Author Archive: Gareth D Jones
Broken Stars edited and translated by Ken Liu (book review).
Like much of the Science Fiction community, I’ve become very excited about Chinese Science Fiction of late. I read Ken Liu’s first collection of translated works, ‘Invisible Planets’, and the four Liu Cixin novels that have been translated so far, as well as meeting Liu Cixin for an interview. This new collection ‘Broken Stars’, which […]
Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor (book review).
The first ‘Binti’ novella was truly wonderful and made a real impression when I first read it. The story constantly challenges the preconceptions of the reader even as it challenges the preconceptions of the characters within it. Binti comes from the Himba tribe in Namibia(?), a people who rarely leave their homeland and are looked […]
2001: An Odyssey In Words edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter (book review).
To celebrate the centenary of Arthur C. Clarke’s birth, NewCon Press has produced a volume of stories that all contain exactly 2001 words. It’s a fantastic concept, giving rise to a great selection of brief yet entertaining stories but, even with a page count of around 200 pages, that still amounts to rather a lot […]
Rejoice, A Knife To The Heart by Steven Erikson (book review).
The arrival of an alien intelligence to intervene in Earth’s affairs signals an end to violence, illness and environmental degradation. You would think this would be good news, but a lot of the rich and powerful, as well as the violent and sadistic, are not very happy at all. As force fields spread across the […]
Nebula Awards Showcase 2018 edited by Jane Yolen (book review).
This is my second ‘Nebula Award Showcase’ in quick succession, a volume that presents a mixture of excerpts from and complete winning and shortlisted stories, novelettes, novellas and novels from the prestigious award voted for by members of the SFWA. I generally read only Science Fiction but, of course, there’s a second, silent ‘F’ in […]
Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 edited by Julie E. Czerneda (book review).
I’ve enjoyed reading a lot of the Nebula Awards winning novels over the past few years, so it seems like the members of the SFWA who vote for the awards have pretty good taste. The annual ‘Nebula Awards Showcase’ volumes contain the winning novellas, novelettes and short-listed short stories, as well as excerpts from the […]
The Consuming Fire (Interdependancy book 2) by John Scalzi (book review).
Last year’s book, ‘The Collapsing Empire’ by John Scalzi, was a riotous, no-holds-barred imperial space opera that was a lot of fun and introduced us to the intriguing setting of the Interdependancy. The sequel is ‘The Consuming Fire’, which follows on with the same set of characters as they face up to the imminent collapse […]
Brick Journal #53 – October 2018 (magazine review).
A review copy of Brick Journal # 53 arrived in good time to coincide with the return to TV of ‘Lego Masters’, which I enjoyed watching last year. ‘Brick Journal’ is packed with articles about and interviews with Lego model designers, instructions for various models and other Lego-related articles of interest to AFOLs (Adult Fans […]
Legion: The Many Lives Of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson (book review).
“That was fantastically, amazingly brilliant,” I said as he closed the cover on ‘Legion: The Many Lives Of Stephen Leeds’ by Brandon Sanderson. “Really?” Bartholomew sneered from his position by the window. Bartholomew wasn’t real – none of the other people in the room were – but that didn’t stop him having an opinion. “That’s […]
The Moons Of Barsk (book 2) by Lawrence M. Schoen (book review).
I thoroughly enjoyed Lawrence M. Schoen’s debut novel ‘Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard’ a couple of years back and became enchanted with his tale of arboreal elephants on the planet Barsk and their limited relationship with the multi-special Alliance of Worlds. In ‘The Moons Of Barsk’, we meet some of the same characters again: the historian, […]
