Oblivion by Anthony Horowitz - A Review

I think it was a month ago that I mentioned that I was reading Oblivion, the last in The Power of Five series. It's not that it took me that long to finish it, as it only took me a few days. And it's not that I was too busy to write a review. I mean I have been busy and I've written most of a novel since then but I could have found a spare few minutes to type something out. It's just that I don't want to. It's almost as if I'm waiting for the book to change, so that I can write a better review for it. But I've done basically nothing of use today so I thought I'd write this thing now, if only to get it out of the way.
As mentioned previously Oblivion is the fifth and last in Anthony Horowitz's The Power of Five series and it took long enough to get here. The previous book, Necropolis, was released in May 2009. I'm sure there's a good reason why there's such a gap but I can't say it did much for the reading experience. After I started Oblivion I became uncomfortably aware that I'd forgotten large amounts of what had happened in the previous books. While it did begin to filter back in there were a few things early on that didn't make any sense. As this is more of a personal problem I can't really fault the book for it so I merely mention it to give you some perspective on what I'm writing. Maybe some bits aren't necessary as bad as I make them out to be, maybe it's just my memory playing up.
The book is split into ten parts, eleven if you count the epilogue, and each focuses on one or more of the Five. As you might expect at the end of the last book they were all split up and sent to various places around the world. They've also, minor spoiler, been sent forward in time by several years and in the interim the world has gone to hell, which is always nice to see in books. The first section of the book focuses on Jamie, one of the twins that appeared in the third book Nightrise. Sadly you don't get to see things from his perspective. Instead he's got a narrator by the name of Holly following him around. Holly is one of those people who always annoy me in books. They seem vaguely baffled by everything around them and don't seem to serve any purpose except to be someone for something to happen to. Which is what you're supposed to look for in a narrator I suppose but it's still not quite what I was wanting. She also has the side effect of preventing us from getting Jamie's perspective on things. I don't think we hear what he has to say for the first section, which is a bit of a waste. I liked Jamie, who got on with things and did them with a minimum amount of whining. I suppose I should give Holly some slack seeing as most of the world has been destroyed but as most of that seems to have happened when she was too young to really remember I'm not sure that I really want to.
As far as storytelling goes Holly is my main gripe. We get to hear from everyone else as the novel progresses  and their stories and methods are usually a lot more interesting. I was slightly annoyed that Matt, the main protagonist is the first and second books and the leader of the Five, didn't appear until page 263 but his section was so good that it was probably worth the wait. No, the rest of my concerns lie with the actual events of the novel and specifically the ending.
Let me put it this way, the ending was rushed. It didn't feel satisfying and it left me wanting more. Most of the novel had been a build up to it, playing pieces moving into position in a satisfying cerebral way. It was like watching some giant game of chess. You could see the general strategy and what they were trying to do but you were never quite sure whether they were going to accomplish it. When everything eventually does come to a climax, a climax that has been building for over 642 pages, it's over after only four pages. It's like pushing a bolder up a hill to drop it off a cliff then watching it tumbling through the air. It's what you wanted but it was over so quickly and the air offered no resistance and you wonder whether it was really worth it after all. Then comes the ending. It's...complicated. Or at least it's complicated to describe without revealing anything. Let me just say that I've seen a similar thing done with two other series and I'd say that both handled it better. It was just such a sudden transition from what we had before and it didn't seem to conform with what we had come to expect.
Then comes the epilogue, or envoi as it's called in a very prim sort of way, and we're back with our new best friend Holly again. Truly this character annoys me. She's got a narration style something like a mix between a teenager and an old, slightly senile granny. She basically rounds everything off and gives us a bit of detail on what happened to all the characters. Well, most of the characters. For some reason we never get to hear what happened to one of the best and most fleshed out characters that was in the book, and she did it in such a way to make me even more annoyed. The envio basically confirms what we could have guessed but it's nice to read it. I don't think that there shouldn't have been one, I just don't think that Holly should have been the one to give it. But again it could just be my disdain towards this character that makes me think like this.
There are a few other things that take the edge off the novel, so to speak. The bad guys are bad. That's it. Most of them don't seem to have any real reason except that they're greedy and want power. It might be nice to see someone who got in with the Old Ones for the right reasons but got corrupted. Instead only one character seems to be able to pull of being a moral grey area without appearing weak and he becomes all the more interesting because of it. Another gripe is that for some odd reason everyone has decided, through means unspecified, that they should get together and attack the Old Ones in some great Final Battle. While I'm all for the sentiment it appears as though most of the world is still unaware that they have anyone but themselves to blame for the troubles that they're facing. Even some of the people who turned up waving weapons in a generally enthusiastic way don't believe in them. Which kind of begs the question as to why they are there in the first place.
The last issue I want to talk about is religion. Usually I don't like bringing religion into reviews because I don't think that it is particularly relevant but as there are a lot of religion images central to this book I think it would be wrong not to give them a passing mention. And there are a lot of them in here. Anyone who was forced to sit through their school's Easter and Christmas assemblies would be able to notice that. The only thing is that Horowitz seems to want to have his cake and eat it to. The Five, and one especially, are portrayed in a Messiah-esque light with parallels that are obvious to anyone except the blind. However the rest of organised religion is seen as incompetent at best and downright evil at worst. I'm fairly sure that there was even a reference to Catholic priests abusing young boys at one point. Being religious myself in a happy-go-lucky kind of way I found the transition jarring. I'm not saying that some good points weren't made in context but if you are going to borrow heavily from anyone it's nice to have some acknowledgements that some of them are alright.
After ranting a bit in the previous paragraphs I should balance out this review by saying that it wasn't all bad. Actually the majority of it was pretty good. The action was enjoyable to read and the special powers that each of the Five had were used well and, this is important, were not just overused. Actually getting everyone into position for the final showdown was fun to read and built a lot of good anticipation.Chapter 8 was just beautiful and one of the best pieces of writing I think I've ever seen in my life. Seriously, anyone wanting to see what good writing is supposed to look like should go and read that chapter. It's a masterpiece. And there were interesting characters, Holly being the exception not the rule.
So would I recommend that you buy it? Well it depends. If you have read all the other book then yes, definitely. It will give you closure and put a end to a successful series. If you were just going to read it as a stand alone novel, putting aside that reading the fifth in a series is a terrible idea? Not sure. It is a good book and it might just be the years that I've been waiting for this that means that it can't possibly live up to what has been inside my head. But Anthony Horowitz is one of the most skilled writers of teenage fiction around at the moment and, while not being quite what I hoped for, this is a solid book. So I'd leave the decision for you. Personally I'd give it a rating of six out of ten for all the reasons I mentioned above and here's the Amazon link if you feel that you want to read it anyway.

The Words. They come for me.

I am shattered so I'm going to make this very quick.

My schedule seems to have got very full very quickly. NaNoWriMo starts on Thursday and I'm planning on entering it. Before that happens I want to have got last year's novel, which I think its ok and might actually be publishable, into a good enough state to send off to some friends for editing. I'm currently in the 'improve what you've got' part and will shortly start on the 'add in as many words as you can.' This part is important because my book is currently only 168 or so pages long. And it needs to be much, much, longer. So I've got to write about 16,000 more words.

But that's not all! I've also got four, count em, four competitions that have to be finished at about the same time. I have to enter these because I have still to get a job and though I'm managing perfectly well at the moment eventually I will need money. And they offer money. So I'd like to enter them. But if I submit each story with the max amount of words I'll need to have written 23,500 words plus 40 lines of poetry before NaNoWriMo begins. Which, might I remind you, is Thursday.

Also on Thursday is my creative writing class. I have to also submit a short story for them, running to no more than 2,000 words which brings us up to a grand total of 25,500 words in the next five days. Which works out to about 5,100 words a day. Plus 40 lines of poetry.

I am so not going to sleep any time soon.

There's other news. What was it? Oh yes.

I'm in yet another competition! Because of eating and stuff. How I managed to finally get into it is a story in itself but one for another time. In this one a short story of mine plus a dozen or so others has been published (yay) on a mobile app. The one who has the most downloads before Halloween wins. The app is free and called Ether Books. You have to be on a iPhone or an iPad to get it. Android users might also be able to acquire it but that remains unconfirmed. Once you have the app you search for my name (Alexander McCall) and my short story should come up. It should look like this.


If you download it then it'll be one more step towards me being a published author and fairies will clean your dishes. Or something.

I am actually starting to see sentences highlighted in yellow floating in front of my eyes so I'll stop now and go to bed. It's going to be a long few days.

Pumpkins

I haven't posted anything in a wee while so I thought I'd throw together a blog post, just to make it look like this is actually an active blog. Also I fell asleep at five o'clock, woke up at midnight and now I can't get back to sleep.
A fair amount has been happening to me lately, though not much that I can post on here. I've been trying to write some stories for some competitions but I'm a bit rusty. To solve this I've decided to enter NaNoWriMo again this year. It's only eight or so days away and I don't know what I'm doing yet but it's not like that's stopped me in the past. I've also been working on last years NaNoNovel. It's actually looking not too bad, though very rough and ready. I'm planning to get it into a better state before starting the next one. Then again I plan a lot of things so who knows what will actually happen.
Although I don't have much chance to get books these days I do have a copy of Oblivion by Anthony Horowitz. However I've not really got into it yet. Mostly it's because it was so long since I've read the others in the series that I'm having trouble remembering who is who and what exactly happened. There's also the issue that the setting for this book is very different to the others. I'm going to get round to it eventually but it's not exactly been compelling me to read and I have other things to do.
On the subject of books, though I don't think we're ever off the subject on this blog, I've just been published again. In the Spring I entered a poetry competition with a prize of £1000. While I didn't win that, and honestly the winning poem about chickens was so good I don't care, I did get published in the anthology. It's called 'Animal Antics 2012' and while not quite as prestigious as Poetry Rivals it's still nice to once again be in print.
As a last piece of news filming just finished today on a short film for a university project. I mention this because I wrote the script (and was the general errand boy but that's not as prestigious.) The video still needs to be edited and put up on a YouTube channel, the name of which has not yet been decided, but it was still pretty amazing to see everything coming together. Hopefully there will be other videos in the future but for now I'm delighted in what we've achieved. When it is uploaded I will link it for your general perusal.
I think I'm finally feeling tired again so with that I bid you goodnight.

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan - A Review

Ah, the time has finally arrived. A new Percy Jackson book has appeared and much is the rejoicing across the land.
Ok, that might be over egging it a bit but it is roughly how I feel. There's very little you can say about the series that is bad (as long as you don't mention the movie. Never mention the movie.) You have a bunch of teenagers who run around with swords and fight monsters. You have well told myths and legends as a background. You get Greek gods who appear occasionally and either help or muck everything up. It's brilliant.
And it's well done. That's the important thing. You can have any amount of myths and legends but usually they're just a few well known ones that still seem a bit dated, no matter when it's based. With the Percy Jackson series they're all given modern context and this allows you to engage with them at a whole new level.
I should probably stop rambling on about how great the series is in general and focus on the book. Obviously if you haven't read any of the books prior to 'The Mark of Athena,' then stop reading this review now, go out and buy them. There will be spoilers for them, which just makes sense, considering that this is the eighth in the series.
When last we left our heroes it was all about to kick off. Percy had just been proclaimed Praetor and the Greeks and Jason were coming in their flying battleship to parlay. The epic quest to journey to Greece was about to get underway.
In other words there was a lot of expectation for this book to live up to. And I think it mostly managed.
There are a few things that might cause people some problems. There are seven demigods on the quest but we only see from the perspective of four of them; Annabeth, Leo, Piper and Percy. In that order. Which means that we don't see things from Percy's viewpoint, the main character of the first five books, until page 152. We don't get to see anything from the point of view of Jason, Hazel and Frank. This is quite a shame as they're supposed to be the Romans and this is the journey that takes them to Rome. So we see Rome through Greek eyes. This is probably on purpose but I really doubt that we're getting a Romans only book next time.
I also didn't find it as upbeat as it usually is. The Percy Jackson series often has problems solved in frankly ridiculous way or some light humour thrown in, like the karpoi offering everyone grain. There was some of that but all in all it was a more serious book.
That's the only criticisms that I can think of and to be honest I'm not even sure that they're criticisms rather than observations. Annabeth was slightly annoying at the start when she was missing Percy but that was quickly solved. Honestly I think the only reason I have an objection to that is because, since reading 'Twilight,' almost any romance seems off to me. The plot was fast paced and there were no obvious holes. The Greek and Roman legends were again used to great effect. And the combat was interesting.
Best of all there's going to be a sequel. Once again I'd thought that this was going to be the last in a series and I've been proved wrong. I have no idea when the next book will come out but I'm really looking forward to it.
All in all, I'm giving this book a nine out of ten.
And if you want to buy it, which I would recommend, the Amazon link is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heroes-Olympus-The-Mark-Athena/dp/0141335742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349879642&sr=8-1

The Sacrifice by Charlie Higson - A Review.

It took a while for my local bookshop to get copies so it was about a week after the book was released that I actually managed to get my hand on 'The Sacrifice,' the latest book in 'The Enemy' series by Charlie Higson. This is one series that I really enjoy. Set in London it's got zombies, the only people left alive are children and they all get killed in really brutal ways. It's great. The previous three books all started by following one main character and also showing events from the point of view of a few others. And at some point these main characters all died, further enforcing the point that no one was safe.

This book follows that same narrative structure (though I'm not going to tell you if the main character dies or not.) The web of people relating what's happening has spread, so you're getting a wider picture than you were in the previous books, where most of the characters joined up in some way. Higson has also decided to relate the cause of the outbreak. Sort of. Before we had the kids hypothesizing all the different reasons that the zombies could have come about, which ranged from government tests to global warming. It was actually pretty entertaining and I think that that ignorance was good. It reinforced that these are children and that they don't naturally know everything. I don't think we needed to know why the zombies were here or why they act in a particular way. But whatever. We're being given a reason so there you go.

Not, of course, that it's as easy as 'This is what happens.' By the end of the book you still don't know exactly what's going on, though you can probably make a pretty accurate guess. And this is another facet of ‘The Enemy’ series. You're left wondering what happened a lot of the time.

Let me explain. The first book in the series is The Enemy. It has a perfectly normal linear timeline, going from point A to point B. It ends at a bit of a cliffhanger but that just leaves you looking forward to the next book. However the next book, 'The Dead,' is a prequel, set a year before 'The Enemy' and featuring almost completely different characters. It expands the general background of the story and lets you know a small bit about one or two of the characters that appeared in 'The Enemy.' Then the third book, 'The Fear,' is a continuation of one of the characters from 'The Dead.' It happens about a year after the second book but about a week or so before the start of 'The Enemy.' It continues on, again involving some of the secondary characters from the other two books who are beginning to get pretty central and involved, and ends at roughly the same point as 'The Enemy.' This should leave us with another nice linear book, which can tie up all the previous points and round everything off nicely. I was fully expecting 'The Sacrifice,' to be the last in the series.

But no. Instead 'The Sacrifice' starts eight days after 'The Fear,' ends. It is, as I think I said, a more widely spread novel so we see roughly three different story lines as different groups go hither and yon. Again, we get people from the previous books and again the world is expanded nicely. But we don't go anywhere near the group from the first book and we're still left on the cliffhanger of what happened to them, a cliffhanger that has lasted through three separate books. That has to be some sort of record. I think that the next book will be the last and tie everything up but for all I know Charlie Higson could be slowly trolling us and the next book will be set in Paris two years in the future. I wouldn't put it past him.

Don't get me wrong. It's a really good, effective way to tell the story. We get to see each character from several different points of view, can emphasize with almost everyone and understand why they're doing it. It's made the cliffhanger bigger in fact as we know more about what that group will be facing. But I just what to know what happens next.

While I have said that all of the books are quite violent, and they really are, this is definitely the tamest of the lot. In 'The Enemy' the characters had survived for a year and so were pretty tough but there were a lot of dangers out there and a lot of people died. In 'The Dead,' the outbreak had only just happened so everyone was pretty inexperienced and a lot more people died. 'The Fear' was just a bloodbath from start to finish and I would really recommend not eating anything while reading the first fifty or so pages. (Take it from someone who knows. It's a really bad idea.) But 'The Sacrifice,' although a fair amount of people do die, is nothing compared to the others, especially 'The Fear.' I'm not sure why, whether Higson just didn't have as many characters that he wanted to kill off or whether he got a lot of complaint letters from parents about their children not sleeping after reading the last one. For whatever reason I'd say that the age rating could be a whole two years younger on this one than the others. Make of that what you will.

However for all that this is still a really good book. The characters are interesting and engaging, the story is well thought out, with a possible exception to the cause of the disease (But he hasn't fully explained it yet so I'm withholding judgement) and the details are suitably gory. So I heartily recommend this series and this book with a 7 out of 10 rating.

Here's the Amazon link in case you haven't bought it yet: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sacrifice-Enemy-Charlie-Higson/dp/0141336129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349493113&sr=8-1

So. It's been a while.

Blah, blah, blah, excuses. Blah, blah, blah, exams. Blah, blah, blah, laziness.

Long story short, I'm back.

I've not been up to much writing wise and, I'll be honest, I was hoping to move all this blog onto YouTube so more people could see me and so I might end up getting money. Weirder things have happened. But for whatever reason my main computer, with all its video-editing specialness, is not connecting to the internet. So I decided to just start this up again.

I'm currently at university studying creative writing among other things so I can't promise a regular schedule. Though I don't think I ever promised that. I will try to put up short stories and I'll certainly be doing book reviews, if I can afford any books, but I don't have a job right now so most of the short stories I'm writing I'm submitting to competitions in the hope of getting money. I'm also trying to get a novel finished and in a state where I can send it to a publisher, writing a radio play of my time in Borneo and doing any other writing I can possibly think of that will allow me to eat.

So.....basically that's what you're going to get. I'll continue to update any successes I manage and try to put actual content up. I'll put up short stories I've written for a joke or I don't think I can get any money for. And until I get my life more structured I can't promise anything else.

Why exactly do you follow this blog again?

Interesting things continue to happen

Time is passing way too quickly and my exams are right around the corner. Which is bad. However it does mean that Poetry Rivals Grand Slam is almost here. Which is good. A week on Saturday I'm heading down to Peterburgh to take part. If you're interested, though why you would be I can't imagine, I'll try and film it to put on my youtube channel.
In other news I'm in yet another competition. If you could go here and vote up the poem called 'The Troll,' then that would be great. It says it's written by Alexander McCall. Turns out they don't accept entrances by people called Skald.

Interesting things happening

This is my blog and so I'm going to start with some bragging.

I like to enter competitions from time to time and I've had some success in the past. Last October(ish) I entered a competition called Poetry Rivals. Nothing happened and so I then forgot about it.

Two days ago I arrived home to find a parcel on my doormat containing three copies of a book, my poem beaming up at me from the pages. I have to say right now that I don't think that the poem is that good but it's published so who cares.

Then yesterday I got a letter through the post, telling me that fifty of the poets published in the book are invited to an event in April, where they get to read their poem in front of a panel of judges. And the best one wins a laptop.

So, yeah, published and in with the chance of a laptop. I'm pretty happy.

Well while I'm here I might as well go over what else is happening in my life. Basically, I'm coming to the end of school and realising that I'm about to be spat into the real world. As such I'm going haywire on revision and also entering every competition I can find, mostly because I'm too lazy to get a real job. So you won't be hearing from me until halfway through June at the very least. Unless I win some of the aforesaid competitions. In which case I'll be right on here to brag about it.

Charred

“Do you remember what it used to be like?” the old man asked. “Do you remember what it was like before the Searing?”

Roamin looked round and swore. “Do you really think that this is the time?”

The old man ignored him and carried on talking. “I remember what it was like. Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

Roamin swore again and turned back to his men. The remnants of his squad hadn't paid any attention to the man. They were all busy barricading the doors to this shrine in the vain hope of keeping the beasts out for a little while longer.

It had all begun as just a routine patrolling mission. All they'd had to do was forage into Charr lands. Just check on the Charr's troop placement, make sure they weren't about to attack and maybe grab some supplies if possible. Then they’d seen this Charr camp and the old man who was being held prisoner. They had all known that they had to act. They all knew what Charr did to prisoners. And it had been a small camp after all. There weren’t that many people there.

Of course they didn’t know at that point that most were out on patrol.

They’d just freed the old man when the rest on the Charr had returned to camp. They’d had no idea that they were coming and the first they knew of them was when they’d crashed into their flank. They’d been out manoeuvred and outnumbered. All they could do was retreat back to this shrine. Now they were trapped here and the old man wouldn’t shut up.

“I remember it all. All of it. Do you?”

Roamin had just turned round to tell the old man to shut it when he stopped. The man was waving his hands about and a picture was forming. Roamin knew magic when he saw it.

“The fields were emerald green, and when the wind blew they would ripple like a pond. Children used to run and play in them. I used to run and play in them.”

The picture showed just that. Green grass with laughing children running everywhere. The look in their eyes was that of pure joy. Roamin, for whom this was just a distant memory, was quiet.

The old man continued, “The rivers used to lie like dropped ribbons and were a deep dark blue. In the evenings after work we’d all go down there and fish.” The picture changed again. This time it showed late afternoon, just after nightfall. There were small groups of people all along the bank, laughing and talking together. As the light began to fade they lit paper lanterns and floated them on the river.

“In the east the snow-capped mountains rose to challenge the sky. It was a peaceful place. That was where I went to learn.”

Again the picture changed. A snowy landscape stretched away into the distance. A tower rose in front of them, like a beached ship, green with age. A group of people were gathered around it, young students in billowing cloaks. One stood out from the rest, a pretty girl with blond hair, bright green eyes and a smiling face.

“That was where I fell in love.”

The scene changed again. This time it showed a city made out of white stone and behind it a great wall that stretched right across the picture. The sun was rising over the top of it and seemed to make everything glow with an almost holy brilliance. “Then there was the great city of Ascalon. A bastion of strength and hope. There was where I lived for years, where I married my sweet Valia.” The picture showed a shrine and the girl with green eyes in a white wedding gown, still smiling. The big wall was still visible in the background. “I had children there. I was happy. “The Great Northern Wall behind Ascalon stretched from the Blazeridge Mountains in the east to the Shiverpeaks in the west, cutting off our kingdom from the North. It was thought to be impregnable.

“Then the Charr came.”

The picture clearly showed a massed army of Charr, the large hairy beasts that looked more cat then man. It showed them launching attacks but always being repulsed. Apparently the old man had been in the front line.

“The Wall held strong. The first appearance of the Charr had shocked us but now we grew confident again. They couldn’t get pasted the Wall. They couldn’t hurt us.

“That was our mistake.”

The picture changed, showing a great gathering of Charr arranged in circles around some sort of bonfire.

“They prepared a great weapon, I don’t know how. That was when this once fair kingdom burned.”

The pictures changed from peaceful ones to horrific ones. Great crystals falling from the sky and smashing buildings to rubble. Fire consuming everything. People running for their lives. “It was chaos. Everyone was running. None of us in the Guards stayed. We all had loved ones. We all ran.

“I hurried through the streets bumping into people. Our house had been on a hill close to the Wall. It took me ages to get there, fighting against the flow of people while over head the crystals and fire still flew. I finally got there. I was too late.”

Another picture formed, a house with a jagged crystal smashed through the roof.

“I knew that I was already too late but still I searched. I searched and all across the kingdom the fields burned, the rivers boiled, the mountains were smashed to rubble. People were crying and dying and still I searched.

“The bloody red sun had set on the landscape when I found them. They were all dead.”

The images still formed, though they were now blurred, as though the old man was looking through water. It showed the girl, now a woman, her hair matted with blood that had flowed through a hole in the back of her head. She was clutching the bodies of two small children in her arms. A third lay a distance away. The first two were dead but the third one stirred slightly.

“One of my sons still lived. That brought brief light into my life. But that light was soon extinguished. He’d inhaled too much smoke. He died shortly before dawn.”

The image changed again. This time it showed four freshly filled graves.

“My life was now filled with blackness. I didn’t have anything left to live for. But I climbed to the top of the hill to see what was left of the kingdom that I’d loved.”

The picture changed for the final time. Now it showed the landscape that Roamin was familiar with. Black, scorched ground. Hills where there hadn’t been before. Deep furrows gouged into the earth.

“My kingdom, my home had burned. My family were all dead, consumed by the same fire that had taken everything from me.”

The image faded away and left the men in stunned silence. Many were crying. But underneath them all was the sound of death. The Charr were breaking in.

Roamin swore and turned to face them, tears running down his face, his sword drawn, determined to sell his life, to kill the monsters who’d done this. Behind him the old man still spoke.

“They took everything from me. And all they left behind them was death. I hate them. I hate them!”

The door fell and Roamin saw them looking through, their furry lips held back in a snarl. Then the old man pushed in front of him. There was a mad fury in his eyes. “By fire they burned! And by fire they will burn.”

The old man thrust out his hands in front of him and fire gushed from them, burning everything before it, making flesh bubble and melt. The Charr tried to run but none escaped the terrible wrath of the fire wizard. The pyromancer took them all.

Roamin stepped carefully through the door and looked around. The Charr were all gone. All that was left was piles of ashes, showing the occasional sickening glisten of bone.

Roamin turned round to thank the old man, to say something, anything, about his home, his family and about what they both had lost.

But he was too late. The old man was already dead.

Yay. We're all going to die

Or in other words, happy New Year. It's 2012 and will the world end? Who knows.
Right, so the story I'm putting up now I actually wrote a few years ago while waiting for a plane in an airport. It's based in the Guild Wars universe and signal a small change in the way I'm going to be doing things. What I'm going to do with it is put it up here and also on some other websites, ones actually dedicated to the game. Hopefully that should generate more interest. I'm also going to do something else with it but that applies to the secret project that I've been babbling on about for ages and should now be coming to light. Well, we'll see.