Tag Archives: Book Reviews

Mary Gentle isn’t one of the genre’s most prolific authors – Black Opera is her first novel in six years – but a book with her name on the cover is an event worth looking forward to. She always goes the extra mile to create rich, unusual alternative-history worlds for …

Sometimes you wonder what the marketing team was smoking. The blurb for this smart and affecting debut novel, for example, chirps, “Will appeal to fans of George RR Martin and Christopher Paolini!” It’s difficult to imagine two fantasy authors who have less in common with each other – or, on …

If you can count Sir Terry Pratchett as one of your fans, then you’re obviously doing something right. Michael Logan’s debut novel was the (joint) winner of Pratchett’s inaugural Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now award, and made the great man “snort with laughter”. Lesley McBrien is a journalist on …

Abortion outlawed, sexually active women vilified, religion enshrined in government… Hillary Jordan has certainly been watching the news. This is a near-future dystopia with a strong emphasis on the near, despite the technological advances described. Hannah Payne wakes up in prison and finds she is red. Not metaphorically – the …

First published in the US in 2010 by Small Beer Press, Karen Lord’s debut novel uses Senegalese folklore to weave an energetic and self-aware story of food, family and mischievous djombi spirits causing chaos. In many ways, this is less a novel than a jumbled heap of Story. It’s unified …

Would you Adam and Eve it? Lost your job? Struggling with the rent? Cheer up, at least you’re not stranded in an alien forest, one of 500 descendants of two shipwrecked astronauts, waiting for Earth to rescue you, with food increasingly scarce and nobody to shag but your own cousins. …

Artists reinterpret cult films in Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art . David Cromarty gives us his verdict…