J D Beresford, A World of Women

I reviewed the new MIT press edition of J D Beresford's Goslings (US title: A World of Women) for Strange Horizons. It's good!

Read With Pleasure

I did enjoy reading these, but I haven’t got a whole blogpost’s worth to say about each of them. Please accept these brief paras in the spirit of strong recommendation. Una McCormack, The Greatest Story Ever Told I bought this from NewCon Press, one of a trilogy of themed novels about a populated Mars, with … Continue reading Read With Pleasure →

A run of bad reading luck

I’ve had a run of bad luck with books recently, a long string of flingings on the floor, duds that drove me again and again to (for example) Terry Pratchett and Barbara Pym to remind myself of what good writing was like. Here are some of the failures, the Xth in an occasional series. Cixin … Continue reading A run of bad reading luck →

To the recycling!

Another in my popular series of mini reviews in which I grumble about books on a scale from furious bitterness to indifference. You can read more of these, and find links to others, here. Today I clear out the books on the meh end. Susan Schwartz, Byzantium's Crown I enjoyed the premise for this fantasy … Continue reading To the recycling! →

Christina Dalcher, Vox

Update: Vox won the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award on 16 September 2019! The title of this very good thriller is a little misleading: the word 'Vox' (Latin for the voice of, as in 'vox populi', the voice of the people), doesn't appear anywhere in the novel. I was hoping for some time that it would … Continue reading Christina Dalcher, Vox →

Raging aggravations

Another in an irregular series of reviews of books I have not enjoyed. Links to earlier episodes are at the end. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Beyond the Northlands. Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas This book, bought at the British Museum’s bookshop, was so promising, with such a good pedigree: an exciting young(ish) scholar; a … Continue reading Raging aggravations →

Avengers: Endgame.

HERE BE SPOILERS. Avengers: Endgame is not a film you can talk about in detail without spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, so please don't read on if you get upset by spoilers. I MEAN IT. I don't yet know if I liked the whole film or not. I was very bored in … Continue reading Avengers: Endgame. →

Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few

This is the third in a series (but not necessarily a sequence) of novels about humans who fled a dying Earth and lived for centuries in their spaceships, looking for a new home. The first novel, The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet, takes place on a spaceship, and the second, A Closed and … Continue reading Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few →

Canadian sff: Sleeping Giants, and Bloody Rose

Two mini reviews of science fiction and fantasy novels by Canadian writers, of Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants, and Nicholas Eames' Bloody Rose. Sleeping Giants I enjoyed this a LOT. Partly it was the plot: gigantic metallic pieces of what appears to be a body are found buried in remote, and less remote, locations on Earth. … Continue reading Canadian sff: Sleeping Giants, and Bloody Rose →

Emma Geen, The Many Selves of Katherine North

This novel had been recommended to me by a Twitter friend a year ago, in terms that made me think that it must be a sf classic, a great sf novel by a British woman that I had unaccountably missed. He too may have got the dates wrong, because this is a 2017 novel by … Continue reading Emma Geen, The Many Selves of Katherine North →