Review: Soul Shadows, and Interview with the Author, Alex Woolf

Estelle’s therapist has prescribed her a dose of solitude. So she’s staying in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, trying to come to terms with her traumatic past. But there’s more going on in the quiet nearby woods than she knows.

An army of unnatural shadows lurks among the trees. Unlike those that harmlessly follow our footsteps, these shadows can rise up, they can touch … and they can kill.

Estelle and her old friend Sandor must battle this shape-shifting army and the sinister forces that have called them into being. But how can you defeat your enemies when you’re afraid of your own shadow?

Soul Shadows by Alex Woolf is one of those book that sort of took me by surprise, in that I thought it was going to be one thing, and it turned out to be something rather different. Based on the press release I received from the lovely people at Curious Fox, I thought this was going to be a fairly traditional ghost/supernatural story, and I was expecting a steady build-up to the horror, over a period of several chapters, as we meet the main character, he/she finds themselves in a potential spooky situation (haunted house, sinister village, deserted woodland), something's lurking in the dark, etc. What I got was a fast-paced horror story where the action kicks in before the end of the first chapter and doesn't relent until the final page.

18-year-old Estelle has a history of mental health problems, stemming from an incident of severe psychological abuse carried out by her mother when she was much younger. Since then she has tried to kill herself several times, and it is only though the help of her therapist, Dr Kirby, that she has finally turned a corner. As the next step in her therapy, Kirby has recommended that she spends a week on her own in his remote country cottage. However, as Estelle quickly discovers, she is most definitely not alone and the sinister shadows she can't be sure are real are only the beginning of a nightmare battle for survival.

I don't want to give too much away about the plot, but I will say that it covers themes of mental illness, identity and what makes someone human, and also the ethics of science. It is guaranteed to have the reader questioning their own opinions on these topics, as the actions of some of the characters will have you wondering who the greatest monsters are: the soul shadows of the story's title or the scientists who created them.

Soul Shadows differs in writing style from a large number of the YA horror books I have read. It took me a while to get used to it, as I felt that it lacked a natural flow at times, and the immediate jump into the action was also something that jarred a little with me. However, after I had read a couple of chapters I did a little research and discovered that this book was not written in the traditional manner. It first saw the light of day on Fiction Express, a website that gives young people the chance to influence a story as it is being written by a professional author. In simple terms, the author writes a chapter a week, and at the end of each chapter the Fiction Express readers are offered a series of options as to how they would like the story to continue. This innovative method of writing a book not only explained the occasional lack of flow in the plot, but also the non-stop, breath-taking pace of the story.

Soul Shadows has many genuinely scary moments, but at times it is the moral issues that are more terrifying. If you prefer your horror to be more action and less slow-burning suspense then this is the book for you.

~~~~

Having enjoyed the book I am now really pleased to welcome it's author to The Book Zone to answer some questions for us:

How did you get the idea for Soul Shadows?

The starting point was a piece of dialogue I wrote between two people, each of them crouched on either side of a door. One of them was very scared, telling the other one not to open the door, whatever happens. I then had to decide what was out there that was making this character so scared. I realised that the scariest thing that I could possibly imagine was my own shadow coming alive. I’ve no idea where this idea came from – but I’ve always been fairly spooked by shadows. It may have something to do with the fact that I have unreliable peripheral vision. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll see a dark thing suddenly move. I turn and all I can see there is my shadow behaving as a shadow should. But one day it may happen that I’ll turn more quickly than usual, and I’ll see something…

Where is the story set?

It’s set in the fictional English county of Wintershire, which is a deliberately bland, undramatic, fairly flat sort of everyplace – possibly based on Bedfordshire. I wanted to give it an ordinary setting to make the events, when they start happening, seem more startling. The story begins in an isolated cottage near a spooky wood. The wood becomes a major setting for the story, as does the nearby village of Delhaven, which turns out to be under the control of a sinister scientific establishment called the Facility.

Who are the main characters? Are they based on anyone you know?

The main characters are Estelle and Sandor. Estelle is an 18-year-old girl who suffered a psychological trauma when she was 14 (her mother locked her in an attic for 12 weeks), and has been in and out of institutions ever since. She’s been sent to the isolated cottage as a form of exposure therapy to get over her fear of being alone. Sandor is a 21-year-old soldier and childhood friend of Estelle’s. At the start of the novel he’s wrestling with his own demons following a tough tour of duty in Afghanistan in which he saw a close friend die. In the course of the novel, both Estelle and Sandor are forced to confront their deepest fears of loneliness and loss. They have to learn to relate to each other in a different way, now they’re no longer children, and a mutual attraction starts to form. Neither character is based on anyone I know. However, I once had to care for a close friend suffering from mental illness, and I’m sure that some of that experience played into my creation of Estelle.

Did any books or films inspire you when writing the story?

A major theme of the book is the dangers of irresponsible, uncontrolled science, and as such my book takes its place in a venerable tradition within horror and science fiction, from Frankenstein to Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. In creating a scientific basis for the shadows, I was influenced by the inventive pseudoscience of TV shows such as Doctor Who and Primeval, and the scary, claustrophobic scene in the Facility (a high-tech research establishment in the woods) was partly inspired by the film Alien. 

What writing techniques did you use in the scary scenes?

First of all, I tried to imagine myself in the scene, and attempted to express, moment by moment, even second by second, how I would feel if it was happening to me. I used short sentences, and slowed the action right down, drawing out the tension. I was careful not to over-describe the monsters – just giving hints of their horribleness and leaving readers to imagine the detail for themselves. After writing my initial draft I went over it several times, ruthlessly hacking away anything extraneous, so I was left with something as lean and mean and hopefully scary as possible.

Do you have a favourite line or scene from the book?

There are a few, most of which I can’t mention here as they’re plot spoilers. I quite like this description of Estelle’s first meeting with her shadow:

Estelle opened her mouth to scream, and the girl-thing seemed to copy her, except that its mouth went on growing and growing, like a distortion in a nauseating hall of mirrors. Its shiny beetle-black eyes gazed hungrily back at her. Saliva dripped from needle-like teeth, as fresh soil from the forest floor began to show between the cracks in its cheeks.

Was it always called Soul Shadows or how did you think of the title?

It began life as a short story called Shadow of Death. Not long after I’d written this, I was approached by a publisher of interactive novels, Fiction Express, to write a novel for teenagers. I immediately suggested an expanded version of ‘Shadow of Death’. I explained the concept to Paul Humphreys, MD of Fiction Express, and he loved it. He particularly liked the name I’d given my monsters – soul shadows – and he said that might make a good title for the story.

Describe Soul Shadows in three words.

Shadows come alive.

What is the most scary thing that’s happened to you?

It was either the time I found myself alone about fifteen feet from a barracuda while snorkelling off the Florida Keys, or else the time I was scaling a rock face in a gorge in the South of France and suddenly realised I couldn’t find a way up or down, or the time I saw a greenish glow in the darkness of a room I’d wandered into by accident while staying in a country house in Surrey.

What is your favourite scary book and movie?

Great question! Let me think! Sorry, I simply can’t limit this to one of each. Favourite scary books are Stephen King’s It, The Shining, Night Shift and Carrie; Clive Barker’s Books of Blood and Weaveworld; Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror; Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes; Peter Benchley’s Jaws; and the short stories of M R James. Favourite scary movies are Psycho; Night of the Living Dead; Halloween; Friday the 13th; Nightmare on Elm Street; The Exorcist; The Omen; Alien; The Ring; The Vanishing.

What was your favourite book as a child?

The Magician’s Nephew by C S Lewis

If you could have dinner with any authors, past or present, who would you choose?

I’d probably choose Stephen King, Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Kazuo Ishiguro and J D Salinger.

If you weren’t an author what would you be?

Something creative, like a sculptor or choreographer or a designer of avant-garde iced buns. However, I’d probably avoid a career in shadow puppetry, for obvious reasons.

How do you write? (morning/evening, how many hours, in what room/location, on computer or wth pen etc?

I love writing in the early mornings, fuelled by plenty of tea. I always write on computer these days, and I work from a room in my house. I generally take quite a long lunch break, then work until around six or my kids demand my attention – whichever comes sooner.

If people like the book and want to get in touch or find out more about you, how do they do that?

They can contact me through my publishers, Curious Fox, or via my website: http://alexwoolf.co.uk

Guest Post: Rick Yancey's Top 5 Sci-Fi Books (The 5th Wave Blog Tour)

Today I am honoured to be joined by Rick Yancey, author of The 5th Wave. Rick has kindly joined us here on The Book Zone to tell us about his all-time favourite Sci-Fi books:

1. The White Mountains by John Christopher. One of the best, most “realistic” take on aliens I’ve ever read. Creepy. Moving. It justfeels like a real alien occupation. Find this book and its sequels. Trust me.

2. Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. The man wrote like a thousand books, so I haven’t read all of them (how did he have time towrite all of them?), but this is hands-down my favourite Asimov. Mind-blowing, complex, so well-structured. A movie could never do it justice.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. Another landmark work of sci-fi. In this case, the movie does do the book justice.

4. Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. Forget all the movies. This novel takes the genre, smashes it to pieces and reassembles it into a savage satire and a searing social commentary. The ending is three thousand times more chilling than the original movie’s.

5. 1984 by George Orwell. Okay, I confess most people don’t consider this, the original dystopian masterpiece, a sci-fi novel. But it was set in the future (he wrote it in 1948), and it includes technology that did not exist in Orwell’s time. And, like all great science fiction, it is more about now than some distant future.

And now here is the next extract of the audio book. If you have been following the blog tour you will already know that a different snippet is being released each day - more details can be read on the banner over to the side of this blog, or if that is too small I have included it at the end of this piece.

Review: Lost Worlds by Andrew Lane

Calum Challenger is a boy with a mission: to track down supposedly mythological creatures and capture their DNA. But while Calum and his friends want to save these beings, an aggressive pharmaceutical company wants to wipe them out. In this fast-paced, high-tech story, Calum and a group of misfit mates – a computer hacker, a freerunner, an ex-marine and a girl with a very big chip on her shoulder – criss-cross the globe, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of their enemy.

I totally love Andrew Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes books, as long time readers of this blog will know from the glowing reviews I have given every volume in the series so far. I am also an avid reader of what I tend to refer to as adult quest thrillers (by the likes of Scott Mariani, Matthew Reilly, Chris Kuzneski et al). So when I found out that Andrew had written a modern-day quest-style thriller for a younger audience I couldn't help but be excited, especially as there is a link between this story and another of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's greats.

Main character Calum Challenger is the great-grandson of Professor George Challenger, a character who first appeared in Doyle's The Lost World. He lives alone in a converted warehouse in London, having lost his parents in a car crash some years earlier. So far, so heard it all before I hear you saying. However, Calum was also in that car crash and did not emerge unscathed, for he is paralysed from the waist down and therefore rarely leaves his modified home. Instead, he spends hour after hour searching the internet using a fantastic (and expensive) computer set-up, hunting for sightings, rumoured or otherwise, of cryptids. Cryptids are creatures that are either long extinct or merely rumoured to have existed, but whose existence has never been proven or acknowledge by science.  Calum believes that many of these supposedly mythical creatures really exist, and may have genes that could hold the cure to cancer, and many other modern diseases. And perhaps even a way to regrow his nerves and give him back the use of his legs.

Calum's mission is a solitary one, until one day a Brazilian boy called Gecko comes crashing into his life. Literally. Gecko is a very talented freerunner, but his skills have come to the attention of some Eastern European gangsters who want to utilise him to carry out robberies. Whilst racing across the London rooftops, Gecko is caught by surprise, and the next thing he knows he is sitting on a sofa in front of a very shocked Calum.  Almost at the same time, fourteen-year-old hacker Tara Flynn is being blackmailed by the mysterious (and sinister) Nemor corporation into hacking Calum's website. With a little help from Gecko, Calum brings Tara into the fold, and it isn't long before the adventure really starts, with this unlikely team of outsiders heading off to Georgia with an ex-special forces chaperone, in search of a yeti-type creature that may be the missing link between neanderthals and homo sapiens. And naturally, the evil forces of Nemor are in hot pursuit.

Lost Worlds is a thrilling and hugely enjoyable read that I raced though in an afternoon. This is the first in a new series from Andrew Lane, and as such a lot of time is spent setting up the characters and their situation. The adventure itself then does not start until we are pretty much two-thirds of the way through the book. Some readers, especially those who are lacking in patience, may not have the staying power to stick through this first part of the book, although I feel that Andrew Lane has done such a great job with his characters that many reluctant readers will persevere, and enjoy the technology-filled story.

Once the action reaches Georgia and the action kicks in we are treated to an adventure that races along at breakneck speed. And this is where I faced one of the biggest disappointments I have experienced in a book for some time. The story simply does not finish in any way I would have expected from a writer as good as Andrew Lane. I'm not talking about a thrilling cliffhanger that sets us up for the next installment, I mean it just seems to peter out. As I was getting nearer to the end of the book I started to worry that the story would end with our heroes trapped and facing likely doom, like in a classic Republic serial - I just couldn't see how Andrew Lane could possibly bring the story to a satisfying end in the rapidly diminishing pages I had left to read. And he didn't. It's almost as if an editor told him that he had to stick to 350 pages, even though the story was 380 pages long. Even writing about it now, several days later, I'm still a little angry about this - it turned what would have been another 2013 five star book into a book that I have rather generously given four stars to on Goodreads, but on reflection may change to three stars. Be warned, I have a long memory Andrew Lane - I expect a return to form in the next outing for Calum Challenger and his merry band of misfits.

Yes, you read that right. Despite my frustration at the ending (or lack thereof), I will definitely be reading any Lost Worlds sequel. There are plenty of threads left dangling that have me wanting more, and I loved the three main young characters of Calum, Gecko and Tara.

You can find out more about Lost Worlds at www.panmacmillan.com/lostworlds where you can read an extract of the book, as well as enter a competition to win an iPad mini. My thanks go to the lovely people at Macmillan for sending me a copy to review.

Book Trailer: Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff

I finished reading Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff last week , and I can tell you that it is one hell of a thriller and the kind of book that just wouldn't have seen the light a few years ago. A teen boy who infiltrates his way into the lives of others in order to carry out an assassination? I still remember when there was an outcry if a teen character killed someone without facing suitable punishment for his/her crime.

Boy Nobody is out at the end of May, and my review will appear here nearer to that date, but in the meantime here is the trailer for you to enjoy:

Review: ACID by Emma Pass

2113. In Jenna Strong's world, ACID - the most brutal, controlling police force in history - rule supreme. No throwaway comment or muttered dissent goes unnoticed - or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a bloody crime she struggles to remember.

The only female inmate in a violent high-security prison, Jenna has learned to survive by any means necessary. And when a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID - and to uncover the truth about what really happened on that dark night two years ago.

When I first saw mention of ACID on Twitter back in 2012 I stifled a small yawn, and thought great, just what the world needs, another dystopian YA story. And then I saw Lauren Buckland, one of the top editors at Random House (and someone I rate very highly based on the books she has edited) raving about it, and I started to think that perhaps I might give it a try. Then, when the cover image was unveiled the shallow part of me thought wow - love the cover, I will definitely read that book. And now? Whenever I read another YA dystopian story I will measure it against ACID. Yes, I loved it that much (yes, even more than The Hunger Games).

ACID is set one hundred years in the future, in a Britain that has become a 1984-style authoritarian police state known as the Independent Republic of Britain (IRB), said police being ACID (Agency for Crime Investigation and Defence). The people at the top, no longer elected officials, have cut the IRB off from the rest of the world, and its residents no longer have access to the internet or any form of international news. Personal freedoms are as close to zero as you can get: no marriage/choice of partner - instead there is life-partnering where your LifePartner is chosen for you by the state, or also dictate whether you can have children or not. And like any such regime that has occurred in 'real life' (I'm thinking USSR, North Korea, China), there is a very small minority of people with a huge majority of the wealth, whilst the masses live in poverty and near starvation. London has become a divided city, literally, with areas designated Upper (for the elite), then Middle, and then finally Outer, which is a pretty grim place to live and work, and where you can be arrested for not having the news-feed (i.e. propaganda) screens on for the majority of the time you are at home.

In the middle of all this authoritarian nastiness we meet Jenna, a seventeen year-old girl serving a life sentence in a prison full of men. Jenna was convicted of murdering her parents two years previously, and in that time she has had to become the veritable definition of badass in order to survive. Resigned to a lifetime of incarceration, Jenna is as surprised as anyone when she is broken out of jail by a group of mysterious rebels. This escape becomes the start of a dangerous journey as Jenna begins to question everything she knows, or thinks she knows, about herself, her background and the IRB itself.

I loved everything about this book. Jenna is a superb character, and it is so refreshing to have a female lead who is strong on the outside and the inside, and doesn't spend half the book mooning over the male lead, or stuck in the middle of a teen love triangle. Jenna is the Lara Croft of dystopian YA: independent, fierce, resourceful and seriously, seriously kick-ass. I also loved the all-too-believable future Britain that Emma Pass has crafted. Yes, there are one or two elements that stretch plausibility almost to its limits, but long-time readers of this blog will know that I read to escape, and suspension of disbelief is second nature to me. In fact, I would suggest anyone who struggles with this should stick to reading biographies.

If you like your stories fast and furious then ACID should move right to the top of your must-read list. Emma Pass has managed to fit more action scenes into her story than you will find in many a big budget action film, and yet the pace does not leave you gasping for air as she has this completely under control, giving us just enough plateaus to get our breath back before the action kicks in again.

ACID reads perfectly as a standalone novel, and for once I was really happy about this as I felt that this story needed to be brought to a satisfying conclusion, without any form of cliffhanger leaving us waiting for a sequel. The final chapter has the barest of hints that we may be treated to another Jenna Strong in the future, and I would certainly read it, but I would be just as happy reading anything in this kind of vein if Emma Pass is writing it, and it looks as we will have the opportunity to do just that, with the publication of The Fearless in 2014.

ACID was published on 25th April and thanks go to the ever wonderful people at Random House for sending me a copy. Go out and get your hands on one now - this is one of those books that I will be forcing into people's hands for some time to come.

Dealing With Writer's Block by Ned Vizzini (House of Secrets Blog Tour)

Yes, I know I said I was pulling back from blog tours, but as I have already read and really enjoyed House of Secrets by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini I just couldn't turn down the opportunity to host a guest post from Ned. House of Secrets is a really fast paced and thoroughly enjoyable fantasy adventure story full of mythical creatures, nasty pirates, and a family of kids trying desperately to find their way home. I was given a list of possible topics for the  blog tour, and I decided to go for something a little bit different (at least for The Book Zone) - a guest post about writing. My thanks go to Ned for taking the time to write this for us:

Dealing With Writer's Block by Ned Vizzini


I don't believe in writer's block anymore.

I believe in it for other people. It's possible, of course, to get to a point with your writing where you know that everything is terrible and you don't want to go on.

But I no longer believe in it for myself.

Why? Because I have deadlines. Deadlines that have nothing to do with my emotions or artistic satisfaction. Deadlines that know no reason or cajoling. And the deadlines don't understand writer's block.

But I have had it in the past and I know its vicissitudes. So I'll try to help you get over it, because it really is a terrible thing, with three tips:

1. Find out why you don't understand your characters.
   
   If you're blocked in a piece of writing, it's probably because you don't have a full understanding of the people you are writing about. This can be a tough thing to learn and to admit. You might be 60 or 120 pages into a book, thinking, “There's something off here—but no one will notice.” Unfortunately I can assure that people will.
   
   If you're struck with this kind of writer's block, where it suddenly seems that you don't know the characters, you have to go back and fix them. This is never, ever fun work. But that's why it's work. You must go back and really understand your characters from the ground up—understand what music they like, what cars they drive, what their favorite food is—and once you have a good understanding, you will get un-blocked and be able to continue.                                                                                                                                                 
2. Read.
   
   There is a simpler kind of writer's block that comes from not reading. You might start to neglect reading as a writer. A phrase I often tell myself is, It's time to stop being a consumer of culture and start being a creator of culture. But if you aren't consuming some culture, namely books, you will never be able to produce.
   
   What are you reading? Is it any good? Is it worth your time? If not, abandon it. Pick something better. Only by reading inspiring work will you be able to keep writing.                                                                                                        
3. Make deadlines for yourself.
   
   Birthdays are the best deadlines. How long has it been since your last one? What have you accomplished? If you're trying to write a book, you should probably be able to write it in a year. So have a quiet moment with yourself and promise: I will be finished with this by my next birthday. And if you don't reach your goal, you don't get cake.
   
   Only by imposing deadlines will you be able to fully beat writer's block. And after you beat it enough, you'll be a professional and it will no longer be an option.

Good luck!

~~~

Ned Vizzini is the bestselling author of the acclaimed young-adult books The Other Normals, It's Kind of a Funny Story (also a major motion picture), Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah.... In television, he has written for ABC's Last Resort and MTV's Teen Wolf. His essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and Salon. He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets. His work has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Los Angeles.