News: Book Cover - Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

This one has been around for a while as I showed it to my good friends Liz and Mark from My Favourite Books when I saw them a couple of weeks ago. It is the cover for the new edition of Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding, which is being re-released as part of Orion's YA imprint, Indigo. Whilst I really liked the cover of the original Gollancz edition, with its image of a lone person watching a fantastic airship, the new cover screams "Buy me!". Perhaps it is because I am a huge Indiana Jones fan, and there is slight hint of that. However, when reading the Ketty Jay books I am always left with a western-in-another-world feel, and this new cover portrays that brilliantly. Darian Frey is fast becoming an iconic character and it seems fitting that he gets the limelight for this new target market. Sadly no airship in sight, but with at least two more books in the series to (hopefully) be reissued by Indigo then perhaps we will see the Ketty Jay on a future cover. I may just go out and buy this for the cover alone!

Attention Grabber #8: The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding

Attention Grabber is my weekly feature where I post what I think is a great opening paragraph to a book, the sort of opening that pulls young readers in and hooks them from the start.

This week's Grabber is from one of my favourite author's of the moment. I love Chris Wooding's Ketty Jay stories, but I first discovered his work through The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, one of my favourite books of the last decade. It is a glorious Gothic fantasy horror story set in an alternate London, with airships, demons and corruption at the highest level. The opening paragraphs mentioning an airship, London fog and hansom cabs give a really good feel for what is to come and had my interest piqued right from the start. I also love Chris Wooding's descriptive writing in these opening paragraphs - he has the ability to tap straight into my imagination so that I can really picture the scene he had created.

The airship lumbered low overhead, its long, lined belly a dull smear of silvery light in the fog as it reflected the gas lamps of the city beneath. The heavy, ponderous thrum of its engines reverberated through the streets of the Old Quarter, making the grimy windows of the tall, close-packed terraces murmur in complaint. Like some vast, half-seen beast, it passed over the maze of alleys and cobbled walks, too huge to consider the insignificant beings that travelled them - and finally it moved on, its engines fading to a dull hum, and then gradually to silence.

There was a chill in the air tonight, a cold nip that had crept in from the Thames and settled into the bones of London. And of course there was the fog, which laid itself over everything like a gossamer blanket and softened the glow of the black lamp-post to a haze. The fog came almost every night in autumn, as much a part of London as the hansom cabs that rattled around Piccadilly Circus or the stout Peelers that walked their beats north of the great river. Not to the south, though; not in the Old Quarter. That was the domain of the mad and the crooked and the things best left unthought of. The good people of the capital knew better than to remain there after the sun had dipped beneath the skyline; not if they valued their necks, anyway.

Review: The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding (A Tale of the Ketty Jay)

Things are finally looking good for Captain Frey and his crew. The Ketty Jay has been fixed up good as new. They’ve got their first taste of fortune and fame. And, just for once, nobody is trying to kill them.

Even Trinica Dracken, Frey’s ex-fiancee and long-time nemesis, has given up her quest for revenge. In fact, she’s offered them a job – one that will take them deep into the desert heart of Samarla, the land of their ancient enemies. To a place where the secrets of the past lie in wait for the unwary. Secrets that might very well cost Frey everything.

Join the crew of the Ketty Jay on their greatest adventure yet: a story of mayhem and mischief, roof-top chases and death-defying races, murderous daemons, psychopathic golems and a particularly cranky cat. The first time was to clear his name. The second time was for money. 

This time, Frey’s in a race against the clock for the ultimate prize: to save his own life.

Firstly, apologies for my absence over the past month or so. I had to take a break from the Book Zone for family reasons, and then just as I was about to launch myself back into it my body finally decided to protest at the stress I had been under and decided to pack up on me. I have therefore spent the best part of the last five days in bed ill, not even feeling able to read for the first two. Nightmare! However, I am on the mend now, but have a huge pile of reviews to get written, and one of the busiest times of the year. Great!

I'm going to kick off with a review for a book I totally loved. Some time ago I posted a review of Chris Wooding's Retribution Falls, the first in his A Tale of the Ketty Jay series. Although written for the adult market and released through Orion's SFF imprint Gollancz, the publishers have noticed that it had been gaining a lot of interest from teen readers, and that first book is soon to be re-released under Orions YA imprint, Indigo. I really enjoyed Retribution Falls, and on finishing it I rushed out to buy the sequel, The Black Lung Captain, a book I felt was even better than its predecessor. Imagine then my delight when I received a copy of the third book, The Iron Jackal, from the ever-generous Jon Weir at Gollancz. I almost dropped everything to read it, but I had a few other reading commitments and so I decided to save it for when I was a little less busy so I could fully savour the story. 

Please believe me when I say that having read it, I  will definitely be dropping everything to read book four whenever it is released. Long time readers of the Book Zone will know that I do not read a great deal of SFF, and even less for the adult market, but this is one series that has fast become one of my favourites, and The Iron Jackal is by far the best in the series so far. The first two books were fun, but by necessity time was spent introducing the characters (in book one) and developing the world building (a weakness of book one, but much improved in book two). Now that these two essential elements are ticked off it is almost as if Chris Wooding has announced "And now let the real fun commence!".

I seem to remember reading a few reviews of Retribution Falls where the reviewer suggested that the characters were not very well developed. Chris Wooding has certainly answered  those critics in the subsequent two books. And the same goes for the world building. Quite often I had found adult SFF too hard going because the author has felt compelled to deliver fully three dimensional characters, including back story, or spend pages going over the minutiae of the world he has created, including lengthy passages about its history and politics. In this series Chris Wooding has chosen to do this over the series, and so in each new book we have found out a little bit more about the world, and more and more of the secrets that the crew of the Ketty Jay have been keeping secret have been revealed. Where Retribution Falls was all about Darian Frey, and the second book took a big focus on the development of Jez and Crake, this book sees us really get to know the mysterious and brooding Silo much better. 

The passages of the book that deal with fleshing out these characters also make the pacing of the story that bit more exquisite. Chris Wooding is now a master at writing action scenes that have you reaching to strap yourself in with that metaphorical seatbelt, and there are even more in The Iron Jackal than in his previous books, but the story would become boring if we didn't have these calmer, more introspective moments between them.

All of the books in this series have been fun, but as I suggested earlier this one really goes for it in the fun stakes. The banter between the various members of the crew, who over the course of the previous two books have developed a very special bond, is superbly written, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, and now that we know them so well we can start to predict (in a good way) how one might react to the actions or verbal snipes of another. The plot this time is also great fun, starting off with a daring heist which soon turns in to a traditional hunt for long-lost treasure. Of course, this wouldn't be a Ketty Jay story without that 'comedy of errors' undercurrent, where everything Frey does just seems to get him and his crew even further up the creek without a paddle.

As I said before, this is a series written for the adult market, but soon to be targeted at teens. There is therefore a small degree of bad language, but also a huge body count: the crew of the Ketty Jay seem to kill quite a few people along their way, although invariably in self-defence. Teen boys will totally love this, but unlike most of the books I feature on here it isn't suitable for younger readers.

I do not have any news as to when the fourth book will be published, but it is certainly one I will be carving over the next year. Chris Wooding ends The Iron Jackal perfectly, but he also raises a number of questions that still need answering, and the events in this book are suggesting that very soon the brown stuff could be hitting the fan in large quantities, not only for Frey and his crew but also for everyone else in Vardia and Samarla. I can't wait!

Review: Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

Frey is the captain of the Ketty Jay, leader of a small and highly dysfunctional band of layabouts. An inveterate womaniser and rogue, he and his gang make a living on the wrong side of the law, avoiding the heavily armed flying frigates of the Coalition Navy. With their trio of ragged fighter craft, they run contraband, rob airships and generally make a nuisance of themselves. So a hot tip on a cargo freighter loaded with valuables seems like a great prospect for an easy heist and a fast buck. Until the heist goes wrong, and the freighter explodes. Suddenly Frey isn't just a nuisance anymore - he's public enemy number one, with the Coalition Navy on his tail and contractors hired to take him down. But Frey knows something they don't. That freighter was rigged to blow, and Frey has been framed to take the fall. If he wants to prove it, he's going to have to catch the real culprit. He must face liars and lovers, dogfights and gunfights, Dukes and daemons. It's going to take all his criminal talents to prove he's not the criminal they think he is . . .

Back in July I went to a blogger event held by Orion to promote their new YA imprint, Indigo. At this event we were informed that Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding was going to be reissued under the Indigo banner in January 2012, and this reminded me that I had a copy of the Gollancz edition sitting patiently on one of my shelves waiting to be read. At that moment I promised myself that no matter how big my To Be Read pile was I would read it over the school summer holidays. I bought it some time ago after having read the publisher's blurb on Amazon, and several glowing reviews that suggested it might appeal to my somewhat simple tastes in stories: lots of action, swashbuckling adventure, sky pirates, and so on.

Why it has sat there so long unread I do not know, especially as Chris Wooding wrote the totally brilliant The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. Perhaps it is down to the F-word that it has been categorised under. yes, I am talking about Fantasy. You may have seen me say in the past that I am not a fan of fantasy novels for adults; some that I have tried in the dim and distant past seemed overlong, far too wordy, and worst of all, they took themselves far too seriously. And so this is a genre that has tended to get overlooked when I have chosen books in the past, for fear that I would pick up a dull, tedious tome rather than a glittering gem. Fortunately, Retribution Falls is one of the latter and I loved it form the very first page.

The reason Indigo are re-releasing it as a YA book is that their research has suggested that it has already become popular with fantasy-loving teens, and I am not surprised. As I have mentioned before, my experience at school tends to suggest that confident reader boys quite often skip the whole Young Adult thing, expecting it to be aimed more at girls, and instead jump straight to adult books, be they by the likes of Andy McNab, Dan Brown, Stephen King and so on. In the case of fantasy, they often dabble with Terry Pratchett along the way, before moving onwards and upwards. Retribution Falls fits perfectly into that middle ground of is it a YA book or is it an adult book, and can be enjoyed equally by both in my opinion.

What I loved most about this book is that it never takes itself too seriously. There are no lengthy drawn-out passages about the flora and fauna of the world that Chris Wooding has created; nor do we have to sit through page after page explaining the political history of the world and its various factions; in fact, world building in this case is not a particularly strong point of the book and I was surprised to find myself wanting to find out a little more the setting of the story at times. However, I gather there is a sequel, and a third book due out soon, so I hope that Chris Wooding expands a little on some of his creations in these. However, if I am perfectly honest, if he doesn't my disappointment will probably be very short-lived as long as he delivers a similarly action-packed, fast-paced adventure story. Like I said before, I have simple tastes.

At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Captain Darian Frey, owner of the Ketty Jay, a rather ugly looking skyship, but it is the thing he loves most in the world. In fact, think Han Solo (minus Chewbacca) and his feelings for the Millennium Falcon and you have a pretty good picture. Except that Frey is much harder to like as he is so self-centred he would desert his crew in a moment if it was worth his while. The best way to describe his crew is as a mixed bag of stereotypes, characters we have seen or read about before, whether it be in science fiction, fantasy or even westerns, but despite this occasional feeling of "see it all before" these characters work very well together. I think this is because every one of them is carrying (and hiding) some pretty hefty baggage, some of which is so nasty that they fear telling others will lead to them being jettisoned from the Ketty Jay at the next port, or something even worse. These secrets are gradually revealed throughout the story, and although some of them are pretty simple to guess there are enough elements in their histories to keep readers turning pages to find out more. There are so many cool characters in this book that to start naming them all would take forever; not only do they have cool names (e.g. Samandra Bree), but they have cool sounding 'jobs' (e.g. the Century Knights) and they fly around in cool sounding skyships (e.g. Delirium Trigger).

If, unlike me, you prefer your fantasy books to be deep and meaningful, with the world detailed down to the smallest of minutiae, then this isn't the book for you. However, if as a child you dreamt of being a pirate, or you idolised the roguish Han Solo because he was the bad boy that all the women wanted, or the idea of sword fights and massive sky battles between skyships (not space ships) makes you salivate, then this is a book you really should try. On the rear of the dustwrapper on the edition I have there is a quote from author Peter F. Hamilton which starts: 'Retribution Falls in the kind of old fashioned adventure I didn't think we were allowed to write anymore,' and I think this sums up the story perfectly. I think some people (the ones I said that take things too seriously) forget that reading for some is all about escapism and having fun, it is not always about exploring the depths of one's emotions, or expanding one's knowledge. I am happy to admit that I have never read a Booker Prize winner, and I doubt that will change in a hurry as I would much rather read books like Retribution Falls and now need to get my hands on a copy of the sequel, The Black Lung Captain; I think we have a copy in the school library.