Sliders: The Next Generation

Book Review: TIMERIDERS
Written by: Alex Scarrow
Published by: Puffin Books
Released: February 2010
425pages
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[SPOILERS] Three teenagers from three disparate periods of time – one from the past, one from the present day and one from the near-future – are plucked from their plains of existence in the moments before their untimely deaths and recruited by a shadow agency to become TimeRiders; “fixers” of broken history, if you will, who right the wrongs that less well-meaning time travellers from the future disrupt for their own avaricious and diabolical gain.

In this opening volume in a proposed nine novel arc from thriller writer (and Norwich resident) Alex Scarrow, Titanic deckhand Liam O’Connor, techno-nut Maddy Carter and fire victim Sal Vikram must adjust to their new raison d'être; before being thrown in at the deep-end pre-completion of their training when desirous physicist Paul Krammer travels back from the 206o's to dethrone Adolf Hitler and see Nazi Germany to victory over the Allied Forces who, in our correct time line (as you all should know) did win the war.

It is up to appointed “field agent” Liam – accompanied by an AI “meat robot” christened Bob (think Arnie in Terminator, only on the good guys' team) – to travel back to the source of the blip and erase Krammer's threat, or face living in a world which was never meant to be; a shell of a world brought to the very brink of destruction after the ripples of the butterfly effect see power – and paranoia – go to Herr Krammer's head; with catastrophic results...

For Scarrow to rely upon the Second World War for his first historical destination screamed to me of lazy cliché (much like the JFK assassination – which, surprise, surprise, the author exploits as well – it's been done to death), but my opinion mellowed when I considered that it was probably wise to ease his young adult readership into his newborn vision via a period today's teenagers would relate to having learnt so much about it at school. Whether it's tasteful to play around with such horrendous true events is another matter entirely. Which brings me conveniently onto my most major qualm with this work...

Living outside the realms of reality, the TimeRiders exist undisturbed in a continually resetting 48hour “time bubble” located in a disused warehouse in New York City on – wait for it – the 10th and 11th of September 2001. Yep, you read that correctly. Am I wrong to think that less than a decade on it's a mite insensitive to use 9/11 as a plot-point in a sci-fi fantasy? Scarrow's reasoning is that in this period of almighty tragedy for the modern world, everybody will be too otherwise concerned to notice three teens and their trainer wandering the streets looking for ripples in the fabric of space/time. But still...

Questionable moral decision aside, TimeRiders is otherwise a fairly entertaining read (if not quite as “mindblowing” as the cover blurb promised). Scarrow may not rewrite the rules on time travel here, but he has clearly done his research, and he has fun with some quite horrific alternate visions of our world. The revised 2001 which Maddy, Sal and agency headhunter Foster find themselves trapped in following Krammer's “amendments” was a shockingly graphic apocalyptic nightmare, and Scarrow often doesn't hold back in his gory descriptions; clearly a beneficial hold-over from his adult thriller works.


In a CR@B Shell: With the entirety of history at his fingertips, Alex Scarrow's all-too predictable primary destination bordered on self-destructive, but it soon opened up a more exhilarating and engrossingly ghastly bag of worms for the sub-team of teen heroes – and knowing where (and when) book two takes them, I'm prepared to stick around for a another trip with the charismatic TimeRiders.
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Vampirate

Book Review: OCEAN OF BLOOD
Written by: Darren Shan
Published by: HarperCollins
Released: April 2011
231pages
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Buoyed by a courteous comment from Darren Shan himself posted beneath my review of the first novel in his latest vampiric series, Birth of a Killer (see HERE – I was well chuffed!), wherein he promised more carnage to come in the saga’s forthcoming instalments, I persisted through a rather weak opening to this recently released second adventure charting the (comparatively) early years in the afterlife of Larten Crepsley before I hit the juicy stuff.

As the orange-haired sunlight-dodger wades half-heartedly through his second “life” like a directionless graduate who isn’t sure what the future holds, drinking himself into oblivion while partying with as many of the opposite sex as he can, I couldn’t help but feel like the opening clutch of chapters in Ocean of Blood were meandering filler; taking a looooong time to say not very much at all. By the sixty-page mark years had passed and I was deep into the hardly mammoth read, yet it felt like the ground covered could have been summed up in a single killer chapter.

That said, it isn’t as if Shan’s nimble prose style is a struggle to read. Granted it isn’t as wickedly poetic as Chris Priestley’s similarly macabre delights (see my reviews HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE and prepare to be hooked), but Shan’s chapters are brisk and punchy and the content easily digestible, so I never considered it a chore to read, just lacking any substantial meat to sink my teeth (or should that be fangs?) into.

For personal reasons, I felt blurring reality and fiction with the inclusion of a cameo from a certain Abraham Stoker, a scribe researching a certain novel on the undead inspired by Vlad the Impaler, was a cheesy misstep. Less cringeworthy than Elvis – sorry, “Bub” – in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, but far too reminiscent of The Undead, the dire twenty-first century “official” Dracula sequel penned by Stocker’s descendant Dacre, which also utilizes the iconic author as a character inspired by “real” bloodsuckers.

Returning to the big picture, and mirroring my thoughts on Book 1 (which opened with a horrifyingly brutal punch which would forever shape young Larten’s afterlife), Ocean of Blood – which is rather tame in the horror department for the bulk of its length – accumulated all its firepower for a staggeringly ferocious climatic 30 pages aboard the high seas.

Prior to the finale I was beginning to question what relevance the book’s title had to the land-based narrative, but then Larten and his lovestruck apprentice Malora board the Pearly Tornado bound for Greenland with Larten sick with vampire flu, delirious and desperate for a feed… Much to my morbid delight, the voyage doesn’t end happily for the suspicious passengers or crew, but it certainly convinced me to stick around for book three, Palace of the Damned, set for release in September: There will be blood...


In a CR@B Shell: Still a flitting and narratively insubstantial beast which fails to remedy Birth of a Killer’s flaws, but much like its protagonist, Larten Crepsley’s sophomore adventure is flamboyant and gushing confidence; wearing its scars with pride. Reach the gruesome climax and your jaw will hit the floor; your perseverance justified.
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Blood Bath-ory

DVD Review: BATHORY: COUNTESS OF BLOOD
15 – 138mins – 2008
Script by: Juraj Jakubisko
Dialogue by: John Paul Chapple
Directed by: Juraj Jakubisko
Starring: Anna Friel, Karel Roden, Vincent Regan, Hans Matheson, Franco Nero, Antony Byrne, Bolek Polivka
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With a budget of £10million, this lavish production charting the truth behind the legend of “vampiric” mass murderess Elizabeth Bathory is the most expensive Slovak/Czech movie ever made. Curiously, it has taken six years from when the cameras started rolling to emerge on region 2 DVD. Completed in 2008 (having replaced departing lead Famke Janssen with Anna Brookside Friel), Bathory’s staggered release schedule has seen it hit different markets at widely different times, but quite why its UK debut has been so delayed – especially given Ms. Friel’s nationality and celebrity – is beyond me.

Slovak auteur Juraj Jakubisko presents his infamous immortal countess in a softer and more sympathetic light than you may expect for a woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific serial killer of all time – a record Jakubisko clearly does not accept as true. He also contests that her renowned blood baths (a trait which many believe inspired Bram Stoker with Dracula) were in fact medicinal herbs, and not the blood of her virginal female victims. Furthermore, any accusation of vampirism is limited to one sentence – this is a more grounded depiction.

Well, as grounded as a film about murder, witch doctors and monk-inventors-turned-spies in 16th century Hungary can be… The 138 minute epic is certainly a rich and exotic affair, stirring a plethora of ideas, characters and genres into one sumptuous piece of romanticised art. Tonally, the film feels like a blend of French werewolf thriller Brotherhood of the Wolf and an episode of The Tudors: there’s dark and potentially supernatural hokum, political intrigue, war, bloodshed, royal deceit, rape and romantic whimsy – and the aforementioned Catholic duo even bring an (ill-advised) splash of Van Helsing into the mix with their comedic endeavours!

It’s certainly a grand gothic affair, even if it does take some following as the years speed by and the assorted threads extend ever-further as Bathory loses her grip on reality while her ever-youthful body betrays her cerebral spiral. Friel and Hans Matheson excel as the doomed countess and her fanciful artist, while the European locales provide an opulent visual backdrop. However, the sheer scope of Jakubisko’s ambitious vision is dizzying in its abundance and could have benefited from a little restraint. Less is more, Mr Jakubisko – unless you’re trying to break some kind of world record…?

In a CR@B Shell: A controversially considerate portrayal of a monstrous feminine, Juraj Jakubisko’s vision is a decadent concoction of fact and fiction, horror and drama, hallucinations and whimsy – making Bathory an intriguing potion which is hard to swallow in one mammoth gulp.
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The Empire Strides Back

DVD Review: CENTURION
15 – 93mins – 2010
Written by: Neil Marshall
Directed by: Neil Marshall
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Ulrich Thomsen, Noel Clarke, David Morrissey, JJ Field, Liam Cunningham, Riz Ahmed, Imogen Poots, Ryan Atkinson
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Following the stellar double whammy of Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005) – not to mention a near messianic level of admiration from Total Film magazine – it is a surprise to me that writer and director Neil Marshall’s subsequent releases (2008’s Doomsday and this year's Centurion) have been released to little fanfare. Indeed, Centurion’s cinema release must have been so limited it totally passed me by!

Sticking with his trusted blueprint of pitting an ever-diminishing band of heroes against a much larger and seemingly unconquerable enemy, Marshall here swaps the supernatural for the quasi-historical – although we’re still very much in his comfort zone of Scotland (Marshall’s beloved homeland and locale for all his previous films), even if it is known as Caledonia back in 117 AD.

Turning the tables on our expectations and favouring the invaders of the sword-slashing, armour-donning Roman Empire over the native, spear-throwing, warpaint-wearing Celtic Picts, Marshall mines the ambiguous legend of the ill-fated Ninth Legion (which was the film’s working title) for gritty, battle-heavy action/thriller gold.

According to historians (and lazy researcher’s best friend, Wikipedia), the 4,000 strong Roman legion marched into Scotland and just disappeared, never to be heard from again... Marshall creatively surmises that the military failure was wiped from the history books to keep the Roman governor of Britannia's record untainted, after a Pict sect lead by a mute, vengance-fuelled warrior (Olga Quantum of Solace Kurylenko) slayed the invading army for murdering their chief's (Ulrich The World Is Not Enough Thomsen) young son (Ryan Atkinson). Lovely chaps.

Yet here we are, siding with the pillaging Roman's, whose motley crew of seven Everyman survivors – lead by centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Hunger Fassbender) – first march north to rescue their captured commander (Dominic 300 West) from the Pict settlement, then head south (via the west, naturally: tactics, people!) to the supposed safety of their fortified garrison. It's a simple plot unburdened by too much character detail.

What Centurion does offer a lot of, however, is walking. Even when the two forces aren't walking towards one another, they're chasing after one another, weapons in hand and revenge in their eyes. And when the chase is up, they're fighting one another. Relentlessly. You see, Centurion also offers a grandiose amount of fighting, and Marshall doesn't skimp on the more spectacularly savage money shots. Many a head is separated from body, eye gouged out and limb hacked off – and we see every bloody strike and slash.

Away from the blistering action, the film’s washed out blue-grey palette, coupled with its misty woodland-shrouded landscapes and swooping aerial views of the Scottish Highlands, lend Centurion an epic and atmospheric quality similar to the obviously comparable Gladiator (2000). Although Neil Marshall's brisk and slimline 93 minute sprint will not remain as iconic as Ridley Scott's drawn out marathon, Centurion does deliver exactly what you would expect from a genre piece carrying the tagline "Fight or Die".


CR@B Verdict: Grisly, grimy and with gallons of gore, Centurion may not be perfect but what it lacks in brains it more than makes up for in brawn: Neil Marshall’s latest is a straight-up slice of hardcore popcorn entertainment.
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