To The Last Page

At the start of Blood Crazy Book 4, there is a warning to the reader from one of the principal characters in the series that "what happens to Nick Aten during his journey may well have a powerful effect on you". That might sound a little like hyperbole, but as soon as you find yourself reacquainted with Nick Aten just a few pages later in Aten Unbound , you feel the sheer weight of the memory of the horror of the what has come before suddenly hit you. There is no immediate shock event to provoke this feeling, just Nick packing to undertake the next stage of his journey "the first step of a journey I did not want to make", but the accumulation of events that have taken us here seems to re-emerge in a frightening flashback. There are a lot of scenes from those first three books that remain vividly etched in my mind. Not least the shock opening of the original book that started it all off (and there are spoilers here only if you haven't read the first three books)...

Better known as a fantasy writer, Garth Nix's first science fiction novel initially feels a little tentative in its approach to what appears to be the space opera field. Rather than take the time to build up to how the people of Earth find a means to travel in space and explore other planets, the author explains it all in the brief prologue before seeming to settle down into rather more mundane aspects of military life aboard one of these spaceships that gets caught up in a skirmish with an enemy fleet. For quite a while you have no idea where it's going, but there is a larger scheme building in the background around the mystery of the Massif. The origins of the Massif are laid out in that prologue, so I'm going to do the same. The first Massif appeared on Earth in 2097, arising into orbit out of the Marojejy massif in Madagascar, leading to the discovery of otherspace travelling Massifs, each with an enigmatic avatar entity. Visits and investigations to the MirinahRakoto M...

" Okay, this just got interesting ". Yep, you have to agree with that statement when it comes through just on page 21 of the 263 page graphic novel Alva in the Dark . It's been beautifully illustrated up to now in dark shadowy black and white, introducing a pair of burglars, Mini and Morten who have been given a tip where to find an apartment owned by a old man with a supply of gold. They are going to need Alva for this job, the young woman something of an acrobatic cat burglar, and she duly obliges for a cut. Maybe they should have thought more about it when a page earlier Alva says " Morten, I have a bad feeling about this place ", and you wonder why they haven't questioned earlier why an old man lives in a dump of a place when he apparently has a substantial hoard of gold. Realistically though, the lure of gold means a sign on the door of a concealed room saying LEAVE NOW is unlikely to be taken as a warning and more as a sign of ...well, isn't that i...