I put off writing this review while I tried to unravel my feelings about the characters, the plot, and its execution. I was hooked right from the get-go and based on the strength of Szpara’s writing, I couldn’t put the book down. So it was something of a disappointment when I retrospectively learned that although…
Here and Now and Then is a literary science fiction novel which focuses on family – how we can never have too much of it and how we will do anything to protect those we love. His mind is going, his memories fading along with it. In the year 2142 Kin Stewart is a special…
Did you read The Handmaid’s Tale and think it just wasn’t bleak enough? If so, have I got a recommendation for you. The Slave and the Free, by Suzy McKee Charnas, is set in a world where women aren’t just considered men’s property. Here, women aren’t even seen as human. The Slave and the Free…
Severance is the hotly anticipated end of days tale by newbie author Ling Ma. It’s a provocative look at the future which shows the dangers of getting caught in a meaningless present and being obsessed with a sentimental view of the past. This story shifts back and forth in time between chapters but for the…
Julia Fine enchants with a towering, powerful tale of womanhood, frustration, coming of age and deep love, in What Should Be Wild. We begin with birth emerging from death; Maisie Cothay, delivered breathing from the body of her dead and literally rotting mother, is afflicted with a terrible and mysterious curse – the touch of…
Fans of fast paced, action-based science fiction novels will find a lot to enjoy in Obscura. The tale of a spooky ship, a creepy mystery and a stalwart heroine, this book is a quick and easy read. It begins with an accident. Gillian Ryan is in the car with her husband when the culmination of…
I am… not entirely sure what I just read, but I enjoyed it wholeheartedly. When I read the blurb and saw ‘Eurovision meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ I was hooked, and I’m pretty much the target audience for this book. I mean, come on. Eurovision in space. How could I not? And that’s exactly…
The concept of human immortality achieved through combining man and machine has always fascinated me, so when I saw The Tea Master and the Detective, I was eager to read it. The tale of a thinking ship and a young woman solving a crime in outer space, this unique story challenges the perception that a…
I first read Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake when I was eighteen, and it’s been on my keeper shelf ever since. When I reread it with a review in mind, I did notice a couple of problems, but on the whole, it’s a remarkable read. Snake, a healer, lives in a world devastated by nuclear war….
Ancillary Justice, the first in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series, won the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. That’s a heck of a showing for a debut book. That she followed it with two more equally stunning and satisfying books makes me wonder who she sold her soul to, and whether or not they’d…