Category: Books
The Lost Adventures Of James Bond by Mark Edlitz (book review).
‘The Lost Adventures Of James Bond’ is a journalistic investigation of the James Bond stories that are no longer on obvious display in the media, ranging from screenplays that were never filmed to comicbooks and television series that have been lost in the mists of time. I suppose a few old eccentrics still read the […]
Iterations: The Kon-Tiki Quartet: Part Four by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (book review).
‘Iterations’ is the fourth and final novella in Eric Brown and Keith Brooke’s ‘Kon-Tiki Quartet’ of interstellar adventures. I reviewed the first three volumes here in February and August of last year and May of this year. Having enjoyed the previous stories hugely, I was keen to find out how the authors brought the series […]
The Curve Of The Earth by Simon Morden (book review).
‘The Curve Of The Earth’ by Simon Morden is the fourth Metrozone novel featuring Doctor Samuel Petrovitch, a genius with plenty of Russian swearwords in post-apocalyptic London. By the start of this novel, Samuel Petrovitch has acquired various cybernetic replacements and a built-in AI, Michael, also known as the ‘New Machine Jihad’. He is part […]
Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson book 10) by Patricia Briggs (book review).
There seem to be two approaches to contemporary urban fantasy. Often there is the need for secrecy, not allowing the mundane human population to become aware of the fact that dangerous supernatural beings live amongst them. The reasons given are prejudice and fear. Proponents of this approach are authors such as Jim Butcher in his […]
The Evidence by Christopher Priest (book review).
We return to the enigmatic Dream Archipelago in Christopher Priest’s new novel ‘The Evidence’, the location of many of his novels and short stories. It’s a world of hundreds of islands in which strange things tend to happen and where Christopher Priest takes advantage of the temporal and gravitational anomalies to weave wondrous and multi-faceted […]
The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency Series book 1) by John Scalzi (book review).
For a thousand years, the Emperox has ruled over the Interdependency, a network of space stations, domed lunar cities and one planet stretching across 48 star systems. Connecting these far flung outposts is a spatial phenomenon known as the Flow, a series of vaguely understood streams that allow ships to cross the depths of space […]
Nucleation by Kimberley Unger (book review).
An intriguing blend of hard SF, corporate espionage and conspiracy theory, ‘Nucleation’ is a solidly enjoyable novel from Kimberley Unger that picks up several recognisable SF tropes and combines them into a relatable yet refreshing tale. Although the story involves wormholes, quantum entanglement and other high-tech concepts, the prose is perfectly accessible, throwing in jargon […]
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (book review).
‘The Starless Sea ‘is the much anticipated second book by Erin Morgenstern. What would you say if I told you there were magical doors all over our world that lead to an enormous library on the shores of something called the Starless Sea? Or that you might just be drawn to one of these doors […]
Disney to scifi author Alan Dean Foster: Royalties, what stinking royalties?
Ah, so, yet another chapter opens in the sad tome of that perennial best-seller, ‘The Author Works for Free‘. The trade body of authors writing in the science fiction and fantasy genre, the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) have just released a statement which they describe as “unprecedented”. The short takeaway according to the […]
Strange Weather by Joe Hill (book review).
In ‘Snapshot’, the first novella in this ‘Strange Weather’ collection, Mike is a fat thirteen year-old kid with brains. He’s making a fancy toy gun in his workshop when Shelly Beukes turns up, shoeless, disorientated and confused. Shelly is getting old now but she used to be Mike’s child minder and practically raised him. A […]
