KEITH STEVENSON Horizon. Reviewed by Bill Congreve
A mission to discover a new planet is sabotaged in this debut SF full of plot twists and wonder. There are two main schools of space opera today: military SF, where some version of the US marines arrives on the scene, kills everybody, and lets God sort out the good...
TERRY PRATCHETT and STEPHEN BAXTER The Long Mars: Long Earth 3. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
This rich and far-ranging epic continues to explore new worlds and ethical problems. Before beginning this book it is necessary to know that in the previous books, The Long Earth and The Long War, the authors dealt with something that Pratchett calls quantum. For him...
BEN PEEK The Godless: Children Book One. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
Ben Peek’s debut gives George RR Martin a run for his money. The best epic fantasy is a seamless blend of intricately wrought elements that creates a fully-realised world with a comprehensive and weighty history that continues to affect the lives of the equally real...
ALAN BAXTER Bound: Alex Caine Book One. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
A grimoire, ancient magic – and cage fighting. This novel romps through it all. Warning! Wizards are no longer weedy, spectacle-wearing dorks with wimpy scars on their heads waving sticks and reciting pig Latin. In the world of Bound, the first in the Alex Caine...
BEN AARONOVITCH Broken Homes. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
This police-procedural urban fantasy is a celebration of contemporary and mythological London. Broken Homes is the fourth in the wonderful Rivers of London series. Rivers of London, Music of Soho, and Whispers Underground are the first three. It would be possible,...
CHRISTOPHER PRIEST The Adjacent. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
This unsettling new work incorporates echoes from previous books and forces readers to ask what they want from a novel. I’ve read a few books by Christopher Priest now, and I have to confess that often I don’t really understand what is going on in them; but still I...
CLAIRE NORTH The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
The pseudonymous Claire North poses an esoteric and intellectual challenge in this historically based and convoluted time-travel story. Born as a kalachakra, or ouroboran, Harry August belongs to a unique group of individuals to whom the usual laws of birth, life...
RJURIK DAVIDSON Unwrapped Sky. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
This debut weaves a prodigious tapestry around its drowned world; the result is an example of the best of contemporary Australian fantasy writing. The city of Caeli-Amur was born out of the imagination of Australian writer Rjurik Davidson in 2005 with his Ditmar...
JO SPURRIER North Star Guide Me Home: Children of the Black Sun, Book Three. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Through cruelty to transcendence: the third book of this powerful series delivers both. This final instalment of the Children of the Black Sun trilogy opens with three damaged mages – Rasten, Sierra and Isidro – reeling in the aftermath of the events of Book Two,...
DAVID M HENLEY The Hunt for Pierre Jnr. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
This future world takes the ethical dilemmas and tendencies of our own time on some scary trajectories. In the earth of the far future, a world of 20 billion inhabitants who are living under domes and experiencing a life controlled by the World Union, Peter Lazarus is...
MARIANNE DE PIERRES Peacemaker. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
Sci-fi, crime, the supernatural and a savvy female ranger – Marianne de Pierres mixes them all in this first instalment of a new series. In the future Australia of Peacemaker we seem to be managing. There have been ructions, wars and incidents due to water shortages,...
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