I was introduced to Elizabeth Bear the other weekend whilst I was helping some friends break in their new allotment. Her debut novel is set in a Shadowrun style environment, 50 years in the future. The gulf stream has packed up, the USA isn’t so united any more, the sole remaining superpower is Canada and transnational corporations are all the rage.

The story, however, is what sets this apart from all the other shadowrun novels I’ve been ploughing through of late. The heroine is a 50year old, world weary combat veteren who, with her group of equally heroic friends, is uniquely qualified to save the day. True, there are one or two characters who meet the usual sterotype of a cybernetically boosted street samurai, but even they’re tempered with a degree of normality and a liberally applied sense of cool taken straight out of film noir. Richard Feymann gets one of the more gratiuitous characters, lending his name to a rakish AI who runs round the Matrix in an amusing and morally ambiguous way. If the book has a weakness, it’s that the antagonists are given the same treatment as the good guys and, well, they’re insufficiently evil.

It wasn’t the smoothest book I’ve ever read, but the story arc is compelling and leaves you wanting the next one. Luckily there’re another 2 in the series.

I found Sniper One to be a particularly gripping read, I picked it up one Sunday morning and then proceeded to devour it cover to cover that afternoon in the armchair by the fire (awww). It’s an account of an Sergeant from the British Infantry’s tour of duty in Iraq from 4 years ago and is presented in the first person.

I found the style very similar to Andy McNab’s earlier books, the sentences were kept short and snappy, the action fast and furious. The conversations and comments were very much towards my sense of humour, very deadpan and matter of fact, not at all politically correct and taken from a highly British point of view. All of the soldiers from his unit were strong, mostly likable characters, who had a clearly infectious enthusiasm for their chosen profession. All the usual military terms and codenames were explained as they went along and most of the scenes and bits of equipment wouldn’t have been out of place in any modern military story.

It’s definately not for children, some of the scenes would be horrific if your suspension of disbelief isn’t quite tuned in and the language. It’s refreshing to come across one small corner of the war that isn’t presented in the same “everything’s going to be alright, we’re all winning here” that the home media consistently reports. I clearly don’t know which is correct, but the contrast is pleasing.

The book is easy reading and I’m glad Sgt Dan Mills took the time to write it.

Like a good little customer, I occasionally do what Momma Amazon says and click on links entitled “people that liked <large pile of books I’ve just ordered > also liked <book>”, the result of which was a novel called Magic Bites by a new author, Ilona Andrews.

I frequently read swords and sorcery type fantasy escapism, but they’re normally set in Medieval times rather than an approximation of the modern world. Apparently the genre is called urban fantasy, think Buffy the Vampire Slayer but less teenage.

All the usual elements were present in this book, hero protagonist, swords, vampires, werewolves, police agencies and knightly orders and an amateur whodunnit plot, but what made this book noteworthy was that it was all brought together in a relatively uncontrived way with the liberal application of my favourite sort of humour, deadpan understatement.

The author only resorted to outright explanation of the world to introduce their unique ideas, such as the swings between ‘magic’ and ‘tech’ phases, and things like lights and clapped out car engines that ran on water and ambient magic. Everything else fell into place in my imagination with only the occasional pause to laugh out loud and get subsequently glared at for failing to share. Some scenes were a little more graphic than I normally find, but only when necessary to convey a certain character or plot device.

For an author’s first book, I found it to be a remarkably good read and I’ll be both buying the next in the series (not sure mail order will be fast enough) and exploring other authors in that genre (with the aid of Ilona Andrew’s Myspace site)