Antony Jones
Books reviewed by Ant (858)
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FantasyMountain Man introduces us to a world that is now mostly inhabited by the walking undead and Augustus Berry lives a day-to-day existence that is largely composed of getting drunk, foraging for supplies and preparing for the day when the Zombie horde will come up the side of the mountain and penetrat...
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FantasyI remember reading the short story "Red Reign" about 20 years ago, written by Newman and published in the Mammoth Book of Vampires. This short story formed the basis for the novel and it's been on my list of books to read for some time. The imminent re-release of the sequel "The Bloody Red Baron" ha...
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Science FictionDangerous Visions was originally published in 1967 and was the brain child of it's editor Harlan Ellison. Anthologies rarely attract the kind of attention that this one has over the years but then most don't win major awards for more than half a dozen of it's stories either. Hugo award wins include...
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The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack won it's author the Philip K Dick award for best novel last year, what makes this acheivement even more remarkable is that it was also the authors début. The novel is a steampunk tale set in an alternative England where Queen Victoria was actually killed in t...
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Science FictionI can't really imagine a more exciting sounding Warhammer 40K novel, a battle during the Horus Heresy conflict that depicts the Ultramarines (my favorite Legion) against the Word Bearers - told with energy and grace by that master of battles Dan Abnett. The Primarch of the Ultramarines - Roboute Gui...
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FantasyTome of the Undergates was a fun, bloodthirsty and action packed novel with a young and yet confident voice and Black Halo promises more of the same, picking up where the first book ended. These mismatched and grumpy souls that make up Lenk's rag-tag band manage to get themselves shipwrecked on an i...
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Science FictionHob is a slave, abandoned as a baby to be brought up with no hope of freedom or any chance of a normal life. On the world of Tribes any male babies born without a father figure to welcome him into his tribe becomes enslaved. Eventually Hob manages to escape and is rescued by a woman from a fighting...
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FantasyMeet Thaddeus Blaklok, mercenary, demonist and down right violent thug-for-hire who uses his fists the way most people use punctuation. He is dragged out of semi-retirement to "retreive" a very mysterious key for his equally mysterious benefactors. He isn't the only one after the artefact however an...
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Science FictionRegular visitors will be aware that Gentle Reminders is being serialised right here on SFBook courtesy of the kind author Martin Perry. It therefore only seemed fair that I read and review the book that some of you good readers are indeed reading. The novel is the first in a series that is part of t...
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FantasyThere has been a lot of good things said about Songs of the Earth and a consummate amount of praise given to the author of this debut novel. It has even been described as the "fantasy debut of 2011" when it was first released in hardback last year and has been on my list of books to read for some ti...
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Science FictionRogue Moon is the disquieting story of what happens when aberrant scientific ambition is matched by human obsession. Shortlisted for the 1961 Hugo Award (losing out to the quite wonderful A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr), Rogue Moon is one of the few genre novels that Algis Budrys w...
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FantasyAnyone who remembers those old Hammer Horror films (or indeed still watches them) will just adore this book, along with anyone else who loves a good story. In their hey-day between the 50's and 70's the Hammer films starred such great screen actors such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee with film...
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Science FictionBerserker chaos marine chapter the World Eaters are blazing a path of destruction across the galaxy, following in the path of a weird, blood-red comet which holds portents of doom. The small cemetery world of Certus Minor is one such planet along this celestial bodies route and the Excoriators chapt...
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Science FictionAnother novel being published by those good people at Scifi Cafe, The Inosculation Syndrome is something of a surprise. The book tells the story of the astronaut Kal who becomes stranded on an alien planet due to a series of errors after losing touch with his star ship while charting regions of spac...
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Science FictionThe second novel in the Warhammer 40k Gaunt's Ghosts Series and written by that insanely talented author Dan Abnett, Ghostmaker acts as a reflection on the history of the Ghost's and focuses on telling the story of the major characters within the regiment. This is done through the use of connected s...
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FantasyAutumn - The City is the follow up to the sensational zombie novel Autumn, promising the same power and subtle horror of the first. It takes a lot of guts to start a story again right from the beginning but told from a different perspective - a brave move that could have gone horribly wrong. Instead...
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FantasyBlackbirds follows the life of Miriam Black who has a singular gift (or curse) that means each time she touches someone she knows when and how they will die - vividly reliving their final moments. Still in her early twenties she's seen sights most people couldn't even imagine along with countless he...
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Science FictionThere are very few authors alive today that can quite match Alastair Reynolds vision of future space and Blue Remembered Earth is the beginning of possibly his most ambitious future vision yet. At the same time it's also one that also feels much closer to home than any novel he has written before. T...
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Science FictionSpirit's Destiny follows the path of one Ella Bland, who having just finished a degree is looking forward to living on earth (a right for attending 4 years of university). The very last thing she ever expected was to become embroiled in an ancient, bloody and quite secret war between a genocidal art...
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FantasyVivisepulture is an ebook collection of weird tales from some seriously talented authors, edited by the singular Andy Remic. (According to the online dictionary Vivisepulture is the act of burying someone alive by the way and you get some odd articles looking that one up on Google I can tell you!)....
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Science FictionCat's Cradle is my first foray into the world of Kurt Vonnegut, I have heard his name mentioned over the years but for one reason or another I have never actually picked up one of his novels. My youngest brother recommended his works (specifically siting Slaughterhouse five) and I have been picking...
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FantasyBrains, Brains, BRAINS!, you just have to love those lurching, decaying animated corpses. The living dead make a great enemy and here we have wall-to-wall flesh eating monsters, ghouls and things that go bite in the night, brought to (un)life by some of the best horror and fantasy writers in the wor...
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Science FictionThe only science fiction novel that the immensely talented Cecelia Holland has written, Floating Worlds is taking it's rightful place within the halls of Gollancz SF Masterworks collection. The novel tells the story of humanity 2000 years in the future where capitalism has been overthrown and anarch...
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Science FictionI first read one of Paul J McAuley's novels over 20 years ago, picked up completely at random for reason's that are shrouded in the midst of time. The book was Secret Harmonies and it became one of the most memorable novel's I have read before or since, managing to evoke a powerful feeling of travel...
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FantasyStorm Front is the first novel introducing the wizard P.I. Harry Dresden to the world, a gritty urban fantasy that manages to captivate right from the start. We join Harry as he's going through a bit of a slow patch and so when the Chicago PD asks for help with a double homicide he jumps at the chan...
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FantasyI must admit that I missed the first 3 novels in this series although I have heard a lot about them (all good) and remember hearing about the (Tony winning) Broadway musical that was based on the first book "Wicked". The books themselves are inspired by Frank Baum's childrens classic "The Wonderful...
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Back in May last year I reviewed a novel by Peter Koevari, a promising new Indie author who has been creating an epic fantasy series known as Legends of Marithia. This is the second novel in that series and follows straight on from the events of the previous book - Legends of Marithia: Prophecies Aw...
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Science Fiction"Who Goes There?" is the novella by John W Campbell on which John Carpenter based the classic film "The Thing", its presented here with another 6 short stories by the same author, mostly published within Astounded magazine in the 1930's. John W Campbell is widely regarded as being highly influential...
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Science FictionAndy Remic has managed to carve out his own particular niche within the science fiction genre, deliberately pushing the boundaries and not holding back in the slightest. Finding a new Remic book is very much like finding a new Tarrantino film - you just know it's going to be an irresistible action p...
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Science FictionEmpire State is the début novel of the talented author Adam Christopher, combining a superhero tale with an alternative reality prohibition era noir-esque New York. Throw in gangsters, private investigators and a rogue robot and even a slight nod to steampunk then you have one daring mix. The parall...
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Science FictionI do so love a post apocalyptic tale and they often seem not very far from the reality in these times of economic turmoil. It therefore gives me great pleasure to inform you dear reader of another tale of survival after a world altering cataclysmic event. Pressia can barely remember a time before th...
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Science FictionI first read this book about 20 years ago, one that I picked up at random having not heard anything about the author in the slightest, it become one of the most memorable books I have read before or since and this will be the third or fourth time I have read it. Ironically it's still the only novel...
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Science FictionI first found this novel during a book hunt back in 2006, at that time I hadn't heard of the author however I had just read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars and as such was looking for another space opera "settlement" style novel. What I found with Coyote impressed me so much that I went straight out...
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FantasyA Zombie novel by the son of comic legend Mel Brooks, World War Z is told as a series of interconnected interviews from survivors of the zombie war all over the world. This method of storytelling is very different, there is no central protagonist or contiguous plot, instead we learn about the story...
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Science FictionPhilip K Dick first wrote this story as a short called "Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday" which was published in the August 1966 edition of the Amazing Stories magazine. Counter Clock World is the expanded, novel length version and was published a year later. The novel uses the Big Crunch theory t...
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Science FictionFar in the future the humans of Earth have spread to the stars, but at great cost to Earths fragile ecosystem. For a world that is largely concrete and plastic, wood has more value than gold and the Terrans waste no time in establishing a logging colony and military base named "New Tahiti" on an idy...
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Science FictionIt's been too long since I read an Arthur C Clarke book, before I even started reviewing in fact and so when the opportunity presented itself to review The Ghost from the Grand Banks I jumped at the chance. This is one of Clarkes later novels, published in 1990 and the story revolves around the reco...
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Science FictionPower Trip is a novel featuring the Wondering Koala, a mute superhero who always manages to stand up for those who need help. This time we are in "Firebird City", home to 8 million people and one power company. After six months of job hunting following college René thinks he's finally hit the jackpo...
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Science FictionThe Everlasting Beyond of Eternal Happiness reminds me quite a bit of Harry Harrisons "Bill, The Galactic Hero" series, which itself is in part a parody of Heinlein's Starship Troopers - there is a very similar irony running throughout and the book even shares some of the same vernacular. There are...
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FantasyLegends of Light is a high fantasy saga told as a series of poems, each building upon the last to weave a tale of magic, romance and creatures of the dark. I must admit that I am not really one to read poems, they have never interested me in the slightest and so when I was asked to review this book...