Reviews with titles beginning with S.
Sabriel is a young adult fantasy novel written by Garth Nix and is the first volume in the Old Kingdom series. The Old Kingdom is a land where magic is common and spirits roam freely (a fact denied by the government). Outside of the Old Kingdom lies Ancelstierre, which has a technology level...
We are once again re-united with one of the few survivors in a world infested with the undead. Gus is a little more dishevelled than the last time we saw him, more bruised and a bit more reckless too as his daily existence of waking up, getting drunk and preparing for the inevitable zombie horde...
Stories from Adam Roberts are always challenging as well as entertaining. Saint Rebor follows this trend, being a diverse collection joined together by the writer’s conceptual ideas in the prologue. Whilst you might expect a variety of story premises in a collection, in Saint Rebor, you have a...
Salem's Lot was Kings second published novel, following on from his success with Carrie. Written shortly after King moved to Maine (the bulk of the story was actually written before Carrie), it follows the writer Ben Mears as he moves back to the small town of Jerusalem's Lot (known...
Sanctus is a mystery detective novel and the debut of Simon Toyne. An enigmatic citadel sits atop a steep mountain, overlooking the ancient Turkish city of Ruin. One of the oldest and most secretive inhabited places on earth is about to draw the attention of the world as a symbolic suicide...
I'd like to start this review by saying that Richard Kadrey doesn't get the visibility he deserves, not by a long shot. I only discovered him myself by seeing other authors discussing how wonderful his work is.
They aren't wrong.
Sandman Slim - real name James...
What happens when the world ends? Do we as a species rally together to save the day at the last possible moment, or do we fiddle whilst Rome burns? If recent history has shown us nothing else, the rich will party, and the poor will die. Nothing new there then. Stephanie Feldman does not see the...
What a neat little idea in a neat little book. Book is probably a touch generous coming in at just over a hundred pages but don’t let that spoil your fun, what you have here is actually a twisted tale, gruesome in the telling and packs a punch other books only hope to imitate.
...
War, what is it good for? Not a lot, but depressingly it is a real driver of innovation. What better way to inspire the greatest minds in the country than to task them with more efficient ways to kill the enemy? Arms races happen all over the place from conventional gun and bullets to newer...
There are many reasons that I am a reviewer and not a writer and one of them is that I do not have that thing in my brain to produce simple, but great ideas. Speculating about the future or past and giving it a twist has made for some great science fiction and fantasy. What about a French...
Schild's Ladder is a science fiction novel by the Australian author Greg Egan. Egans latest hard physics thriller Schilds Ladder, presents his yet hardest to understand story. This time I'm actually unsure whether it's worth the effort, to try to understand what he’s saying. I normally find...
Sometimes I feel that reading post-apocalyptic tales are less an escape and more training for the future, after all as a race we aren't doing a great job of preventing this self-destructive outcome. Luckily there is no shortage of literature to teach us about survival in a future wasteland and...
Coming-of-age stories are perennial favorites because most of us get the chance to come-of-age at some point. You may know a few immature adults, but when it comes down to it, they are not walking around in short trousers and attending school. The reason that we do not all write about our own...
Sometimes it is hard to see that something is not quite right as it has always been that way. Why in children’s cartoons does there always seem to be a misbalance between the male and female characters? Will boys not watch girls on screen? Will men not read about women in books? Fantasy...
I may be biased, but I think that science fiction is the greatest of genres because you can explore so many avenues. I have read many a future dystopian that have explored human’s obsession with science or lack of care with climate change. What I have never read is a science...
While many stories depict the fight between man and machine, Sea of Rust shows a future where the machines have already won.
Humankind has been wiped off the face of the Earth by the very robots that were built to serve them. Now the planet is controlled by vast intelligences (known...
Who doesn’t love a good pirate story? What about a story that has flying ships that drop gunpowder bombs? Or a story that has magic and mysterious civilisations living on remote islands? These all sound great and are wrapped together in a lovely fantasy package in Michael...
FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson's best friend and colleague is brutally murdered while pursuing an investigation into the genetic manipulation of food crops and Jack is convinced that a group of eco-terrorists are behind the killing, with the beautiful geneticist Naomi Perrault being the prime...
Second Sight follows on from the events of the Riddler's Gift and is the second novel in the Lifesong series by Greg Hamerton. Tabitha Serannon has not only survived the horrors brought by the shadowcasters led by the Darkmaster, but has become a miracle healer and a fledgling wizard, but...
I 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...
Selected Shorts and other methods of time travel is a collection of short stories especially created for Young Adults, written by David Goodberg. The Year is 2051 and time travel has become a commercial success. Opportunities abounded for curious history buffs, futurists, and corrupt...
Senlin Ascends is the ground-breaking debut of Josiah Bancroft and the beginning of the Books of Babel series. Originally self published in 2013, the book was picked up by Tor / Orbit when it became clear just how special the novel really is. Since then the series has continued with Arm of the...
Our body connects with the outer world by means of our five senses ( not to mention the sixth sense for those endowed with it…). We take our senses for granted and realize their importance only when they become defective or when we miss one of them entirely. But what happens when one of our...
Serial Killers Incorporated is a dark urban fantasy novel by Andy Remic and published by Anarchy Books. Callaghan is a drug and drink fuelled, womanising, amoral, hardcore photographer for the tabloid rag Black & White. He's a guy with very few redeeming features (if any) and his journey on the...
The novel picks up just where Fire Sea left off. Alfred jumps into Death's Gate as Haplo's ship passes through it, and finds himself in a stasis room like the one he woke up in; in fact, he believes he's on Arianus. Tired, he decides to put himself back to sleep... Only to find someone in...
Servant of the Underworld is the debut novel from a rising star in the fantasy world, Aliette de Bodard. Acatl is the high priest of the Dead for the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. It is his role to oversee the dead making sure they receive the correct rituals and rites of passage into the...
The world will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. Similarly, it won’t be the robots that uprise and destroy humans, but our own incompetence when it comes to programming. Build and programme things correctly and everything should be fine, but this is modern life and doing things...
Have you ever wondered what happens in those years after the Superheroes have saved the planet? Would they continue to fight crime or would it all turn into a big PR exercise? While many would see them as noble warriors who are elevated far above the common man what would happen if they...
Set within the same universe as the authors previous novel Tribes, Shades of Empire follows the ex-soldier Alexander Napier, merchant starship captain Madeline Pallestrino and a host of other colourful characters.
Alexander still reluctantly wears the marks of his servitude to the...
I've been reading Reynolds books since he began writing them and have seen him grow over the years from a seriously talented writer to one of the best in his field. Revenger was one of his finest works to date, Shadow Captain eclipses it easily. It's the second in a planned trilogy but manages...
If you look at the Star Wars timeline from afar it can seem a little depressing. An Old Republic falls only for an Empire to rise. That goes and you get The New Order. It seems that the rebels are always having to rebel against something. However, for the Sith to rise,...
Shadow of the Demon is the third and final novel in the Prophecy of the Kings trilogy by David Burrows. Kaplyn, Lars, Lomar and the brave defenders of Thrace have earned a respite from the horrors of the war they find thrust upon them. The Seige was only the start though and they must now find...
Some of my favourite Urban Fantasy is about a normal world that is unaware of the creatures that lurk in the night. Whilst we are all safely asleep, there is are demons and witches lurking around the corner. Most of us will never even know that these things exist,...
We all have a past. For most of us it is dull. I went to school, Uni and then got a job. It is rare that I have to face off against the hideous undead or talk to the local rat population. Gina Meyers does not have it so easy, and her past is coming back to haunt...
Five years ago, the boy Konrad first saw the Bronze Knight, harbringer of destruction adn death for his true love and those dearest to him. But now Konrad is a hardened mercenary, and when the evil warrior reappears, Konrad has his chance of...
Shadows of Self, the fifth in the Mistborn series and the sequel to Alloy of Law, shows Mistborn’s society evolving as technology and magic mix, the economy grows, and religion becomes a growing cultural force.
The bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society that came out of the...
38 000 years in the future and the greatest, most terrible war humanity has ever faced rages across the galaxy as the forces of chaos look to spread terror to every corner and man fights fellow man. On the home world of the human race preparations have begun to defend the Imperial Palace and get...
In the holy city of Othir treachery and corruption are rife, the ideal breeding ground for any freelance assassins with no scruples. Caim is one of the best, living on the edge of a blade he has carved out an impeccable reputation but when he reluctantly takes on a job at very short notice he...
Shakespeare's Planet is a science fiction novel by Clifford D Simak. The plot of the novel lacks overall action. There is some exploration of the ruins, pond and hill by Carter Horton but this come to very little information or help to solve the problems the characters face. Most of the time...
Shards of Honor is a novel in the Miles Vorkosigan Adventures by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is the first book by McMaster that I've read that isn't about Miles Vorkosigan. It is about Miles's mother and father and the story of how they met and fell in love. Shards of honor takes place during...
Shards of Space is a collection of short science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley. Normally I make a short mention of each of the stories in short story collections, but there's has to be a limit. Shards of Space contains eleven stories and none of them are worth the time (my time) or space...
If I have said it once, I have it said a thousand times, science fiction is the best genre as it is so wide reaching. Stories can be grandiose, epic Space Operas with multiple characters on several planets. Or, stories can be personal affairs, titbits of speculative fiction that tweaks our own...
There is much to like about Joe Abercrombie, particularly when he returns to his darker writing, as published by Gollancz. One of the founders of the ‘grimdark’ movement, Abercrombie’s gritty brand of fantasy delivers real consequences and hard bitten characters in all the different...
What would you do should a sudden cataclysmic event effect the Earth? The answer is that you will probably be dead, but if you are lucky enough to be the protagonist of a book you are likely to have survived. It would be a very short book otherwise. The events in Dana Fredsti and David...
Hutchinson's writing has, at times, turned out to be worryingly prophetic - he wrote about the break-up of the European Union while Brexit was just a twinkle in David Cameron's eye, in his astounding Fractured Europe series.
This time he's writing about life in rural...
When a beloved intellectual property enters the public domain, it can be a fearful time for fans, what on Earth are all these authors going to do with your beloved characters? In the case of Sherlock Holmes, it has been a magnificent time. Each year the shelves bulge...
Forget Marvel and their Marvelverse, the place that I want to be is in Christian Klaver’s Victorianverse. This is an alternative history of the era, but also of the fiction of the time. In the author’s 'The Classified Dossier’ series, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson have...
Sherlock Holmes is such an iconic figure that it is easy to believe that he was real. A great detective walking the streets of Late Victorian London solving crimes that conventional police could not hope to solve. But he was not real, neither was Watson and they are both out of copyright which...
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...
I've always had a soft spot for Sherlock Holmes. The books are wonderful pieces of classic fiction (my favourite being the Hounds of the Baskervilles) and modern interpretations such as those penned by Moffat and Gattiss help to keep this Centenarian alive in the minds of millions.
...
Sherlock Holmes and his creator may be long dead, but this has not stopped the master detective living on in the works of others. James Lovegrove has written several stories that have expanded on Arthur Conan Doyle’s legacy, but The Cthulhu Casebooks offer something very different by...
The tale is often told from the perspective of the victor, distorting the truth to make them look better. In an epic poem like Beowulf, it all points to one man being the hero, but what if there is more to the story. Shield Maiden by Sharon Emmerichs retells the final part of Beowulf’s...
Most people love a good heist if they are not the ones being robbed. Be it in the movies, a documentary, or even a novel, a heist is all about planning and then it falling apart instantly. You can tell the story of a heist in different ways; do you go deeply into the plan or find out more about...
The second part of the story begun with Bowl of Heaven, Benford and Niven bring us the conclusion to their mysterious 'big smart object' story.
Shipstar is less of a sequel than a continuation. The fitful nature of the story which caused problems in the first book is not smoothed as much...
The creation of a new subgenre comes fraught with danger, there may be a good reason it did not arise before. I am seeing an increase in what can be called Cosy Fantasy, novels that have many of the tropes of the genre but concentrate on character interaction over the action. The threat is that...
I found this book on Amazon while generally having a browse around and put it on my wish list for Christmas (yes, last Christmas). I finally got round to reading it, I'm glad I did!
Shovel Ready is set in a near future New York that has suffered much since a dirty bomb hit Times...
What is war good for? Not much, but it does advance some technologies faster than they might have been. Microwave technology, nuclear, plastic surgery – all have benefitted from being pushed by necessity. What about a war on a distant planet? Like here on Earth, any opposing armies will be...
I am not one to look back on my life, preferring to live and enjoy what I have in the present, but when I do it is often about my years at school and University. That person I could have treated better or the time I stood up in assembly by mistake. The events felt at huge at the time, but in...
Listen to your kids. It can be hard sometimes as they can speak absolute nonsense, but they also speak the truth, and they may need you to listen. Perhaps they wake at night and tell you that things are not right in the house, you can dismiss this as childish fantasies, but their fears...
Horror author William Massa has been terrifying me since I first watched saw the film he scripted—Return to the House on Haunted Hill. Since then, I have ploughed through his writings, recently reading his hybrid cyberpunk-android-civil-rights-commentary-action-packed-science-fiction-novel...
There is something magical about the silver screen. I enjoy watching films at home, but I love going to the cinema. A group of people in a dark room with a large screen and superior sound. I feel like I am immersed in the film, it draws me in, there is a power. But what if that power was real?...
Fantasy does not have to be massive epics set over several books that see dynasties rise and fall. Some of the best modern fantasy books concentrate on the characters that may have hidden in the background of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. The humble conman for instance and their crew. I...
Silverhair is a science fiction novel by the award winning author Stephen Baxter. This book is very quirky in that it forces us to see from a new perspective. For anyone who's ever read Raptor Red the concept of this book will most likely be familiar. Baxter has decided to craft a story...
Sirius by Olaf Stapledon is a science fiction novel and part of the Gollancz SF Masterworks collection. Sirius is the pinnacle of Thomas Trelone's experiments, the body of a large dog with the intelligence of a gifted human. He is raised as an equal in the Trelone household, alongside the...
The future could be Utopian, but if the vast majority of science fiction novels have taught us only one thing: it’s going to be Dystopian. The setting of Myke Cole’s Sixteenth Watch promises to be an uplifting one as humans have populated the moon and therefore found the resources...
Sixty One Nails is an urban fantasy novel of a secret war raging beneath the streets of London, written by Mike Shevdon. Under the nations capital there is a whole other world where magic is real, the world of the Feyre. A dark magic will be unleashed by the Untained… Unless a new hero can be...
Richard’s cousin Malley has just run off with some guy she met online, and Richard knows that things aren’t as great as she tells him they are. What’s a boy to do but to go after her, along with Skink, a ragged, one-eyed ex-governor of Florida?
The unlikely pair find themselves...
A few weeks ago we reviewed the spider-infested book The Hatching. This was preperation for the launch of the much anticipated sequel Skitter.
Skitter follows on directly from the dramatic events of the previous book and once more we are thrown into the middle of spidergeddon.
...
In Denmark there is a thriving science fiction subculture with many short stories being written every year. Since 2007 the Danish science fiction association (Science Fiction Cirklen) has published an annual anthology of a selection of these original stories, written by Danish authors. For the...
Sky Coyote is the second volume in The Company series of novels by Kage Baker, following on from the events of the novel "In the Garden of Eden".
This time, the viewpoint changes from Mendoza, child of the Spanish Inquisition, to Joseph, her rescuer and recruiter. Unfortunately, Baker is...
Heroic Fantasy doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but when done well can be powerful, energetic and immersive fiction. Sky in the Deep is one of the best examples of recent times and an equal to Gemmell's past stories.
The story follows Eelyn, a member of the Aska...
I love 2000AD, it is a fantastic serial comic that is filled with some of my favourite characters. Judge Dredd is omnipresent, but there are other characters that I picture when I think of opening a new issue; ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper and of course, Slaine. Slaine felt a little...
Slant (/) is a science fiction novel by the award winning writer Greg Bear. With nano machines taking care of the human race, from food to both physically and psychologically health, we seem to have it made. There's even a small free heaven for the freaks that for some reason would rather live...
I missed reviewing Sleeping Giants when it first came out. I've finally got round to picking up a copy to find out it's now been out long enough that there are two further novels in the series: Waking Gods and Only Human. Back in 2016 It was one of those break-out novels such as The...
A collection of six short works all with author commentary as to their origins. As a writer I would characterise David Hutchinson as a storyteller first and foremost. Each of the pieces in this collection tick forwards continually without straying too far. The exposition is neatly added...
Slow Bullets won the 2016 Locus award for best Novella and was shortlisted for the Hugo (along with making a number of must read lists). As you would expect from a novella it's a short read at 192 pages but it packs in more ideas than many more weighty novels manage.
Narrated in...
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...
No one's tried to Kill Harry in almost a year and the worst problem he has faced in that time is trying to get stains removed from carpets caused by his bungling apprentice.
Anyone who knows Harry knows that this is too good to last.
The person to put such a spanner in...
The horror genre has taught me how to deal with events that happened in my childhood. If you and a bunch of friends accidently run over a homeless person or set fire to a witch, the best thing is just to admit it without delay and take your lumps. You see, no matter how many years pass, they...
Smoke is a book that presents the idea - what if your stronger emotions were visible? People's Anger, Lust and Lies all visible as real smoke and soot that settles around them, permeating their clothes and the space around them. Within this world Children are born carrying "the seeds of...
Fire fighter Sean Grigsby’s near future debut sees the world infested with dragons risen from beneath the ground. The wingless wyverns rise up to destroy cities and take lives, leaving only the shadows of people - ‘wraiths’ - behind. It’s up to the ‘smoke.
Cole Brannigan, a...
There is a reason that criminal gangs fall apart. As an individual you can take responsibility for your own action, plan ever detail and keep your mouth shut when the job is done, but what about the others? They may be getting cold feet or have a loudmouth. The Smoke Kings are a group that...
There is a long tradition of Folk Horror in the UK, but plenty of other countries bring their own flavour to the genre. American Gothic has all the trappings of classic Folk Horror, but has that distinct US flavour. The woods out there seem different, ancient landscapes unused to the people that...
We are told to live in the moment; don’t worry about the past or the future, it is now that you should care about, but how many of us really do? We spend endless hours checking our phones or having meaningless arguments online. If someone walked in on you right now and said that you are not...
Snow crash is an acclaimed speculative fiction novel by the award winning author Neal Stephenson. Never getting into the Cyberpunk thing and hating the much-hyped use of the word Cyber, I've stayed away from everything that fell within the Cyberpunk category, with William Gibson as the centre of...
Snowblind follows the events of a small town of Coventry in the US state of Massachusetts which appears to have something of a unique storm. Not only a storm where people go missing or are killed but one that has an unearthly, supernatural twist. When the lights are extinguished demonic icicles...
Review by author Luis Villazon. This is a detective novel, with a fantasy setting. The city of Winter Moon is surrounded on three sides by impenetrable mountains and on the fourth by an impassable frozen sea. Its only connection to the outside world is via the magical floating city of...
Sam Vimes is forced to take a holiday in the country and discovers that things are not what they seem in the peaceful village. Once again Pratchett has written a classic with, humour, suspense and sheer wonder. I was hooked from page one and read the whole thing in two days stopping only to eat...
So Bright The Vision is a short story collection by the award winning author Clifford D Simak. A small collection of four stories written in the late fifties: The Golden Bugs Are they bugs or are they aliens? And why are they cleaning house? Leg. Forst. Collecting stamps is a whole other ball...
A deep space adventure with monstrous aliens, this short and pacey read from Stargate official fiction novelist Cannon, draws inspiration from both Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s sequel. Humanity’s struggle against the Harvestmen – a feral xenomorph with a terrifying instinct...
Stories are often told from the side of good, the plucky underdog who fights against the armies of evil only to be victorious, but what about a book told from the side of the agitators, the terrorists the anarchists? These are all labels and Emily Tesh sets out to prove in Some Desperate Glory...
Graham Joyce has a wonderful knack of writing about very ordinary, very real characters that lead generally ordinary lives and yet making those people not only highly engaging but also act in a realistic fashion to events around them. He then places just one small idea that is outside the realms...
A near future that sees an altered world, changed by flooding, climate change and terrorism. The biggest change however is by the arrival of the aliens who call themselves the Jackaroo.
The Jackaroo seem to be Earths hope and salvation, saving it from itself. At last the question of...
Illustration ©2019 Tim McDonagh from The Folio Society edition of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes
The bright yellow cover of this Folio Society edition of Bradbury’s classic fantasy novel is inset with a cartoon-like carnival poster, clearly...
The year is 2065 and two decades have passed since civilisation in the west was destroyed by economic collapse. In the UK no central government exists and people survive in broken pockets of civility - small communities who have banded together to build some semblance of order amid the chaos....
What would happen if you combined a detailed historical fiction novel that includes the politics of, Countries, Kings and Queens with that of the manipulation by Angels and Deamons and Devils? You probably end up with something like Son of the Morning.
Set in an alternative history where...
Son of the Tree is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance. SON OF THE TREE-Jack Vance. I loved this story even more. Head in the clouds the arrogant druids of Kyril fed and nutured the 5 mile wide by 12 mile tall tree that was the cornerstone of their religion. They have a full slave society...
There 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...
Fantasy is a wonderful genre, and it has become more so in recent years as it has grown in diversity. It felt for a while that fantasy was always epic and set in some sort of alternative Europe. There were plenty of alternatives to find if you looked, but today theses are abundant and that is...
Endings are not easy, especially in epic fantasy series. Hundreds or thousands of pages all building up to this. Famously one TV adaptation finale did not go down very well with the fans, so if authors did not know it before, they know it now. David Hair’s Tethered Cathedral trilogy comes...
Soul Stealers is the sequel to the Andy Remic Epic novel - Kell's Legend, and the second volume in the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. The indomniable Kell is still being hunted by the evil clockwork vampires and to make matters worse, he is now being tracked by two beautiful but deadly female...
SOUTH is a dystopian fiction set in an alternate America, set in modern times, where a civil war breaks out between the North and the South. The story follows a variety of five characters, each trying to kill, hide or survive. The book follows Garrett and Dyce, on the run from the South’s law...
There is more than one tradition in science fiction. You can have your epic space battles, but here in Blighty we have the tradition of an every person getting wrapped up in something far above their pay grade. Arthur Dent had his towel, and Johnny Gomez has his mop and bucket. It can’t...
Space Marine is a rare novel that is set in the Warhammer 40k universe, written by Ian Watson. Space Marine is essentially a piece of history in the Warhammer 40k universe, but one that Games Workshop doesn't actually agree with, and was never re-printed. The novel itself no longer "fit's in"...
Space Team is one of those rare gems, a genuinely funny science fiction story that manages to entertain from beginning to end.
The book follows the miss-adventures of small-time conman Cal Carver, abducted by aliens from incarceration due to a case of mistaken identity. His day goes...
Space, Time and Nathaniel is a collection of science fiction short stories by Brian Aldiss. The stories in this collection are some of Aldiss' earliest stories and it's amazing how little they have lost through the years. Nearly none of the stories seem quaint and silly the way some of the...
Spaceship Earth is a science fiction novel by Tom Schwartz. Scientists have discovered that the universe is a "closed system" and that the rate of expansion is slowing. This means that eventually the universe will stop expanding and begin collapsing upon itself, ultimately resulting in the...
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...
It feels like we take science for granted in the modern world; buildings that tower into the sky, above them flying machines made from metal. Stop and think for a moment at how wonderous all these advances have been, how we use the internet to communicate today, or how a simple invention like...
Speaker for the Dead is the second volume in the Ender Saga, by Orson Scott Card and has won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. This book could probably be read on it’s own, but it contains numerous spoilers for Enders Game and I can’t think of any good reasons why you wouldn’t want to...
Having grown up in a village, life there had its pros and its cons. There is a real sense of community, and everyone knows each other. Great, but also not so great. Any small incident can become gossip, no matter how benign, so I can only imagine what would happen should a fire break...
In some books there is more one thing that a reader can focus on. It could be the characters that draw the reader in, or the narrative, or the world building. As a long-term fantasy fan, one element that I often end up focussing on is magical systems. How magic works in a fantasy world can...
There are at least two sides to every truth and somewhere in the middle is what happened. All relationships contain lies, they oil the machinery of compromise, but for a better relationship you want to keep them to little white lies. Things can quickly spiral out of control if you start to hide...
Spirit'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...
If you like your urban fantasy dark and gruesome with an added touch of horror, Splintered and its predecessor Premonitions are right up your alley. This sequel picks up shortly after the first book, following Anna Ruiz and the...
Spoils of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is a volume of short stories set in the Tales of the Apt world and takes place (in the chronology of the world) before Empire in Black and Gold which is the first novel in that series. It tells stories of some of the minor characters from the main book...
I remember reading the very first Spooks book a number of years ago and really enjoying it. Never having been sent any to review until since I've had little opportunity to read any others in the now quite size-able series (13 volumes at the time of writing). It's clear I should have read more...
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory hasn't even been released at the time of writing and it's already been picked up by Paramount TV. It's the authors first foray into literary speculative fiction and follows the Amazing Telemachus Family.
Back in the 1970's they acheived...
The crime genre comes in many flavours from the cosy murder mystery set in a picturesque English village to a crime noir of 50s Chicago. The setting can be near or far, the tone light or dark, but they all have one thing in common – crime and that crime is often a murder. Callum McSorley...
Murder, kidnapping, shootings, stabbings; not an amusing set of words, but in the hands of a great author, crime can be funny. In fact, crime can be hilarious. The crime comedy when done well is one of my favourite genres and Carl Hiaasen has being doing it well for years. He has combined wit...
Star King is a classic science fiction novel by Jack Vance. Scifi mystery novels are strange creatures. Quite honestly, I have not come across many, and I haven't enjoyed most that I have come across. One exception is Peter Hamilton's Quantum Murder series (at least I think that's its name)....
Lieutenant Callum (called California, Cal or Harper) Harper punches his Captain, Laurence Decker for being incompetent and letting soldiers die on a mission we (initially) don’t learn much about. Cal has time and the option to finish things off but backs down and so...
It is feels increasingly complex to be a Star Trek fan. Things started off being about Kirk and co, then Picard, then Sisko etc. By now there are various TV shows that have been and gone, but also films that are set in parallel universes and I have no idea what is happening in...
The original USS Enterprise was sent out on a five year mission to explore Space, but even the biggest Star Trek fan would not want to know about every single detail that happened on the voyage. We can forgo the times that they slept or went to the loo. Perhaps even skip a few lengthy sessions...
What makes a great trilogy? Three stories that combine to make one, but are themselves also valid. Each book should have a start, middle and end that combine together to make a longer narrative. There are not many things worse for a fantasy or science fiction reader than getting their hands on a...
Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood, the original was the first film I ever saw at the Cinema and for a period I watched the film (and the two proceeding) pretty much every day - at one point I could recite the whole script if you'd asked me to. Must have driven my poor mother to...
As a fan of the expanded Star Wars Universe of novels, I pinch myself with the amount of quality content there is. These are not just novelisations of the films, or even expansions of the most well-known characters, the novels are cutting deep and exploring corners of...
An exciting new high fantasy story in a new fantasy world, Starborn is Lucy Hounsom’s debut novel. Her graduation to UK Tor’s writing stable from an MA in Creative Writing and before that a BA in English and Creative Writing speaks for itself as being quite an illustrious journey towards the...
Having read more than a few Starship loads of science fiction in my time I am particular about what type of aliens I like. I have a fondness for the Star Trek tactic of gluing some plasticine to the forehead of a humanoid but in today’s fiction...
Illustration ©2018 Stephen Hickman from The Folio Society edition of Starship Troopers
The Folio Society has produced a beautiful, limited edition of Robert Heinlein’s classic book, Starship Troopers, first published in 1959.
In 1998, aged 22, I went to the cinema to see...
Inheritance should never be something that you look forward to, but when you receive some, it can make a huge change to your life. I may be enough to pay a deposit on a house or pay for a child to go to university. It can also be a real pain in the bureaucracy. Think of the taxes that...
Startide Rising is a science fiction novel by the acclaimed author David Brin. Finally I have some luck with a Brin book. SR has its good sides even if parts of it make me kind of sick. Sorry, but intelligent dolphins not my cup of tea. I'm not sure why, but I think its because I really loath...
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...
State of Mind is a post-cyberpunk science fiction thriller by Sven Michael Davison. In the year 2030 you can eat all you want, take drugs and drink as much as you want without any negative side effects, you can call a friend, surf the web, listen to music, watch a film or even play a game...
State of Union follows on from the events of the authors previous novel, State of Mind - a post cyberpunk novel that we reviewed back in February 2011.
Jake has been living off the grid for five years and returns to civilisation to find a nano-virus pandemic known as MaxWell has killed...
A near future premise that quickly transforms into a Lovecraftian space opera, as you may guess, Static Push is full of surprises. The title, whilst directly relevant to the story really doesn’t do the ideas contained in the novel justice.
A science team at Dennison Industries are...
Day One - The Georgia flu sweeps the globe, a pandemic on a scale not seen before. Reports put the mortality rate at 99%.
Week Two and most of Civilisation lies in ruins.
Twenty years after the cataclysm and pockets of humanity have rebuilt settlements across the US. Things seem...
Steam Queen is a steampunk novel by Jack Hessey. Europe is a lawless country where armed bandits prowl the vast network of railway lines in heavily armed steam trains looking for easy marks. Heavily fortified mercenary engines travel from town to town looking for work in a world where every day...
Steeple is the sequel to the quite brilliant novel Barricade which we reviewed back in June last year. It describes a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by a war of human against their artificial, super-human constructs, the "fiscials".
As you can imagine, fighting against a superior...
Space travel is often painted in a glamourous fashion. Sleek ships sail among the stars as the crew members go on daring adventures, but the reality would be much more cramped. The planet Earth may feel a little crowded at times, but compared to being in a space craft, we can...
Stolen Lives examines the questions of self and free will. How do we become the person we are? What would happen if our memories; the details of our very identity were stripped away?
Matt Tyler is going to find out. He awakes to find no memories of who he was, in a strange place with...
Stone of Tears is the second volume in the epic Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Darken Rahl has finally been defeated and Richard and Kahlan race off back to the mud people to marry. Nothing goes to plan however and as they are waiting for the wedding preparations to be completed three...
Storm 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...
Storm Thief takes place in the fantasy world of Orokos, a city on an island run by a totalitarian government, ravaged by chaos and by the probability storms that re-order the world wherever they strike. It has been this way for so long that history has forgotten it, and its citizens don’t...
Getting a few tattoo can be a thrill. It is going to hurt, but for many that is part of the joy. Think for a moment about that poor sap who wakes up after a heavy drinking session with a new tat. Not only did they miss out on the anticipation, they also probably have no idea what they got....
World Fantasy Award winning series Strange Tales has now reached its fifth volume, offering again a bunch of tales ranging from SF to horror, from fantasy to supernatural, sharing a "strange" or "weird" character.
The present book includes sixteen brand new stories, penned by authors...
Strange Weather contains four stories that are subtly linked; each different in theme and style. They are tied together, as you might expect from the title, by some pretty unusual weather.
The book begins in 1988 with "Snapshot" which describes 13 year old Michael Figlione living in...
It would be a bit of an understatement to say I've been eagerly anticipating this novel, ever since I was lucky enough to review Sixty One Nails I've been completely hooked by Mike Shevdon's rich, dynamic prose and unique, powerful voice that helps to create this astounding urban fantasy...
Stranger in a Strange Land is one of the most famous and controversial science fiction novels, by the legendary author Robert A Heinlein. A best seller and Hugo award winner - having never been out of print, Stranger in a Strange Land was written in 1961, almost 50 years ago. The original...
String of Pearls asks the question; what if Heaven turned out to be just as dangerous as Hell? Dayson Snow has spent most of his life fighting against the greed of multinational corporations and when he arrives in Washington DC with Yumi Mihara - the love of his life - he becomes embroiled in a...
Comedy combined with Science Fiction is rare because it is so hard to do. When it clicks though it is worthwhile as you get some absolute classics such as Red Dwarf or Hitchhiker's. Those are mighty large shoes to try and fill, but Chris Panatier is giving it a go in Stringers, a book that...
The Dresden Files are fast becoming a comfort read of mine. Jim Butcher writes in such a disarmingly warm, friendly manner that is quite compelling, relaxing and addictive.
Summer Knight is the fourth book in the series and poor Dresden really seems to have hit rock bottom. With no...
Sunrise Alley is a science fiction novel by the author Catherine Asaro. By 2033, biomech research scientist Samantha Bryton tasted success with the development of "forma" androids, but has fled to Northern California to reconsider her values as the wealth and fame she has accrued feels wrong. A...
Sunshine Republic is a dystopian science fiction novel by Ted Brownstein. It's the year 2130 and the newly independent Republic of Florida is deeply divided over the use of technology, the Futurist party believe that their society could be vastly improved by the use of cheap, abundant robot...
Supernatural: War of the Sons is an original story based on the hit TV series Supernatural (naturally) featuring the brothers Sam and Dean. The novel has been written by Rebecca Dessertine and David Reed. Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force 27 years ago and...
Releasing a book about a pandemic during the middle of a real pandemic is a bold move but one that Paul Tremblay has taken. Although there are some parallels between what is happening in the world today and those within the pages of Survivor Song, they are...
Swan Song is a classic horror novel by Robert R McCammon. Having seen endless recommendations for this book in the alt.books.stephen-king newsgroup, every time somebody asked for something similar to The Stand by Stephen King, I fearlessly grabbed it when I found a cheap used copy at my local...
Nostalgia is a dangerous tool to use in a novel as what people think happened is not always the case. They prefer to see the past through rose tinted glasses. The 1980s can be seen as an era of Nintendo playing and Bermuda shorts, but that was not my 80s. I remember the Spectrum, my milk...
You are probably a fantasy fan if you are reading a review of this fantasy book. As fans we love the genre, but even we can admit that plenty of the tropes are well trodden and to standout a new fantasy series is going to have to be something different. Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare opens...
The first novel in The Grim Company was a singular example of the traditional fantasy novel for the 21st century. I stand by my comment of it being one of best fantasy novels of 2013. Sword of the North is the direct sequel to this debut and follows the spectacular events at the end of the first...
There are ways of writing a historic epic. The current trend is more towards long drawn-out sagas over several books, sometimes up to twenty or more. This allows you to really get to know the characters and read about them for decades, keeping you and the author busy for years. They are great...
Swords of the Emperor combines the two Warhammer fantasy novels Swords of Vengeance and Sword of Justice along with the short stories Feast of Horrors and Duty and Honour. Each of these tales have been brought to life from the pen of Chris Wraight who creates a sense of maturity and depth to the...
The thought of travelling to space and living on the International Space Station has no interest to me. Stuck in a metal box, isolated, miles away from civilisation with only the same people as company sound like a one-way ticket to madness. You do not need to go into space to create such a...
Hank Mondale is a rough and ready P.I. who likes to drink and gamble more than he should, a lifestyle choice which has led to his landlord threatening to evict him and bookie threatening a great deal worse, he desperately needs a break. When the real estate mogul Thomas Blake calls with a paid...
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