Book Reviews

The Girl Who Played With Fire
Stieg Larsson
Quercus Publishing
Review by Brad Harmer

"Long" seems to be in at the moment. Movies at the cinema no longer think anything of having a running time of three hours, books are getting chunkier, and some British sit-coms even run for longer than six episodes. I suspect it’s a credit crunch thing. Everyone wants value for money, not realising that the age old adage of quality versus quantity still holds true. The Girl Who Played With Fire is, despite its pretensions, little more that a Dean-Koontz-Clive-Cussler-Ed-McBain dollop of summer holiday reading – but it weighs in at a hefty 649 pages. Way, way, way too long for the tiny little story contained within.

It’s all pretty uninspiring stuff. There’s a psychotically violent action-hero woman as the protagonist...who has virtually no character flaws. Funny when that happens, huh? Especially is there are things like “incredibly short temper leading to violence” that would be disadvantages to most people that the author manages to just somehow turn into a positive life-saving trait.

Anyway, it’s a book about Lisbeth Salander, a psychotically violent heroine, and Kal Blomkvist, a journalist who is investigating the murder of his friends. Oh, yeah, in this book all journalists don’t actually have to write, read or edit anything, and can spend every hour the day playing private detective for their own amusement.

The book hits peaks and troughs of being incredibly action packed and interesting, and then spending pages and pages of being incredibly dull. For every gun-fight there’s a scene where Salander spends ages hacking into someone’s computer to leave them a message in a Word file. All the interesting characters don’t seem to get more than hundred pages between them, and we’re instead treated to Super Salander and Detective Inspector Journalist all the time. And the problem lies in the books unwieldy length.

As mentioned earlier, this at its heart, could have been a fun summer holiday, Dan Brown, John Grisham read. What it really needed was some decent editing to get it down to a realistic length. At three or even four hundred pages, this would have been a great, action packed, adrenaline fuelled action story. What it is here is tedious and drawn out.

About two thirds of the way in, the action does ramp up a little. The combat scenes are well handled, and it becomes, if not “interesting”, then at least “not dull”. The surprise of just who the mysterious villain “Zala” is is certainly unexpected, which was handled well – but again, the pacing was lost after the revelation due to the book’s ponderous length.

If you’re one of these people who only read about two books a year on holiday, (I’m looking at you, Da Vinci Code Boy) you’ll probably be blown away by this, and it’ll probably be the surprise smash of the summer. However, anyone who’s a big reader would be recommended to take a pass on this. There are much better books out there. By Cussler, Koontz, Grisham and McBain.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: A rather large amount of gun-fights, fisticuffs and beat-downs.
Sex/Nudity: Nothing explicit, but several strong allusions.
Swearing: A realistic amount.
Summary: A high-octane action-adventure book spoiled by some rather precious editing. Could have been brainless fun, but wound up just brainless. 4/10

God of Clocks - Volume Three of the Deepgate Codex
Alan Campbell
Pan MacMillan
Review by Brad Harmer

In the cataclysm of the battle of the gods, a portal to Hell has been opened, releasing bizarre creatures that were never meant to be and threatening to turn the world into a killing field. In the middle, caught between warring gods and fallen angels, humanity finds itself pushed to the brink of extinction. As usual, its only hope lies with the most unlikely of heroes.

Former assassin Rachel Hael has rejoined the blood-magician Mina Greene and her devious little dog Basilis on one last desperate mission to save the world from the grip of Hell. Carried in the jaw of a debased angel, they rush to the final defensive stronghold of the god of clocks - pursued all the while by the twelve arconites, the great iron-and-bone automatons controlled by King Menoa, the Lord of the Maze. Meanwhile, in the other direction, the giant John Anchor, still harnessed to his master's skyship, drags that vessel into Hell itself to meet Menoa on his own ground.

But neither Heaven nor Hell is anything they could ever expect. Rachel's ally, the god Hasp, finds himself in the grip of a parasite and struggles against conflicting orders to destroy his own friends; and a dangerous deity comprised of broken souls threatens to overcome them all. As Rachel travels to the final confrontation she has both sought and feared, she begins to realise that time itself is unravelling. And so she must prepare herself for a sacrifice that may claim her her life...

This is a strange book. The setting, with its high magic meets steam-punk war-machine setting reminded me very much of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy (and I mean that in a good way). The “Angels” are nothing more or less than magic powered battle mechs – and I think that’s cool. The massed battles sequences were amazing set pieces of swashbuckling action. But unfortunately, when the dust has settled, cracks begin to appear in more than just the scenery.

Whilst Campbell epic battles scenes are fantastic, he writing begins to lose its appeal when dealing with the more personal scenes. The relationships between the characters are hard to follow, and I even had difficulty keeping track of who was who at times. The sense of humour throughout was excellent, and something that isn’t used well enough in most fantasy or sci-fi works.

If you’re already a fan of the Deepgate Codex series, then you’ll be more than happy with it. If you’re not however, this is unlikley to win you over, or even interest you in reading any of it.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating
Violence: All the usual associated with fantasy books featuring massive battles with living battlemechs.
Sex/Nudity: None
Swearing: The odd profanity, which, whilst usually fitting in a fantasy work, seems rather out of place here.
Summary: Fun steampunky, battle action, but nothing that you won’t find done much better elsewhere. – 6/10

"Social networking" sites can cock off

I’ve talked before about my absolute disdain for social networking sites, but I thought I’d weigh in again on some stuff that’s been pissing me off about them recently. From Facebook to Myspace all the way to Friends Reunited, social networking sites have taken the concept of social interaction and replaced it with an interesting new concept: social non-interaction. Ever had this conversation before?

“Hello mate, how have you been?”
“I’ve not been too good. Haven’t you been reading my Facebook?”
“Uh...No, I was hoping you’d tell me anyway.”

Seriously, it seems like everyone’s life is only available in digital form now. I quite happily have no problems admitting that I have a Facebook account. However, I use it as a tool. I don’t let it make me into one.

When I first got sent an invitation to join Facebook (and this was a WHILE ago, mind you – before it really took off), I thought “what a good idea; a way for me to see what all the people I’ve ever known have been up to without having to interact with them in any way, shape or form beyond a ‘hey, thanks for the add’ message when first adding them.”

Before too long though, I’ve been inundated with requests to join someone’s Mafia family or become a master poker player through the wonders of my internet browser. When did Facebook stop being an interaction tool, and become a website devoted to watching people dick around to record levels? Productivity in offices must have hit an all-time low since Facebook came along, as most of my friends who work 9-5 soul-destroyer jobs seem to update their statuses more at work than anywhere else. If you want to know how I can guess, it’s generally because the status update goes something along the lines of “Generic Person is bored at work lol”. Here’s a thought: DO SOME FUCKING WORK. That’s generally known to cure boredom, even if it is at the cost of your eternal soul.

And another thing; why the hell did I get sent an invitation to Become a Fan of “Not being on fire”? What possible person does NOT fall into that category? I can only think of one; the monk who set himself on fire in protest. Even then, I find it hard to believe that all the time he was burning, he was thinking “Oh, awesome! Awesome!” The sad thing is, though, that I actually became a fan of not being on fire for a while, because I actually thought that if I didn’t, it would have implied that I WAS a fan of being on fire.

However, even now Facebook trembles at the might of what is being tipped as the next internet phenomenon (or ‘Fad’ as I like to refer to them): Twitter. In all seriousness, my main issue is that someone seems to have looked at Facebook and gone “Yeah, I like all these ideas for stuff to put in, but I think it would be much better if you didn’t have to worry about all these applications”. Now, if that was all it was, I’d be a fan of Twitter (I’d even Become a Fan on Facebook). They seem, however, to have taken this further and taken it to a much less logical conclusion. “Ok, so we’ve got rid of the applications. Let’s leave the ability to update statuses and that’s it. Oh, and let’s limit the posts to the size of a text message, that’ll be handy.”

Ultimately, my issue with Twitter is the fact that it really doesn’t need to exist. For status updates, there’s Facebook. For 160 character messages letting the important people in your life know how you are, there’s...a text message. Letters work for that purpose too, and you don’t have to restrict yourself to any character length. Besides which, it costs 30p to send a letter anywhere in the country, it’s about the last bargain left on Earth. Last but not least, for good old-fashioned attention seeking, there’s always standing on a church roof with an automatic weapon. You could always ring 118 118 and cry down the phone as well, I suppose.

Video Game Reviews

Fuel
(PS3 (Version Tested), Xbox 360, PC)
Codemasters

I’m beginning to wonder that despite the evolution of gaming that has happened over the last few years. Developers have run out of ideas to reinvent the traditional gaming genres without using some sort of pad. With Fuel, Codemasters seem to have decided to have as little originality as possible, but instead take elements from other games and try and do it better than their competition, and in some respects they do succeed.

For those who don’t know the premise behind the game, Fuel is set in the non-too-distant future in a Mad Max-style world where civilisation has crumbled and the only commodity is fuel. How do you earn fuel I hear you ask? Simple, by burning as much as possible to win races, time trials and other assorted challenges in an open world environment in an assortment of bikes buggies and other off road vehicles. You can then use the fuel you’ve won to buy new vehicles and clothes for your racer.

If none of that description sounded original to you, you would be right, but Fuel tries to go one better than its competition. Fuel outdoes the huge bustling world of Burnout’s Paradise city, by delivering what feels like an entire country with about 5,000 square miles to explore. And it tries to outdo other off-road racers like Motorstorm by offering more game play variety and harsh terrain with great weather effects. Each of the vehicles handle well and offer a good sense of speed and are different enough from the other vehicles in the game to offer a well rounded play experience. It also has a track creator that allows you to make your own racetracks, and race other people online with them as well as share them with the gaming community. Sure, level editors are not an original concept, but it is very rare that you get the option to do so on a console so it’s great to see it included here.

The game does have its problems though. Despite all of its ambitions and giving you a world full of possibilities. It still tries to hold you to boundaries. Take Fuel’s races for example, rather than allowing you to race from point A-B going whatever route you prefer, which you think would be possible considering the huge game world (and something that Burnout Paradise allows you to do). You still have to travel through checkpoints. The weather in the game, whilst incredibly pretty, seldom factors into the race and doesn’t challenge the player to win the race through extreme conditions.

Overall this is a fun game with good graphics and weather effects. I just find it hard to recommend it to lovers of open world racing where Burnout Paradise rules supreme, or lovers of off-road racing games where I would recommend PS3 owners to stick to Motorstorm. However, if you’re an X-Box owner, you probably won’t find a better off road game out there. 7/10