Happy book birthday to me! 2020 may not have brought much to celebrate, but I'm thrilled that To End All Wars, the third of the three novels that I wrote way back when I first put my day job behind me, finally gets to see the light of day.
To End All Wars is the most personal book I've written. That seems an absurd statement on the face of it, when The Bad Neighbour is set around where I live and even draws upon a few of my own experiences. And perhaps what I really mean to say is, more of me went into To End All Wars than anything else I've written. Nothing I've done better reflects my interests, my opinions, or the topics that fascinate me, and perhaps that's most apparent when I try and talk about what genre it belongs to. Clearly it's a historical novel, because it's set during the First World War, with the opening chapters taking place in the trenches of the Western Front and in No Man's Land. But then there's the question of the strange encounter my protagonist Lieutenant Rafael Forrester has when he's out there, and which leads him ultimately back to his homeland and a country house hospital in the north of England, where yet stranger experiences await; that's definitely the stuff of genre fiction, and that hospital, with its inexplicable rules and weird ambience, has more than a little of The Prisoner about it. Only, from there, To End All Wars will go on to be a thriller and an adventure novel, will toy with horror, will even tell a love story or two...
I realise I run the risk of making it sound like a crazy mishmash of ideas and genres, and I'm not going to claim it isn't that. But in many ways, To End All Wars may actually be the most focused of my novels. Ultimately, it's the story of Rafael Forrester, who begins the book doubting himself and the war he's fighting in, and ends it ... well, let's just say, in a very different place. And part of why I hope the sheer amount of ingredients that went into it didn't lead to an almighty mess is that I put an inordinate amount of work into getting the details right. I'm sure I drove my editors at Aethon nuts with the degree to which I wouldn't let go until I was as sure as I could be that I was happy with every last word! Nevertheless, I've no regrets; I love this book. And I hope, perhaps more than with anything I've written, even including my debut Giant Thief, that others will love it too, or at least be challenged and haunted and affected by it.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Obviously, it's early days yet, but there have been a couple of highly positive responses. Ros Jackson reviewed To End All Wars on her site Warpcore SF here, and concluded both that it's "...a gritty story that balances action with moral questions, and mixes credible history with the fantastic" and that it's "...well researched and enjoyable" (though actually, Ros's observation that bits of the dialogue reminded her of how her grandfather used to talk was by far my favourite part.) And a fellow author you might have heard of, the multi-award-winning Adrian Tchaikovsky, was kind enough to take a look and concluded that To End All Wars is "thoughtful and atmospheric" and "a haunting story about loss, empathy and the human soul." So that's nice.
Should that suffice to whet your appetite, you can buy To End All Wars in e-book and paperback, as you'd expect. But if you want to experience the story at its very best, I heartily recommend having a listen to the audiobook. Audiobooks are something of a speciality for Aethon, and they went all out on this one; from the samples I've heard, actor MacLeod Andrews has done an exemplary job of bringing the text and its characters to life, and his remarkably good impression of an English accent will now and forever be the voice of Rafael Forrester in my head. Also, I think I like that gorgeous cover art slightly more in its square incarnation!
And there we have it. You can pick up To End All Wars online in all the usual sorts of places, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. With Aethon being a somewhat smaller press and me being far from a big name author, those week-one sales really count, so if you'd like to support us along with reading / listening to a book that hopefully you'll thoroughly enjoy, now's the time to grab a copy.
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