David J. Williams

Richard Morgan triggered more than a little stir in the gaming community earlier this week, when he celebrated his winning the Crysis sequel job by doing a drive-by on the writing in various other games . . . Halo is “full of bullshit archetypal characters” . . . Arkham Asylum features “the stupid girl with big tits” . . . Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 2 is “just a bunch of mission levels” . .  you get the idea.   Predictably, the gaming community reacted like a bee hive getting poked with a stick.

The key word being:  predictably.

Richard knows what he’s doing, of course. Indeed, he does it every time he embarks on a new venture in his career, the last one being when he announced the release of his first fantasy novel by digging up the corpse of J.R.R. Tolkein and sodomizing it.  I exaggerate….but judging from the way Tolkein’s legions reacted to his criticism that Lord of the Rings was essentially a puerile piece of crap, you’d have think that’s exactly what happened.

But all that was going on was Richard getting more attention for his book.  Same way he just got that much more attention for the Crysis sequel.  Knowing him, he’ll probably do a pretty good job with it too . . unlike a lot of writers with a genius for self-promotion, Richard actually delivers the goods, as anyone who’s read ALTERED CARBON can tell you.

And he picks his targets carefully.  Were he to pen a mainstream novel, he’d have an article in the Guardian about how Hemingway was too drunk to write his way out of a paper bag.  If he writes a scifi movie script, we’ll have a rant about how everything from Star Wars on sucks balls.  Part of it may just be the natural ambition of a writer who wants to take everything he does to the next level.  But most of it’s a matter of page-views and eyeballs.  Looking at the man’s career thus far, it’s kinda hard to argue with the results.

Mike Collins over at the awesomely-named Rescued by Nerds has reviewed BURNING SKIES. Mike starts off by saying that MIRRORED HEAVENS was “easily my favorite book of last year” (!), but he has this to say about the sequel:

So my verdict on BURNING SKIES? I can say without any hesitation that it wipes the floor with MIRRORED HEAVENS. This is Dave on steroids. The action is bigger, the conspiracies are deeper and the stakes are through the roof. . . .

Most of the book takes place on the fantastically conceived Europa Platform where we go from one wild action scene to the next. The pace is absolutely relentless and thrilling all the while. We learn bits of relevant information in the course of all the action. It reads fast, but it’s not lacking in depth. It builds to a conclusion that I certainly didn’t expect. One character makes a reveal that changes everything you’ve thought to that point and Dave ends with the boldest cliffhanger I’ve read in a long, long time. This is like Darth Vader revealing he’s Luke Skywalker’s father big. It’s a stunning conclusion. . . .

After Mirrored Heavens I thought Dave was very much a writer in the vein of Richard Morgan. Bombastic action scenes and a tough edge. After Burning Skies I think Dave is standing toe to toe with Morgan at his best. I can’t pay him a higher compliment than that.

BURNING SKIES is available from Amazon and other fine bookstores!