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Changing Of Faces by Tim Lebbon. check out website: www.pspublishing.co.uk
Thus it is nice to see a publisher prepared to cultivate them as a niche market. ‘Changing Of Faces’ is one of a series of collectable books being produced by PS Publishing. They are numbered limited edition volumes, nicely presented and with an insert signed by the author.
Tim Lebbon is a highly respected author in the horror field. Here he is examining the way in which people react in the face of disaster. Some authors will start right at the beginning, establishing their characters before gradually having the disaster creep up upon them such as in Stephen King's ‘The Stand’, a thousand page epic of before, during and after a plague wipes out most of the human population of the USA. Lebbon drops us into the latter stages. In a minimum of words, scattered throughout the text we discover that some kind of plague has swept across Britain, killing most living organisms, including plants and resurrecting them to infect others. The word ‘zombie’ is not used but the implication is there. A small group of survivors has found a kind of sanctuary on a beached ferry. They are just beginning to hope that it is all over. Then a giant crow punches its way through a steel door, intent on eating those on the other side. It is not alone. With death or dawn, the were-animals revert to their human form and the group is smaller. The viewpoint character is the youngest of the survivors. At twelve, Jack is on the edge of puberty and still, despite the traumas he has been through, has a sense of curiosity and adventure. It is this that leads him to follow Lucy when she leaves the ferry, heading back to her hometown and the place that, she says, the were-animals come from. This is a very fine closely observed piece. The sense of terror is heightened because it is unexpected and tightly focused. The desperation of the characters comes across in the writing. For those that like the frisson that good horror gives, this is a gem. Pauline Morgan
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OTHER REVIEWS - May 2004
Non Fiction Mythology: The DC Comics Art Of Alex Ross Futures: 50 Years In Space The Challenge Of The Stars by David A. Hardy and Patrick Moore Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon: Second Edition by Brian Roseberry DVDs Babylon 5: The Complete First Season: Signs and Portents Fantasy Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson The Siege Of Mithila by Ashok K. Banker Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan The Destroyer Goddess by Laura Resnick The Weavers Of Saramyr by Chris Wooding The Iron Grail by Robert Holdstock Faerie Tales edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davies Darknesses by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Slipstream Changing Of Faces by Tim Lebbon Karloff’s Circus by Steve Aylett The Well Of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde Science Fiction The Golden Globe by John Varley Market Forces by Richard Morgan It Came From Outer Space screenplay by Ray Bradbury A Gift Of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey Different Kinds Of Darkness by David Langford Felaheen The Third Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Absolution Gap by Adrian Reynolds The Line Of Polity by Neal Asher The Affinity Trap by Martin Sketchley Natural History by Justina Robson Horror Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harris Magazines
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Finding
a market for novella-length stories is always difficult. They are
too long for most magazines and too short to interest the major
publishing houses.
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