We see the stories on the news every day. Criminal proceedings against accused 911 masterminds. Carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes the terrorists even get through the stricter security arrangements restricting all our lives and manage to kill a few innocent civilians. But how do we really fight this war? Gerald Seymour’s The Unknown Soldier shows us how it all works from a variety of angles, and it’s a far cry from James Bond or Steven Seagal. It’s not glamorous. Sometimes it’s downright sordid. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not surprising that the film rights for Altered Carbon were snapped up by Warner Brothers so soon after Richard Morgan’s debut novel was published. This story packs such a solid punch, you can’t help but imagine all the action up on screen in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Read the rest of this entry »

Remind me never to go to the North Pole. If the conditions that Dan Simmons describes so meticulously in his latest novel are in any way accurate, it really doesn’t sound like a pleasant place to visit. Extreme cold, hazardous ice floes, frostbite, starvation, scurvy, mutiny, cannibalism: as if that wasn’t enough for these poor sailors to go through, Dan Simmons decides to throw an enormous ice monster into the mix to pick them off one by one. Read the rest of this entry »