The Book Plank

No Hero by Jonathan Wood, Arthur Wallace #1 "What would Kurt Russell do?" Oxford police detective Arthur Wallace asks himself that question a lot. Because Arthur is no hero. He's a good cop, but prefers that action and heroics remain on the screen, safely performed by professionals. But then, secretive government agency MI37 comes calling, hoping to recruit Arthur in their struggle against the tentacled horrors from another dimension known as the Progeny. But Arthur is NO HERO! Can an everyman stand against sanity-ripping cosmic horrors? No Hero actually escaped my attention when it was first released by Titan Books, it is that I saw the release of the sequel, Yesterday's Hero , which is out later this year that I found out that it was the second book in the Arthur Wallace series. Reading the synopsis of No Hero promised a lot of fun, last year I had the pleasure to read Guy Adams' The Clown Service which also goes about a secret service agency set in En...

1. The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs, Gollancz In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way upstream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it – from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do. In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who is the key to peace between warring nations and survival for the Empire. When a callow mercenary saves the life of the Governor on an ill-fated hunting party, the two groups are thrown together. For Fisk and Shoe – two tough, honourable mercenaries surrounded by corruption, who know they can always and only rely on each other – their...