The group of survivors who escaped The City, have found refuge in an underground military base. Safe behind a massive blast door, they’re protected from the hordes of undead, but trapped. If they enter the bunker they’ll kill all the soldiers trapped inside. But when the dead start clogging the bunker’s air vents, something must be done.
The Reivers: The Story of the Border Reivers by Alistair Moffat.
If George MacDonald Fraser’s book The Steel Bonnets is a history of reiving on the English side of the border, Alistair Moffat gives us an equally interesting account of the Scottish borderers.
Moths by Jane Hennigan
An interesting speculation on the kind of world that might emerge if most men died, and patriarchy was just a memory.
February 2023
Jane Hennigan recently secured a publishing deal with Angry Robot Books so the covers for MOTHS and its sequel TOXXIC have been changed. I understand the reasons, and why the Kindle versions of the books have dropped off Amazon, probably in the short term, but I really liked the cover design for MOTHS, it’s striking and one of the reasons the book caught my attention.
Reiver: The Sword’s Edge by David Pilling
The second outing for Richie o’the Bow, this time on the run in Scotland, escaping the Armstrongs of Liddesdale for killing their chief Nebless Will. Captured by the English he is forced to work as a double-agent, carrying messages to and from the treacherous Earl of Westmoreland. Treads similar moss to the first book, breathing life into brutal time of blood-feuds and betrayal, political intrigue and rebellion. The whole thing has a filmic energy about it.
Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman
Really exciting insight into how a brain, isolated in a dark box, functions and understands the world. “The brain is a dynamic, electric, living forest.” It’ll make you reassess what you think you know.
Reiver by David Pilling
England in 1569 and there’s rebellion in the air. The Catholic earls of the north are plotting to depose the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Against this backdrop, Richie o’the Bow is caught in a blood-feud with one of the most dangerous riding families on the border, the notorious Armstrongs. Outlawed for killing two of their number, during their raid on his village, Richie and his Bairns do what they must to survive, including killing as many Armstrongs as possible. Tight prose churn through events on the turbulent border of sixteenth-century England and Scotland. A place where theft, murder, revenge, and vendetta are a brutal way of life.
Survivors by Terry Nation
A reimagining of episodes from Terry Nation’s TV series, with a radically different ending for his characters. One thing I’ve always found interesting about Survivors is Nation’s heroes. They’re all middle-class individualists, with “natural” authority. While his bad guys are all working-class “thugs” with guns, forcing their collectivism on everyone. The book and TV series were written in the mid-seventies, before Thatcher came to power, and plays to that idea, often pushed by working-class Tories, that the unions had too much power. Not an idea I ascribe to, but perhaps that understanding is one of the many reasons that generation chose Thatcher in seventy-nine.
Autumn: The City by David Moody
A group survivors cling on, holed-up in a university building, surrounded by the undead. As the numbers of undead increase, becoming ever more aggressive, a squad of soldiers arrive bringing with them as much fear as they do hope. A novel about the undead that never uses the word zombie.
Autumn by David Moody
A virus rips through the population. Everyone just drops dead. Traumatised and afraid a few survivors take refuge in a community centre, and watch with growing panic as the dead rise. Autumn is an interesting twist to the undead genre, that deliberately avoids the word zombie. In the end it’s weight of numbers that is the real threat.
This Rotten World: Choking on the Ashes by Jacy Morris
As the apocalypse takes its toll both physically and emotionally, the remaining survivors of the original group head for the coast, and one more fight. This time for a new home. Of all the zombie fiction I’ve read of late, this series is my favourite. Morris weaves an interesting tale that could very easily see all five books as a trilogy of films.
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