SFBook - 20 Years of Reviews
Providing book reviews of speculative fiction since 1999. Read our story
Sherlock Holmes is long dead, but this has not stopped the character’s legacy from living on. Sherlock was incredibly popular in his Victorian heyday, but the number of TV shows, films and books still being made today suggests that this popularity is still the case. Taking the concept of...
Europe in Autumn was my first experience of Dave Hutchinson's unique and astonishing voice. It is simply sublime fiction, a deep and intelligent story and one of my favourite reads of recent times. It was impressive enough to win SFBook Book of the Year in 2014. Europe at Midnight is the much...
There is an inherent problem with superheroes. Sometimes they are just too super. How is any mortal person meant to take down a being that can fly into the sun or bounce bullets off their bracelets? It is up to the comic creators to come up with an enemy that will match the super heroics with...
I've always said that Hutchinson is an under-appreciated author. His Europe series not only being an accomplished trilogy, but also somewhat prophetic given the UK's current realtionship with the EU.
Acadie is a step away from his near-future,alternative fiction series,...
Freedom is just chaos, with better lighting
In Stephen Baxter's collaboration with the late Terry Pratchett, he imagined that there were a limitless number of parallel dimensions just a small step away, each with a slightly different version of Earth (although none others of which contained indigenous humans). In his latest novel, World...
Following the events of A Time of Dread, this book raises the stakes even further. Drem and friends flee the horrors at Starstone Lake. They must warn the Order of the Bright Star that a Demon has risen, but Fritha, the Demon's high Priestess has other ideas and is hot on their heels....
It sometimes feels that if you have read one fantasy novel, you have read them all. The same tropes crop up again and again. This may be comforting to fans of the genre, but people that dabble may soon become bored. Those of us in the know realise that there is a wealth of variation if you are...
A Memory called Empire is the debut of Arkady Martine, although reading the book you'd be forgiven for thinking she's been writing best-sellers for years.
The vast, interstellar Empire of the Teixcalaanli have appointed Mahit Dzmare as new Ambassador to the capital. When she arrives she...
In Cheryl Campbell's vision of the future, humanity finds itself enslaved by a genocidal faction of an alien race known as the Wardens. Decades of war has left much of the planet in ruins and threatens the existence of any human (or alien) who offer any form of resistance.
Dani thought...
Haimey is the engineer aboard the Singer, an interstellar salvage vessel named after its shipboard Intelligence. Haimey is genetically modified for zero-G, and she has brain-enhancing implants that connect her to the rest of the crew and chemically manage her emotional state. Haimey, Singer, and...
There is nothing quite like a caper movie. A bunch of loveable rogues essentially breaking the law, but it is ok as they are up against even worse rogues. It is not a genre that I have found in a book format too often, can you capture the humour and pace required to make the ride an exciting...
No Way is the follow up to the gripping thriller One Way. A perilous journey to the Red Planet by a group of convicts. Deciding that it was much more economically viable to train people that would have otherwise rotted in a jail rather than a group of experienced and highly trained...
The first in the Eidyn series, The Lost War begins its story part way through, in the aftermath of a ruinous war for the kingdom of Eidyn. The location of the opening scenes, in a tavern no less, and the easy interplay of two of the main characters Aranok the draoidh and Allandria, his bodyguard...
The sequel to the 2016 Clarke Award winner, Children of Time, the story of the far future human and spider civilisations picks up several generations after the events at the end of the previous novel.
A terraforming team, led by Dirsa Senkovi and Yusuf Baltiel discover alien life on a...
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate...
Once a noble lord, after a failure on the field of battle, Silas Bershad "The Flawless" was stripped of all titles and forced into the life of a dragonslayer, moving from one perilous hunt to the next. Stalking dragons and collecting their valuable oil, his only escape seems to be death. But...
A Hopeful Future
Review kindly provided by Vanessa Smyth.
Welcome to the third and latest instalment in The Wayfarers series, Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. This current narrative is set within the same captivating universe as the first two books and, despite...
There are books that ruin it for anyone else. Harry Potter has basically made it impossible to make a book set in a magical school without someone saying, “rip off”. Just don’t mention to those people that The Worst Witch has been around a lot longer. Still, it takes a brave...
David Moody has been writing his Hater series (which has been optioned for a film by Universal Studios) since 2006, originally with the books Hater, Dog Blood and Them or Us. Then in 2017 he started from the beginning of the story again but from a totally different perspective with One of...
Failed science writer Alex Dolan is just floating along, struggling to find work when multi-billionaire Stanislaw Clayton provides a surprising, well-paid offer out of the blue. He wants Alex to write a book about the world's first privately funded high-energy physics facility - the...
There seem to be a worryingly large number of ways we, as a species, could become extinct. From huge extra terrestrial rocks hurtling through space or climate change making our world uninhabitable to Trump pressing the wrong button at the wrong time. A virus that seems to strike at random,...
To the uninitiated, Star Wars is just a film. To everyone else, that is just nonsense. There are multiple films, games, books, toys, teddies and now a theme park. A small part of the Star War Universe resides in Disneyland. You can visit the outpost of Black Spire and...
Crowfall is the third novel in Ed McDonald's Raven's Mark series, following on from Blackwing and Ravencry. If you haven't read the previous two books I recommend you do so before reading this book, or indeed this review.
Some time has passed since the events of Ravencry,...
Book of the month
Book Awards
Science fiction, fantasy & horror book reviews
SFBook.com is one of the oldest book review sites on the internet, founded back in 1999 in an age before phones became smart and when the leading figure of the free world was respected and even occasionally admired. A non profit site primarily aimed at the Science fiction, fantasy and horror genres (although we do have a growing list of general fiction). We strive to feature only the very best in Science fiction, fantasy, horror and speculative novels. We like to think we write personal, unique and constructive reviews.
We are constantly evolving and expanding the web site and strive to make the site a richer experience for the visitor. If you have any suggestions, or constructive feedback we'd love to hear from you.
We have dedicated pages for Science fiction book reviews as well as fantasy book reviews and horror book reviews but you can also browse by author, publisher, name, series or Sub Genre.
Reviews are provided by a team of regular and guest reviewers from around the world, mostly based in the USA and the UK. These include Ant - the site editor, Allen Stroud - chair of the BSFA and Sam Tyler, reviewer extraordinaire. We try our very best to prevent giving away any spoilers so that the reading experience remains as fresh as possible. Where spoilers are mentioned, we do our best to let you know in advance. We firmly believe that life is too short to struggle through a book you are not enjoying so often the reviews you see will be the books we've made it through to the end. However if you want to know about a book not listed, please feel free to get in touch.
If you are a publisher, author or authors agent who would like to see a book reviewed you can reach us on the Contact Us page. If you'd like to review books or related articles to feature on the site, get in touch with Ant.
Disclaimer: This is a disclaimer about the site in general and it's reviewers. As mentioned above this site is completely non-profit. The site owner (Ant) hates to see websites plastered with adverts and as such advertising is pretty much banned from the site. None of our reviewers accept any monetary remuneration or gifts for the reviews we provide and we not employed by any publisher or author. We do however accept advanced reading copies of books by authors and publishers so that we can review their work. The reviews on the site are not biased in any way and purely reflect the opinion of the reviewer.
Cookie (Biscuit) Consumption: As with every site on the internet, We (SFBook.com) do store Cookie however these are minimal, totally anonymous and purely consumed by Google Analytics for traffic analysis. This data is mainly used to provide bragging rights as to how many wonderful visitors happen upon our humble domain. Please visit as often as you can so more Cookies (Biscuits) can be consumed.