The Biggest Secret by David Icke

I think this is the tenth David Icke book I have read. It is, I believe, his most popular and biggest selling volume. You may wonder why I didn’t make this one a priority. Well, it’s because this is the book where Icke introduces the lizards for the first time, and I just wasn’t ready to tackle that. I couldn’t fathom that I could end up believing that our world leaders are actually shape-shifting reptilian entities from another dimension. I also didn’t want to have my opinion of Icke dashed to pieces, since I have benefitted so much from other parts of his research. But … I reckoned it was time to bite the bullet and dive in.

Firstly, the title of the book led me to believe that the entire five-hundred-page volume was going to revolve around the theme of reptilian entites. It doesn’t. The reptilian theme is something that Icke weaves throughout the pages, but a lot of the material in the book is concerned with hidden agendas in human society. In essence, the theory that the world is ruled by reptilian entities is based largely upon the view that the gods of antiquity were actual beings of an extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional nature. Mankind was ruled by these so-called “gods,” and many cultures do speak of reptilian gods. In Icke’s view, the gods never left. Overt rule was exchanged for covert rule. Today, the British Empire is nothing more than the ancient Babylonian Empire relocated and repackaged. Rather than dismiss this whole thing with a knee-jerk reaction, there are certain elements of this research that I personally find fascinating. One is the importance that ruling monarchy place on bloodline, and especially how the bloodline of many key figures in politics, both here and in the USA, can be traced back to Charlemagne (assuming the research is accurate). I find it interesting, and a little suspicious, that we have Egyptian obelisks placed outside powerful buildings around the world. We even have a pyramid with an “all-seeing eye” on the dollar bill, and the same on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. This is very much tied into the secret society known as Freemasonry. A look at the key figures involved in the formation of the United States reveals a massive prevalence of Freemasons. Furthermore, Freemasonry has definite links with the occult. Cut to the present day, and we have photographic evidence of former presidents of the USA being involved in a place called Bohemian Grove, where powerful men go every summer for a holiday which culminates in an occult religious ceremony involving a mock human sacrifice before a massive stone statue of an owl. Think I’m making this up? We have Alex Jones to thank for infiltrating the grove and obtaining direct video evidence of the ritual. This is what the American government gets up to on its days off.

Icke, by his own admission, has never seen an actual reptilian.
Evidence for their existence relies on the testimony of witnesses that Icke has been in contact with, including Arizona Wilder (once a “mother goddess” involved in occult ritual), Christine Fitzgerald (close confidante of Princess Diana), and Cathy O’Brien (once Project Monarch MKULTRA mind control slave). Much is said about the British Royal Family in regard to reptilians and occult ritual. The closing chapter of the book, and one of the most fascinating, is about Princess Diana’s death. Icke goes into a lot of detail in an attempt to show that it was an assassination, and not only that but a pre-planned occult ritual sacrifice.

I did not finish this book believing that reptilian entities rule the world, nor did I finish it entirely unconvinced about the idea, either. What is clear is that something is going on – a hidden agenda that the masses are not privy to, and something which has been going on for hundreds of years and maybe a lot longer. Some of the research in the book I felt was sloppy and inconclusive, and in the end, I felt a degree of frustration that I couldn’t hold something resembling proof in my hand and say, “Here it is!” But there is no denying that there is much to gain in reading this book, even if what you’re left with is somewhat fuzzy. Perhaps the book can best be thought of as an introduction to the esoteric, a book that will make you think, “Hey, the world is not exactly the way I’ve been told it is.” I was left with the awareness that there were numerous, hitherto unknown, avenues open to me that I was eager to do more research into.

Reality Is Plastic! by Anthony Jacquin

Reality Is Plastic! is a book on hypnosis. It’s extremely short, just shy of 100 pages, but those pages are packed with information. There’s less of an emphasis on understanding what hypnosis actually is, more on practical routines that you can try on your friends. The book provides illustrated step-by-step instructions, such as how to invoke paralysis in limbs, how to invoke amnesia in your subject, how to make your subject think you are invisible. It all sounds far-fetched, and it’s not something that I have personally tested, but I have a friend who swears by this book and has used the routines to great effect.

The book places great importance on the confidence of the hypnotist being one of the prime factors in hypnotising someone. It’s the idea that hypnosis occurs when your confidence creates the expectation in the subject that they will be hypnotised.

It’s true that this kind of esoteric knowledge can be used for ill intent, but equally true that it can be used for good intent, such as the curing of phobias and the releasing of addictions. Ultimately, knowledge is neutral. It’s how we use knowledge that matters. Personally, I’m all for learning as much as I can about the workings of the mind, and research into hypnosis is proving for me to be a great avenue.

The book will be more useful to those who are interested in street hypnosis – the fun side of things. But the insights apply right across the board.

The only downside is the price. Anthony Jacquin sells the book for £22.50 plus £2.50 postage from his website, which is an insult for a paperback book of this size. For me, esoteric knowledge is a joy to share, not an opportunity for excessive greed. Worse still, the book is ring-bound, giving it an air of amateurism. And the text hasn’t seen a decent edit, judging by the many puncutation errors throughout. It you want to self-publish, do it right.

That said, the book was a fascinating and worthwhile read. A useful book for any budding hypnotist to have in his library.

Tales from the Time Loop by David Icke

The book begins with a short autobiography, which I read with great interest, particularly to hear David Icke’s own reflections on his experiences in the early 1990s, when he had his brief “son of God” phase that caused so much public ridicule. The rest of the book is divided into four parts, or layers, as they are called.

First, “The five-sense conspiracy.” This is the largest section of the book and comprises some two hundred pages. Icke begins by filling us in briefly on the overall picture of the conspiracy, involving secret societies, hidden-hand leadership, pryamid power structures, and the various scams that are played on humanity. The bulk of this section of the book is taken up by an examination of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11 – a tearing down of the propagana given to us by the mass media and a look at the US government’s real motivations, as well as the consequences of their actions for innocent Middle Eastern civilians. Icke’s previous book was Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Centre Disaster. Although I haven’t read that book, my guess is that the material in Tales from the Time Loop forms a sequel of sorts. The information quickly gets complicated to sift through, and I confess that at times I’m left not quite knowing what to believe. The chapter on civilian casualties is particularly moving, and at the very least the reader is left with a sense that he needs to question an awful lot more than when he hears on the TV news.

Layer 2 is “The extra-terrestrial/inter-dimensional conspiracy.” To call the information in this section startling is an understatement. Essentially, Icke’s claim is that many of the key people in positions of power (and throughout what is called the Illuminati) are possessed by entities from another dimension – entites that have a reptilian form. Icke was first introduced to this side of the conspiracy through receiving numerous reports in the late 1990s of people who witnessed another person “shape-shift” into a reptilian. When enough of these reports came to light, this indicated that there was something worth researching. 100 pages of Tales from the Time Loop is dedicated to this topic, merely a fraction of what went into his earlier book on the reptilians, The Biggest Secret, which I haven’t read. In summary, the secret rulers of the world can be traced back to antiquity, via secret societies and religions, right back to ancient Babylon and Sumer. The worship of the serpent, in various forms, can be seen far and wide in ancient religion. Human sacrifice is one of the primary ways these entities obtain energy. Such practices never ended, but go on in secret today, among the rich and famous. Reptilian shapeshifting is commonly reported in Satanic ritual abuse.

That’s just a fraction of the story. It reads like a science fiction extravaganza, and I can’t get on board with all of it. Icke’s big problem is that he never pauses long enough to let the reader catch his breath. The revelations come thick and fast, building one of top of the other, and the reader (me, anyway) is left behind somewhere along the way amidst a fog of information that he can’t hang on to as provable. Icke relies heavily on quotes from other written souces, particularly authors Zechariah Sitchin and Stewart Swerdlow. The former has written books which take an alternative view of human history and the latter claims to have had access to an underground base where reptilians were operating from. I simply don’t have enough information to make a decision. I wish Icke had simply tackled a few aspects of the reptilian theory thoroughly instead of trying to cram everything into a small space. For instance, I find it very interesting that the ancestry of the vast majority of American presidents can be traced back to Charlemagne. If that’s true, then there has been something very big and very fishy going on for hundreds of years outside the public eye. I also find it very interesting that so many Freemasons were involved in the formation of America, and that government people participate in a secret dark religious ceremony at Bohemiam Grove every year. It is unquestionable that there is something shadowy going on in the world that the public is not privy to. I just wish these themes were developed fully, but all too often Icke says, “You can read more about this in my book, X.” To be fair, though, Icke’s summaries do raise important questions and open up many avenues waiting to be explored. Every chapter has thorough footnotes about where you can go to find out more.

Layer 3 is called “It’s all an illusion”. This is where the book goes in the direction that I really appreciate, where we delve into the philosophical and the intuitive. Physical reality, as we know it, isn’t solid. Three-dimensional solidity is just a perception of the human body and brain. Underneath all of this, the universe is really an energy field. Now, you can believe that, or you can believe that physical solidity is the basis from which all else stems. Either way, it’s a belief, and none of us can get outside of our perceptions to find out. You might ask, what does it matter? Well, if the physical universe is just a perception, perhaps consciousness is a far greater thing we have imagined. Perhaps all that exists is one gigantic consciousness, and every human life is that consciousness undergoing an experience of separation from the full magnitude of what it is. The cornerstone of this part of the book is an experience that Icke had in Brazil, where he was invited to take a psychoactive drink called ayahuasca as a means of opening the door to a higher perception of reality (a similar account is told by Aldous Huxley, regarding mescaline, in his book The Doors of Perception).

Layer 4 is “Transforming the illusion.” The focus is on waking up from all the nonsense we’ve been conditioned to believe is normal life and all the traps that keep us hypnotised. The ultimate conclusion to all this is that we learn to laugh about life – to realise that this tiny life is just a game, full of endless possibilities, on the great canvas of infinite awareness. Really insightful stuff.

There were moments, in the earlier parts of the the book (especially the reptilian section), that I thought I was going to be giving this a bad review. But overall, when I’ve digested all 450 pages (and they’re pretty big pages), I find myself yet again impressed with David Icke’s insight. Once more, my mind has been stimulated to learn more and more from the wealth of information that lies ignored just outside the mainstream.

Trance-formation of America by Mark Phillips & Cathy O’Brien

We all know that the world of politics is a manipulative and sometimes seedy realm. Politicians and distrust are two words that go hand in hand in the minds of many people, and the reality of this is borne out by the broken promises and sexual scandals that often hit the news media. I got the first hint that this was merely the tip of the iceberg when I read a chapter called “The Depths of Evil” in David Icke’s book I Am Me, I Am Free. This offered a brief condensation of Trance-formation of America, and the reading of it left me thinking, “Surely this is simply too outrageous to be true – that the world I’m living in is nothing like the way everyone thinks it is?”

The trouble is, I’ve been discovering that, in general, the world really isn’t the way most people think it is. Most people are blind to the fact that the food instrustry is destroying health. Most people are blind to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is not about health, but wealth. Most people are happy to continue raping the planet of all resources and poisoning it with pollution, and will think of this situation as normal life. This book challenges the reader to get to grips with information claiming the governments of the USA (and other countries) are rotten to the core – so rotten that the word diabolical is maybe the only one that fits.

Co-author Cathy O’Brien suffered sexual abuse by her father Earl as a young child. When it was found out by the authorities, the US government offered her father immunity from prosecution if he would agree to have Cathy introduced into the MK-Ultra mind-control program. Child abuse victims are specifically targeted because because of the effect on the mind caused by trauma. The mind becomes compartmentalised, learns to close off memories as a coping mechanism, and develops Disassociative Identity Disorder (what used to be termed Multiple Personality Disorder). After much painful training, Cathy developed numerous personalities which could be switched by various programmed methods. Each personality was hidden from the others and she lost all awareness of the passage of time. This compartmentalisation allowed her to be used in various criminal activities: prostitution to high-ranking government people, government sanctioned drug-running, “carrier pigeon” secret messaging.

In adulthood Cathy lived with her handler Alex Houston in a sham marriage. Houston was not her first handler; there was also Wayne Cox, with whom she had a child, Kelly. Like Cathy herself, Kelly was introduced to MK-Ultra at an early age and was soon taking part in child pornography and prostitution to members of the government. Cathy eventually became what is termed a “Presidental Model,” and was in close contact with the likes of Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill & Hillary Clinton. Some of the sexual stuff that Cathy claims went on between her and these people almost beggars belief. One of the worst was when Bush took Kelly into another room and violently raped her while Cathy had to listen to her daughter’s cries on the other side of the wall. This book took so long for me to read because at times I just couldn’t take it. I had to put it aside for a while and read other things. It was too terrible.

Co-author Mark Phillips first met Cathy by going into business with her “husband” Alex Houston. When Houston eventually put some trust in Phillips, this paved the way for Phillips to find out what was being done to Cathy and Kelly, and to make a plan to rescue both of them. After a lot of running, and much learning about mind-control, he was able to de-program Cathy and eventually bring about her complete recovery – and uncover all the memories that the government thought it had so effectively hidden. Kelly was not quite so fortunate and remains in psychiatric care.

So, what should we make of a book like this? Are Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips a couple of sensationalist attention-seekers wanting their fifteen minutes of fame? After having read the book and also seen Cathy talk about her life on video (see below), I just don’t get that impression. She does not seem the slightest bit unhinged. And it strikes me that you would have to be more than just a little unhinged to write the sort of things she writes and risk prosecution from countless famous names.

For me, the thing that really pulls this book firmly out of the realms of fantasy is the picture section. We have photographs of Cathy and Kelly, pictured with some of the people mentioned in the book. Business cards, with addresses and phone numbers, are supplied for many, many people involved in the events of Cathy’s life, any one of whom can be easily contacted to verify information. There are several letters from the government, demonstrating Cathy and Mark’s ongoing quest for justice. There are medical reports on Kelly, showing evidence of her sexual abuse and her ongoing psychological trauma.

It’s no surprise that this book is self-published. What publisher would dare to take it on and risk prosecution? For me, therein lies the most convincing aspect of the story. There are countless high-profile people named and shamed in this book, and yet here it is in publication with not a single charge laid against Cathy and Mark. Why? Is it perhaps because it’s a true account and to draw attention to it through a legal battle would only bring the awful truth out into the public eye? Or should I perhaps give the government the benefit of the doubt and simply say they are innocent until proven guilty?

People who read conspiracy books are often accused of wanting the world to be a more exciting place than it really is, trading the mundane for the sensational, swapping rational investigation for wish-fulfillment. Well, here’s a book that will really put you to the test. Because there is nothing to like here, nothing pretty, nothing that makes me feel good. It only makes the world seem like a much darker and more foreboding place than I thought it was … if it’s true. Is it? I may regret saying this, but I’m inclined to believe it.

The remainer of this video (seven parts) can be viewed here.

Infinite Love Is the Only Truth, Everything Else Is Illusion by David Icke

David Icke has written many books on the subjects of the global conspiracy and the nature of reality. I’ve read three before this one, all of them published on or before 1996. So I thought it was about time I jumped in at the deep end and read something from his more recent research. This one was published in 2005.

The book begins with a couple of chapters summarising Icke’s research into the global conspiracy and the inter-dimensional side of the manipulation, including his theories about shape-shifting Reptilians. These chapters serve only as a taster, and to really get into them properly, you need to read books like, And the Truth Shall Set You Free and The Biggest Secret – something I haven’t yet done, and therefore I have to remain on the fence with some of his assertions.

After that, the book starts going in the direction that most interests me, in a chapter called “Downloading Reality,” where the author aims to show to that the physical world is nothing more than a holographic illusion. Some of the claims are startling and fascinating – that our own DNA can be consciously modified, and this is the real explanation behind evolution. We also have the ability to heal ourselves to some extent. Icke talks in a lot of detail about DNA/RNA, and unfortunately I found myself getting confused, but that material did serve as an interesting introduction to some thought-provoking ideas.

There’s a chapter on the nature of religions. I first read Icke tackling this topic in I Am Me, I Am Free, and I was stunned by his insight. This time round, oddly, he concentrates on Judaism rather than Christianity, exposing the craziness of all the impossible rules and regulations.

Another chapter takes a look at society and invites us to take a hard look at much of what we consider to be normal life, in education, the media, health services, banking, etc. Good stuff.

Another chapter is critical of the New Age movement, which shows a dramatic shift in Icke’s views since he started out in 1990 with The Truth Vibrations. Back then he was very pro New Age. Now he believes the New Age movement to be the most enlightened of all expressions of religion, but still caught in the program. In the past, Icke spoke about our souls being on a journey of evolution. Now he denies that. Now he sees reincarnation as part of the program – another aspect of us being trapped in this physical life “matrix.”

This change in ideas is due, it seems, to an experience Icke had a few years before, when he was invited to take ayahuasca, a drink that shamens use to tap into the reality beyond our five senses. He claims that he was spoken to by a female voice for five hours. One phrase that was repeated many times was “Infinite Love is the only truth, everything else is illusion.” Getting to the bottom of that is the cornerstone of this book. For instance, if we are all one consciousness, if our separation from each other is just an illusion, if the only thing that exists is Infinite Love, and if we are everything that exists, then how can we possibly evolve by experience? I have to admit, he is asking the right questions and getting right down to the nitty gritty of what this idea of “oneness” (that he has been promoting for many years) implies.

My only criticism of this book is that the amount of new material in here is relatively small. Much of the book is a refresher course in research Icke has already expounded in previous books, and in greater detail. I have his previous book, Tales from the Time Loop (2003) on my shelf, waiting to be read, and I can tell that it contains massive amount of overlap. That said, I appreciate that Infinite Love was written to be self-contained, so that it can be understood without reference to other works.

It takes a certain type of mind to appreciate a book of this nature. You have to be unafraid to question everything you’ve been contitioned to believe, to take no norm for granted, and also to abandon skepticism in favour of allowing yourself to flirt with new possibilities. That’s me, for better or worse. I found the ideas in this book stimulating and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

God Outside the Box by Patricia Panahi

I was drawn to this book by a review I spotted elsewhere, at a time when my life had just undergone great spiritual change. I had chosen to abandon my Christian faith, on the grounds that I had been ignoring terrible problems with it. See my personal blog for more detail. In short, I came to view my religion as a sort of mind prison, where you are lured into sacrificing your freedom to think for yourself to a massive set of beliefs that are laid out for you by others: the Bible and the Church. And any attempt to reclaim that freedom to think for yourself instantly makes you a denier of the Word of God. It was a breath of fresh air for me to start looking at life and universe and saying, “What do I think?” instead of “What do they want me to think?”

This book is essentially Patricia Panahi’s autobiography, and she has an interesting story to tell. In her childhood, she was in the rare position of having a Muslim father and a Catholic mother. They weren’t overly religious people, and didn’t impose their beliefs on their daughter. This allowed Patricia to look at what she was being taught from two standpoints that were very different, whereas most of us grow up with a single religious view and the idea that “I’m right, and everybody else is wrong.” In her college years, she learned about Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddism, etc., but always from the perspective of an outsider looking in. She started to notice ways in which all religions were expressions of some of the same ideas.

As I was reading this, I couldn’t help thinking how great it would be if we all had opportunity to learn it this way – if we were shown a big picture and allowed to choose, instead of being encouraged to blindly follow what those around us are doing, and never dare to question it for fear of being branded unacceptable or fear of facing some eternal punishment.

Patricia appears to possess that rare kind of skepticism that is actually looking for answers rather than looking to deny the reality of everything. A little later in life, a friend encouraged her to go to something called a “Rebirthing” session – a New Age type practice that involved lying down and allowing your higher self to affect you. The results of that session were the first big wake-up call to the idea that there was an actual spiritual dimension to life that was real and definite – something you could experience rather than simply have faith in. This awakening led Patricia to start reading everything she could get her hands on, on a vast array of spiritual topics. Over the course of her life since then, she has learned and experienced a great deal that she shares with the reader. Not only strange experiences that scientists would balk at like walking on fire, but hard experiences of life that contain priceless lessons.

The theme of the book is spiritual awakening. I felt a great sense of kinship with many of the ideas that Patricia communicates. I wouldn’t say I was on the same page with everything, but overall this is an excellent read. If you’re learning to see the world in wider terms than the rigid scientific mindset that says “This world is all there is,” or you’re daring to step outside the boundaries of a religion that has been programming you, I thoroughly recommend this book. It will be a great encouragement to you in your own quest for truth.

Faith Awakened by Grace Bridges

Faith Awakened caught my attention because it’s a post-apocalyptic novel set in Northern Ireland – specifically Bangor, which is only about forty miles from where I live. It’s not often the Emerald Isle gets the sci-fi treatment. This is also a Christian novel, and those who know me from my personal bloggery might think this would automatically make it right up my street. News that something is “Christian fiction” actually has the effect of making me feel quite ambivalent, because I’ve had the experience of reading some pretty bad Christian novels, dripping with melodrama. I’m pleased to announce that Faith Awakened avoids this trap to a large extent, which is no easy thing because this is essentially a love story.

Grace doesn’t pull her punches. She is not afraid to kill off about six billion people from the get-go, at the hands of a deadly virus. Then, rather than step into the “cosy catastrophe” genre, things get even worse for the tiny band of survivors. It seems that their mysterious immunity to the virus is temporary, as the virus mutates. There seems to be no hope for the last remnants of the human race … until the discovery of a cryogenic research laboratory. The survivors theorise that it may possible be go to sleep for many years, experiencing a virtual reality dreamworld, with your body safely sealed off from infection. Then, many years later, the virus will have died, and it will be safe to emerge.

The novel appears to jump back and forth in time, telling two apparently unconnected stories: one the life of Mariah in the post-apocalypse world, and the other the life of Faith in a world like the one we know. We are left to ponder what’s really going on – whether it is two points in time, or a real world and a virtual one; are Mariah and Faith separate individuals or the same person? Grace resists answering these questions until the end. I had a pretty good idea what was going on long before that, but I did like being left to deceipher it on my own.

This is a Christian novel only in the sense that the outlook of the central character is Christian – and only loosely Christian, at that. Characters refer to God as “The Awakener” and Christians are “The Awakened.” Christianity itself is not mentioned by name. During the reading of this novel, I coincidentally happened to be moving away from my personal Christian faith, so I was glad that this was more of a story told from the author’s peronal outlook than an attempt to convert an audience.

The author often uses very broad brush strokes in telling the story. The usual advice you hear in writing circles is “show, don’t tell,” whereas Grace has largely chosen “tell, don’t show.” But I’m going to defend her stance. The entire life of Faith is crammed into these pages, and it’s often not high-octane drama where you want to pull the reader in and show him every detail. It’s a gentler, everyday kind of story, and I found myself mostly content with the fast pace with which events were told. That said, there were points where I wanted the author to really zero in and pull the reader right into the direct experience of the protagonist.

On purely a personal interest level, I would have to say that the overall nature of the book as a love story didn’t really grab me as much as other aspects that I would have preferred to have seen developed, such as the nature of the totalitarian pre-apocalypse society, and a deeper exploration into virtual reality. In terms of the story the author wanted to tell, the stand-out for me was that I got the distinct feeling I was reading something autobiographical at times. And having now met Grace in person, I can confirm that this was indeed the case to a large extent. And it’s this that elevates the book to more than mere entertainment.

Faith Awakened is a self-published novel, and since so many self-published authors take the easy route of not learning correct grammar and not weeding out errors from their manuscript, I always feel I need to comment on this topic. Well, I’m pleased to say that this novel is very cleanly presented – obviously a labour of love in every way.

I had opportunity to meet Grace in person recently, in the bizarrest of coincidences. I happened to be reading her book while members of the Christian Fiction Review Blog (of which Grace is one) were gearing up to review my own novel, Chion. Grace happened to be living in Ireland at the time (she’s actually from New Zealand, and had been living in Germany until recently), so we arranged to meet up at a halfway point between our towns. Grace brought her laptop, and we decided to interview each other. I’m delighted to share that interview with you here. Grace has also agreed to allow Faith Awakened to be featured here for free download. For more information, visit the Faith Awakened website.

The Grace Bridges and Darryl Sloan interview:
[ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ] [ Part 3 ] [ Part 4 ]

[ Download Book ]

I Am Me, I Am Free by David Icke

I first heard of David Icke on the Terry Wogan show in 1991. I was about nineteen at the time. Icke had once been a famous footballer, until his career was cut short by arthritis. He then went on become a BBC television sports presenter. The reason why he was being interviewed by Terry Wogan was because he had recently published a book called The Truth Vibrations, where he claimed to have undergone profound spiritual changes and was in contact with beings from a higher dimension. The audience was very amused. Even more amused when Terry asked him if he was the Son of God. Not given time to explain the difference between a son of God and the Son of God, hilarity ensued. For me, the outrageous nature of this made the Wogan interview one of the unforgettable moments of television, and the name David Icke was firmly locked in my mind, forever shelved under messianic crackpot. Well, not quite forever, it seems.

Earlier this summer, whilst browsing the website of Christian conspiracy theorist Mark Dice, I came across an audio interview of Mark interviewing David. I thought it was a strange combination of interviewer and interviewee, given their opposing backgrounds, and so I got curious. I can’t remember what specifics in the interview caught my attention, but I was enthused enough by David’s presentation to seek out some of his books.

I chose I Am Me, I Am Free first, primarily because I was more interested in Icke’s spiritual views than his conspiracy theories or his radical theories about shape-shifting reptilians. Why was I not put off immediately by the knowledge that he believes reptilians are walking among us in human bodies? I don’t know. Maybe the Mark Dice interivew sounded too sane, and maybe the fact that I couldn’t marry this sanity with the outlandish claims created a sense of intrigue in me. In any case, I chose not to jump straight in with his reptilian book, The Biggest Secret, but rather to break myself in gently.

I Am Me, I Am Free disturbed me from the first chapter. And it disturbed me because it was chipping away at a closed-minded attitude that I possessed and didn’t know I possessed. It disturbed me because it seemed to be right. Some way into the book, I felt that I was finally starting to understand the greatest spiritual battle of my life: the battle between athiesm and Christianity. Icke woke me up to the “mind prison” that is conventional science – the idea that the world should only be understood in terms of “this is all there is,” that the burden of proof is the only measure of rational thought. But wait, he doesn’t stop there. He also makes an attack on religion, too. This was the most problematic aspect of the book, because I was a Christian as I was reading it, and had been consistently a Christian for about seven years.

But for the first time in my life I started understanding that there was an alternative to dogmatic religion and equally dogmatic science. And that alternative was the pursuit of truth without any attachment to an “ism,” without the necessity of taking on a strict set of beliefs, without fear of damnation. Just the breaking free from closed-minded assumptions you’re not even aware of and the openness to all possibility. I dared to deconstuct my Christian beliefs and start again from the ground up. Guess what? I can’t accept the Christian view of reality any more. One personal example of this (not from the book) is the way we can encounter things in the Bible like God commanding the Israelites to slaughter the men, women and children of Amalek (1 Samuel 15). We can’t understand this, so we put it on a shelf in our mind, thinking that we’ll get an explanation some day. But you know, it never comes down the from shelf. It just gathers dust. But you start to wake up to some of the craziness you’ve allowed yourself to believe, when you dare to deconstruct your beliefs and attempt to put them together again. Suddenly the bricks don’t fit as neatly as you thought they did.

The book covers much more ground than I’m mentioning here. There’s some excellent material on self-esteem and a particularly difficult chapter on mind control, which makes some terrifying claims that need further verification. But it’s the sort of book that contains much in the way of self-evident truth, and it’s the sort of book that you don’t have to accept hook, line and sinker. You can gain something from it and leave what you find unacceptable.

For me, this was a totally life-changing book. I didn’t expect this to happen to me when I started out. I know the world is full of people making all sorts of claims to enlightenment, and I don’t consider myself an easy man to fool. Richard Dawkins didn’t get very far with me. I’ve been waking up to a lot of things over the past few years, and this book has served only to step that awakening up a gear.

David Icke is an extremely important thinker in today’s world, and I am a better person for having discovered his books.

The Mars Run by Chris Gerrib

When I got some distance into The Mars Run, I realised I was reading something that belonged to that rare sub-genre known as “mundane science fiction.” If you think that’s me putting it down, you would be wrong. Let me educate you. Mundane SF is a tricky beast to write, and something that I, as an author, have not attempted. Mundane SF is all about what’s really likely. You are not allowed to feature time-travel, interstellar space travel, teleportation; even aliens are frowned upon. Mundane SF takes what technology we already have and theorises realistically about what seems genuinely possible in the future. Doesn’t that make for rather dull sci-fi? Depends on what you’re looking for in a story. For me, I like to sink my teeth into a good human drama. That’s what The Mars Run is. If anything, I found the mundane SF aspects of the novel fascinating. When Gerrib tells me about a spacecraft that has a spinning central section creating an area of the ship with artificial gravity, it excites the scientist in me, in a way that the phrase “Kirk to transporter room” won’t.

The novel is set in the 2070s, told in the first person by Janet Pilgrim, a young astronaut in her late teens. In order to raise money for college, Janet agrees to become a crew member on a cargo haul from Earth to Mars, a vocation no more exciting than a present-day truck driver. A mining colony has been established on Mars, and there is regular traffic between the red and blue planets. There is also the danger of pirates; outer space is the new ocean. Janet’s ship gets attacked and the whole crew murdered – except her. Janet is given the opportunity to join the pirate crew. It’s that, or death. From there on, the trip to Mars turns out to be much more dangerous and difficult that she ever expected.

On the author’s website, Gerrib writes, “Warning – explicit sex and language!” I’m a Christian, so you know right off the bat that I’m going to be tolerating rather than appreciating those two things. In actuality, the sex is not very explicit at all. It’s almost written as summary. Which is no bad thing, considering that there’s a lot of raping going on – or at least something very close to rape, as Janet spends a good portion of the novel forced to play the role of sex slave, and using her feminine wiles to get the upper hand. The exception is a consensual and rather pointless lesbian relationship. I can imagine what a movie of the novel would be like (Kleenex to the ready) but as a book, with Gerrib holding back on the eroticism, the lesbian relationship seems superfluous and is ultimately swallowed up by the larger story.

The Mars Run is a self-published novel. Gerrib’s writing style is clear and streamlined, respecting the reader’s intelligence. When Gerrib writes about an astronaut placing his helmet against a closed door in a vaccuum, he expects the reader to figure out on his own that this is a little trick you can play to hear what’s going on inside the room. Too many author write timidly and slow their work down with pointless qualifications. Not Gerrib. I spotted some grammar and punctuation errors, but not a lot. It wouldn’t take a great deal of work to lick this into truly professional shape.

The novel is a character drama, and on the characters it succeeds. Everyone was well defined, their actions believable, and the reader really feels for Janet’s plight. The only part of the story that I disliked was an overly long section near the end where Janet seems to be carried along by events over which she has no control, and everyone around her is merely talking politics. Thankfully, this section is not characteristic of the story as a whole.

This was an enjoyable read, and one I’ll remember. Reminded me of Robert Holdstock’s space trader novella Elite: The Dark Wheel. I had qualms about some of Janet Pilgrim’s moral decisions in the story, but the ending was surprisingly refreshing on that score.

[ Download Book ]

North of Sunset by Henry Baum

There’s a new serial killer with an unusual MO stalking Hollywood: no one with a personalised number plate on his car is safe. The psychopath’s name is Curt Knudsen and he’s known to the public as the Vanity Plate Killer. His name is no secret to the reader, because this is no mystery story. Author Henry Baum likes to take you right inside the head of your killer, putting his life and his motivations in full view. But this is not only the tale of a serial killer. It’s a shifting-perspective novel that lets you see the thoughts and feelings of several very different and flawed individuals: a detective, a paparazzi photographer, a producer, and principally, top Hollywood actor Michael Sennet. Michael and the killer become inextricably linked, due to an unfortunate incident. A paparazzi photographer captures Michael’s infidelity on camera and tries to bribe the actor. Michael, in a fit of rage, clobbers the photographer to death. To cover his tracks, he dresses the scene to make it look as if the Vanity Plate Killer commited the crime. But Curt Knudsen isn’t too happy about having his image tarnished by a copycat. However, if you think the rest of the novel is about Curt out for Michael’s blood, think again. There are far more complex issues going on in the killer’s head. The story also has an amusing and insightful satirical side, poking fun at our tendency to become starstruck when encountering celebrities – celebrities who may well be immoral behind all the glitz and glam.

North of Sunset is very well written. The style is snappy and polished, a rare find in a self-published novel. The author also pulls off two very tricky things of note. The first is his decision to write a story about bad people. When you learn about how to tell a story effectively, they tell you to make the reader sympathise with the protagonist(s). Well, there’s not much to sympathise with here. Even the characters who aren’t killers are still wrapped up in their materialism, greed and adultery. And yet the novel remains a page-turner. Secondly, the author indulges in talking us through a lot of each character’s backstory. It’s usually better to reveal a character’s nature through his present actions in the story rather than communicating it through lengthy passages of exposition about the character’s past. And yet there’s no denying that Henry Baum is able to do just that and make it all very interesting. The author is involved in the Hollywood movie industry and rubs shoulders with the sort of people he’s writing about. The writing definitely carries an air of realism. As an author myself, but with a different background, I know I couldn’t handle the same material as Baum.

The only disappointment I found in the novel (and this is purely personal) is that I rather liked old Detective Harry Stein. He was the one character with a bit of moral backbone, and he seemed a little underused in the story. I would have liked to have seen him get a bigger slice of the action.

Nevertheless, North of Sunset is a very good thiller, both insightful and inventive. A worthy read for those who like crime fiction.

[ Download Book ]

Antarktos Rising by Jeremy Robinson

I’ve had my eye on Jeremy Robinson for a while. He’s a self-published author running his own publishing imprint (Breakneck Books), and he’s one who seems to be going places. After spotting a couple of glowing reviews on some blogs, I had to get hold of this.

I love the concept Robinson came up with. America inexplicably freezes, while Russia boils, and Antarctica thaws. The earth’s crust has tilted forty degrees on its axis. All the earth’s nations are now in ruins, with billions dead. As humanity picks itself up from the apocalypse, the remaining governments seek to claim Antarctica (later named Antarktos) as their new home. Rather than descending into war, all the nations agree to a participate in a race. The first three to reach the centre of Antarktos will divide the continent into three equal sections. The losing nations will have to make do with the harsh conditons of their present homeland.

After only two months of mild weather conditions, Antarktos has mysteriously transformed into a lush paradise. Trees and plants have grown at an alarming rate. The thaw also reveals Antarktos to have been inhabited in the distant past, eons ago when it wasn’t covered in ice. Worse still, the thaw has released Antarktos’s wildlife from a state of cryonic suspension. The race teams not only have to outwit and outrun each other (with talented assassins and Arab terrorists in the mix), but they must also face dangerous dinosaurs and do battle with a more intelligent enemy – mentioned briefly in the Bible: giants, known as the Nephilim, recorded in Genesis chapter 6.

From the beginning, the story is divided up into several sub-plots. We follow Dr. Merrill Clark, Antarctic explorer, as he experiences the changes on the continent first-hand. We follow Mira Whitney, in the USA, who must escape an incoming tsunami followed by a rapid freeze. We see right inside the lives of Arab terrorists, intent on sabotaging the American race team. And there are Russians and Chinese sub-plots, too. All the jumping around from place to place does unfortunately have a negative affect on the story’s pacing, but it did help maintain the sense of epic promised in the story’s premise. Occasionally, I got impatent, eager for the race to get moving and the real adventure to start.

The first point where the story faltered a little for me was when Dr. Clark emerged from a naturally dry valley in Antarctica and discovered that all the ice had gone, leaving only soil and rock. The temperature had risen, then the ice had melted and presumably flowed out to sea. But I had to ask myself: why didn’t the water flow into the valley and drown Dr. Clark? A valley, by definition, is lower than the surrounding land. No matter how I tried to think about it, I couldn’t conceive of how one man could survive the “birth pains” of the new continent. I put this plot-hole aside, hoping it would be the only one. Sadly, a little later we see Whitney in the USA hiding from men with guns by pretending to be dead. However, she’s in sub-zero temperatures. The author seemed to forget that the very act of breathing would betray her, as her warm breaths hit the frigid air. Maybe I’m nit-picking, but it bugged me, because I thought it should have been so obvious. To be fair, though, the novel wasn’t littered with these inconsistencies.

The author makes a reasonable attempt to add a more intimate and personal side to the story. The lives of the principle characters are fleshed out. We even see the terrorists’ motives from inside their own heads. But none of it rings true enough for me. The characters were just too straightforward and uncomplicated, their actions occasionally spoiled by melodrama. The novel just lacks a necessary richness in the area of characterisation. And that’s a great pity, because that’s one of the main things I’m after, as a reader. If the characters don’t come alive in my imagination, even the most original and action-packed story will fail for me.

Antarktos Rising is essentially a cross-genre novel. Nothing wrong with that, in principal; genre definitions are merely labels to determine where a book should be placed in a store. Antarktos Rising starts out as a thriller with sci-fi leanings, but by the end it’s in full-fledged fantasy territory. Robinson starts off by appealing to those who like their fiction grounded in something close to reality; he goes to great pains to inject some science into his theory of the earth’s crust shifting. But at the end, we have winged beasts and magical healing powers. Those who where expecting a scientific explanation for the accelerated growth of Antarktos will be disappointed to discover that it boils down to an explanation more at home in a Tolkien-esque fantasy. All I’m saying is, you have to like both genres. You have to be able to handle the massive suspension of disbelief that is part-and-parcel of any fantasy novel right alongside scientific thrillers, which typically thrive on rationality. This strikes me as a hard sell, and it didn’t quite work for me.

It’s more than just thriller plus fantasy. There’s a religious side to the story. I have no problem with that, in principle, and I think it’s good that a writer injects his own beliefs into his fiction. That’s writing from the heart, after all. However, there was something strange about reading two characters debate about the historicity of the Biblical Flood inside a novel that was already steeped in so much fantasy. If you want to convince a reader that the events of the Bible really happened, you’re going to need to place your argument in a more reliable context. As a Christian myself, I felt Robinson went a little too far when he suggested that the Flood was not God punishing mankind for its wickedness (as stated in the Bible), but God wiping out a race of demon-human hybrids that had mixed with man’s bloodline. The Flood, he suggests, was a means of restoring humanity back to a pure bloodline. I’m shocked that a Christian author would dare to mix fantasy with reality and be so bold as to misrepresent the will of God.

I hate having to voice all these criticisms, because I really wanted to love this book. In fairness, there were some really atmospheric scenes. The short chapters, many of which ended in cliff-hangers, kept the pages turning. Robinson, as a self-published author, is one of the minority who are doing self-publishing the right way – taking time to shine their prose up so that it sparkles. Robinsons’s grammar, punctuation and style are almost indistinguishable from a professional novelist’s. I think, however, that the story could have benefitted greatly by being submitted to some hardcore critiques prior to publication. The plot-holes alone make me suspect that Robinson is running a one-man show. Every writer needs his advisers.

Overall, this is a story that attempts to be great and succeeds in being good. It’s clear that the author is working to the best of his ability and aiming for the top, which is something I can respect. And I hope that Jeremy Robinson continues to hone his craft with future novels. It struck me that fans of Jules Verne in particular may appreciate this novel.

L.A. Stalker by David Kilpatrick

The protagonist of the novel is Los Angeles police detective Jerry Leger, and he’s working on the case of Pandora Collins, sexy superstar actress. Pandora’s problem is that she has a stalker. It has been going on a long time, but lately the stalker’s advances have been getting more dangeous and sick. Worse still, not long ago, another actress who was the target of a stalker turned up dead. When the police fail to apprehend Pandora’s stalker, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires a contract killer. Everything goes smoothly until a misunderstanding about payment turns the assassin against Pandora. And, as the novel’s blurb puts it so well: “Pandora soon learns that the cure she called upon is worse than the disease.”

This novel grabs your attention even before page one, with a striking and touching dedication:

This book is dedicated to that small army of underpaid, overworked and forgotten people who wage a near-silent war against sexual predators. Your dedication and humanity may not always be recognized, and the good you do cannot be measured. Your success is measured in the things that never happen; the things you prevent from happening. Your reward can be seen in the joyous faces of those would-be victims who never have to face the horror and heartache of sexual predation, and in the normal lives of those victims you’ve led to recovery.

It comes as no surprise to me that the novel is very well written, as I’ve already read and enjoyed the author’s Undercover White Trash. David Kilpatrick belongs to that tiny group of self-published authors who care deeply about the quality of their work. Usually, in self-published books, grammar and punctuation errors are leaping out at me on every page. They were pretty hard to find in L.A. Stalker.

The novel contains material that some readers may find offensive: scenes of violence and sexuality (and both of those together). But the book was written in such a way that I never once felt the author was being gratuitous – just bravely honest – even when writing about rape and child molestation. One very daring scene for the author was a flashback of Pandora being molested by her father when she was about twelve. What Kilpatrick drew attention to was the idea of a child’s tolerance and acceptance of a father’s long-term abuse – something that is as true and tragic as the more horrific forms of abuse that tend to claim the spotlight. The violence of the story is complemented by an undercurrent of tenderness, brought about by detective Jerry Leger falling in love with Pandora.

I wasn’t offended at all by the sex and violence, but there was something else that bugged me – something you only detect if you read between the lines: the morality of ending. It’s difficult to talk about that without spoilers. Suffice it to say, taking into account eveything that was at stake coming up to the end, I didn’t like the author’s resolution to the story. It had the bitterness of a fall from grace, only it was written as the opposite.

Regardless, I think L.A. Stalker is a great thriller, populated by believable characters about whom the author skilfully makes you care.

[ Download Book ]

Survival Op: The Fear in the Wilderness by Scott Allen

Author Scott Allen asked me to review his book and even went to the trouble of mailing it to me from the USA at his own expense. I usually say no to review requests, but the cover art and theme of the story appealed to me. My confidence that I was in for a good read was further bolstered by the many positive reviews of the book I found online and by the fact that Allen is an English teacher. Sadly, the novel didn’t live up to expectations. My problems with it began in the very first sentence:

It was the same type of dark, dreary night as when I was delivered here in this dreadful prison of the wilderness.

For authors, the opening line is your crucial moment to hook a reader’s attention. The last thing you want to do is blow it on a comment about the weather. In fact, starting a book with a line about the weather is generally regarded as a cardinal sin of writing fiction. However, I could forgive it here, if not for the dreadful grammatical error that made me read the sentence several times, to make sure I understood it before I moved on. It should read “I was delivered here to this dreadful prison,” not “in this dreadful prison.” To say that you were delivered in a wilderness really means that someone gave birth to you there!

Unfortunately, this grammatical misstep was not an exception, but the shape of things to come. However, I thought, “Okay, the book is far from polished, but let’s ignore that fact and hope the story is good.”

The protagonist is Marcus, a homeless thirteen-year-old boy who is kidnapped by a criminal organisation called Survival Op. Marcus is part of a scientific experiment to enchance the human body’s survival ability. As part of the research, the organisation implants a microchip in Marcus designed to monitor the chemical changes in the body during stress. Then they release him onto an island wilderness and begin to hunt him. Marcus is soon joined by a girl called Lynn, and together they learn to survive.

That all sounds okay as the basis for a story. But big problems arise in its execution. For instance, Marcus and Lynn start a fire just inside the entrance to a cave in order to burn out all the snakes that live there so that they can make it their home. The plans works. However, a couple of chapters later, the duo enters the cave, only to discover an S-bend leading to an expansive cavern at the back of which are several holes. So why didn’t the snakes simply move further into the cave? Okay, it could be argued they died from oxygen depletion, that is, until our heroes decide to build a fire at the back of the cave, under one of the holes. Lo and behold, the smoke escapes up this convenient air-hole (or should that be plot-hole?).

Marcus and Lynn’s relationship isn’t believable. One minute they’ll be sharing a joke, and the next minute Marcus is inexplicably angry. Furthermore, the dialogue is written as if two robots are communicating:

“I cannot believe they would die to rescue us,” Lynn said as she leaned her head back on the cave wall. “Who would die for someone they do not even know?”

“Ms. Wayne told me that it does not matter how special or awesome something is that a person does, it is the reason why that person does that thing,” I said.

The author sometimes uses inappropriate words. Marcus constantly calls Lynn “punk” (a term I’ve only ever heard referring to males). Fish swimming through the water are referred to as “figures” (a term I’ve only ever heard reffering to humans).

The story meanders through fairly predictable territory. The main surprises were those of incredulity. The reader is literally slapped across the face with Marcus’s instant transformation from ordinary boy into experienced survivalist and killing machine. He does survival tricks that no young teenager would know, instantly knows how to handle captured weapons, kills without mercy or conscience.

On a descriptive level, one of the most disappointing moments was when Marcus finally comes face-to-face with a fearsome beast that has been skulking in the wilderness. It is described as ten-feet-tall, black, with bright yellow eyes. That’s all the reader is given. We never know whether it’s hairy, scaly, whether it moves on two legs or four.

As a result of this review experience, I’ve actually changed my submission guidelines on the blog. I read for pleasure, and I would rather avoid having to read bad books altogether. But right now, my personal commitment to review everything I consume compels me to write this painful one.

Survival Op is just another title in a sea of poorly conceived, sloppily written, non-edited, novels that gives self-publishing a bad name. Sorry, Scott, I wanted it to be different, but I have to tell it like it is.

Mind’s Eye by Philip Henry

We begin with a bizarre death scene: Johnny Knox, a lonely teenager with a talent for drawing, is discovered one morning, dressed in his pyjamas, lying in his driveway, without a mark on him. Suicide, natural causes, or murder? No one knows. Classmate Steve Norton gets the first clue when leafing through Johnny’s art folder, where he discovers a portrait of a humanoid reptilian creature. Nothing strange in that; Johnny had a penchant for fantasy. Except this isn’t the first time Steve has seen the creature. The first time was in reality, when it was on his doorstep trying to get in and kill him. Clearly, Steve isn’t the only one who’s had an encounter with this beast. Where did the creature come from? What’s its purpose? Can it be stopped? Steve’s next move is to photocopy Johnny’s drawing and put it on the school’s noticeboard with his phone number .. and wait to see what happens.

Mind’s Eye is told from the perspective of Steve Norton as an adult looking back on his school days. It begins with a catchy hook: Fifteen years ago, the town of Portstewart was the scene of a series of strange deaths … Only three people knew the whole story of what really happened. I am one of those three. The author does a magnificent job capturing what it felt like to be sixteen, in particular how horny we were! Steve is tossed to and fro between his commitment to his girlfriend and his desire for other girls. At times, he seems like a cheating rat, but he never quite gets as far as actual cheating; it’s all in the intent. Henry handles the character so well that you feel empathy rather than contempt. I remember myself as a boy of semi-integrity, with a fairly noble heart, at the mercy of my sex drive. Steve Norton is like that. He reminds me of myself, and is the sort of friend I would have liked to have had. The sexual content also injects a great deal of light-hearted humour into the book, and never seems in bad taste.

The book is set in the real town of Portstewart, Northern Ireland, circa 1989, which happens to be the very year that I was sixteen. As such, it allowed me to experience a heart-warming time capsule that readers of other ages might miss. Bands like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi get talked about, as well as movies like Rambo, and such fashions as shell suits and headbands. At one point in the novel, a teacher responds to Steve’s headband with the remark, “You look like a bloody Comanche!” For some reason, this cracked me up more than any other line in the book; there was just something so perfectly Northern Irish about it. One slight mis-step that I found funny was the mention of the BBC microcomputer as state-of-the-art. Dude, 1989 was the era of the Commodore Amiga versus Atari ST war!

School life is quite dramatic in Mind’s Eye. There are a lot of sexual shennanigans and bullying going on. Class divisions are quite prevalent, with jocks and cheerleader types at the top, lording it over the common folk. This is the only aspect that didn’t ring true to life in Northern Ireland – at least in my neck of the woods. But I don’t want that to read like a criticism. Henry simply chose to portray school life in a fashion that seems more American (no offense to the Americans!). And it works just fine. If anything, it feels like the literary form of one of those teen horror flicks that emerge from the US every once in a while. In fact, I’ll go further: it feels like everything you wish those teen horror flicks were. Let’s face it, there are a lot of crappy teen flicks out there. Mind’s Eye would make a great one.

I haven’t said a great deal about the supernatural side of the story. That’s on purpose. I don’t want to spoil too much. The book is 233 pages long, divided into ten fairly evenly spaced chapters, each one a month in the life of Steve Norton. I found myself looking forward to each chapter, as each carried the story to somewhere new and unexpected; there was never a dull moment, and pacing was spot-on. What you get is a thoroughly enjoyable B-movie-esque monster mystery that is both serious and funny, filled with believable characters.

The novel has been self-published by the author. Grammar and punctuation (that ol’ self-publishing headache) are close to professional, needing just a little more work. No one but a hawkeye grammar-hound like me will spot anything amiss! I will, however, slap Henry’s wrist on the amateurish cover art. This also affords me an opportunity to ask you, dear reader, to overlook such considerations and get stuck into a great read. Someday, I’ll put together an official top ten list of self-published fiction that I’ve read. I can tell you right now, though, that this one occupies the number two slot. In fact, I had a lot more fun with this than with many a Stephen King novel. And if that doesn’t validate self-publishing, I don’t know what does.

Mind’s Eye is Philip Henry’s second novel. The first is Vampire Dawn, also reviewed here (a sequel, Vampire Twilight, is due later this year). Both books can be purchased through www.philiphenry.com (take note that the book is cheaper at Diggory Press – the author’s POD publisher, than at Amazon).

Autumn by David Moody

I recently bought myself a Pocket PC and I’ve been trying out various applications on it, one of which is that old niche interest: the ebook. The vague memory of a free zombie novel was the first to surface in my mind, so I hunted for David Moody’s site and downloaded Autumn. Turns out, it’s pretty good.

We begin with 99.99% of the population dying of some mysterious plague. Already we’re in different territory than George Romero. No zombies running amok, biting the population and creating yet more zombies; everyone but a handul of people dies.

People, industrious as they are, find a way to locate other people, and soon we have a small community of twenty-something, holing up in a community centre. Meanwhile, outdoors, the dead start to get up and walk. If this were a George Romero film, the zombies would be banging on the door trying to get in. But the zombies in Moody’s novel are simply mindless wanderers, with no inclination towards violence … yet.

It has been a long time since a horror novel made me feel anything, but there’s a particular scene in Autumn that gave me some genuine chills. Three of the survivors are making a home for themselves in an isolated country farmhouse. They’ve created a flimsy barrier around the property to keep the dead out. By the time they realise that the dead are learning to function better (and what they are learning is mainly aggression), it’s too late. The survivors have been lulled into a false sense of security, and they are now sitting ducks, surrounded by hundreds of zombies. There’s no telling if the inadequate barrier will hold back the onslaught.

Much is made of the idea that zombies are attracted by noise. It was quite chilling to consider that once you make the mistake of allowing yourself to be surrounded by the walking dead, it was no use simply switching off your noisy generator and hoping the zombies would disperse. The fact that the zombies themselves were moaning was enough to attract more zombies. Then those in turn would attract yet more: the snowball effect.

The story works so well because it is very personal. Moody gets into the characters lives and makes you care for them. There’s a lot of dialogue in Autumn. Occasionally, I got a little irritated by the constant need of the characters express their feelings. Things occasionally felt a bit repetitious, but mostly the dialogue worked to the story’s credit (except for all the pointless swearing). The only other irritation in the novel was the inclusion of one of those old “it was only a dream” chapters that you can see coming from a mile away. Thankfully, this affected only a minor sub-plot, not the whole novel.

Autumn is self-published, and with almost all self-published novels comes a certain lack of polish. I spotted a few typos, but for the most part the work was a smooth read. Moody makes a couple of grammatical mis-steps, but nothing to get in a twist over. In fact, the errors were consistent, revealing Moody to be a writer who cares a great deal about his work, but simply needs a little more growth.

Autumn is the first novel in a series. It is offered free for download at the author’s website in the hope that the reader will be motivated to continue the saga in paperback. The ending does leave you wanting more.