read, and one which you’ll fly through in no time, but it’s a shame that Cross doesn’t put as much heart and effort into the larger sci-fi plot and characters than she does the comparatively more engaging love story elements.

Rating:

‘Tempest’ by Julie Cross is available to buy now.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

The tie-in novel can be a tough proposition to pull off well, but even more challenging are those books based on video games. It’s a lose-lose situation in most respects; for the majority of games, the narrative doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny and is merely tolerated for the fun gameplay, but even those titles with rich mythology and great characters might not prove as memorable and enthralling when you’re a passive observer instead of an active participant helping shape the story. Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth attempts to adapt the exhilarating action and adventure of the Uncharted games to the printed page, and while it’s a fun little pulpy adventure to help tide fans over until the new game arrives, sadly it never comes close to rivalling the video game adventures of Nathan Drake.

When college professor and noted archaeologist Luka Hzujak turns up brutally murdered in New York while investigating the myth of Daedalus’ labyrinths, his grieving daughter Jada turns to her godfather, Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan, for help. Wise-cracking adventurer Nathan Drake leaps to the aid of his best pal/partner in crime and he and Sully head off to Egypt with Jada in tow, intent on unravelling the mysteries of the lost labyrinths, discovering the treasure at the heart of it all and uncovering the truth behind Hzujak’s murder. But with an army of mysterious hooded assassins and a sinister German industrialist on their tail, the treasure-hunters’ latest adventure might prove to be their most dangerous yet.

Though he crafts an entertaining adventure for Nathan Drake, Christopher Golden never quite manages to manoeuvre around the overlooked fact that, at least on paper, Uncharted isn’t an exceptional series. They’re solid, old-fashioned Indiana Jones-inspired adventures that’re masterpieces of presentation rather than plot. The masterstroke of the Uncharted games is in the storytelling rather than the story, combining fantastic gameplay, incredibly cinematic, dynamic and interactive action narratives with voice acting and motion capture performance that’s far above and beyond that of most other games. Take away the exceptional voice talent of Nolan North, Emily Rose and Richard McGonagle, the cinematic, visual action and the interactivity and we’re left back at square one, with an enjoyable, but derivative and familiar pulp adventure story.





Not that that’s a terrible compromise, but without the defining, elevating elements that make the games such phenomenal experiences, the wear in the foundation is much more apparent and harder to forgive. The Uncharted series has always owed a colossal debt to the Indiana Jones movies; without the globe-trotting, treasure-hunting adventures of Henry Jones, Jr., the roguish, quip-happy Nathan Drake we know and love wouldn’t exist. But Christopher Golden goes a few steps further, borrowing almost the entire plot of Temple of Doom for The Fourth Labyrinth. (Spoiler alert!) A mysterious, sinister, catacomb-dwelling cult kidnapping the locals and feeding them potion to turn them into mindless worker drones? Check. One of our heroes momentarily turned slave-zombie and forced to attack his friends? Check-oslavakia.

(The spoilers are over, you can look now!) In fairness, Golden does weave an otherwise entertaining and fairly gripping tale which, true to the Indy/Uncharted formula, weaves mythic history lesson with cryptic, supernatural-tinged mystery and tomb-raiding adventure to engaging effect, with a fun re-imagining of the Daedalus/Minotaur myth. Sadly it’s more than a little damning that The Fourth Labyrinth’s most original and interesting story moments are shamelessly yoinked from an Indiana Jones movie. The action is naturally never as dynamic or as heart-stopping as its gaming counterpart, propped up by too much exposition, and the dialogue’s never quite as snappy, but Golden manages to strike a decent approximation of the game’s tone. A high-octane jungle jeep chase/impromptu rescue sets the scene and reintroduces Nathan Drake perfectly, and a couple of underground labyrinth exploration set-pieces offer fast-paced, well constructed action to have you speeding through pages at a steady clip.

There’s the obligatory woman-of-the-week love interest in Jada Hzujak, a fiesty and amiable girl who gives Nate a run for his money in terms of both wit and adventure. There’s more literary real estate devoted to constantly reminding us of her hair colour than there is to her actual character (keep a hip flash handy and take a swig whenever ‘magenta streaks’ are mentioned – hangovers will ensue), but Golden throws in plenty of fun, flirty banter that works well in effectively nudging along their ‘will-they/won’t they?’ relationship. The usual friendly back-and-forth ribbing between snarky Drake and playful curmudgeon Sully is intact, too, and the pair are great fun to spend time with yet again. There’s brief mention of Nate’s parents, but otherwise there’s not much new light shed on familiar faces and precious little character development for our two heroes, while newcomers might be a tad lost as Golden makes only a sparse effort to introduce Nate and Sully to non-fans.

Those who loved the games will likely find that this paperback Nathan Drake outing never reaches the heights of its interactive equivalent. But while it’s derivative and light on character, The Fourth Labyrinth still makes for a fun, pulpy adventure that proves to be an enjoyable afternoon read. Consider it a fatty, but quite tasty Uncharted hamburger to tide you over until the delicious prime cut steak of Drake’s Deception arrives on PlayStation 3.

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Christopher Golden’s ‘Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth’ is available to buy now .
Click here to order the book from Amazon.co.uk

Whether you’re a fan or not, it’s impossible not to see the unfortunate impact that Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series has had on the landscape of teen literature. In any medium, publishers and studios will always try to replicate or capitalise on the latest phenomenon. As a result, almost every upcoming novel aimed at the teen market is the third, fifth or eleventeenth book in a series centring on the epic, forbidden love between a small-town girl and a broody vampire/werewolf/mummy/Oompa-Loompa. In a genre completely flooded with bland, derivative tales of gothic romance and warring supernatural clans, Cat Patrick’s Forgotten is the kind of book that young adult fiction desperately needs more of: An enticingly unique and instantly compelling novel with a killer concept.

London Lane might seem like your average high-school girl – good grades, a loyal, if stubborn best friend and a supportive, but overprotective mother – but what sets her apart isn’t on the surface. Every night at 4:33 a.m., London’s memory resets itself. Her entire past is a blank, but she can see her future like memories; she’ll remember things that’ll happen tomorrow, but has no clue what happened yesterday. Patching together a past for herself by keeping a system of daily notes and relying on reminders from her mother and best friend Jamie, London attempts to live a normal life. Trying to start a relationship with the sweet, charming new boy at school proves difficult in itself when she’ll forget him every night, but when London uncovers a terrifying memory of her future, she’ll be forced to unravel her past if she’ll have any hope of changing what’s to come.





Patrick uses the Memento-esque concept to great effect both as a mystery device and to fuel the human drama of a girl stuck with such a unique condition, exploring the inherent minor perks and major problems for a teenage girl with total memory loss. After all, the daily life of a teenage girl seems like a life and death drama already, and a particularly bad day at high school can feel like a minor tragedy for the hormonal teenagers living it. London has the benefit of being able to see the future and pick and chose what parts of the past she wakes up to. If she doesn’t want to remember a painful argument or embarrassing mishap, she simply doesn’t leave a note to tell herself about it and it’s gone forever.

But it’s a double-edged sword, too: Relying on a parent or friend to remind her of the past is great in theory, but what if she isn’t being told everything? And where should she draw the line with her knowledge of the future; is it okay to interfere with someone’s happiness in the present if it might spare them heartache later? London’s struggle to live a normal life and the murky moral dilemmas that pop up while she’s exploring her abilities helps shape her into an interesting, immediately likeable and realistically flawed, believable protagonist. Her story becomes even more gripping as Patrick unfolds a tapestry of captivating mystery that’ll hook in readers in until the surprising (if hurried) finale. Questions unravel at a steady pace and Forgotten becomes even more riveting as the answers become clearer. What caused London’s condition? What’s her mother hiding from her? Why can’t she see her boyfriend in her memory of the future like she can everything else? And who is at the centre of the looming funeral she keeps seeing glimpses of?





Naturally, since it’s a Young Adult novel, there’s the obligatory romance, but Forgotten’s is a refreshingly sweet and simple one at heart, and swoon-inducing new kid Luke Henry is sure to have teenage girls wishing they could steal him off the page and keep him for themselves. London’s romance is made instantly problematic for her since she’s doomed to forget Luke every night, will never recall the events of their first date and only gets to remember their relationship vicariously through her collection of notes. Even so, she does get the benefit of being able to rediscover his improbable good looks and fall for him all over again with every new day. He’s the archetypal Prince Charming, only with a quirky fondness for painting ears, but while he’s a little too lightly fleshed out in comparison to the other well-developed characters, it’s a welcome change to find a sweet, well-adjusted nice guy as the romantic interest in a young adult novel, as opposed to yet another terminally broody, melodramatic bad boy.

I started reading Forgotten in bed expecting to skim through a chapter before falling asleep. Four hours later, it was 5am and I was on the last few pages. It’s a gripping, unputdownable read, and Cat Patrick dishes out the perfect balance of intrigue, drama and romance with a breezy, delicate prose. Naturally, if you vomit uncontrollably at the thought of teen romance novels, then it probably won’t be for you, but if you’re jonesing for a unique, compelling and memorable change from the mountain of Twilight knock-offs, then Forgotten is a perfect fit.

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Cat Patrick’s ‘Forgotten’ is released simultaneously in the UK, USA and Australia on 6th June 2011.
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