Archives 2013
This is a list of all the reviews that SFBook have published in 2013.
For ten years Thomas Covenant has done his best to move on with his life and get back on top of his illness. While a decade may have passed in Covenant's world, in the Land it's been over three thousand years since he freed the people and defeated the evil Lord Foul.
In this time Foul...
I stumbled across Poison early in high school, and I loved it so much I went on to read whatever other works of Chris Wooding that I could get my hands on. For years I remembered Poison to be this incredible, fascinating novel, so when I picked it up again as an adult I was a little...
A book so good he had to write it twice? Actually that’s a fair statement to make. Demon Seed was originally written in the 70’s and then thirty years later was completely re-written. The story and plot remains the same but what Koontz has done is move the novel into the 21st century with...
Waking up on a strange world with no memory of his past, our intrepid protagonist finds an unusual group of people surviving on the slope of a mountain chain that forms a ring around a vast sandy dust-bowl that appears to hold dangers unseen.
Everyone else seem to also have no memories...
The Scar returns us to the wonderful world of Bas Lag, first encountered in the award winning novel Perdido Street Station. This time however we are far removed from the dirty, winding streets of New Crobuzon and thrust into the wider world, adrift on strange tides and weird seas.
The...
The Man from Primrose Lane - an elderly recluse who wore mittens all year round; a man who seemed to have no friends or family, is murdered one summers day. The murder goes unsolved with little or no evidence until a day four years later when Best-selling author David Neff learns of this strange...
The Rook is a surprisingly impressive piece of fiction, managing to turn a literary device often used to provide back story into an integral part of the story. Myfanwy Thomas wakes one morning in a London park surrounded by bodies wearing latex gloves, somewhat battered and bruised and with no...
I must admit that one of the reasons I picked up this novel is that it has my surname on it, the other being that it is of course Philip K Dick who still rates as one of my favourite authors.
Written back in 1956 The World Jones Made is one of the authors very early novels and tells the...
I’m going to start by saying that this isn’t usually a book I’d consider reading, my usual reads being Sci-Fi and Fantasy (usually humorous), or history books, but I was very surprised and really, really enjoyed it.
The book is seen through the eyes of a Collector, Sam Thornton,...
The Aylesford Skull is the fourth novel in the Narbondo series, following the adventures of the brilliant but eccentric Professor Langdon St. Ives and written by one of the founding fathers of the Steampunk genre - James P Blaylock.
Not only has Blaylock won a number of awards, he's also...
Touchstone is the beginning of a fantasy journey quite different to the traditional tale. While it is set in the medieval style world full of magic and monsters it takes a unique path in the way the various races and magic are presented.
In this world theaters are a place of magic where...
Following the horrific murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a dis-used graveyard populated by ghosts and other undead creatures of the night - completely unaware of the death of his parents. Taking pity on the innocent child the ghosts agree to raise him as their own, naming him...
Changes continues the story of Herald trainee Mags, following on from the events of Foundation and Intrigues - all set within the long running Valdemar series.
As with the previous two books, Changes manages to disarm the reader and surround them in a warm, soothing embrace - yes we are...
Without warning, on the eve of the second Gulf war an unknown energy blast hits the USA - destroying all fauna while leaving flora and buildings intact. America as we know it vanishes in the blink of an eye.
It's 2003 and in Kuwait US forces are poised for the invasion of Iraq, in Paris...
The Twyning is the story of young ratling Efren, born into a time of change for the Kingdom of rats that live beneath the city streets. After the King is assassinated by a human scientist Dr Henry Ross-Gibbon the whole rat society is in turmoil.
This death is just the start though, with...
Nation is the first novel in some time (since the 1996 novel Johnny and the Bomb) Terry Pratchett has written that is not a part of the Discworld series. Sir Terry had apparently been ready to write it for four years and could wait no longer. Primarily aimed at children, Nation is everything...
Among Others is about as different from any novel I have read than the Moon is from a piece of pie. It's not even a book I thought I would enjoy either, if someone had approached me and asked me to read a novel about a 15 year old girls account of her life in a boarding school - delivered in...
The Grey city of Dorminia, surrounded by granite walls thrice the height of a man and at least three feet thick at it's weakest point. These walls provide a barrier for those without as they do those within, patrolled by the harsh Crimson watch and observed from the skies by the Mindhawks -...
Divine Endurance and Flowerdust, - two novels collected together for the first time exclusively as an e-book and known as "The Last Days Of Ranaganar" - are set within a far-future south-east Asia, a future that is hardly recognizable from the present and one that seems both medieval and...
Last year we reviewed Control Point, a contemporary fantasy that managed to blend a strong military style with that of fantastic magical powers. The author managed to create a successful combination with tons of action and tense drama; narrated in a powerful, unique voice. Fortress Frontier is...
We are here; fairly innocuous words that little prepare the reader for the tightly written thriller that Michael Marshall has penned. It all begins with the struggling author David and his wife Dawn visiting the publisher in New York who has finally agreed to print his debut novel. As he returns...
I first read Tithe when I was young, probably the same age as the main character, Kaye—16. I was entranced. It was so dark, so beautifully written, and so enticing. I wanted more of the silver knight, more of the deliciously dark faery world. It isn’t by any means glorious—there’s teen...
Adam Robots is a collection of science fiction shorts by the irrepressible author Adam Roberts. Each little story explores a different style, sub-genre or convention and yet each is quite clearly a product of the authors mind. There is a certain momentum to Roberts prose, a hustling and yet...
Dreams and Shadows is a contemporary urban fantasy fairytale which tells the story of two young boys Ewan and Colby who both become embroiled in the secret world of the Limestone Kingdom - a parallel world where Wizards and Genie's co-inhabit with creatures much older and largely forgotten. Ewan...
Another episode is the Mountain Man series always brings a degree of eagerness; not only with knowledge that you just know the dialogue will be entertaining but in the authors wonderfully rewarding tone too; Hellifax is no exception.
Gus, the reluctant hero of the previous two Mountain...
Something is going wrong on the planet of Paradise, crops will no longer grow while those imported are withering and dying in their droves. The indigenous plant life (never entirely safe) is becoming wildly unpredictable and dangerous. And so the order is given to abandon Paradise, all personnel...
Werewolves are often given second place to those pale undead that are now thankfully on the wane, where one wanes another waxes and perhaps 2013 will be year of the werewolf - it will if Red Moon has anything to do with it.
The novel is set in an alternate world where werewolves are not...
Towards the end of the 21st Century Earth appears as a very different place, a post-singularity existence and a fractured future of a billion earthbound souls, preserved at the bottom of a gravity well.
Huw is a technophobe and somewhat of a misanthropist - a natural selection for the...
The great world-spanning City of Chung Kuo see's the "War that wasn't a war" being fought between it's levels as the ruling seven T'ang struggle to maintain calm and prevent change.
But this War isn't being fought on a battlefield, instead these combatants are employing a degree of...
Every so often there comes along a book that manages to make you go wow, one that stands out as a book that is destined to become a classic. Last year Osama was such a book; this year Wolfhound Century takes that honour.
Set in an alternate Russia the novel tells the tale of Investigator...
By the time Dean Koontz wrote this novel he was already a household name. He had infiltrated the mystery / thriller / horror genres like no other. With a novel a year hitting the bookshelves he was as prolific a writer as Stephen King. However on closer inspection one can find that a lot of the...
The world has ended and the few who remain are faced with a struggle to survive, not only with a lack of food and heat (not to mention any real form of civilisation) but also against the hordes of shambling undead who look to rip, tear, kill and eat not to mention the possibility of an even more...
A Taste of Blood Wine is romantic. It’s chock full of smoldering description, intrigue and mystery, dark love, and all sorts of gossip and twists and turns.
The novel follows Charlotte, the daughter and lab partner of a scientist, as she rapidly falls for the vampire Karl. But then the...
The Nexus Odyssey is an omnibus featuring the Darwinian Extension series along with the follow-on novel "Renewal", a series that presents a bold vision for the human race.
It begins in 2033 with a planned mission to populate the red planet, Mars. But rather than a simple plan to create a...
Noomi Rapier is a rookie investigator with the Transdimensional Authority, a force who police the travel between dimensions. When Noomi and her partner "Crash" Chumley find a dead body slumped over an altered transdimensional machine in one of the many dimensions they patrol, they must discover...
Although Graham never seems to have reached the dizzy heights of other horror writers he has been a very prolific writer over the years, and has seen a few of his works hit the silver screen. However, forever in the shadow of the likes of Herbert, another British horror novelist, these movie...
Redoubt is the fourth novel in the Collegium Chronicles, following the adventures of the Herald trainee Mags and his friends Bear, Lena and Amily. Mags is becoming something of a hero, not least due to his rescuing of Amily (the daughter of Kings Own Herald Nikolas) from agents of Valdemars...
This is the first book I have read by this author, not somebody I had ever heard of. To my surprise I discovered a large catalogue of books he has written, most of which are very popular in their own right and it is at times like these I question what I have been reading these last thirty odd...
Prophets of the Ghost Ants is about as different a story as you are ever going to read (and given the sheer breadth of works around nowadays that is saying something). It's already been optioned for a film trilogy and has been lauded by such people as Lawrence Bender - the Oscar winning film...
What can be said about this author that hasn’t been said before? Prolific. Scary. Master of terror. King is all of these and more. King has really grown as not just a writer of horror throughout his career but as a true wordsmith, a master of his art and none more so than with this latest...
We last saw Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery getting ready to set sail with the Giants and embark upon the quest to find the fabled One Tree; the force that can remake the staff of law and free the land and people from the evil influence it has become infected by.
One Tree rejoins these...
The Desert of Souls is a sweeping tale that is firmly rooted in the traditional sword and sorcery genre and yet flows with a steady, refreshing grace. Set in 8th Century Baghdad the novel is full of an eastern style that sets it apart from the majority of the genre. It's a refreshing environment...
I must admit I watched the entire series of Dexter before I even picked up one of Lindsay’s novels. Did I do the right thing? Yes and no. I absolutely loved the show, one of my faves. The book? Awesome too. I will definitely be adding them to my collection in the near future. Are they the...
Two years ago something happened in Broken Hill, something that killed thousands, the entire population of the small Australian mining town. Although everyone was encouraged to believe that some form of "environmental disaster" was the cause there are a few people who know what really happened....
This isn't the first of Joe’s books that I have tried to read. I tried Horns many months ago but had to give up as it wasn't quite sitting with me. NOS4R2 however is on a completely new level. It had me hooked from the start, the idea and plot behind it all was fresh and interesting and I...
Christopher Priest is without a doubt one of the finest writers alive today. Rather than compromise his stories for the sake of easy understanding Priest writes undiluted and it's up to the reader to pay attention; to digest and to consider what the story really means, or at the very least what...
Blope is about segregation, plastic surgery gone wrong, and all sorts of messed up religion. For a little background, it is basically another version of history where the American Southwest becomes part of an extreme Taiwanese empire. Its ruler uses the American Southwest as an experiment &...
One of my favourite series has now reached book four and continues to astonish and astound in the quality and conviction of the writing, the continued building of the rich tapestry that is The Courts of the Feyre and the journey of the complex characters that inhabit Shevdon's urban fantasy....
Shaun was very prolific in the Eighties, and with this novel you often wonder why he could have been so successful. The trick with Hutson is not to take him seriously both in his style and content and more often than not as an author also. There are all the usual clichés with Hutson’s work in...
State of Being is the third novel in the God Head trilogy and follows directly on from the cataclysmic events in State of Union. Jake Travissi is on the run, having lost everything he cared for and the future looks bleak with AI taking over the surviving population; the only hope may mean going...
This is Stella Gemmell's first solo book, after writing with her late (great) husband for a number of years. I must admit that I am a huge fan of David Gemmell, I've read and re-read most of his works and the majority are still hugely memorable; for me he defined the Heroic Fantasy genre. I...
When I first picked this book up I thought, this seems a bit amateurish. Further reading and I understood why. It is a novel aimed for young adults. With this in mind I began to look at the novel in a new light. I cast off my misgivings and settled down to enjoy the story for what it was....
Poison is an enchanting adult take on the classic fairy tale Snow White. With an appealing freshness and confident, unique voice of the author its a tale that will leave you eager for more.
Everyone knows the story of Snow White and Poison is instantly recognisable from that childhood...
The Art of War continues David Wingrove's epic re-imagining of the Chung Kuo, the fifth novel in the 20 book series and things are starting to really heat up. It's five years after the events depicted in Ice and Fire and the story picks up in the summer of 2206. The Dispersionists who have...
Imagine a world where cloning was not only advanced enough to create real bodies but where the technology was inexpensive and simple enough to be viable on a large scale. Of course making copies of real people would be wrong and there would bound to be a law against such a thing but what if a...
It's true that I have a soft spot for a good post-apocalyptic story, there is just something about the setting that appeals to me. I'm clearly not alone in this regard either, post-apocalyptic scenarios are dominating the film world this year while in the world of books we have excellent...
The Executioners Heart is the fourth novel in the Newbury and Hobbes series and follows on from the events of The Immorality Engine - although you don't need to have read that or any of the previous books to enjoy The Executioners Heart. The Queen's agents Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica...
It’s a book about drugs. No it’s a book about zombies. Wrong again, it’s a book about love, hope and the desire we have to be better people. It is all of these and so much more. Peter’s creations of zombies being referred to as Chucks due to the fact that they are always chuckling and...
Cory Doctorow has a unique way of capturing the technological challenges of current times that speaks volumes, provocative and blended perfectly into an entertaining, rewarding story. Pirate Cinema is no exception and the fact that it is labelled as a "Young Adult" book should not put the older...
Probably one of my favourites of the late Mr Herbert’s novels. The haunted was written at the end of a very successful decade of writing. Everything about the Haunted book is quintessentially Herbert and quintessentially English.
Herbert gets everything right with this book, there is...
Hooded Man collects the three novels Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland (along with a short story set between the first and second books), all of which are part of the shared post-apocalyptic universe known as the "Afterbright Chronicles" - which includes this years SF Book of the year...
Ok this was my first time reading one of Mr. Shan’s novels and I must admit I wasn’t wholly impressed. However, reflecting back maybe I am being a bit too harsh. My experience as an adult is to read books aimed at my audience and not one of a younger audience. In that respect, yes, I got it...
The Big Time won the coveted Hugo award for best novel in 1958 - the fourth novel to win such award; a science fiction story written by an author best known for his fantasy stories. It's unique in style and form, reading as much as a play as it does a novel. This feeling is re-enforced by the...
By the time Lumley got around to writing this book he had already written thirteen others. His early works expanded heavily the Cthulu mythos with some subtle differences. He introduces us to a guy named Titus Crow. But that was then and this is now and we have a new hero to thank. Harry Keogh....
The Long Earth is an outstanding novel; entertaining with some great touches and a unique story that has Pratchett's touch of genius about it - combined with Baxter's hard-scifi edge and world building skill. All the ideas and the vast scope of the story carried the book forward really well but...
Traditionally Mo is a thriller writer; she certainly does love a good mystery yarn. However I was sold this novel on the pretext that this novel contains enough horror overtones to be able to put this book firmly in the horror section.
They weren’t wrong. I’d go so far as to say...
Evening's Empires is the fourth novel set within the Quiet War series, although it is pretty much a stand-alone story in that universe and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of McAuley's works.
The story follows Hari, a young man who has narrowly escaped kidnap (or worse) and as...
Ok, where shall I start? It was an ok book. A little above average. Hints of promise, but then his next piece of work would have to be something special or he will find himself reduced to the bargain bookshops and supermarket shelves. It started off with great promise too to be fair. The...
I picked up The Ocean at the End of the Lane having already read a few (spoiler free) reviews on-line, so I was pretty thrilled to have finally bought it for myself (hard-cover and all). I'm a long time fan of Neil Gaiman—I discovered him in high school and remained a loyal reader. I'm...
Terra is a very different novel. It doesn't take itself too seriously and on the surface appears very light-hearted, a safe novel with prose full of soft curves rather than sharp edges. This is after all a young-adult novel and yet there is much more to this book than meets the eye.
The...
Quite a small book on the whole, just coming in at over 200 hundred pages but I must admit not one of those pages was wasted, each one moving the story along in a fast paced manner. The book is more suspense than horror or thriller but I do find it sits nicely on the bookshelf amongst his other...
The third adventure that follows Chicago's only Wizard Harry Dresden get's off to a powerful and swift start that doesn't let up for the whole novel. This time Harry has some help in the form of a Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter who is a "righteous" man, driven by his devout faith and...
Now I am a self-professed fan of horror books and have been since I was a teenager, reading hundreds of horror books along the way. Most have been good, a few not so good. I have collected loads of authors along my journey, possessing all the King novels, Herbert novels and quite a few Barker...
If you've read any books by Graham Joyce you will feel very much at home with The Year of the Ladybird. Not only does it read very much like his previous stories - complete with the everyday path of the protagonist and minimal use of any genre tropes - but The Year of the Ladybird feels like a...
I remember seeing Ed’s books in shops when I was younger, mysterious front covers that looked interesting but back covers that sounded just a bit, well, naff. You then look closer and read things like "Master of Dark Suspense", Koontz stating that, "Gorman’s writing is strong, fast and sleek...
Charm is the second in Sarah Pinborough's series of novels which rewrite the traditional fairy tale for an intelligent, adult audience. This time it's the story of Cinderella that is re-created into an erotic, adult and charged story with a touch of brothers grimm darkness. I love how the author...
The first of the sequels to The Rats is a vast improvement to the original in terms of suspense and action. What the book lacks in originality now, due to it being a sequel, it definitely makes up for in horror and gore. The author’s writing has really come a long way in the intervening years...
Broken Homes is the fourth novel in Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series and each one gets better and better - this one though has a completely unexpected twist at the end that I guarantee will leave you breathless and have you clambering through the book looking for the clues along the way....
The Dead of Winter was a novel that caught me somewhat off guard, combining two genres I enjoy immensely, horror and the westerns, and successfully merging them together. Set in and around the town of Leadville, Colorado the story follows the tough, hard-drinking, gambling lead of the story,...
Ok so we all know who Shaun Hutson is, and asked to name some of his works then Slugs is more than likely to be in the answer bank, most people probably know that it was even his first novel. What they may not know however, unless they have read up on the guy is that he is a die-hard Iron Maiden...
Douglas Richards has a wonderful way of injecting science fiction elements into a thriller style plot without upsetting the balance and comparisons to the late Michael Crichton are inevitable. If anyone was to compare authors it would also be fair to say that Richards is a worthy successor to...
Proxima is more than a bit of a surprise. There is no doubt that Stephen Baxter is a talented and imaginative author and has worked with some of the finest people to put pen to paper however I find some of his novels quite dry and lacking in empathy / effective characterisation. To be fair...
Like many people who read fantasy my journey into this wonderful genre was largely propelled at a young age by JRR Tolkiens classic "The Hobbit". For me it came from a completely unlikely source too - from my Gran who didn't seem to read much (at least that I noticed), didn't have many books and...
2047 in New York and the future imagined in Zxap Jacket is a grim one; acid snow falls with abandon on the dirty streets and those without a Zxap Jacket suffer stinging eyes and burned skin. As is commonly prevailent within the early 21st Century, it isn't long before private enterprise looks at...
It's the 23rd Century and Earth is changed forever following the arrival in Darwin, Australia of the alien "builder" technology that provides a "tether" out into space; humanity finally has a space elevator. No-one knows why, or even if these elusive aliens will return.
Some time later...
To relate to this novel you need to understand the reason for the book, memories. Those snapshots of time stored in our own personal biological computer situated in our noggin.
In many ways it's these recordings of our travels through time (and if we are very lucky, space) that make us...
Blood and Chocolate’s protagonist Vivian Gandillon loves the change—the sweetly painful way her body moves from human to wolf. At 16, she’s stunningly beautiful and has all the men in her pack running after her. Her pack family, recently driven away from West Virginia where her father lost...
Back in November 2011 Jeff and Ann VanderMeer published "The Weird", the ultimate collection of weird tales of the last 100 years. This November they turn their attentions to Time Travel in another landmark Tome.
This is without a doubt the most definitive collection of stories featuring...
Aislinn has always seen faeries. They are powerful, cruel, and dangerous. She and her grandmother have avoided them all of their lives—don’t stare, don’t speak, don’t attract their attention. But now, faeries have started to stalk her, including Keenan, the Summer King. Keenan has...
I'm often saying that there just isn't enough well written comic fantasy, aside from the likes of Pratchett, Holt, Howard and Rankin the laugh-out-load novels still being written are few and far between and in large the genre is being propped up by writers such as Rob Knipe and RJ Astruc....
The Death of Grass is a classic post-apocalyptic tale of a world without grass. Written in 1956 - just as the post-apocalyptic genre started to gain ground, created by the British author Samuel Youd - under the pen name John Christopher.
The Death of Grass was Youd's second novel and was...
It's difficult to imagine that the Discworld began 40 books and 30 years ago, so far it has been a tremendous journey (long may it continue) and Raising Steam continues possibly the finest continuous fantasy series yet created.
One of the things I love about the Discworld is the...
The Beautiful Land makes excellent use of the parallel dimensions theory as it relates to time travel. Here you don't directly travel in time but to a different point in a parallel world which could be almost like our own or vastly different depending on the changes that have taken place. Here...
Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? The Heroes (and it appears, Villians) of this fine city are being bumped off one and no-one seems to have any idea who could be carrying out this evil deed.
Worse still there are supposed to be fail-safes to prevent any Cape (be they good or bad)...
White Gold Wielder is the last book in the second of Stephen Donaldson's trilogies about the Leper Thomas Covenant and his journeys to the parallel reality known as "The Land". Regular visitors to the site may recall that I didn't think that much of the previous volume - "The One Tree" and I...
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