David TallermanRezensionen

Look like someone wanted to write a screenplay for a Hollywood blockbuster but run over and ended up with a short story.

The world changed with the coming of a sickness with no cure. Civilization has descended into violence and chaos. Those who are well struggle to survive and avoid the Sickers. At a former prison, now called Funland, survivors hunker down and form a safe zone. Sickers can't get inside the prison walls, but sometimes survivors are even more deadly than the infected.

This story reminded me so much of The Walking Dead. It definitely has the same vibe. Survivors not only have to avoid those who are infected, but other survivors as well. Power struggles. Violence. Scavenging. Human nature.

There is a lot of action in this story. Definitely never a dull moment. It definitely kept my attention from beginning to end. Total binge read. Once I got sucked into the story, I just couldn't stop reading. I kept seeing the action playing out in my head like a movie. I love it when my head gets totally immersed in a story like that. Definitely gave me the same feeling that The Walking Dead used to -- in the seasons where they were in the prison or fighting The Governor. Great action! Exciting and lots of drama and power struggles going on. There are a lot of characters and the point of view changes between them. Usually I don't like POV switching around like that, but for this story it really worked.

Thorougly enjoyed this story! I look forward to reading more by this author!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Flame Tree Press via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

This started strong, with an interesting rogue in interesting trouble and just getting deeper. But the entire extended middle section of the book is driven in spite of the main character, because all he wants to do is escape it. It's hard to maintain much interest when he has none, so by the time he finally came around and realised he'd been an arse (something I'd realised approximately a hundred-fifty pages earlier) I wasn't really that involved. In the end, he learned some heartwarming lessons, maintained his devil-may-care grin, and encouraged us along for further adventures that I will not be attending, even if he might actually be more invested in them now.

I do appreciate the way it turns the humble-boy-taken-from-home-turned-king and magic-stone-is-the-key-to-it-all on its head. But I dramatically do not appreciate the way the paper-thin villain has tremendously bad plans, buckets of evil, and a scimitar. There is just not enough new, interesting, or compelling here.

Meddling with reality is dangerous.

It's especially dangerous when your enemy has gotten possession of your device and doesn't understand important aspects of it, has removed all safety features--and intends to use it as a weapon.

And when the device itself has its own opinions on what's "harmful" and what's not.

Florrian is traveling with the device that will prove all his scientific theories when a rival organization attempts to steal it. The drastic action he takes can potentially threaten the fabric of reality unless he--or some alternate version of him--or is it her?--can come up with a way to set things right.

I had no idea where this was going at first, and it's a wild ride, but it's a lot of fun.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

I have to say, the first half of this book didn't grab me, but the second half has the pace, suspense and twists you expect from a decent crime thriller. Primarily urban and dark, there are few light moments to break the bleakness., making this a gritty read.
Things go bad quickly for the lead character from the start, but although there is escalation, the pace seems too slow in the first half. I also didn't connect with Ollie. Paranoid and pessimistic, he seems to have neither the intelligence of a history teacher nor the street smarts of a man with a delinquent adolescence. It made it hard to feel empathy for him, especially with some of the stupid decisions he makes.
The second half is far better. Although some twists are not entirely unexpected, the outcome never feels certain, and it's well paced. If you like this genre, it's worth persisting with the book long enough to get to the good bits.
Many thanks to Flame Tree Press for the ARC. My review is my honest opinion.

A great mystery, and a good graphic novel. Tallerman manages to weave in just enough suspense to get me hooked! I'll definitely be picking up the next few issues.

I’ll freely admit horror, or dark fantasy, is not really my thing. Even so, if there was one thing which jumped out at me about the stories in this collection, it’s that they pastiched their inspirations a little too effectively. In fact, for much of the collection, it felt like the author had no voice of their own. Granted, it takes good craft to pastiche so effectively, and in an individual story read in, say, a magazine or anthology, it wouldn’t present a problem… but in a collection of such stories, you start to wonder who has actually written them… I wasn’t as taken with the Lovecraft-kiddie story, ‘My Friend Fish Finger By Daisy, Aged 7’, which I first heard at a York pub meet, as much as I know others have been; and I thought the title story, an Aleister Crowley story, suffered from a lack of, well, Aleister Crowley… although I thought it quite effective otherwise. The stories are, on the whole, well-crafted and polished, and wouldn’t look out of place in any random Weird Tales sort of anthology or magazine. The collection is also very nicely illustrated, with a page of art introducing each story. But for me, that lack of a voice felt like a deal-breaker, and it all seemed somewhat too polished, so your attention tended to slide from the prose. It has occurred to me that short stories succeed when they contain a high concept conceit that resonates with readers or a strong voice – and the best stories have both. In terms of strong conceits, some of the stories in The Sign in the Moonlight get close, and in isolation those conceits might have seemed stronger. I’ve always liked collections, I much prefer them, in fact, to anthologies… but reading this one made me think about why I prefer them, and why some are more successful than others.½

I keep requesting comics from Netgalley. Don't know why since I'm pretty ambivalent towards comics. This comic is based on a Lovecraft story. Not a huge fan of Lovecraft (mainly because I can't get past the racism). So why C21st Gods #1? Because I like reading horror and comics are quick reads and I crossed my fingers that Tallerman and Summey would leave out Lovecraft's racist undertones (there's a WOC background character in the comic, which is an improvement from Lovecraft's belief that Of the complete biological inferiority of the negro there can be no question. Still, I feel icky about the source material and a background POC character of two is hardly going to fix that.)

So, twenty-four pages in a retelling of The Call of Cthulhu. Basically, twenty-four pages that reads like those movie previews that are disjoint images flashed on the screen separated by a few seconds of darkness meant to make you think Wow, what a moody dark film this is going to be but instead just gives me a headache. A few shots of gore. A gloomy house. A run down precinct. People humping a statue. There you go -- that's pretty much the twenty-four pages right there.

Probably good for fans of Lovecraft. Meh for me.

C21st Gods #1 by David Tallerman and Anthony Summey went on sale November 9, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What happens when a scientist invents a machine that connects parallel realities and that machine gets shot - and the scientist is surprised by how the machine behaves? Something not so good obviously.

Meet Dran Florrian. He invented Palimpsest - a machine that can get anything from another parallel world. There is only one rule - no weapons can be brought through - or anything that can harm anyone. Add a psychopath that wants to use the machine as a weapon and Florrian's ex-wife and the story can start. The machine get damaged surprising everyone and instead of exploding or just shutting down, it starts playing protector - it merges reality to save its inventor.

The first time the characters change, I wondered where the editor was. It took a few pages to start suspecting what really is going on, a lot longer for it to be confirmed. Or for Dran to figure it out.

At the end of the day, it is a pretty good novella about parallel realities and hard choices. Not the best I had ever read, probably won't be the best this year even but it was a nice read and it made me think about choices. The parallel realities were different enough to make them interesting (even the small part that we saw of them) and the explanations on why they are was fascinating. And the end is almost perfect - it opens the door for additional stories but it also closes the story that it started to tell.

Novellas are hard to sell - too long for most collections and magazines, too short to be published on their own. I am very happy that Tor started the current line - the novella is a perfect length for Science Fiction and Fantasy. And that one proves exactly what the length can do - it could have been a lot longer and overwritten story but by allowing it to be as long as that, the story is a lot stronger. And it is allowed to have a single storyline instead of the usual multiple stories in a novel.½

Dran Florrian has invented a machine he calls Palimpsest and, afraid it might be used as a weapon, he decides to do a runner with it. But his arch rival, Harlan Dorric, tracks him down and tries to take Palimpsest for himself. Oh, and Florian’s ex-wife, Karen is now with Doric too. Palimpsest apparently provides a means of viewing, and even manipulating, alternate realities – as is revealed when Doric and his goons attack Florrian, and Florrian and Karen find themselves in a completely different world (a steampunkish one, in fact). And so it goes. As the chase continued across alternate realities, it occurred to me this was a very cunning way to expand a short story to novella-length. Because the resolution of the story is not dependent on the realities Florrian and Karen visit – in fact, all they do is delay, or perhaps even obstruct, the resolution. But this is hardly a problem as the story is fast-paced, very readable and manages a more-than-sufficient level of invention. Perhaps the various backgrounds are a little sketchy, and Florrian has a tendency to over-analyse at times; but at short-story length this would probably have been too light on detail to be satisfying, and there really isn’t enough plot to justify novel length. But it works just fine as a novella.½

I received this book in return for a review.

David Tallerman's short fiction is commonly seen in all the best genre magazines and anthologies, which tells you that it is well-crafted. This collection showcases a short story writer of uncommon skill.

In here you'll find stories that brush the unknown with fingers outstretched, that send shivers down the spine, that paint with a palette of darkness. Tallerman is obviously influenced by past writers of the macabre in some of these tales but the range is much broader than that. Be he writing in the style of Victorian ghost tale, pulp era horror or modern his voice comes through.

Tales of mountain explorers, barrow dwellers, Santa Things, freezing deserts, soulful scarecrows and, of course, ghosts fill these pages and you'd be hard pressed to find an off note in the symphony of shadows. It is possible to find favourites though. I was especially taken with The facts in the case of Algernon Whisper's Karma a very clever tale of reincarnation. Also The war of the rats, written especially for this volume, was an utterly compelling tale of World War 1. Another favourite was the charmingly disturbing tale of My friend Fishfingerby Daisy, Aged 7.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this work to fans of Lovecraft, MR James, Algernon Blackwood et al as Tallerman can take his place amongst those, and other, master craftsmen of the dark tale.½

I liked the 1st book Giant Thief and the second delivers the same: an consistently amusing and entertaining action adventure with an amusing rogue, clashing with his stalwart and moral associates and running away from some wonderfully creepy assassins. Plus giants (yay giants!) It uses our fantasy genre expectations to make this world building-lite but with some nice extras. Easie Damasco is one of the main draws here (although the other characters are good) and his transition from amusing fantasy rogue to someone with a burgeoning conscience feels natural and necessary and his post 1st adventure bewilderment and ennui that accompanies it pitch perfect for a second book of a presumed trilogy. Of course this won’t appeal to anyone who prefers their fantasy grim or full of the detail of cultures and geography. Nor are there dragons, zombies or ninjas riding unicorns. Just wanted to let you down gently.
It does have some minor issues, the plot doesn’t quite make sense although it's ok as Easie can be dumb but sometimes you just think “perhaps you would like to mention the killer assassin trailing you?”

I wanted to be entertained and it didn’t disappoint and eagerly look forward to the next one½

Nice pacing, and the protagonist's voice is fairly enjoyable, but the events failed to grab my interest.½

I picked this up on the basis of a) thief; and b) giant. There's not enough fiction with giants in in my world, and I'm a sucker for thief-based fantasy.

SHORT VERSION: Readable, but bland. Feels like some wasted potential.

The broad premise of the book worked okay for me. Easie (the thief) is forced into an invading army as bow-fodder, and desperate for a way out. Through a fluke, he ends up in charge of a giant and makes a break for it, pausing briefly to loot the enemy general's tent, both for much-needed cash and for revenge. It turns out the loot he stole includes a MacGuffin that's the secret of controlling the army's giants, and they're pursued frantically through the land, suffering various hardships and setbacks before finally returning it to its rightful owners, the giants themselves.

I read most of it on a train journey, and it was okay, but aside from the giant premise I found it a bit bland and without anything particular to hook me. The story itself is adequate, but doesn't really throw up any surprises. Most notably, the characters just didn't sell themselves to me.

Easie Damasco himself has no distinguishing features whatsoever, which is a bit of a drawback in a protagonist - he's just a cut-and-paste fantasy thief, gutter class. He's known by sight to the guard, cynical, selfish, treacherous, and largely amoral, until he develops a rudimentary conscience towards the end. Just like 90% of fantasy thieves, in fact. But there's nothing to help you pick him out in an identity parade, or give you much of a feel for what he might do, or an interest in what happens to him. There's a hint in the cover, which says "from the tales of Easie Damasco", that Tallerman might be planning to turn him into a recurring protagonist, which I can only hope he'll rethink. Easie Damasco isn't clever, he doesn't have an interesting way of seeing the world, he's not witty and at no point did I find myself cheering him along. That's not to say I disliked him, because I didn't; I was more or less apathetic, and that's not how a first-person viewpoint character should make me feel. I was interested in the story, but not in Easie, who seems to serve mostly to get in the way of the plot. His self-centredness isn't comprehensive enough to be entertaining, or knowing enough to be attractive. We don't learn anything much about him to give him a place in the world, amd he seems largely ignorant, with limited interest in what's going on. His thoughts aren't enlightening and his comments aren't amusing. There's also a slight puzzling tang of mysogyny in Easie's character. He claims to have thought the election of Mayor Marina Estrada was a joke, and talks slightingly of her and her abilities for most of the book, but it feels weirdly out of place. The rest of the world seems entirely free of this trait; the other residents of Muena Palaiya eagerly elected her as Mayor, she's trusted and obeyed by her troops, and nobody else questions her. Now that's obviously not to say that Easie can't be a bit mysogynistic, but it just felt like an odd loose end floating in the book, especially as it doesn't seem to crop up outside the Estrada context. I'm half-inclined to say it's just an unconscious artefact of the many other books with a thief protagonist with old-fashioned views of women, which feels a bit mean, but I honestly can't see why Tallerman included it and it doesn't seem to serve any purpose in the book. It doesn't even seem well-developed enough to be a character trait.

While I'm talking about women, there's also a brief scene where an apparent ally, Mounteban, turns out only to be helping them out of love for Estrada. When she rejects him, he sexually assaults her and Easie comes to her rescue. Mounteban then blows hot and cold on them for the rest of the book, alternately rescuing and betraying them. There was just no need for the (we are led to assume) attempted rape. It doesn't add anything to the plot, it doesn't produce any character development, and it doesn't establish Mounteban's character any better than his abandonment and later betrayals do. Estrada is the only woman in the book, she's a competent and trusted leader, and the best-realised character in the story, with an actual history and some flaws. I felt like Tallerman did a reasonable job elsewhere of having attraction influence men's attitude to her without it becoming a central point, and without her deliberately manipulating them. I don't understand why he included this rather clumsy throwaway scene, which is never relevant again.

The giants seemed genuinely intriguing, and I was encouraged early on by Estrada pointing out that the reason "Saltlick" is monosyllabic and taciturn is that he only knows a few words of their language. Right at the end there are some tantalising glimpses of giant culture, but I have to admit that on the whole I felt a bit let down. The other characters' attitudes towards "Saltlick" don't change much throughout the story, even Estrada doesn't seem bothered to find out any more about giant culture, and they don't even use his proper name when they learn it. The giants' utter obedience to the Macguffin seemed to need more justification in my view, considering they were shown to be intelligent and civilised, and it was being used by a non-giant to force them into actions utterly against their nature. Basically, it seemed like the giant aspect of the book was severely under-developed.

In general, the characters all felt underdeveloped to me, while the plot seemed a bit unsatisfying, as though loose ends weren't quite tied up. Character development didn't quite seem to get anywhere, apart from a slight relaxing of the general distaste for Easie and Saltlick becoming slightly more confident. To some extent it seems like so much of the book was spent fleeing that there wasn't enough time for much else, be it character interaction, witty dialogue or revealing of interesting details. If people aren't belting for their lives, they're too exhausted to talk or pointedly ignoring each other. Even the antagonist doesn't get much development except "wants to usurp the King" and "is violent and treacherous", which is a shame when a compelling villain can really make a story.

Before I go, here's one line which stuck with me a bit, which made me feel that Tallerman had something decent in mind and just didn't quite manage to pin things down.
Estrada: "For all that, you're only a small part of a very big picture."
Easie: "To me, I'm a large part of a picture only slightly bigger than I am."
I can't help wondering if part of the problem is that he had a really solid mental picture of what Easie Damasco was like, and forgot that the readers didn't, and that it was his job to show us. With a better-defined protagonist and some tightening up of things, it could have been a lot less generic.

NITPICKING
Before I finish, I feel the need to go off on a slight tangent here. There's a Very Specific Level of Criminal common to fantasy rogues, where despite being a liar, cheat and common thief, they've never done anything really *bad*. They don't tend to rob the elderly, beat up victims to find out where their valaubles are, use unnecessary force in robberies, leave people destitute or set fires to cover their tracks, which is how real criminals operate. I'm not suggesting I want to have people like that as protagonists, but I'd like authors to think carefully about constructing their thieves in order to explain how these career criminals manage to steer clear of anything particularly unsavoury. Tallerman isn't a particularly egregious example, but I couldn't help noticing the contraditions of Easie's character. He's infamous, but not very successful and doesn't seem especially competent. He comments that he wouldn't normally stoop to looting a baggage train, but he never seems to have had any money, so what does he usually steal? Since he apparently *isn't* the romanticised high-class thief who robs lords for the hell of it and loots temples, and who has money for luxuries, he must steal from common people. Similarly, his old stalking ground is a large town which apparently supports a flourishing underworld; on the plus side at least it wasn't a Thieves' Guild, but they do have a secret passage into the town and a vast network of tunnels in solid rock, neither of which are known to the authorities until a thief is recruited to the war council. Am I seriously to believe that no kids have spotted either of these fascinating things while running wild about the place, no keen soldiers or guards have noticed them while searching for defensive weaknesses or hidden criminals, and most of all that no drunken thugs have boasted about them or revealed them under questioning? None of these things bothered me too much, but they did niggle.

There were also a few typos that should have been picked up, including "a rope pulled taught" (which made me cringe) and a spot of feigned drunkenness that didn't make sense because (I can only assume) an enthusiastic spellchecker had corrected the drunken misspelling. A bit more attention there would have been nice. On a lighter note, I couldn't help noticing the rallying cry that "Castovalians have never worn a yoke, never called any man master!" conveniently ignored the fact they lived in a monarchy filled with powerful nobles, but that's all too common in real life. I would love to think it was a wry observation on Tallerman's part, but the rest of the book doesn't have the tone to support that.

EXTRA
The copy of "Giant Thief" I bought for the train includes a bonus short story, "Imaginary Prisons". The contrast is huge. "Imaginary Prisons" is novel, unexpected, has touches of humour and doesn't waste words. I'm not going to say it's a work of genius, but it's a good solid short fantasy story that I thoroughly enjoyed, all ten pages of it. If Tallerman produced more stuff like that I'd be happy.

Fun fantasy.

Lured in by a fun title and silly cover but sold on the humorous excerpt I read. This is your typical fantasy setting, but no detailed world building and in-depth discussion of how the magic system works. Bang we hit the 1st fantasy trope (of hanging thief) before we are off on a wise cracking adventure set amongst potential civil war and the odd giant. If there are no surprises there is much relief that Tallerman delivers, the action is well done, the pace fast and the characters flesh out and (the most difficult) constantly amusing. Easie damasco is great rogue to hang a tale on and it doesn't even stop the humour or drag the story as he slowly matures. If fact it’s a hook to hang the next book on, one that I will be buying.

Recommended to fantasy fans and those looking for a fast paced read.½

Although the interview with Tallerman that accompanies the story compares Jenny to an addict, I think a better comparison is to bulimics or cutters. The future brings cures for all diseases, so a new wave is drugs that make people sick. One pill to make you sick, a second to make you better. Jenny likes being sick, so she holds off on the second pill as long as she can. And then there’s her friend and roommate who sorta wants to help, and sorta doesn’t. The story is made by his complex character. Jenny is almost a prop.½