This is odd. Once again I am reading a movie novelisation book well in advance of my seeing the movie. I did the same with "The Day after Tomorrow" and "King Kong", and have still to watch the new Kong movie.

I will probably watch the film this books adapts at some point. The "V for Vendetta" comics are some of my favourite of all time, and given that I rarely read comics anymore this is likely to remain true. But my fondness for the comics have given me a great deal of concern regarding the movie, more so following the disappointment I felt over the Hitchhiker's movie.

This book gave me a chance to look in on the movie without having to watch it. Sounds odd when you consider that the books will take longer to read than the movie will to watch, but books are my preferred medium so...

In a near future the world has gone to hell. Britain has devolved into a fascist state. Rights are restricted and power is held by an elite, the hierarchy of The Norsefire political party, a once obscure organisation that gained popular support when the world descended into chaos. Britain has been cleansed of all the non-British, all of the impurities that Norsefire in their bigoted paranoid way, saw around them.

When the story starts the people of Britain are controlled. Secret police organisations see and hear everything, and anyone who doesn't toe the line is removed. And these secret organisations and the government behind them are corrupt, just as each similar one know in our past has been. The old "Power Corrupts..." thing in action.

Into this world steps V – a man in a Guy Fawkes mask who revels in the glories of the past, of music, art and theatre and of all the freedoms of the era prior to Norsefire's control. And so V begins a violent campaign against Norsefire – beginning with a bomb that destroys the Old Bailey – the symbol of justice in Britain.

This was not a film I ever thought would be made. For although the government of the day in this story is fascist, V is still a terrorist. In our current world I never would have thought that a film would be made glorifying the terrorist. But it was. And from the indicators in this book, the film is likely to be good.

As a book it makes good reading. Steve Moore has told the tale cleanly, not embellishing it with the superfluous. He has brought something to the table for this is not (I would imagine) a prose conversion job on the script. This allows you into the thoughts of the main characters, adds substance to their motiviations.

Some of these characters are fairly two dimensional – the bad guys are just plain bad and little effort is wasted on trying to round them, but V has depth, and Evey (the girl who has become wrapped up in the unfolding events) is so wonderfully realistic.

I enjoyed reading this book, and it's meant I now want to see the film.

Synopsis
Imagine a Britain stripped of democracy: a world of the not-too-distant future, in which freedom was not lost, but surrendered willingly to a totalitarian regime that rose to power by exploiting people's worst fears and most damning weaknesses. This is the setting for the parable of Evey, a young woman who is saved from death by a masked vigilante calling himself only V. Beguiling and dangerous, V ignites the fuse of revolution when he detonates two London landmarks and seizes the government-controlled airwaves, urging his fellow citizens to wake up and shed the blanket of tyranny and oppression in which they have permitted themselves to be cloaked. While those in power take steps to neutralise the threat, the police pursue the mystery of V, unaware of the terrible truth that awaits them at the end of the trail. It is Evey, however, who, with V as her untrustworthy guide, sets out on the most painful path of all: a journey of deception, and self-discovery, deconstruction and re-creation, vindication and vengeance.