Sequels to beloved books can be a scary proposition, especially when they have the added baggage of following a beloved movie adaptation. Luckily Irvine Welsh is too smart and headstrong a writer to fall into those traps in Porno, his sequel to the cult classic Trainspotting. The action takes place ten years after Trainspotting as Renton remains in hiding from the mates he betrayed, Begbie's rage simmers in prison thanks to Renton's betrayal, Spud struggles to stay clean, and Sick Boy returns to his hometown to set in motion a number of scams (Welsh starts the count at 18,732), not the least of which involves making a porn film. Once again Welsh tells his tale through a round-robin rotation of first-person narrators, each with his own distinctive voice. Some of the accents are easier to understand than others — Sick Boy, naturally, is vastly more eloquent than Spud — but it doesn't take long to catch on, especially if one is familiar with Welsh's earlier work. As a sequel, Porno lacks the spark of originality and freshness that made Trainspotting such a gritty pleasure. But Welsh manages to reward fans with the opportunity to spend even more time with characters we can't believe we've grown to love — the sort of people who, in reality, we might get up and cross the bus to avoid if they sat near us. Porno is a rambunctious, down-and-dirty book, by turns darkly hilarious and surprisingly touching. Bolton, Powells.com

The Trainspotting lads are back...and in worse shape than ever. In the last gasp of youth, Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson is back in Edinburgh. He taps into one last great scam: directing and producing a porn film. To make it work, he needs bedfellows: the lovely Nikki Fuller-Smith, a student with ambition, ego, and troubles to rival his own; old pal Mark Renton; and a motley crew that includes the neighborhood's favorite ex-beverage salesman, "Juice" Terry.

In the world of Porno, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Frank Begbie is on the loose. But it's the hapless, drug-addled Spud who may be spreading the most trouble.

Porno is a novel about the Trainspotting crew ten years further down the line: still scheming, still scamming, still fighting for the first-class seats as the train careens at high velocity with derailment looming around the next corner.

"Damn if Welsh can't write the hell out of anything! A gleefully perverted farce." Ken Foster, San Francisco Chronicle

"Porno shares many of its prequel's characteristics, which is to say that it is on the one hand...dead scary, and on the other hugely funny. In particular, Welsh has a whale of a time sending up drugs moralising and the pornography trade." D.J. Taylor, Literary Review

"Welsh has an uncanny talent for dialogue, and his writing is often diamond sharp....If this follow-up feels less urgent than the original, it is no reflection on Welsh, but rather on the growing familiarity of the terrain he has so inimitably staked out." Publishers Weekly

"[A] convoluted, coked-up coda to the original's smack-addled beggar's opera....Still, the cellular-level agonies of Trainspotting persist in Simon's desperately virtuoso narcissism... (Grade: B-)" Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly

"In his long-feckin'-awaited sequel to Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh still has a lust for life....His edge has hardly dulled." Alex Porter, Spin

"This is an oddly-loveable-ne'er-do-wells-run-amok extravaganza with plenty of outre humor....[Welsh] is a born storyteller." Hartford Courant

Irvine Welsh is the author of Trainspotting, The Acid House, Marabou Stork Nightmares, Ecstasy, Filth, and, most recently, Glue. Born in Edinburgh, he lives in London