It's Complicated - A review of One Big Beautiful Thing by Marie Flanigan

It’s Complicated

Just when Kate’s life looks to be perfect, tragedy strikes. The man she loves is torn away in a tragic accident. A year later, still crushed by grief, her life shattered, she moves back to Arlington, where she grew up, in the hope of picking up the pieces and moving on. But moving on is harder than it sounds. Moving on means leaving Robert behind and that’s just too painful. 

Unfortunately, her heart has other ideas. Despite her best efforts, she’s drawn to Aiden. And that’s a problem. Because both of them are unattached but neither of them is free.  

Yes. It’s complicated.

One Big Beautiful Thing centres on Kate, a bright, talented young woman who life and its heartbreaks have convinced is undeserving of happiness. Despite the sadness and low self-esteem her warmth, compassion and intelligence make her a compelling and engaging character.  Contending with the judgemental attitudes of her mother and the Catholic community she’s surrounded by, and fighting her desire for Aiden, she embarks on reinventing her life, and discovering who she is and what she wants. 

This complex story follows Kate’s difficult and painful journey from despair to hope.  It explores the well of human emotions, with some truly touching moments and sparkling dialogue. Beautifully-written, it’s one of those books you’re glad has chapters. Otherwise you’d never be able to put it down!

If you liked ‘The After Wife’, you will love One Big Beautiful Thing.

An interview with Martine Lillycrop by Writing Ink Reviews.

WIR:      Hi, Martine.  Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about your latest novel, High Tide in the City.

ML:        No problem. I’m looking forward to it.

WIR:      High Tide in the City is a cyberpunk novel with a distinctly ‘noir’ atmosphere.  Several people have commented on its Chandleresque feel.  Do you read a lot of Raymond Chandler?

ML:        No.  Sorry, but I don’t.

When I started writing this, and in those days I was calling the book Persona, I wasn’t aiming to sound like anyone.  Nix’s voice was in my head and I just wrote him.

I’d never read any of Chandler’s work. Sad to admit, I’m a sci-fi geek, which might explain why everything I’ve written is in that genre.  I don’t tend to read outside of it, so when someone compared the style to Chandler’s, I must confess I felt a bit put out.  Now I’ve read some of Chandler’s work, I have to agree with the comparison.  Chandler is the master, though. I wouldn't put myself up there alongside him.

WIR:      The opening chapters appeared a few years ago on YouWriteOn.com, where it joined their Bestseller list as one of the highest-rated books. Is the current opening the same as the one published there?

ML:        There have been a lot of changes, partly due to there now being an ending.

I’m not a planner, I tend to go with the flow and see where it takes me.  That means I end up with a lot of extra stuff in the first draft. Some of which turns out to be useful and has a place in the finished piece, the rest gets dumped. So some of the scenes and details that appeared in that early incarnation have now gone, or have been replaced with an alternative.

WIR:      Presumably those changes are an improvement?

ML:        (laughs) Well, that’s the idea. It means the story’s not bogged down by irrelevant details or scenes that have no purpose. It makes for a cleaner book and a better story.

WIR:      As a prize for achieving such a high standard on YouWriteOn, Persona earned a free professional review.  How did it feel, having a well-known editor look over your work and give it a thumbs up?

ML:        Well, what can I say? Amazing!  An incredible opportunity.

 I get the impression the reviewer – Michael Legat – was a little puzzled by some aspects of my story. He didn’t let that stop him, though and delivered some really sound points to help me improve what I’d done so far. Sadly, he has now passed away, but I like the idea that some of his advice found its way into the pages of my novel.

WIR:      That’s a nice thought. 

Where did the inspiration for High Tide in the City come from?

ML:        That’s a difficult question. For a writer like me, things percolate subconsciously, so a lot of comments, articles, news reports and memes were probably working on me beneath the surface, and continued to do so while this novel was getting written. I often feel a novel writes itself.  Okay, yes, the writer writes it, but given free rein the end result is often vastly different (and superior) than the initial idea. At least, that’s my experience.

Part of it, I guess, was that I love Bristol as a city. It’s a beautiful place full of history and diversity. I suppose I wanted to ask myself what would happen if.  What would happen to Bristol if the sea levels rose to such a point that half of it was under water half of the time?  It already has a tidal range of 13 metres. That’s a lot of sea! That, plus the anticipated scarcity of fossil fuels in 2070, and the predicted rise in sea levels, was the perfect setting for my man Nix. 

WIR:      I love the fact that you’ve taken an ordinary, everyday city, transported it to the future and made it contemporary.   There are obvious differences – technology, environment -  but it isn’t far-fetched.  How did you strike a balance between making it futuristic and keeping it real?

ML:        If anything, I’ve underestimated the rate at which technology will move forward.  At its present levels, I think things will be far more advanced than I’ve envisioned for the 2070s. I endeavoured to restrain myself for the simple fact that I didn’t want it all to be too ‘glass and chrome’ and living under domes. I wanted gritty. I wanted things to be mean and nasty. I didn’t want laser guns or robots (although they’re there).  I wanted the people to be people, just like us. Not cyborgs or AIs (though they’re there, too). They’re there, but not evident, if that makes sense.

WIR:      I’m intrigued by these bracers.  They’re these computer/phone/passports gadgets that everyone wears on their wrist. An obvious progression from the mobile phone.  How did you get the idea?

ML:        Because they’re an obvious progression from mobile phones. (laughs)

WIR:      (laughs)  Oh, okay.

ML:        That’s what they are. It makes sense, right?  We already have bracers, just about. It’s just that no one’s got around to combining a wristwatch with a mobile phone and strapping it to their arm. In High Tide in the City, bracers do a lot more than phones, even todays’ phones.  But essentially, that’s all they are.

WIR:      The book is set in the UK, yet the protagonist, Nix, is an American. How does that work?

 ML:       This relates to the whole global warming, fuel scarcity thing in Nix’s world.  The United States has become a third world nation, due to a fifty year famine striking the American ‘Breadbasket’. They’ve run out of oil, they have no food, half the country is now desert. All that’s left are the coastal districts, which are under severe pressure to cope with the new Demographic. Anyone without squeaky clean paperwork is deported, and Nix’s mum (who was a single parent) was a Brit working in the States. So he’s actually English. Unfortunately his mother died when Nix was 14, and he was deported as a foreigner, even though he was born and raised in the states.  Thus the accent and the attitude.

WIR:      Will we be seeing more of Nix in the future?

ML:        I’m working on a sequel right now.  Don’t hold  your breath, though. I’m not what’s called prolific when it comes to churning out tomes.

WIR:      In the meantime, anyone who hasn’t read High Tide in the City can check it out on Amazon Kindle.

ML:        And it’s being released as a paperback on Amazon in the next couple of months.

WIR:      You can also get Martine’s other works, Blightspawn, and Under Verdant Skies on Kindle too, right?

ML:        That’s right.

WIR:      Thank you Martine, I’m looking forward to the sequel. Hurry up. Get writing!

High Tide in the City by Martine Lillycrop

I'm really pleased to have finally published my latest novel - High Tide in the City. This book's early incarnation won me a free professional review through YouWriteOn.com.

At the time it was entitled 'Persona' and the opening chapters reached the top 5 highest-rated for well over a month. It still remains in their bestseller charts.

High Tide in the City is a noirish cyberpunk novel set in the 2070's, in a world where fossil fuels have finally expired and global warming has raised the sea levels.  But that's not the story.

"When ex-cop Matt Nixon is called to a murder on the wrong side of town he thinks it’s business as usual. He couldn’t be more wrong.

But who’s going to believe he’s chasing a killer who’s already dead? And how will Nix stop him when he doesn’t know whose body the killer's wearing?

When the tide starts rising, it’s a race against time. And the clock is ticking." 

High Tide in the City is available on Amazon Kindle to either purchase or loan through Amazon Prime.
Paperback copies can be purchased through lulu.com right now, and will be available on Amazon in the near future.

The book is currently available for a low launch price. Buy now. High Tide in the City Kindle version.
or High Tide in the City paperback version.

For a quick taster, here's the opening few pages:

High Tide in the City

By

Martine Lillycrop

Chapter 1

Always knew there was a chance I’d kill someone. It was bound to come down to it one day: me killing someone, someone killing me. When it finally happened, the penny came down in my favour. Can’t say I’m sorry, though there’s those who might wonder why, given this is me. There’s some who’ve seen and done the things I’ve seen and done and come through it feeling nothing any more. So I always hoped I’d feel something, taking my first life.

As it happened, I did.

Couldn’t have been happier deleting the fucker’s ass.

*

Seem to remember it starting out on a night pretty much like any other. But back then, for me, most nights tended to be pretty much like any other. This one adopted the standard format - it was busy and it was raining.

Most cases are easy. Some, not so.

I already knew this wasn’t one of the simple ones. I knew because when I swung my hydro-job into the car-port, the ambulances were already there but the sense of urgency wasn’t.

This was my third call tonight - one rapist, one joy-riding senior citizen and now this. Which brings me to my job. What I do.

There’s this Native American saying.

‘Don’t judge a man till you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.’

These days that mile can get a person arrested. But it doesn’t stop them. If you’ve never tried it, you might wonder why. You might wonder what makes someone want a digi-chemical cocktail injected straight into their brain.

They say it’s for the experience - taking on a new persona, becoming someone else. Escaping themselves for a while. To an extent it’s true, but often it’s just for the needle. The cold, sharp stab at the base of the skull which gets colder and sharper as it goes deeper. Until your brain fills with stars like the universe has just been born inside your head and the endorphin rush hits, making you feel invincible. It fades as the squirt comes on. But some people do it, all of it, for those few seconds of feeling like God.

For others it’s the surrender. Because you have to, to get it in you. It’s impossible to upload a squirt yourself, get the needle just right so it goes in at the right angle, the right depth. Get it wrong, you’re blind or a vegetable. Or dead. So someone else has to do it. Usually the same someone who just sold you your black-market fix.

Handing your life over to a stranger, a criminal - letting them do something to you a qualified doctor would baulk at - it demands something of you. Gets to be a thrill, that total surrender, that flirting with death or coma.

Just so you can ‘Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’.

That was the tagline, back when it all started. Everyone wanted it then and everyone did it. Until it was found to be addictive, caused brain tumours, then suddenly doing it was illegal.

Then the trouble started for real, and black-market squirts aren’t clean - you can never be sure what you’re getting. Dirty squirt. The users mostly come off badly and their victims, worse.

Rain greyed out the street lamps like vertical smoke, but it hadn’t deterred the onlookers huddled outside the address. The night flickered white as two dozen data-cams strobed across me. Looked like someone had cashed in with a call to the Media Desk.

Media. I could almost read their minds: Photo opportunity - some guy stepping out of a car. They didn’t know who I was, why I was there, but they had to have me. Just in case there was a tasty morsel waiting there to be plucked over.

I might even make it onto the morning download again.

At least I’d shaved. Mind, eight hours later is long enough to make it look like I hadn’t bothered, but even so. Plus I always seem to miss that bit, just under the jaw - the bit the other guy never misses when he’s throwing punches at it.

Fuck ‘em, anyway. Wasn’t like I had to keep Public Relations sweet these days. With any luck the black stubble and sour face’ll keep me off the splash page. Ugly don’t sell.

I heeled the door of my converted Ford shut, blinking at the after-image scored across my retinas. Turned my collar up against the downpour and glanced round for whoever was in charge.

They saw me first.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

The voice came from behind - what I call clean British, not the cut-glass type, just clean. Barely any accent. The whip-crack tone made me wince.

‘Nixon. I forgot you worked nights.’

Yeah. Course you did.

I didn’t need to see the face to know who was standing there. My shoulders tensed anyway. I breathed it out before turning.

Rain had given her panda eyes. It dripped off the bun she’d pulled her hair into, turned escaped strands into slick dark lace which clung to her cheeks. The coat she wore fell to just below her calves and a stream ran off the bottom like a Japanese waterfall.

‘Need an umbrella?’ I asked.

She rolled her eyes. ‘My night’s already turned to shit. And now they send you? Who did I piss off this time?’

I managed a grin. ‘You look fantastic, by the way. Done something with your hair?’

She gave a sneer, but her bracer jangled before she could add anything. She flipped back the sleeve of her coat, turned away so the front fell open, showing me a tantalising glimpse of curvy figure beneath the fitted suit she wore. She twisted her wrist, so the screen lit her face, and gave the facia a brutal stabbing.

I sucked my teeth, feigning indifference while she answered.

Maybe I should explain. This was Lian. Detective Inspector Morrison. We used to be partners. Friends. More than friends. Before I got hooked. Before I got fired. Nothing like getting kicked off the Force for squirt addiction to turn a girl against you. But we’d been a team once. A good team.

Yeah, okay. Her approach and mine had always been different. Psychological profiling was her special skill, her strength. All very well for regular crims, but once we’d been assigned to the sparkling new Persona Task Force, all that extra schooling was pretty much redundant. Not according to her, though. I never understood why she didn’t get it. How can you profile someone who’s playing out a fantasy through another persona? Soon as the squirt dies, they’re different people - model citizens.

Me, I’d always gone for the suppliers. The sack-of-shit hard-asses who sold the squirts in the first place, after downloading them from some sad fuck arrogant enough to think other people wanted to be like them. So I went undercover. I entered that world. Did my best to turn it upside down.

I walked a lot of miles in that time, wore out a lot of different shoes. Closed down a few shoe-shops, too. Before it got out of hand.

I’d always known there was a price to pay - there usually is. But it was more than I’d counted on. Wasn’t the first time I’d heard that excuse from a user.

Pretty pathetic when I heard it from me.


Thanks for reading. I hope you like it enough to want to read more.

Don't forget there are other titles available : Blightspawn on Kindle or through lulu.com

Taunton Writer's Retreat

I've already got my place reserved and my laptop warmed up ready.  Can't wait for this to come around so I can get some real writing done!

Below are the details.  Visit http://www.wordsarama.co.uk/writers-anon-taunton-writing-retreat/ if you're in the area and you want to book up.

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL

Answer: Write

Ever wondered what makes a writer? Well, writers write. It’s as simple as that.
Do you:

• have a story in your head, but never seem to have time to work on it?
• always find that life gets in the way of you writing?
• feel guilty if you sit down to write knowing the dishes need doing or the dog needs walking?

If this sounds like you, then welcome to the Writers Anon Taunton Writing Retreat.
This writing retreat offers you the chance to buy a whole day out of life to simply sit down and write. No distractions, no interruptions.
Based in central Taunton, in Somerset, this is a one-day writing retreat hosted by local writing group, Writers Anon. We all know how hard it is to just get your bum in a seat and fingers on the keyboard (or pen) and that’s why we’re organising this retreat. This day will give you the time and space to write and meet other budding writers. And it’s designed to be fun. No furrowed brows and tortured artists here (unless you’re really into that, then go for it).

Writing retreat details
Time: 10am to 4pm
Date: 29 September 2012 – to coincide with Taunton Literary Festival 2012
Location: The Drawing Room, Taunton, Somerset, UK
Cost: £20 including refreshments and lunch

So what’s it all about?

Once you’ve booked your place at the retreat, simply turn up with pen and paper or laptop in hand. We have a short introduction and then it’s time to find yourself a spot and sit down and write. And that’s it. But with no household chores calling your name, no phone calls or the lure of TV and games, you’ll be surprised how much you can achieve.

You will receive a planning sheet, emailed to you in advance, to help you set your goals and ensure you get the most out of this one-day retreat. We will also provide some reference books, character sheets and writing prompts on the day, if you need some inspiration to get you going.
That book, play, article or short story won’t write itself, so get yourself to the Taunton Writing Retreat.

The Venue

The Drawing Room is a 200 year old pub, set in the historic heart of Taunton, across from the beautiful Castle Hotel and the recently restored Taunton Castle Museum. Our retreat is in the light and airy function room, offering tea and coffee-making facilities and a view over the Castle Green. With no main road nearby, we won’t be disturbed by the noise of traffic, This is an ideal location to getaway from it all for a few hours, but with the convenience of easy transport connections for when you want to get back to reality.

Luckily for us, The Drawing Room is managed by experienced caterers. The price of your writing day includes a delicious homemade buffet lunch, plus refreshments and biccies to keep us going throughout the day. And with good ales and wine available just downstairs, we think it’s a really good idea to take a moment to celebrate at the end of a hard day’s writing.
For just £20 you get time, peace and quiet, space to write, inspiration from other writers and good food. What are you waiting for?

For booking and payment details simply visit the above web address or email writersanon@hotmail.co.uk.

Spaces are limited, so book your place at the

Taunton Writing Retreat today and kick-start your writing project.

Veteran by Gavin Smith

I thought, when I bought this for my kindle, that a book from a large publishing house like Gollancz would guarantee a certain standard. Particularly given the £5.99 price tag (even on Kindle). I guess I just didn't - couldn't - believe the one- and two-star reviews it was getting on Amazon. This was Gollancz, for Christ's sake! Those reviewers were expecting something different? Maybe it was a matter of taste? How should I know? Unless, of course, I read it. So I did.

Well, I finally finished it and I now understand what those low ratings were about. 

It's not that it's a bad book. Indeed, it has a lot going for it. The settings involved some nice touches, such as the oil rig city, the nomadic country and the flooded US coast. All of them were visually powerful ideas, and well-rendered.

The main character, Jakob Douglas, is a veteran of an extraterrestrial war against 'Them'. (Can the human race, in this book, honestly not think up a proper name for their enemies. Is 'Them' the best technical and/or derogatory term the media, politicians, scientists, generals and thousands of battle-weary soldiers could come up with? Hmm. Okay, maybe.) So Douglas is a vet, now back on Earth. Scotland, to be precise. Nice. He's been cybernetically altered with loads of pretty cool hardware, which has been locked, now he's stood down, because he'd be a danger to the public if he had access to his weapons. Given his dreams, that's fair comment. The guy's head's a mess. Shortly after explaining all this to us, he's suddenly recalled and all his equipment is reactivated, leaving him to wreak havoc on some poor, unsuspecting bad guys. 
 

His boss, with whom Douglas has some pretty bad history, instructs him to go north to neutralise a downed 'Them' before it lets loose on the general public and annihilates half of Scotland. Following its trail, he encounters Morag, a young prostitute, who convinces him the Them is actually an okay guy and insists on helping it. Douglas decides to help her and in the process surrenders everything about his character that makes him interesting. From this point on, he's more often than not an observer in events he doesn't understand and can't control. When he does get involved - usually in the action sequences - the story takes on the dimension it lacks in the rest of it. It's a real shame, because the rest of it is, frankly, a bit crap.

The core idea has some merit - the nanomachine-like 'Them' construct melds with an AI to create an IT version of God, whose purpose is to give total access of every scrap of human information to absolutely everyone. You can see why the government want to stop it, right? Well, they try. Douglas and the band of merry men he's accumulated on the way aim to stop them. 

The problem lies in how we get from Douglas locating the Them to the final showdown, which, to be fair, is pretty spectacular. The pace during the intervening stretch is slow, littered with atrocious dialogue (three pages, at one point, debating the merits of the only female character at around the level of 'She's a whore', 'No she's not', 'Yes, she is', 'No she's not'). There were several scenes that didn't really have much point - including one where he's supposed to fight to the death just for someone's amusement. I mean, please!

The standard of writing leaves a lot to be desired, bordering, in places, on amateur. It's clear no professional editor even glanced through it, and at one point I actually put the book down, went online and checked whether this writer really was published by Gollancz or if he was taking their name in vain. He's there, on their author list. Come on Gollancz! If you aim to keep your reputation, you should at least employ a copy editor before you okay a book for publication!

It would have been nice if someone had paid attention to the layout, too. Block paragraphs. Really? The 458 pages the book apparently uses is probably more like 350, owing to the extra space taken up by blank lines between paragraphs. Okay, yeah. Now I'm being picky. But it annoyed me, all the same. It meant the layout was more like a typewritten essay than a published book. What's the word? Oh, yes. Unprofessional.

The final impression I got, and this is not to deride the author who, to be fair, has probably tried his best, and is at the mercy of Gollancz and their editorial crew, is that Veteran was meant to be Gollancz's answer to David Gunn's Death's Head series. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. Smith has a long way to go before he can call himself Gunn's rival. 

Would I read anything else by Gavin Smith? Well, I suspect this was his debut novel, and people grow. I might look at sample extracts of his subsequent novels and maybe take a chance. Maybe.

What Came After by Sam Winston

In a world where corporate greed has become the new fascism, where food has been deliberately poisoned by GM to control the masses and where fossil fuels are so limited only a small percentage of the population can access them, your best bet is to be born rich. Failing that, you have to be very smart and ready to do whatever it takes to protect your family.

When Anderson Carmichael, the richest man in the world, takes his son on a sightseeing car ride from New York to Boston, he wasn't planning on breaking down. But since the rare and ancient Hummer he's driving slips off the road and he and his boy are left stranded, what else is he supposed to do but let the local mechanic fix it? He's amazed that one of these people, these penniless workers left sick by the poisoned crops they grow, has the knowledge and skill to fix his car. He leaves the mechanic an IOU before taking off in his repaired Hummer and driving away, confident it's the last he'll ever see of Henry Weller.

But Henry Weller, isn't your usual Empowerment Zone guy. Not only is he super-smart, his five year old daughter, Penny, is going blind from eating bad food. And since the richest man in the world has left him an IOU, he decides to call him on it. This means a journey of several days, on foot, from Connecticut to New York, with his daughter on his shoulders and who knows what between them and their destination.

Sam Winston's main character, Henry Weller, is introduced as a quiet, gentle and generous man who sees no distinction between himself and Carmichael, despite the latter's privilege and wealth. When Weller is later pressed by circumstances, he demonstrates a stunningly deep and pragmatic core. His placid obstinacy in the face of threats and outright danger make him a force to be reckoned with and even Carmichael finds himself indulging him - at a price.

In order to gain the health care his daughter needs, Weller must embark on a far more dangerous journey to a destination even Black Rose, Carmichael's private army, dare not go.

The backdrop for all of this is a stricken United States, under-populated and fallen to ruin. Where populations do exist, the people are tied to PharmAgra, the only food company in existence, who cleanse the poisoned crops the workers have grown.  The workers must then buy it back as food, or eat untreated stuff and suffer the mutations and disease this entails. The distribution of wealth and power is so unbalanced in Winston's world, it's reminiscent of medieval feudal society, even to the point where people wear brands (sub-dermal smart-chips) to announce their status.

On the minus side, the writer's style is slightly unusual and takes a bit of getting used to - there were a few points at which I had to re-read in order to work out what was intended. Once or twice the point of view wandered from one character's head to another, again disengaging me from full immersion with the story. These are minor issues - the story itself is terrific. 

Besides, it's worth a read just to get to know Henry Weller, who is a true gem of a character.

You can purchase this ebook on Amazon.

http://www.whatcameafter.com/

I Am Alive - PS3 and XBLA

In a post-apocalyptic world, devastated by global earthquakes and ongoing tremors, you walk alone. Five hundred miles from home when the Event struck, you've spent a year walking back across a ruined United States. You've travelled roads littered with wrecked vehicles and split by ravines, you've climbed ruined buildings to stay above the poisonous fog hanging low over the devastated country. Food, medicine and ammunition are cripplingly scarce. Those few survivors you've met on the way are ready to kill to protect what scant supplies they have. Others are ready to kill to take yours from you.

Now you've reached Haventon, the city where you lived with your wife, Julia, and your daughter, Mary, before the Event . But, like everywhere else, this city is in ruins. To get to your old apartment, you have to pick your way through jumbled wreckage, find a safe way around broken chasms and over the towers of debris blocking your way. In addition, you also have to stay above the fog, which saps your stamina while you breathe it, and will kill you if you don't get clear in time.

You find your apartment empty with only a letter telling you your wife and daughter were evacuated, but not to where. Back outside you hear a young child crying. Thinking its your daughter, you go looking just in time to rescue Mai - not your daughter, but still a child in trouble - from thugs who no doubt have less than good intentions. There follows a series of missions, helping Mai, her mother, Linda, and their friend, Henry, to escape the city. During these missions there's opportunity to assist others in trouble, who in return provide retrys plus snippets of information about where your wife and daughter might have ended up.

As you wander, almost blind, through deadly fog, your stamina bar slowly drops and then starts pulsing. Tension rises as you fail to find anything to climb. You can't run, that uses more stamina, and when you find something to climb you know the bar will drop all the faster, since climbing burns more stamina again. Let it drop too far without finding a resting place, your fatigue also drops, meaning you only regain partial stamina when you do rest. If your fatigue drops to zero in the fog, you die. If it drops to zero while climbing, you fall. And die.

Luckily, fatigue (and stamina) can be replaced by resources if you have them. These appear as items - of which there are three main types: those which replace stamina, those which restore fatigue and those which restore health. When you find them, be careful how you use them. They're limited. Apocalypse. Hello?

Your health bar drops during combat, and drops fast. You can only take two or three hits - less if you're up against a firearm. In that respect, the game is realistic - frustratingly so, since you only have so many retrys and some NPCs have guns, while you have limited bullets. Run out of retrys and you have to load the game from the last save, which means replaying up to half an hour of game all over again before you reach the point where you died. You also use up those retrys on climbing missions, where you have to conserve energy, pick the quickest route and find a rest point as fast as possible. Before your fatigue runs out.

Combat is about strategy. There aren't enough bullets going around to waste, so it's not a case of spray and pray. Besides, a fair number of the people you meet, especially early on, are innocents and won't hurt you. Save your bullets for the more deserving. You can walk past some folk without any conflict, though they might warn you off and will retaliate if you attack them, and you have the option to help others with your resources (for which you earn a valuable retry). Some of more aggressive NPCs can be subdued just by pointing your gun at them, and you can force them back (into a fire or over a drop) by ordering them to back up. Some are more confident and will have a go, even if they only have a machete, especially if you're pointing an empty gun. Selecting which guy to shoot when faced with a group can make the difference between death and survival.

Given the often low visibility, your general vulnerability against attackers, the limited resources available and the constantly-dropping stamina bar, it's enough to get your heart thumping on a regular basis. Either that, or you'll find the game so limited in what your character can do you'll find it infuriating. The puzzle element involved in figuring out how to get from A to B, whilst not exactly taxing, was enough to keep me interested. Walking in haze, not knowing what or who might be up ahead got my heart thumping fairly regularly. The absence of zombies, mutants and aliens was refreshing. There's enough challenge there just from the environment.

On the whole I enjoyed the game and found it challenging, especially during the last few missions. I liked the moody music and the washed out colours which gave everything a mean, dirty look. I can see why some reviewers have rated it low, though. The game's not perfect.

The visibility can be annoying when you're lost and looking for the next area. When climbing, you sometimes grab the wrong hand-hold or move in the wrong direction when the camera is positioned above instead of behind you. Not good when you're low on stamina. In combat the pistol sights will sometimes fix onto the wrong target, and when it's a case of shoot the right guy, and fast, you don't want to be messing around, and you definitely don't want to shoot the wrong guy with your only bullet.

The game concludes suddenly and at a point where you think another mission is about to start. The final shot is ambiguous and leaves scope for a prequel/sequel, or even for extending this one into a full-length game.

For atmosphere, suspense, and the sense of desolation ripe throughout the story, I felt it was worth the money, even if the ending came way too soon and was hugely disappointing.

8/10