Guest Post by Michael Grant (Light Blog Tour)

I am honoured today to welcome Michael Grant to The Book Zone as part of the Light Blog Tour. Michael's here today to tell us what it is like for him on a real world book tour. I was very fortunate to be able to listen to Michael last autumn when we welcomed him in to school to talk to our Year 9s. If you ever get the chance to listen to him then I suggest you grab it!

Thanks to the Book Zone for Boys for letting me blog tour on this blog.  I’ll try not to say anything embarrassing.

So, I am visiting the UK in October on what we like to call “Book Tour.”  I think this will be my sixth or seventh UK book tour, though my first for MESSENGER OF FEAR.  I’ve also done one such tour, for GONE and BZRK, in Australia and New Zealand, one for GONE to Netherlands, a quick dash to Ireland, and of course many such excursions around the States.

My non-US tours are different from my travels around the States.  In the States I know the lay of the land, so to speak, so I fly un-accompanied and generally eschew the offered limousines in favor of renting a car.  In the UK I travel with a publicist, most often by train.  We don’t really do trains in the US, we do cars.  I’m a Californian by birth and we do cars to an even greater extent than other Americans.  California is the birthplace of car culture.

As a part of genus Americanus, species Californius Irascibilus, I am uneasy on trains.  Trains run on schedules and that means I am out of control of my movements.  It means I cannot decide to pull over and go shopping.  It means I cannot park and sleep unobserved.  It means I cannot drive through a fast food restaurant and eat a burger with one hand while driving with the other while adjusting the radio while puffing on a cigar while cursing other drivers and offering useful hand-signals meant to convey my lack of satisfaction with their driving skills.

Being a Californian requires a great deal of eye-hand coordination.  

It seems unsafe somehow to just sit in a train.  God only knows who’s driving the thing and whether he or she is paying attention.  And it’s strange not being on my own.  The publicists are invariably charming, tolerant, bright, tolerant women young enough to be my daughter, who have the unenviable job of guiding a cranky old fart through busy stations and into schools and bookstores where I manage to irritate teachers and administrators by saying things I shouldn’t.  

Did I mention that the publicists are tolerant young women?  One of my favorites sometimes reads religious works.  I like to think she was an atheist before being paired with me and that I drove her to seek the solace of religion.  

Anyway, we careen around the country in trains, stopping here and there so that I can address auditoriums full of kids who’ve escaped math class to hear me ramble on about how much better their lives will be if they’ll only buy my book.  (Which in case you missed it is called, MESSENGER OF FEAR.)  I suppose they should also read my books, but the fact is I’m there to sell books, so, really, what they do with the book is entirely up to them.

I have a love-hate relationship with Book Tour, but always end up having a lot of fun in the UK.  Once I broke away and drove a rented car across Scotland.  As you know, Scots, like Brits, drive on the wrong side of the road, so it wasn’t perhaps my best driving effort.  (Sorry about the side mirrors, you folks parked in Edinburgh, but the road was pretty narrow and I was on the wrong side of it, after all.)  But generally it’s the train, which I have to say, is almost always on time, usually clean and not always packed to the rafters.  

I know Brits often complain about the trains, but it lacks the conviction of a Californian complaining about traffic.  And with no opportunity for useful hand gestures and the possibility of gunfire in response, it all seems just a bit tame.  

In any event, British folk, I will be there soon.  Or may already be there by the time you read this.  You may want to fold in those side mirrors in case I break free and get my hands on a steering wheel.

It’s still drive on the left, right?

Review: BZRK by Michael Grant

These are no ordinary soldiers. This is no ordinary war. Welcome to the nano, where the only battle is for sanity. Losing is not an option when a world of madness is at stake. Time is running out for the good guys. But what happens when you don't know who the good guys really are?

Noah and Sadie: newly initiated to an underground cell so covert that they don't even know each other's names. Here they will learn what it means to fight on a nano level. Soon they will become the deadliest warriors the world has ever seen. Vincent: feels nothing, cares for no one; fighting his own personal battle with Bug Man, the greatest nano warrior alive. The Armstrong Twins: wealthy, privileged, and fanatical. Are they the saviours of mankind or authors of the darkest conspiracy the world has ever seen? The nano is uncharted territory. A terrifying world of discovery. And everything is to play for...

Confession time: I have not yet read any of Michael Grant's Gone books. I have them all, sitting there glaring at me, begging to be picked up and read. And I will read them, at some point, but with so many new books arriving each week it is sometimes difficult to prioritise reading a books that have been out for some time. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Grant at an event held to launch Egmont's teen imprint, Electric Monkey, and I squirmed as I made this similar confession to him, but I think I got away with it by telling him just how great I thought BZRK was.

If you are anything like me then BZRK will blow your mind. That's pretty much all I want to say about this book, as it is almost un-reviewable, in that to give even the slightest amount of information away would definitely spoil your reading experience. I said as much to Michael and he seemed to take this as a great compliment. BZRK is very different from pretty much any YA book out there at the moment, and the closest I can come to expressing how it is continuing to play on my mind almost two weeks later, is to liken it to William Gibson's Neuromancer which had a similar effect on me many years ago. BZRK is a gamechanger for YA literature.

I am going to be very careful with my words from this point in, as I want to give you a feel for the book without spoiling it. A Michael Grant book wouldn't be a Michael grant book if it didn't make the reader feel very uncomfortable at times, and BZRK is no exception to this. The man seems to take great delight from scaring the pants off his teen readers, by drilling deep into their psyches and toying with the things that they fear the most. And we're not talking ghosts and goblins here, were talking about the things that make them wake up terrified in the night, and refuse to go to sleep again until dawn's early light brings some relief from the dark.

BZRK deals with issues such as: identity; control; what it is that makes us independent humans with independent thoughts; and - scariest of all in this book - madness. It is a book where you question the actions of everyone, both good and bad, and find yourself asking whether the good guys are actually just slightly less bad than the villains. For both sides, it is very much a case of the end justifies the means, and in BZRK the means are pretty damn deplorable sometimes. And what makes things even worse is that to many of the bad guys, what they are up to is just a game, albeit infinitely bigger and more extreme than anything produced for your average games console. There is one speech, by a character called Bug Man, that really does leave a bad taste in your mouth.... just as Michael Grant intended, I do suspect. 

If you have a son who is a reluctant reader, but loves computers, gaming, science fiction films and/or The Gadget Show then I strongly recommend that you go out and get them this book. Michael Grant will hook them from the very first chapter, and won't let them go until the last page, at which point they will be begging for the sequel.