Obtain No Mans World Omnibus Edited By Pat Kelleher Available As Document

ending was frustrating not knowing the fate of all the characters
When Thomas Only Atkins signed up to fight for King and Country, half the boys he grew up with ended up fighting alongside him.

Theth Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers were a Pals Brigade, a whole town transposed to the Somme together to feed the Fronts relentless need for warm bodies.
They also disappeared from the face of the Earth, on thest November, along with nearly half a mile of mud and trenches, a Sopwith and a tank.

Finding themselves on a terrifying alien world, Tommy and his mates have to contend with maneating plants, ravening beasts and the eerie, insectile Chattsto say nothing of a sinister, arcane threat from within their own ranks.
. .
No Mans World presents all three novels from this series, Black Hand Gang, The Ironclad Prophecy and The Alleyman, along with a new introduction and extensive new content.
If you like horror you will enjoy this a lot more than I did, There is a gripping start during the First World War, when a welldescribed battalion from a northerly town goes to the Somme, Life is really unpleasant and often short,

An officer has a cabalistic ritual which involves death, and this keeps him from perishing he also means to use it for other purposes.
This may explain how a dimension door is opened during a chlorine gas attack, In reality German explosives opened a massive crater here the nine hundred men find themselves in an alternate reality where their area of mud and barbed wire is surrounded by lush greenery.
Large, fearsome hungry creatures are attracted by the stink of dead bodies, Worse scavengers arrive overnight.

The men are desperately trying to cope with the change and maintain discipline, as well as fight off nightmarish creatures intent on eating them.
A tank, a light fighter plane, two nurses and a padre have also been snared by the otherworld, I found the pilot the most likeable character although much of the early tale follows a young Tommy from the trenches, We early decide not to invest too much in characters as it's clear many are going to be monster fodder,

I don't like horror so I won't pretend to have read all the book once I realised how nasty it was, I skipped through they travel a bit and meet more things with big teeth, They travel a bit more and meet people in chainmail who are not friendly, They travel a bit more and meet people from the Americas who were sucked in to the dimension trap too, Mainly, anything from this dimension wants to eat people, The cabalistic officer is determined to get back home, but at what cost

I checked the end and it's not really a proper ending, leaving us to think that another book was envisaged.
We see that a disciplined army tends to hold together and fight whereas a rabble would have been picked off quickly, That seems to be the message of the story, Horror fans, have fun. First I have to say I'm really glad I had all three books in one, Though I knew the basic plot before I began to read, already beginning for me was really catchy, Including elements of the First World War to the genre of science fiction is not very common, and the author managed it absolutely amazing, Story is coherent and exciting, we are still discovering new interesting features of alien environment and characters are very complex and sophisticated,

If I like a science fiction novel, it has to be an unforgettable story from a unique environment such No Mans World really is.
I definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoy an interesting science fiction novel,

I recieved my copy via Netgalley in exchange for honest review,
I received this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an unbiased review,

The first time I read about the concept for this story I was intrigued: a battalion of soldiers fighting on the Somme, during WWI, is mysteriously transported on another planet, where they find themselves fighting another kind of war, against a hostile environment and predatory creatures.
So, when I signed up at NetGalley and started browsing around, one of the first titles I saw was the omnibus containing all three novels in this series, and requested it right away luck was with me, because I was swiftly granted the book.


The first thing I noticed, as I started reading, was the amount of research work that must have gone into crafting the background for the story: the details of trench life, warfare and of the daytoday hellish existence of those soldiers are quite sharp and contribute to create a very clear image of the living conditions on the battlefield.
Sometimes those details can be overwhelming, what with unusual terms and military jargon, but once the reader gets into the “vibe” of it all, it helps the immersion in the story itself, even when it shows the most unsavory aspects of it all.


Its a known fact that life on the front is no walk in the park, but what WWI soldiers had to face was particularly awful: those young men had left home driven both by patriotic feelings and the desire to find honor and glory, sometimes even to escape dreary lives,

but what they found in reality was worse than a nightmare.
The trenches meant dirt and mud, rats and body lice cold, discomfort and unpalatable rations, and this was just the setting, because the constant shelling, the sorties that meant heavy casualties, the awareness of an enemy always ready to pounce and the horrid consequences of wounds, given the poor level of medical treatment, were enough to sap even the strongest of characters.


All this is rendered with stark realism, from the observation of the soldiers reactions during an attack or of their rare moments of quiet, when they find in shared camaraderie and in news from home a way to forget the cruel reality of warfare.
Also quite real is the huge divide between the troops and the officers some of them men as young and inexperienced as their underlings, but denied the luxury of showing fear and uncertainty because it mirrors the social barriers that were in force at the time.


With these premises, I should have enjoyed the book or rather books quite a bit, but unfortunately the rich setting was offset by a characterization that was not as carefully rendered as the background.
Im aware that a plotdriven story must focus more on events than on the figures peopling them, but still I need some fullyfleshed characters to enjoy it: with the exception of Private “Only” Atkins, whose backstory is detailed in some depth, the other individuals are painted with such broad strokes that I found it difficult to care for them.
Even the evil officer Jeffries, despite the satanic rituals and bloody trail of corpses behind him, failed to appear like a believable menace, and instead looked more like the proverbial mustachetwirling bad guy than a fleshandblood person.


Once the soldiers found themselves transported into an alien world, I would have expected more of a reaction after the initial shock and disbelief had been processed.
Instead these men choose to stay in the trenches, carrying on with “business as usual” while waiting for an unlikely rescue: no sense of wonder, no desire to know what had happened to them.
Yes, there were forays to procure food and water, but the men showed no inclination to understand the world they had been brought to, or to look beyond the restricted confines of the corpseriddled section of mud they had been transported with.
A further point of puzzlement came from the liberal use of ammunitions and explosives, with no one mentioning the dwindling supplies or the fact that they could not be replenished.
Worse still was the lack of perceivable reaction to the heavy losses suffered from the hostile environment: it was a jarring contrast with the realistic portrayal of the soldiers' behavior in the first part of the novel.


My suspension of disbelief was stretched even thinner at the first contact with the planets indigenous dwellers: both the humanoidlooking ones and the insectoid “master race” spoke fluent English, with mannerisms and frames of reference not unlike those of their unexpected visitors.
That was indeed my turning point, the factor that brought me to finish at least the first book of the omnibus, The Black Hand Gang, but to go no further: when I lose faith in a story, in its ability to take hold of my imagination and carry it elsewhere, it means that something vital is missing.


I dont mean to say that this is a bad book, but it does not fulfill my own requirements for a compelling story, At times it reminded me of thoses ors movies, where characterization and believability were sacrificed in the name of moving the action forward at a fast pace: here some of the narrative choices were quite over the top, especially while picturing the consequences of meetings with the local flora and fauna.
Nothing wrong with that either, but not exactly what I look for in a book, Clearly not my “cup of tea”,



sitelink wordpress. com The final book in this volume, The Alleyman, brings to a close this part of the story of theth Pennine Fusiliers, I have already posted reviews of the first two books in the trilogy Black Hand Gang and The Ironclad Prophecy, I say "this part" because the story is not ended the final fates of the protagonists and of the antagonist are not resolved, Indeed, there are many questions left unanswered at the end of the book, not just about the characters, but the world itself, I think there are more unanswered questions than there are subplots resolved, Unfortunately, it would appear that they will have to remain unresolved, as the last of these books was published in, and there has been nothing since.
A disappointing ending to what was, after a slow start to the first book, an excellent adventure yarn that I found to be quite gripping, Pat Kelleher is a freelance writer, He has written for magazines, animation and radio, He served his time writing for a wide variety of TV licensed characters, translating them into audio books, novels and comics, Yes, he¹s written for that, And that. And even, you know, them, He has several non fiction books to his credit and his educational strips and stories for the RSPB currently form the mainstays of their Youth publications.
Somehow he has steadfastly managed to avoid all those careers and part time jobs that look so good on a dust jacket, From publishers website sitelink Pat Kelleher is a freelance writer, He has written for magazines, animation and radio, He served his time writing for a wide variety of TV licensed characters, translating them into audio books, novels and comics, Yes, he¹s written for that, And that. And even, you know, them, He has several non fiction books to his credit and his educational strips and stories for the RSPB currently form the mainstays of their Youth publications.
Somehow he has steadfastly managed to avoid all those careers and part time jobs that look so good on a dust jacket, From publisher's website sitelink sitelink,