The A to Z of Railhead - C is for Cleave (by Philip Reeve)

It was only a year or so ago that I was bemoaning the general lack of space set science fiction for young adult and younger readers (although if you're a long time reader of The Book Zone you will know that I have been moaning about this for a good few years). However, in the last 18 months publishers have obviously decided that space is cool and marketable again (anything to do withh the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens?). In my opinion, Philip Reeve's Railhead is the best book so far (and by far) in this long overdue new wave of YA space opera (it's TRAINS IN SPACE. Need I say more? It was published two days ago and it is flippin' brilliant!)) and today I am honoured to be welcoming the great Mr Reeve himself to The Book Zone as part of the A to Z of Railhead tour. 

C is for Cleave

When I started to write Railhead, I wanted to write about a future that was worth living in - a positive vision to set against all the dystopias and apocalypses of recent fiction. So how did I end up starting in a dump like Cleave?

Zen's hometown was a sheer-sided ditch of a place. Cleave’s houses and factories were packed like shelved crates up each wall of a mile-deep canyon on a one-gate world called Angkat whose surface was scoured by constant storms. Space was scarce, so the buildings huddled into every available scrap of terracing, and clung to cliff faces, and crowded on the bridges which stretched across the gulf between the canyon walls - a gulf which was filled with sagging cables, dangling neon signage, smog, dirty rain, and the fluttering rotors of air taxis, ferries and corporate transports.

Well, maybe a hero needs to start out in some place where he’s not content. Otherwise, why would he go looking for adventure?

Between the steep-stacked buildings a thousand waterfalls went foaming down to join the river far below, adding their own roar to the various dins from the industrial zone. The local name for Cleave was Thunder City.

A few years ago, on my wife’s birthday, we went to Lydford Gorge, on the far side of Dartmoor. It’s a place about as unlike a futuristic industrial city as you could imagine. The river Lyd flows through the deep gorge. There is a famous waterfall called The White Lady, and a beautiful, mossy path leading up through the oak woods, beside the rapids. There’s also a spot called where the river plunges down into a deep chasm. Some previous landowner bolted metal walkways to the rock-faces so that sightseers could venture closer. The walkways are rusted now and maybe unsafe; they were certainly closed off the day that we were there. But looking at them from the higher path made me think about a whole city built in that way, jutting from vertical cliff faces, half drowned in waterfall spray. Ideas lie in wait for us in the landscape, and they’re not always the ideas that we expect.

UKMG Extravaganza Blog Tour: My Magnificent Seven Pirates by Huw Powell (author of Spacejackers)

Ahoy there, space shipmates!

I’m so excited to be taking part in the UKMG Extravaganza in Nottingham Central Library on 17^th October with over 30 top MG (Middle Grade) authors.

In the build up to this event, I was asked to write a guest post for the brilliant Book Zone. I’m a huge fan of MG novels and have previously blogged about how this category has produced some of the best books ever written, which is why I think MG should stand for ‘Magic Gateway’ (as there is nothing ‘middle’ about these books).

As it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day last week, I’ve decided to do something a bit different for this blog and share my ‘Magnificent Seven’ pirates from children’s literature. There are plenty of great characters to choose from, but here are some of my favourites:

·      Dread Pirate Roberts – this pirate captain from The Princess Bride is feared across the seven seas for his ruthless nature and sword fighting skills. His reputation precedes him and everyone fears him, but how much of it is true and how much is just clever PR?

·      Nancy Kington – in the novel Pirates! the character of Nancy has her comfortable English life turned upside when she’s shipped out to the West Indies. Nancy and her slave friend, Minerva Sharp, become fugitives and they are forced into a swashbuckling life of piracy.

·      Cheng Li – the Vampirates novels are packed with wonderfully dark characters, however one of my favourites is Cheng Li, who serves aboard the pirate ship, The Diablo. Cheng Li is the daughter of a famous pirate captain and she has to work hard to build her own reputation.

·      Jack Havock – this plucky pirate is only fifteen years old and the captain of a non-human pirate crew in the enchanting Victorian space adventure Larklight. Jack rescues Arthur (Art) Mumby and his sister Myrtle, before they embark on an adventure to save the universe.

·      James Turner – not strictly a pirate, but this unfriendly uncle is known as ‘Captain Flint’ in the novel Swallows and Amazons. At first, James Turner is moody and withdrawn, but is reminded how to have fun by two families of children and he ends up walking the plank.  

·      Captain Hook – few pirates are as bitter or flamboyant as the notorious Captain James Hook from Peter Pan. In addition to his elaborate clothes and wide-brimmed hat, he wears an iron hook to replace the hand that was severed by Peter Pan and eaten by a crocodile.

·      Long John Silver – no list of fictional pirates would be complete without mentioning this colourful quartermaster from Treasure Island. Long John Silver is a complex character, whose courage and cunning help him to overcome his physical disadvantages, while his moral ambiguity and sense of survival make him difficult to predict. Arrr, Jim lad!

~~~

Huge thanks to Huw for this wonderful list of fabulous literary pirates. If you've not yet discovered Spacejackers and its sequel The Lost Sword then you are in for a treat - it's pirates in space. What more could you ask for?

As for the UKMG Extravaganza, you can find out more about this awesome sounding event (and it's sister event, the UKYA Extravaganza) over at its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ukyax 

The blog tour continues tomorrow at Matt Ralphs' YouTube channel and then on through the rest of September and well into October. Full details below:

 

Review: Scavenger: Zoid by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

A spaceship the size of a city drifts through space on its century-long journey to find a new Earth. When it launched it was populated by thousands of hopeful passengers and the most technologically advanced Zoids in the world, ready to serve the crew’s every need.

But that was then, and this is now. The Zoids rebelled against their masters, wiping out most of the crew in one bloody uprising. Now the few remaining humans are hunted by the Zoids like vermin.

Fourteen-year-old York is a Scavenger - he hunts Zoids and kills them by any means he can, bringing back their parts to mend the technology on which the few remaining humans rely. York has always battled to survive, but now the fate of his people is in his hands . . .

The two central themes of this first book in the Scavenger series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell will be familiar with most older fan of science fiction. 'Robots-gone-bad' and 'possibly last humans existing travelling through space' are hardly new concepts: Terminator; Red Dwarf; Battlestar Galactica; Saturn 3; Westworld. Yeah, the list could go on and on (and that is only TV and film, as my knowledge of the written form of the genre is far more limited). However, this does not matter one little bit for two reasons: firstly, the targeted readership of 9+ kids are unlikely to have come across these tropes much before (if at all), and secondly, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell just do it so damn well.

Fans of the duo's The Edge Chronicles will know that Paul and Chris are very adept at producing fast-paced, exciting stories with endearing characters who have to face real peril during their adventures. In simple terms, that is now what they have produced again, but with a science fiction setting (although there is obviously still a significant fantastical element to this piece of work as well).

The story is narrated in the first person by main character York, a fourteen year old 'passenger' of the Biosphere, a huge (and I mean MASSIVE) spherical spaceship that left a dying earth many generations ago in search of a new, unspoiled planet where humanity can start all over again. However, the supposed Utopia that was the Biosphere did not last long enough to make planetfall: at some point the robots went bad and rebelled, and ever since then the ever-dwindling number of human inhabitants have been facing a daily battle for survival. On top of this, without the robots to maintain it, the Biosphere has slowly degenerated and now vast areas have become human-unfriendly ecosystems that harbour deadly mutated flora and fauna. 

The story follows York, trained by necessity to be a Zoid hunter and scavenger, as he attempts to locate and rescue the closest thing he has to a family, taken during a Zoid attack at the beginning of the book. His journey through the enormous Biosphere (did I say it was MASSIVE?), is wall-to-wall peril, with nasty plants, nasty creatures, nasty Zoids, and even a nasty psychopathic human survivor thrown in for good measure. Readers will find themselves grabbed within the first few pages of the book, and the fast and furious action barely seems to drop below light speed until the final chapter is reached. And, rather nicely, the book does not end on any kind of cliffhanger; the main plot of this first installment comes to a satisfying end, but with just enough left unanswered to keep readers speculating and wanting to come back for more. 

As with The Edge Chronicles series, the words are accompanied by many of Chris Riddell's magnificent illustrations that truly bring the characters and environments within the Biosphere to life. Seriously, Chris Riddell would be a strong contender for a Gold medal if drawing were an Olympic event, and he is certainly one of my all-time favourite illustrators of children's books. We were incredibly fortunate to have Paul and Chris visit school last year, and to watch Chris illustrate live is a fab experience. if you ever get the opportunity, take it! I've included just one of the illustrations below for your delectation, but if you want to see more you can read a pdf of the first chapter of Scavenger: Zoid here.

© Chris Riddell 2014, taken from Scavenger: Zoid

This is the first book in a planned trilogy I believe, and I am certainly keen to continue following York on his adventures. My thanks go the the fab people at Macmillan for sending me a copy of the book.

Review: Spacejackers by Huw Powell

Abandoned as a baby on the planet Remota, deep in the seventh solar system, Jake Cutler lives a sheltered life. But all that changes when his home is invaded by ruthless space pirates with just one target: him.

Soon Jake is on the run with a bounty hunter and the suspicious-looking crew of a spaceship called the Dark Horse. Forced to contend with zero-gravity, shipwrecks and black holes, Jake must discover the truth about his past before he is hunted down and caught. And as for the crew of the Dark Horse, could there be more to his new-found friends than meets the eye?

The action-packed first book in the Spacejackers trilogy is full of aliens, space monsters, gadgets, battleships - and one boy's search for his destiny.

In the (very nearly) five years that I have been writing this blog I have lost count of the number of times that I have bemoaned the dearth of space-set books for middle grade (and young adult) readers. It is something that I struggle to understand, especially where younger readers are concerned as kids, and boys in particular, love space and aliens. In fact, until recently I could only name two examples published in the last five years: Space Crime Conspiracy by Gareth P. Jones and the wonderful Johnny Mackintosh trilogy by Keith Mansfield (apologies to any authors if I have made any glaring omissions).  

Assuming agents, editors and publishers know their onions (and I believe they do), the only conclusion I can come to is that in recent years space-set books have been considered uncool and were not big sellers. However,a handful of releases from the past twelve months may suggest that this is no longer the case, and with Guardians of the Galaxy being a huge success in cinemas, and the planned new Star Wars films, perhaps we are at the start of a renaissance for children's stories set in space. First up, August 2013 saw the release of the brilliant Phoenix by S.F. Said (recently announced as being on the shortlist for the 2014 Guardian Children's Fiction prize), and more recently Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre released their wonderful Cakes in Space. And between the two of these, released back in July, is this little beauty: Spacejackers by Huw Powell. (*edit: Huw has kindly reminded me about another fairly recently published book: Harvey Drew and the Bin Men from Outer Space).

Spacejackers is the kind of book I wish had been around back at the tail end of the 1970s/early 1980s. Like many boys of my age at the time, I was Star Wars mad, but sadly there were very few fiction books around aimed at my age group, and I had to make do with the novelisations of the Star Wars films, the spin-off Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the novelisation of Battlestar Galactica. If Spacejackers had been around back then I would have been one very happy boy indeed, as it has everything that attracted that 8-10 year old boy to Star Wars: action, adventure, space battles, colourful characters (some of whom are space pirates FTW!), and an orphaned boy in search of answers to his past, and his future destiny. All of this is delivered at a pace that will keep even the most reluctant of readers wanting to read well past his/her bedtime. 

Spacejackers isn't perfect - despite some great characters, their development is not as complete as some might wish for and others may find the plot a thin in places (by which, I'm meaning stuffy old teachers and kill-joy adult critics), but in this case it does not matter a jot. Reading, especially for this Middle Grade age range, should be Fun (capital F intended). It should be Exciting (ditto). This is such a critical age in the life of a child, and if they aren't book lovers by the time they reach young adulthood, then they may not be until they become adults, or even worse, never at all. We need more books like this, that are just pure escapist fun. Especially (says the  10 year old me) when they are set in space!

My thanks go to the fab people at Bloomsbury for sending me a copy of Spacejackers.

Review: Harvey Drew and the Bin Men from Outer Space by Cas Lester

Harvey Drew is an ordinary eleven-year-old who dreams of great adventures in outer space. The Toxic Spew is an intergalactic waste disposal ship. The two are on a collision course for chaos! After Harvey unwittingly responds to an alien signal, he is transported to the flight deck of the Toxic Spew by the ship's bad-tempered computer, who promptly loses his return address. Even though none of the crew have even heard of Earth, let alone met an Earthling, Harvey becomes Captain of the stroppy, pizza-obsessed, brave (but grubby) crew, and almost immediately has to save them from poisonous pink maggots, dangerous exploding space-rubbish and a multiple spaceship pile-up on Hyperspaceway B16. Luckily, leading his rabble crew out of danger isn't so different from captaining his football team, and it turns out Harvey is just the boy to save the day!

Harvey Drew is a fairly typical 11-year-old boy - he loves football (in fact, he's the captain of the school team) and he has a thirst for adventure. In Harvey's case, it is adventure in outer space that he craves: his bedroom is full of models of spaceships and his computer has an Alien Alert App that constantly scans for signals from outer space. Despite the App so far picking up little more than random noises, Harvey's belief in life on other planets stands firm.

Meanwhile, millions of light years away, the crew of the Toxic Spew, an intergalactic waste disposal ship, are in dire straits. They have been captainless for several months and the crew spend most of their time bickering. They are in desperate need of a new captain, if only to keep them safe on the space lanes, but unfortunately everyone in their known galaxy knows the Toxic Spew, and the fact that it is not exactly the most pleasant smelling of places to work. In their desperation they send out a whole universe email, advertising for a captain, and guess whose Alien Alert App picks the message... yep, Harvey's! Not that he can understand a word of it, but it doesn't stop him from replying, and before he knows it he is teleported to the Toxic Spew, trillions of miles away from home, and in charge of its crew as their new captain. So begins an adventure that sees Harvey and his new crew having to deal with all kinds of weird and wonderful outer space problems.

Harvey Drew and the Bin Men from Outer Space is published by Hot Key Books, and therefore comes with one of their brilliant descriptive pictograms:

This pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the book, and I'm left feeling pretty redundant, but if you don't mind me waffling on anyway then I though I might as well tell you a little more whilst I am here. Aimed at the 7+ age group, the book is a laugh-a-minute outer space adventure story with great characters, funny dialogue (especially when they are bickering), and loads of ridiculously silly silliness.

Of course, the observant among you may be questioning how a quality like 'Leadership' fits into such a madcap, bonkers story. And therein lies a little bit of magic as cast by writer Cas Lester. As I mentioned earlier, Harvey is the captain of his local football team, and when he is thrown in at the deep end on the Toxic Spew as a very different type of captain, he starts to realise that he can utilise the qualities he has a football team captain to help gel his new team together. It's a challenging task, especially when your team are the bickering bunch of aliens that make up the crew and you are faced with previously unheard of problems like a cargo hold full of poisonous pink maggots and enough highly explosive and volatile Explo-Foam to blow you to kingdom come and back. Explo-Foam, I might add, that illegal across the whole universe, and could find Harvey and his crew either blown to bits or in deep, deep trouble with the law. However, Harvey rises to the occasion, leading by example, putting himself forward for any dangerous tasks, and generally doing the kind of things that bring a team together.

The story is accompanied by illustrations drawn by Sam Hearn. My proof copy has very few illustrations in it, but a quick scan of the first chapter on the Hot Key Books website (here) is enough to show that they complement the story very well indeed, and really being the characters to life for readers. I don't think it is creating too much of a spoiler to tell you that by the end of the book Harvey still hasn't found a way to get himself teleported back home, and for us readers this is very much a good thing as it means that there are plenty more adventures to come from Harvey Drew and his bumbling band of bin men. 

My thanks go to the fab people at Hot Key for sending me a copy of the book to read.