STAR WARS Episode VII finds its writer

According to Hollywood sources, screenwriter Michael Arndt has written a 50-page story treatment for Star Wars: Episode VII and is a front-runner to write the full script.

Arndt has previously written Little Miss Sunshine (which he won an Oscar) and Toy Story 3 (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). He has also written the scripts for the in-production The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Oblivion, a major SF movie starring Tom Cruise. He is also working on an as-yet-untitled Pixar movie for 2015.

Arndt is a logical choice for the role as he has lectured extensively on Hollywood scriptwriting, often citing the 22-second climax of the original Star Wars (between Han Solo destroying one of the TIE Fighters during the trench run and the Death Star blowing up) as the perfect emotional end to a film.

Apparently the treatment is currently doing the rounds of directors, with copies sent to Brad Bird, Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams. Spielberg and Abrams are far too busy with other projects to be able to helm Episode VII, but could handle either VIII or IX further down the road. Bird is a firm fan-favourite choice for the role of director on the film but may also be unavailable, with him having committed to the disaster picture 1906 and then a big SF epic called 1952.

At the moment it appears that Disney want to include Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in the new films, possibly in extended cameos as the baton is passed to a new generation of characters. Apparently the new trilogy will form an all-new story, not based on any pre-existing Star Wars storyline.

The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

Elisa, Queen Regnant of Joya d'Arena, has defeated the invading armies of Invierne. However, she finds ruling her new nation difficult. An outsider from another land, her commands are not respected and she faces challenges from both the nobility and the masses, whose taxes must pay for the rebuilding of the country. Elisa must also face down a renewed threat from Invierne. Defeated on the battlefield, they now play a game of misinformation and intrigue, with assassins stalking the rooftops of Elisa's capital. In the midst of this Elisa discovers a vital clue to the origins of the magic of her Godstone, but dare she leave the capital in the hands of her rivals to pursue this quest?

The Crown of Embers is the sequel to Fire and Thorns and is the middle volume of a trilogy. Like its predecessor, the book is an easy, light read but is unfortunately rather less successful. Whilst the first book featured a solid, eventful plot which unfolded with focused conciseness (a relief from the too-many flabby epic fantasies around), this second book is comparatively uneventful and repetitive. There are several assassination attempts, which are foiled. Elisa angsts over how to rule her kingdom more effectively, to no conclusion. She angsts who whom she should marry for the good of the kingdom, to no conclusion. She moons over a potential love interest, even in the middle of a dire assassination attempt. Rinse and repeat.

These problems are confounded by regressive characterisation of the lead: Elisa evolved, in a standard but nevertheless reasonably-well-handled way, from coddled princess to warrior leader in the first book. In this second volume she seems to lose all of the confidence and skills gained in the first book and becomes a lame duck ruler, unable to assert her authority. This would be more convincing had we not seen Elisa already weld a band of desert villagers into a fearsome guerrilla army. No real explanation is given for Elisa's fall from competence in this volume save it was necessary for plot purposes. Some of the secondary cast get some decent character development (such as Tristan, one of Elisa's potential suitors), but overall the characters are less interesting than in the first book.

Where the novel does spring to live is in its depiction of the unusual magic system and the revelation that a lot of what is assumed about the world's backstory may be untrue. But these moments where character (and reader) assumptions are overturned are fleetingly brief. Otherwise for the bulk of the novel we are subjected to pretty standard YA fantasy fare, with the added irritation of an undercooked love story that utterly fails to convince.

The Crown of Embers (**) is a serious letdown after the first novel in the sequence. There are flashes of inspiration and interest, but overall this is a book that is content to rest on its laurels rather than build on the successes of its predecessor. It is available now in the UK and USA.

ELITE 4 Kickstarter announced

David Braben and Frontier Developments have put up a Kickstarter page for Elite: Dangerous, the long-awaited fourth game in the Elite series.

In visual terms, this was 1984's answer to Crysis II.

The original Elite was released in 1984 on the BBC Micro and is one of the most famous, seminal and game-changing titles of all time. It was an open-universe game in which you took a spaceship and could trade and fight your way across eight galaxies and some 2,000 star systems, all in (wireframe) 3D. It was the first major 3D game and one of the first games to give you total freedom in how you approached playing it. The sequel, Frontier: Elite II was released in 1993 and featured filled-in 3D graphics, multiple controllable spacecraft, an even vaster universe (hundreds of millions of procedurally-generated star systems in a - somewhat - accurate recreation of the Milky Way) and the ability to land on planets. The third game, First Encounters: Frontier II was released in 1995 and was notable for the number of bugs present in the game, resulting in a lawsuit between the developers and the publisher.

Braben has been teasing fans with the possibility of an Elite IV for many years before announcing this Kickstarter project. Braben indicates that raising funds the traditional way has been difficult, and he's only been able to spare a few developers to work on the project in moments of spare time, hence the decision to go down the Kickstarter route.

So far, mixed feelings. On the one hand, Elite was a seminal, brilliant game, a total gamechanger and one of the biggest steps forward in the history of the form. Frontier was also a very solid game, even if its ambition exceeded its grasp. However, the Kickstarter page is scant on details about the proposed title: no graphics or videos have been posted, which is odd for a game that's been in development (even if at a low ebb) for several years already. So far the only hard info that's been released is that the game will have modern graphics (as you'd expect) and some form of multiplayer component (as you'd expect). Otherwise there seems little to distinguish it from the X series of space sims or Chris Roberts's recently-announced Star Citizen (or even EVE Online, though presumably Elite IV will have direct 'twitch' controls rather than the mouse-driven interface of that title).

Still, with 10% of the funding already raised within hours of the announcement and even the BBC running a news story on it, it looks likely that this will be funded. Certainly a project worth keeping an eye on.

Coldplay drummer joins GAME OF THRONES cast

Will Champion, the drummer (and also occasional guitarist, bassist and singer) of Coldplay, has joined the cast for the third season of Game of Thrones. Champion will have a small role as 'a drummer'. Other details about his role are shrouded in secrecy.

Champion is the fourth notable musician to work on the show. Former easy listenin' crooner Jerome Flynn has a recurring major role as Bronn whilst ex-Blockhead Wilko Johnson is Ser Ilyn Payne, of course, whilst the lead singer of Snow Patrol, Gary Lightbody, also has a cameo role in the upcoming third season.

Batman: Arkham City

Several months have passed since Batman defeated the Joker's attempt to take over Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately, the asylum was almost overrun by Poison Ivy's out-of-control plants in the process, rendering it useless. To replace it, a section of Gotham City's run-down docklands has been sealed off and converted into a new prison and asylum, with most of the city's most dangerous criminals incarcerated there. Appalled, Bruce Wayne enters politics in an attempt to shut down the facility, only to find himself arrested and thrown into the prison. He has to survive, find a way of resuming his Batman persona and bring down both those running the prison and defeat its array of inmates at the same time.

Arkham City is the direct sequel and follow-up to 2009's Arkham Asylum. Arkham Asylum was the game that, after dozens of failed attempts, finally 'got' the Dark Knight and made him into a credible computer game character. It did this by giving Batman a strong, dark storyline to follow, an array of gadgets to use (both in investigations and combat) and welding together the 'gritty' approach favoured by Christopher Nolan's movies with the more colourful and bizarre world of the Batman comics. It also had a great combat system and some solid stealth mechanics.

The follow-up is, inevitably, bigger and more epic. Arkham City sprawls across a much vaster area than the old asylum and is open to exploration from the very start (the asylum unlocked section-by-section as you went through the game and was more linear). The game is also divided neatly into both the main storyline and a series of side-missions, some of which are quite lengthy and involved in themselves. The main storyline involves Batman having to face (and, in some cases, work alongside) villains such as the Joker, Two-Face, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze and Ra's Al Ghul before taking on the director of the prison, the sinister Hugo Strange. However, a ton of other villains show up in the side-missions, including Deadshot, Zasz, Killer Croc (though only in a brief cameo), the Mad Hatter and Bane. Rather than feeling over-saturated, like almost any superhero movie with more than two villains, this gives the game the feeling of existing in an already-extant world, with a large amount of optional information available (via the Batcomputer) to fill players less-versed in the DC Universe on who these people are.

As with Arkham Asylum, the game involves tracking down clues to solve mysteries and beating a quite staggering number of thugs into unconsciousness. The game's setting also allows you to spend quite a lot of time perched precariously on building corners, gazing broodily into the night before spotting some passing thugs beating up a civilian and swooping down to deliver some vengeance. The setting allows you to 'be' Batman even more completely than Arkham Asylum, which is highly satisfying.

That said, the open world environment does offer some problems as well as some improvements over the first game. The first game benefited highly from its focused, linear structure that gradually opened up the asylum as you progressed (and allowing you to backtrack and reach previously-inaccessible areas with later-acquired gadgets). This second game sprawls flabbily in its opening sections, with the game taking a while to give you some sense of what you are trying to do. Once it does and you're alternating the main storyline with optional sub-missions the game kicks into a higher gear, but it's a slight disappointment that Arkham City isn't on fire from its opening moments the same way its predecessor managed.

The biggest surprise from the game is that the bigger setting doesn't necessarily translate into a notably different experience from the first game. There's about half again as much content (I completed Arkham Asylum in 11 hours and City in about 17) and a few more major locations, but the game's bigger canvas often translates in you taking three minutes of rooftop-swinging to move between locations rather than a minute of running as in in Arkham Asylum. The game - surprisingly - reuses the same locations several times over missions just as Asylum did in a clear cost-saving move, and after a while you realise that more than 90% of the buildings in the city cannot be entered or interacted with other than swinging from their rooftops. The much bigger location certainly gives rise to some new gameplay experiences, such as chasing down a serial killer on a time limit before he strikes his next victim, but it's not as transformative to the gaming experience as you might expect. In fact, after a while I was regretting the fact that we didn't have a full Gotham City game, with you being able to explore the city of Gotham as a whole and using vehicles to help complete missions as well as Batman's gadgets (which, a few minor additions aside, are pretty much the same as in the first game).

Still, if Arkham City is less of Grand Theft Gotham and more Arkham Asylum Redux, that's no bad thing. Combat is still physical and rugged, undertaken with impressive animations and combos. There's a greater variety of moves and opponents which makes the combat varied without becoming over-complex. The stealth mechanic is still enjoyable, with the game being at its best when you can take out a whole room of enemies with no-one realising where you are. The investigation side of things is still somewhat lightweight, but at least nods at Batman's detective origins. The story is decent and the voice-acting is as superb as its forebear, with Mark Hamill again taking top prizes for his gleefully deranged role as the Joker in what is his swansong appearance as the character. The scene where the Joker is taunting Batman only to get side-tracked into a puzzled analysis of the final episode of Lost is definitely the game's comic highlight. The game is, overall, a ridiculous amount of fun once you get over the slight hiccup of the start.

Arkham City (****½) is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

The early years of the 22nd Century. North America is crawling with 'virals', creatures of superior strength and stamina who feed on human blood and flesh. Most are unintelligent, but they are controlled by 'the Twelve', the original death-row inmates who were experimented upon to create the virals. Standing against them is Amy, the Girl From Nowhere, and her allies, a military force based in Texas.

The death of one of the Twelve has also resulted in the destruction of the virals he created. This reveals the path to victory and survival: kill the Twelve and end the viral threat forever. But this is easier said than done. After five years of failed assassinations the military are ready to abandon the mission, and only one last attempt can be made.

With millions of copies sold, translations in forty languages published and the film rights bought for a very high amount, The Passage was one of the biggest success stories of 2010. The Twelve is the direct sequel and the middle volume of a proposed trilogy (the final volume, City of Mirrors, is due in 2014). However, Cronin has gone to some lengths to try to avoid 'middle volume syndrome' by giving the book a number of self-contained narratives and character arcs whilst also continuing the story of Peter, Alicia, Amy and the other survivors of the First Colony and their war against the Twelve.

The Twelve contains much of the same that made The Passage a good book: good characterisation, evocative descriptions and a rich atmosphere. It improves on it in several areas as well. It's a notably shorter (by some 200 pages), more concise and more focused book with every chapter building up to the conclusion. The Twelve does repeat The Passage's structure of having an opening section (in this case the first third of the novel) depicting the fall of civilisation before moving to the post-apocalyptic 'present day'. There are numerous self-contained stories in this section which are compelling reads, but initially appear a little disconnected from the post-apocalyptic storyline. However, Cronin eventually loops most of these storylines back to the main story and explains their relevance.

The biggest problem The Twelve faces, which is much more present than The Passage, is that of adhering to the traditional post-apocalyptic, 'big showdown' type of storyline whilst trying to surprise a reader familiar with the rules and tropes of such storylines. Now the rules of this particular type of vampire/zombie story have been set, Cronin shows a surprising inability to surprise or startle the reader any more. Things proceed pretty much as you might expect them to: some reversals, a few capture-and-escape sequences and then a big explosive finale (literally, with some huge explosions and shoot-outs) and something of a happy ending, until the inevitable final chapter which ends on a cliffhanger note leading into the final volume.

This predictability extends to the villains, with the rulers of the human/viral colony being rather rape-happy towards their prisoners. Whilst the issue isn't simply tossed in for the sake of it (as it would have been in, say, a Stephen King book) and is treated seriously, it's still a disappointing cliche to indulge in, especially as otherwise the treatment of the female characters is highly positive (three of the primary POVs - Alicia, Amy and Sara - are all female and are the most well-developed characters in the book).

The Twelve (****) is a very solid read, with Cronin's skills with character and prose being undiminished and even a tad improved from the first volume. However, the storyline is a lot more straightfoward, and the book shows a general decline towards predictability and cliche - though well-written - which is disappointing. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Cover art: Feist and Gaiman

Some cover art for upcoming books. First up is Raymond E. Feist's Magician's End (US version):

Normally I don't post much about Feist (that whole, 'Fourteen years since he last published a good book' thing tends to get in the way), but this is somewhat noteworthy as Magician's End concludes the entire 30-volume saga begun way back in 1982 with Magician, bringing to an end the cycle of riftwars and interdimensional chaos to plague the world of Midkemia. Feist plans to move onto other works and worlds (including an apparent SF series) for a while, which can only be a good thing for the quality of his writing. Magician's End will be published in May 2013.

Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman's first full-length-novel-for-adults in eight years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, will be published in June 2013. Cover blurbage:

“They say you cannot go home again, and that is as true as a knife . . .”

A man returns to his childhood village seeking comfort in memories of his youth and the friend who long ago transformed his life.

Once upon a time in a rural English town, an eleven-year-old girl named Lettie Hempstock shows a little boy the most marvelous, dangerous, and outrageous things beyond his darkest imagination. But an ancient power has been disturbed, and now invasive creatures from beyond the known world are set loose. There is primal horror here, and menace unleashed—within the boy’s family and from the forces that have gathered to consume it.

Determined to have their way, these otherworldly beings will destroy a meddling little boy if he dares to get in the way. It will take calm, courage, and the cleverness of the extraordinary Hempstock women—Lettie, her mother, and her grandmother, to keep him alive. But his survival will come at an unexpected cost. . . .

Storytelling genius Neil Gaiman delivers a whimsical, imaginative, bittersweet, and at times deeply scary modern fantasy about fear, love, magic, sacrifice, and the power of stories to reveal and to protect us from the darkness inside—a moving, terrifying, and elegiac fable for every age.