SA JONES The Fortress. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
The Fortress provides strong examinations of patriarchal values, toxic masculinity and the places to which these values can lead. This chilling, challenging, sexually explicit work of speculative fiction explores and eviscerates aspects of patriarchal thinking. It is...
NICK CLARK WINDO The Feed. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The Feed poses important questions about our addiction to and reliance on technology. The Feed is a post-apocalyptic tale with what can only be called a Black Mirror edge. As with that series, Nick Clark Windo is interested in exploring our relationship with...
LOUISE ERDRICH Future Home of the Living God. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Louise Erdrich successfully joins a long line of novelists exploring current issues through a cracked, extreme reflection of our own world. Dystopia has a long history in literary fiction. A breakdown in social order or a reshaping of society are useful lenses through...
C ROBERT CARGILL Sea of Rust. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
C Robert Cargill proves there is still plenty of life in the post-apocalyptic robotic genre. Post-apocalypses now come in may flavours. One of those is the robopocalypse. Man builds robots, robots become sentient, man tries to reign in robot sentience, robots revolt....
NATASHA PULLEY The Bedlam Stacks. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
An adventure full of wonder and discovery in The Bedlam Stacks. Natasha Pulley burst onto the fantasy scene last year with her stunning debut The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. This slightly steampunk tale of Victorian London was full of charm and whimsy but also...
SARAH GAILEY River of Teeth. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Gailey has delivered a fun, fast-paced, wild-west-style romp set in a possible America. Sarah Gailey’s River of Teeth has a killer alternative history premise – a riff on an actual plan by the US Government in the early 20th century to import and farm hippopotamuses:...
MEG HOWREY The Wanderers. Reviewed by Justine Hyde
Howrey casts us into the infinite reaches of the universe to ponder our aloneness. The word ‘planet’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘wanderer’. Greek astronomers thought the planets were inexplicable celestial bodies wandering through space against a background of...
CIXIN LIU The Three-Body Problem series. Reviewed by Chris Maher
Cixin Liu takes the tropes of science fiction and looks at them with new eyes in this ambitious and imaginative series. ‘Hard’ science fiction doesn’t have to be hard to read, and even though Cixin Liu admits The Three-Body Problem is more about ideas than character,...
ELIZABETH TAN Rubik. Reviewed by Justine Hyde
Rubik is a wonderful experiment in fiction, exploring a vast landscape within the contained borders of a novel. Experimental fiction can be a risky gamble for the reader, but when it is beautifully executed, as in the case of Elizabeth Tan’s debut, Rubik, the...
DANIEL FINDLAY Year of the Orphan. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Year of the Orphan is a distinctive story of bravery, resilience and self-sacrifice in a vicious, haunting future. Sometimes it feels as though the most pressing question of the 21st century is how we can best prepare for the apocalyptic collapse of civilisation...
CAT SPARKS Lotus Blue. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
World building is the real star of Lotus Blue, the debut science fiction novel for Australian author Cat Sparks. Very quickly in this novel Sparks creates a vision of a future Australia – an already ancient land – that’s further weighed down by centuries of...
Recent Posts
ALAN HOLLINGHURST Our Evenings. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey20 March 2025The Booker-winning author of The Line of Beauty delivers a novel about class, [ … ]
MAJA LUNDE The Dream of a Tree. Reviewed by Ann Skea18 March 2025The new novel from the Norwegian author of The History of Bees imagines a [ … ]
KATE KEMP The Grapevine. Reviewed by Sally Nimon13 March 2025Psychologist Kate Kemp’s debut novel opens with blood spatters and goes on to [ … ]
ALEXANDRA ALMOND Thoroughly Disenchanted. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley11 March 2025Alexandra Almond’s cosy fantasy demonstrates why you really should be careful [ … ]