Author Archive: Gareth D Jones
Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar (book review).
Lavie Tidhar creates wonderfully vivid worlds in his books. Worlds where the strange and bizarre intertwine with the mundane, where history is slightly different and where Jewish culture and language permeate the tale. In ‘Unholy Land’, the Jews have a homeland in East Africa known as Palestina and the horrors of the holocaust did not […]
By The Pricking Of Her Thumb (A Real Town Murder) by Adam Roberts (book review).
Adam Roberts is a great player with words, constructing lyrical prose and playful dialogue without any care as to whether it falls strictly within the rules of English grammar or whether indeed the words could be found in a dictionary. Private detective Alma, her partner Marguerite and several of the other characters she encounters like […]
Game Of The Gods by Jay Schiffman (book review).
The first thing that struck me about Jay Schiffman’s debut novel ‘Game Of The Gods’ was the characters’ quirky names, which struck me as somewhat Vancian and made a nice change from the usual run-of-the-mill popular name derivatives. There are characters called Dariox Vinyl, Pique Rollins, Spiro de Yerusalom and Veriton Glass. Some of these […]
One Way by S.J. Morden (book review).
I guess comparisons with Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ are inevitable for S.J. Morden’s near-future Mars thriller, ‘One Way’. I can’t really make those comparisons directly though as I’ve only seen the film and not read the book of ‘The Martian’. Mars has almost its own personality: ancient, dusty, red and forbidding. It has featured in […]
Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu translated by Joel Martinsen (book review).
Another of renowned Chinese author Cixin Liu’s novels has been translated for our enjoyment by Joel Martinsen in the form of ‘Ball Lightning’, a hard-SF, physics-based tale of obsession, complicated mathematics and the force of nature. As soon as I started reading, I recalled the curiously formal tone of Cixin Liu’s work, which initially may […]
Planetside by Michael Mammay (book review).
Set around two millennia in the future in a society of planetary colonisation and terraforming, ‘Planetside’ is Michael Mammay’s debut novel of mystery and conspiracy against the backdrop of a prolonged planetary war. Colonel Butler is pulled out of semi-retirement to investigate the disappearance of a counsellor’s son on Cappa Three, only to find his […]
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations by Rob Grant & Andrew Marshall (book review).
Like other great comedy Science Fiction novels before it, ‘The Quanderhorn Xperimentations’ is based on a BBC Radio series or, at least so the cover of the book says, though it also claims to have travelled back in time to be written before it occurred and also possibly to be a true story, so who […]
Nemo Rising by C. Courtney Joyner (book review).
It’s a long time since I read ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ by Jules Verne, so I don’t remember a great deal about it. Admittedly, it’s even longer than that since Jules Verne wrote it in 1870. ‘Nemo Rising’ features the return of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, as well as more sea creatures, marvellously […]
Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi (book review)
In a complete change from his high concept, far future ‘Jean le Flambeur’ trilogy, Hannu Rajaniemi takes us back to 1938 for his latest novel, ‘Summerland’. It’s a world of espionage, brewing conflict and political intrigue, set amongst various government departments where Rachel White is trying to discover the truth behind a Russian defector’s claim […]
After Atlas (Planetfall book 2) by Emma Newman (book review).
‘Planetfall’ was a fabulously engaging novel of deep characterisation and otherworldy intrigue that left me highly impressed. ‘After Atlas’ and ‘Before Mars’ are both dubbed as ‘Planetfall’ novels, as they are set in the same universe, but the stories are seemingly unconnected other than a shared background and references to the departure of Atlas, the […]
