Acracknophobia by Mark Jackman

Acracknophobia: The Sid Tillsley Chronicles Book 3 by Mark Jackman

Sid, whose fist is its own vampire slayer, has gone soft for the sake of a woman. This is disastrous news for people and a relief for vampires, but how long will it last?

ISBN 978-1905091935

ASIM for Kindle B007IVM674

347 pages

LL-Publications 2012

Vampires and humans live in an uneasy peace, under an alliance called the Coalition – not that the public are aware, except those who are inadvertently taken as food. Some of the humans and vampire committee members get on well, but as in all such high-powered gatherings there is political infighting, human manoeuvring and subhuman shenanigans. In the previous two books, Sid and a few pals, living in the Northeast of England, drink Bolton Bitter beer and it seems this empowers their anti-vampire abilities. Book Three, in typical hilarity, sees a scientific analysis of the lowest order and we are ultimately treated to an explanation of how Bolton Bitter has such magical powers.

Before then the book opens with an unexpected first chapter. We have a rare creature – King – a half-breed vampire, who is more into music and burgers than arteries. He is as welcome a break from the usual vampire as Sid is to vampire slayers. The opening chapter, like all the chapters, leave the reader hooked, eager to devour the next. Shortly after we meet King, we are driving along the M56 with his hard-nosed dad, Borg, a ruthless vampire, whose very existence makes this book cold to the touch. I mention the M56 because I know it well, being my local road (when not cycling – I get shouted at otherwise) and Borg is going toMiddlesbrough, where my first publisher lives. So many connections to my own life in this book makes me nervous.

With Sid what you get is more than what you see. He’s a giant of an unpolitical uncouth man with a big heart and a vampire-deadly fist offering readers a continuation of his unique character. You can’t help liking him even if you’d cross the city to avoid meeting him on a dark night. Sid wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless it sucked blood. With King we have a completely new dimension in species-related literature. Fascinating.

In some ways this is a more thoughtful novel than the first two. Loose ends need to be tied up. Fear not you fans of Sid, your ribs will ache with mirth as he is obliged by his new fiancée to attend homophobic-adjustment sessions to modify his attitude to ‘them lot’, and alcoholics anonymous, which he understands not at all being as Bolton Bitter is not so much a problem as a solution. These counselling sessions go against Sid’s persona but without them there would be no ‘Howay the lads’ with Sheila Fishman and her alluring jugs. His feelings go deeper than mere looks. As she steps out of car ‘both of Sid’s cold feet warmed up’. What a great romantic line. Seriously.

Sid’s homophobia takes a hefty knock when the counsellor informs the group that even some penguins are gay. Sid eyes, suspiciously, the chocolate wrappers on the table and asks, ‘Is it catching?’ Sadly for Sid the Miner’s Arms is now The First Swallow of Spring and so he’s not wanting to grace an establishment of ‘them lot’.

The efforts of people to solve the mysteries in Book Three that were presented in the first two books takes us into partially familiar analysis. Arthur: ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbably, must be the truth.’

‘That’s deep, man. Is that some sort of quote?’

‘Aye…Colombo.’

Each chapter ends with a hook just as each starts with a pity media quote – a commentary to the whole gory story. It’s a mystery, a wonderment, how Jackman kept track of the twists and body count. Not even the most teeth-sharpened vampire aficionado will be able to guess how this one ends. I commend this book to all readers of both humour and vampire genres. Enjoy.

 

Purchase from the publisher. Or from Amazon and other book sites, or order from bookshops.

Reviewing from Lanzarote

Shall we take the laptop? Yes, no, maybe for a couple of hours before wife, who would have used it to craft more of her non-fiction Masters work on Education while I would have snatched in between to write up book reviews, more of ARIA book three, and complaints letters. Why on the sunny side of Earth should I want to write a moaning missive? Lanzarote is a fascinating lump of mostly cooled lava in the Canary Islands, but the resort we’d swapped our 5-star Villacana, Spanish timeshare for, with Lanz and Club in its name shouldn’t rate a star, or a moon. Yes, under new ownership and so refurbishments are in hand, and all we need to do is wait for the next meteor. In spite of the shabby furnishings, and corny entertainment, it was clean, the maid smiled and the weather was sufficiently cloudy to stop us getting sunburnt.

My Mold barber told me to hire a bike in Costa Teguise and ‘do’ the coastal bike route. I was tempted but there were too many kids, dogs, people and the occasional lizard to be a whizzing carefree ride. We walked our sandals to the bone instead. And when our feet complained we read books. One of my book group novels is Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. ‘Author’s preferred text’ ie not the one hacked around by the BBC for the TV version in the 1990s. I’ve met Neil at a convention. He’s tall with dark curly hair and no, he won’t remember me. Neverwhere is a beautiful novel set in the underground tubes, cellars, basements, sewers and sometimes roofs of London. I keep thinking it should be called Underwhere. Beyond the prologue, the story starts with a young female, Doors, who has a marvellous ability to think open doors, catches, locks and hearts. She is being chased by two gruesome killers… but I’m not reviewing it now. China Mieville’s Kraken is also set in London – both terrific writers, Kraken more for adults, I’d say. I also read M. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device, because I am an admirer of his literary style and mistakenly assumed the book was about a marvellous technology – the next topic for the Chester Library SFF group. I quite enjoyed the story, based on a sentient bomb that can only be triggered by someone with Centauri genes. The lone man with such, John Truck, leads a fraught existence chasing his dreams in a kind of shoot ‘em up Star Wars feel story (but without aliens, unless that’s Truck). I liken it to those other SF stories where a lone captain struggles to survive against all odds: Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem, Horza in Ian M Banks’ Consider Phlebus.

I read with LOL moments, Mark Jackman’s Acracknophobia, third and last (apparently by popular request) in the series on Sid Tillsley, vampire slayer with a mighty fist. Full review in a later blog. Also Peg Herring’s Dead for the Money – the second in the Dead Detective Agency series – a clever premise of a demised detective going from limbo back to the living to solve a murder. My wife, who doesn’t enjoy fantasies, but does like mysteries, liked this novel a lot.

I also started, cos I found it by lucky chance in the resort library, Ian M Bank’s Surface Detail (2010) in the Culture Series.  Hang on, it starts with a girl being chased by two killers…

There’s more to Lanzarote than me reading books for review. I’ve been three times and cannot stop admiring how early settlers, drifting, possibly expecting lack of survival, found water and made it work. The Canaries exist because of the tectonic plates pushing up in mid-Atlantic. 300 former volcanoes make up the island of Lanzarote (one is still mildly active) and the broken up lava fields look moonlike. (depending on which moon!) Weathered ash and lava are nutritious for crops such as vines, tomatoes, potatoes and many others if you can water them. Wells found water in the past but now it is by desalination plants. I made my own volcano in the kitchen. I was frying up (in healthy olive oil) local potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers and a soy-based protein. It smelled absolutely gorgeous. Then I dropped a glass breakfast bowl. It looked like a crater before it hit the floor – then exploded. I thought the food cooking on the hob would be safe but we found glass ejecta ‘bomb’s – aarrggh. Into the bin. We abandoned self-catering for that night and sampled local cuisine of a pasta variety. Tasty.

In other news I learnt that ARIA: Left Luggage will be released on August 1^st. Yeay. The publishers, LL-Publications have a list of reviewers now but if you are a reviewer and want one please look them up and ask at http://www.ll-publications.com

 

Image of Lanzarote courtesy of http://www.spanish-living.com/

Killing Kiss by Sam Stone

I met Sam Stone for the first time at FantasyCon in Nottingham this summer. She is stunning and many of us males hid behind our piles of unsold books in case we were spotted ogling her ample assets. So it was a pleasant surprise to attend her excerpt reading to discover she is entertaining and a fine writer. Her publisher is now Terry Martin at the House of Murky Depths, a producer of excellent adult graphic fantasy comics.

Killing Kiss is available at the main online stores such as at Amazon and also from Murky Depths website - go to the Murky Shop and find paperbacks.

Here is my review

Review of Sam Stone’s Killing Kiss

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

 

Paperback: 240 pages

Publisher: The House of Murky Depths

Date of publication: September 2008

ISBN-10: 1906584079

ISBN-13: 978-1906584078

 

Vampire Gabriele has to move every few years in case his agelessness turns too many suspicious heads and because young women tend to die after his feeds. He cannot develop relationships but desires them, one in particular with Carolyn. However, his urges take a twist with a different woman and he feels he is losing control. In addition the woman who initiated him into the vampire existence centuries earlier crosses his path several disturbing times.

 

This is not just another vampire novel. Sam Stone takes us into the mind and body of the four-centuries-old young man. We are treated to a tour de force of dramatic lives, gruesome deaths through seventeenth century Italy to cruise ships, Goth clubs, and we participate in present day student life.

 

            One of the dilemmas with vampire stories is with the continuity of the vampire with respect to his contemporaries. Imagine if you didn’t age beyond your twenty-fifth year, how your friends and colleagues would react as the years passed. Add to that Dorian Gray scenario the need to kill for blood, and our vampire has a credibility problem. The world is too small to hide in a new life, especially these days. Sam Stone doesn’t hide from this problem, indeed it becomes a feature. Gabriele shows us how he has to avoid former acquaintances or terminate them, and when he inadvertently creates another vamp, he has the unenviable task to tell her to say goodbye to her family. Therein lies a neat plot twist, but I’m not going to spoil it.

 

            In spite of the novel creeping us out successfully there is room for the occasional gag.  When Gabrielle takes his vampire protégé to seek fresh input of blood in a student restaurant district of Manchester he says: ‘Do you fancy Indian or Chinese?’ Excellent vampire joke!

 

            The writing style is beguilingly easy but you are left with intriguing and deep aftertastes. I particularly enjoy the borderline ESP that Gabriele discovers as if by accident. For example he sees the dissipating heat signature left by a lover on a door handle. Sam Stone is gifted at following her writerly instincts in the attributes of other-being characters. Some aspects of the plot, however, elude me. Perhaps it is because the novel uses flashbacks to show Gabriele’s development, and his significant lover-victims’ lives. Not that the snippets intrude, on the contrary they are skilfully interwoven with the present day. However, because Gabriele ‘is’ 25 in all but the earliest flash backs and he is making stock investment and invention-backing decisions that are always spot on, I felt he was acting on information from his future. For example how did he know Laker Airlines were going to fail before it happened? Vampires are not usually into time travelling and I don’t think Gabriele is either. (A possible sequel as his abilities develop?) It must just be that the vampire is so superior he made wise investment choices. He should have been a banker in 2008.

 

            Some literary techniques that I enjoy reading include the juxtaposition of opposites. For example: ‘The quiet deafens me with the roar of doubt…’ Invoking musical references are used to good effect in this novel, adding to the atmosphere with all of our senses.

 

            One of the aspects of Killing Kiss that elevates it is the way the past catches up with Gabriele in the form of his own nemesis: the vampire that transformed him. These scenes are particularly salivating as she is Lucrezia, an Italian timeless beauty with a sanguine appetite beyond mere feeding.

 

            Read this book and change the way you feel about vampires for the rest of your so short life.