SFBook - 20+ Years of Reviews
Providing book reviews of speculative fiction since 1999. Read our story
Comparing a detective series to Sherlock Holmes is not always helpful as that is such an iconic character who has gone off to be in a thousand different spin offs, but on occasion it is apropos. If a series is about a super intelligent detective with a penchant for opium who works with a...
What makes a good noir story? Is it the setting, the characters, a murder? All these things, but also none of them. I have read many ‘classic’ noir stories about a grizzled PI investigating a femme fatale set some time in the 40/50s, but I have also read them set in alternative...
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...
I love fantasy, from the low to the high, but I love it even more when it is tackled in an interesting way. The Last Phi Hunter by Salinee Goldenberg has all the elements of High Fantasy, packed with more magic than a Paul Daniels Appreciation Society AGM, but this is not a book of wizards and...
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
The timeline is fragile. Stand on a butterfly in the Jurassic Era and you may end up returning to a world in which we all have seven arms – useful for multi-tasking. If time travel were available not everybody would respect the past and therefore, it needs to be policed. A subtle and...
You should be careful what you wish for, but also careful what you promise. Are you going to be able to live up to the hype? Arcadia Books are pretty pumped with James Logan’s The Silverblood Promise stating that it is the best fantasy debut of the year. Let me be the judge of that and...
There are a lot of different ways to be smart and just because you are one, does not automatically make you the other. The classic is book versus street, you may know your way around an academic essay, but would fail to talk yourself out of a tricky situation outside the pub at closing time. If...
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...
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...
It's 2118 and humanity has not only got over the coronavirus, but have reached out into space - colonising the Moon, Mars, Ceres and Europa. It's still early days of mankind's expansion though and the ship Khidr is part of a small fleet who travel between the different colonies, assisting the...
There is an art to the short story. They should not try to emulate their longer cousins, or even the novelette format. A short story should pop up, throws a few punches then head off again without a backwards glance, but the best of them with leave an impression, a lingering sense of something...
There is a knack to adaptation, we have all seen a film made from a book. Many have read an adaptation of a film, but can you make a prose adaptation of a comic book? We see superheroes in the cinema every month, the action and colour sparks on the big screen, but bringing forth all that imagery...
Writing a futuristic science fiction novel will allow you to explore strange new worlds but can also be used to explore our past and culture. Reading a wide range of stories from different people, from different parts of the world is a gift that will keep giving your entire life. There has been...
Joining a band is a rite of passage that everyone should try at least once. I got as far as forming a fake band with my mates at university, but then we had no commitment. To really make it you will need to buckle down and learn an instrument and write some songs – or just be a punk band....
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Not all authors write short fiction and those that do, do not always have enough to fill a complete collection, never mind several. Christi Nogle is a talented short story writer as their previous collections have already shown. One Eye Opened in That Other Place is one of the trickier...
Science Fiction can be upbeat and utopian or downbeat and dystopian. The current trend is to focus on the negatives, but even these books have a glint of hope in them. When it comes to dystopian visions of the future, they do not come much more intense than Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of...
According to esteemed author Robert Rankin there are only ever three locations in a Private Investigator novel. A bar, the alley behind the bar and a rooftop to have the final showdown on. Billie Walker is no normal PI, she is not an investigator, but an Inquirer. She goes as far as to say that...
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...
There are space books and then there are Space Operas. What makes a good Space Opera is a sense of scale – the big and the small. Characters making decisions that define the entire Universe, but also their place in the local power struggle. Who will rule, which family? Which sect? Which...
There is a perfectly sensible reason why the concept of Fairy Woods exist. Back in the day, the land was covered in thick forests, any person that travelled too far from the village or well-trodden tracks could easily get lost and become victim to one of several predators from wolves to wild...
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