Category: GENRE
The Annotated Sword Of Shannara (Shannara book 1) by Terry Brooks (book review).
It was with a great deal of trepidation that I approached Terry Brooks’ ‘The Sword Of Shannara’. It was once described by the critic David Pringle as the novel that showed that ‘fantasy really did have the potential to become a mass market genre’. Published in 1977, ‘The Sword Of Shannara’ appeared alongside other fantasy […]
The Mongrel Mage (The Recluse Saga book 19) by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (book review).
‘The Mongrel Mage’ is the 19th novel in the on-going ‘The Recluse Saga’ but you don’t have to read the other eighteen to follow it. Even so, I imagine that most people who buy this book will have some of the others and at least understand Modesitt’s magical system of order and chaos. Essentially, order […]
The Backworlds (book 1) by M. Pax (ebook review).
Every now and then a book comes along that’s a real pleasure to read and ‘The Backworlds’ by M. Pax is a fine example of such a book. It’s not a long story and it’s not a very complicated plot but it is very well-written. The author has clearly spent some time thinking about the […]
The Rain (Netflix trailer).
Another trailer for The Rain from Netflix, in which a brutal rain-borne virus wipes out most of the population, and two young siblings embark on a perilous search for safety. Looks like some worthy YA-style post apocalyptic guff. Streaming May 4th 2018 and ineligible for totally nothing on the awards front. Oh well.
Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky (book review).
Until relatively recently, Adrian Tchaikovsky was known almost exclusively as a fantasy author, having produced the multi-volume epic fantasy series ‘Shadows Of The Apt’. More recently, though, he has successfully turned his hand to Science Fiction, winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016 for his hard SF novel ‘Children Of Time’. ‘Ironclads’ is a […]
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (book review).
Two books came to mind as I started reading Sam J. Miller’s book ‘Blackfish City’: ‘Austral’ by Paul McAuley and ‘America City’ by Chris Beckett. Of course, it turns out the book is not particularly like those novels at all, except in some superficial sharing of tropes. It’s set in a future where climate change […]
Lost In Space (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack) by Christopher Lennertz (soundtrack review).
There’s not many people who don’t remember ‘Lost In Space’, be it the original TV series in the 1960s or the film from 1998 or perhaps the film ‘The Robinsons: Lost In Space’ from 2004. To ensure a generation of new kids get their fill of ‘Lost In Space’. Netflix has commissioned a new series […]
Spellbound (Spellwright Trilogy book 2) by Blake Charlton (book review).
‘Spellbound’ is the second novel in ‘Spellwright Trilogy’. The story starts ten years after the end of the first book, ‘Spellwright’. Nicodemus has left the Heaven Tree Valley with a few kobold warriors and Magister Shannon, to wage war on the demon Typhon. Nicodemus has been trying to retrieve the Emerald of Aarahest, the jewel […]
They Came To A City (1944) (Blu-ray film review).
Based off a JB Priestly play, ‘They Came To A City’, they used the same cast in the film version. Technically, this film is borderline SF in terms of eight people are taken from their reality and dropped into a cloudy or foggy open-air tower where they don’t know what is going on. With modern […]
The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson (book review).
The idea behind dating apps meshes with social media to create compatible social groupings known as Affinities in Robert Charles Wilson’s near-future novel that initially seems to be heading towards a utopian tale of co-operation and acceptance, but soon turns into a wonderfully complex tale of social revolution. Adam Fisk’s life is fairly humdrum, with […]
