The Fury by Alexander Gordon Smith

Cal, Brick and Daisy are three ordinary teenagers with one terrifying thing in common: today, without warning, the world will turn against them.

Every person they meet will become a bloodthirsty, mindless savage, hell-bent on killing them. And they do not know why.

..

With the Furnace series watching me accusingly from the To Be Read shelf(ves) and my ears ringing from all the good things I’d heard about the series, when The Fury dropped through the letterbox I pounced on it and claimed it for myself before Liz could.

As I say, I had heard lots of good things about the Furnace series, but made a point of clearing my mind before eventually sitting down and cracking the Fury open. What I discovered was that whatever I might have heard, it didn’t prepare me for the frenetic energy and sheer mad genius that Mr Smith would be squeezing into those 535 pages.

Reading chapter one was the literary equivalent of discovering that the wrinkly apple you just ate was actually a habanero chilli. Whatever I was expecting the Fury to be was turned upside down and inside out. I’d normally expect to say something along the lines of “the story starts off quite normally...”  but I can’t here. Smith starts with a bang, setting the tone for the rest of the story – having had a taste of the madness in store, it feeds a sinister tension into the background of all the seemingly normal day to day stuff that the three main characters are going through. I knew that the proverbial excrement was hurtling towards the fan, but what I didn’t appreciate was Smith’s capacity for ramping everything up that extra, unexpected notch. It kept things unpredictable – just when I thought I handle on what was really going on, I’d turned the page and be faced with another WTF! moment, but in the best possible way. It kept me turning the pages, the “just another few pages” syndrome that usually sees me suddenly realising it’s 2 a.m or that I've missed my station.

The three main characters each have distinct personalities, and as they try and survive long enough to try make sense of what is happening to them and why, Smith goes to town seeding the story with a palpable sense of impending doom and apocalyptic overtones. He’s not afraid to push the boundaries, and does so with both glee and a deft hand. Outstanding stuff. 

Find the madman Alexander Gordon Smith's website here, and also check out Gordy's new venture, The Inklinkg Studio that looks so much fun as well as the combined blog, Trapped by Monsters, that he shares with a group of other children's writers. 

The Sleeping Army by Francesca Simon

Freya is an ordinary girl living in modern Britain, but with a twist: people still worship the Viking gods. She’s caught in her parents’ divorce, and shuttling between bickering adults is no fun. One evening, stuck with her dad on his night shift at the British Museum, she is drawn to the Lewis Chessmen and Heimdall’s Horn. Unable to resist, she blows the horn, waking three chess pieces from their enchantment; the slaves Roskva and Alfi, and Snot the Berserk. They are all summoned to Asgard, land of the Viking gods, and told they must go on a perilous journey to restore the gods to youth. If Freya refuses she will be turned into an ivory chess piece but, if she accepts her destiny and fails, the same terrible fate awaits her.

Firstly, the look and feel of the book in your hand is great. The cover is rough, it feels a bit like antique paper and the artwork is superb. It already sets the tone for the book. It's also not a full-sized paperback and the print is decent sized, so even for reluctant readers this is a great gift.

Freya as a main character is so great - she's grumpy, annoyed that her parents are full of it, and all she really wants to do is have a quiet evening. Instead she's been handed over to her Dad who forgot that his shifts at the museum had changed and so she has to spend time at the museum, after dark.

When she is left to her own devices, she strolls around and notices the horn suspended from the ceiling near the chess pieces. And she thought: hey, I wonder if I can blow it? And so she does, but quietly. Only thing is, it doesn't come out as quiet. There is a tremendous noise, masses of confusion and then the next thing she knows, she's tumbling through the air with her dad shouting her name. And then she lands, somewhere else, with three companions and a horse with too many legs.

So begins the very epic story of Freya's reluctant quest. She is indeed very much the reluctant hero. Her call to take up the journey is not one she wants, at all. She is genuinely just a girl, who is clearly very ill equipped to become The One to try and save the gods from eternal destruction. What doesn't help is the fact that the two servant/slaves with her along with the berserk warrior Snot don't hold her in high esteem, at all. She's seen as a nuisance, a hindrance. Not really someone they want on their side, to try and save themselves and the world.

As their journey continues, after a very odd conversation with Odin and his dying crew of gods, it becomes clear that this Asgard, this world they are travelling through is far bigger than Freya could have imagined. She used to be a bit of a passive believer in the gods and yet know, having seen them for real, she doesn't have much choice and they are both more AND less than what she expected.

The quest is set up through a variety of tasks that they need to perform to reach their goal. Yes, I am being very non-committal about what exactly this entails but I love the cleverness of the characters and how slowly but surely (very slowly) they come to work as a team to reach their final destination and not just that, but they figure out how to help Freya get to her goal.

But of course, things aren't as easy as that. Not in a true hero's quest anyway.

The book made me grin and frown and growl. Sometimes all at once. (No one came near me on my commute whilst I did this). I both liked and disliked the characters, just like you do in real life with some people, when they get under your skin. A lot happens throughout the book, and is quite rapidly paced, but never so that your mind feels cluttered.  The fact that we are given an alternative religious history here, that the old Norse gods are our gods and that the Christian god and his son are a new religion is very interesting and far from being controversial, and it really does make one think what would have happened if...

The world is still ours - we have cars and mobile phones and all the modern paraphernalia associated with our current lives, except for this one crucial thing, that in Freya's world, we bow to the Allfather, old Odin and his cronies.

I enjoyed The Sleeping Army - Ms. Simon has a very light touch when it comes to working the alternate history and religious bits and you are never given a theology lesson and it just works so well.  She's integrated the modern and the old very nicely and Roskva and Alfi are our point of reference for the way things were in the long distant past so as a reference, that works well as we can identify with both of them, as well as Freya.

The conclusion to the novel made me grin - it is a true quest story in which the hero manages to save the day and then some (other shenanigans too) other random things happen that you may not suspect.

I think that readers 9+ would really enjoy this and that some older readers (especially adults) who like things a bit Viking and Norse, will be pleasantly surprised because although the novel is aimed at younger readers, there is a lot of great mythology to be relished here as well as world building and action.

The Sleeping Army is out now - brand new - and would make a perfect gift come Christmas for that hero / heroine in your life, regardless of age.

Writing Classes from Faber & Faber

A Mike Figgis Masterclass: Deconstruction of Film Narrative

Using the evolution of Timecode as a working example, internationally acclaimed director Mike Figgis will unpick the cinematic threads and explain what makes this film so utterly unique. Through close examination of versions one, eleven, fourteen and fifteen, Figgis will explore how the film evolved over a compressed time frame and through deconstruction, simultaneously shed light on how to construct a movie.

Paying special attention to space, light, sound, music composition, narrative, imagery, improvisation, drama, editing, direction, digital technology (including equipment and its uses), camera movement and framing, Figgis will present and explain the fundamental building blocks of modern digital film-making while offering a compelling and inspiring insight into his own experimental and groundbreaking aesthetic.

The course will take place at The Hospital Club from 2-4 February 2009 and there will be open Q & A throughout. Course price: £400.

http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2008/10/faber-academy-figgis-masterclass

Writing a Novel 2009 with novelist and MAN Booker Prize Judge Louise Doughty

This is a practical, workshop-based course which covers all aspects of novel writing from first ideas for a book through character development, plotting and structure, to re-writing.

Writing a Novel is the first six-month long course from the new Faber Academy. Beginning in February 2009, students will attend weekly evening workshops (2 hours) which will cover all aspects of novel writing from the first conception of an idea for a novel through to getting words on a page, narrative structure and style and re-writing. In addition, there will be six full-day sessions to take place on one Saturday each month. Most of the classes will be lead by the Course Director, novelist Louise Doughty, but there will also be guest seminars given by well-known writers, agents and publishers.

There are 16 places available on Writing a Novel 2009. One place on the course will be allocated free of charge. This place will be chosen at the discretion of the Course Director and the Faber Academy and will be based on merit and not financial circumstances.

Applications will be accepted until 28 November 2008. Course price: £3,500.
http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2008/10/faber-academy-writing-novel-course

The First Creative Writing Course at Bloomsbury House, the new home of Faber and Faber

Set over four days, Erica Wagner and Salley Vickers will rescue the words ‘traditional narrative’ from the dusty wardrobe full of faux-leather fringing and pseudo-ethnic costume where they’ve been stashed. This course will look at how to make it new in the way that human beings have always found best: by looking for the stories – of life and death, of love and loss – that have always meant the most to us and recreating them in original voice.

The course will take place from 5-8 February 2009 at Bloomsbury House, 74-77 Great Russell Street, London WC1. Course price: £500.
http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2008/10/faber-academy-london09

The Art of the Short Story with Gerard Donovan and Claire Keegan, Newman House, Dublin

Set over four days in the beautiful rooms of James Joyce’s former college, Gerard Donovan and Claire Keegan will explore how to transform everyday experience from statements into suggestion that is both intellectually and emotionally significant. Using discussions and exercises, the workshops will address the elements of the form – among them setting, characters, time, structure and how fiction forms a temporal arc - while pondering how short story writers use detail, and the lack of it, to cast the spell of that single effect.

The course will take place from 16-19 April 2009 at Newman House, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. Course price: £500
http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2008/10/faber-academy-dublin-course


The details of other Faber Academy courses in early 2009 will be available shortly on http://www.faber.co.uk/

For further information please contact Patrick Keogh at Faber and Faber on 020 7465 7682 or patrickk@faber.co.uk

The Carhullan Army, Sarah Hall

It was the rush of water into her own home that inspired Sarah Hall's third novel, The Carhullan Army, which won the Booktrust's John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in December 2007.

TCA describes the future dystopia which opens as a young woman, known only to the reader as "Sister", flees from a crowded apartment block in a squalid town under the totalitarian control of The Authority.

Resources are rationed. Food comes in tins from America. Fuel is scarce. Medicine stores are running out and in any case new strains of old diseases are resistant to the drugs.

Women are fitted with coils (nicknamed "dog leashes") to prevent pregnancy and there is a lottery in which the prize is coil removal for a few lucky ladies. Sister is heading for the hills, where a group of tough, renegade women are holding out as "unofficials" on an old farm where they grow their own fresh vegetables, striving to become self-sufficient whilst one elite unit prepares for battle against The Authority. (taken from the interview with Sarah Hall in the Telegraph).

The thing about The Carhullan Army is that it is one of the scariest books I have ever read. Not because it is filled with scenes of gore or horror, but because it felt uncomfortably like reading a book about something that is on the cusp of happening.

Like "How I Live Now" and "The Handmaid's Tale" it is set in a dystopian future which is, if you ponder it, uncomfortably possible. We follow Sister as she makes a run for it from an awful relationship and a life akin to slavery. She literally heads for the hills, to Carhullan, to make a better life for herself amongst a tribe of women who live a life of hard labour but contentment, battling the elements and eking out an existence on the land.

Sister's appearance on the farm triggers curiosity and very little animosity. She finds a home, becomes accepted and finds warmth and love with one of the women.

The leader of the women on the farm, Jackie Nixon, is one of the most charismatic and enigmatic characters I've come across in a book. She is a legend in her own lifetime, a woman with a strong spirit, who is as uncompromising as the land she cultivates. She uses Sister's appearance as a catalyst to create a shake-up in a community that's become lulled by into a false sense of security. It is not an immediate change, but it progresses slowly and in that time we watch Sister grow and find confidence, a place to belong.

This is an incredibly powerful book written with great skill and prowess by an author who has clearly given a lot of thought to how quickly society can fall apart and the awful consequences which can so quickly come about - all we have to do is look how bad things are currently in the economy and you can feel the catsoft feelings of dread pad up and down your back.

A very good and satisfying read. I will definitely seek out the author's other books.