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May 202015
 

These books shouldn’t be my thing, but I enjoyed this very much. The first two were enjoyable in the way that you could watch the craft of the writer evolve – the second book just felt more polished than the first – and Curran’s Glaze is a triumph, but this took me by surprise.

The second in this series ended on a major cliffhanger – something that, given the central conceit of the plot, should have been straightforward to sort, but Curran is never one to take the easy way out: this book is good, and makes the series excellent, rather than enjoyable.

May 182015
 

Megan Abbott is the queen of creepyweirdawfulcompelling. The last book I read of hers made me want to take my skin off and scrub the inside of it clean before putting it back on – this one’s no different. An illness taking hold of girls in a school – it could be an STD or a plague or, quite possibly, something out of a science fiction film. Abbot’s books are a dissection of the ambient horror of modern suburban lifestyle, and this may be her best book yet. It’s awful, not for everyone, but you’ll at least admire the craft of it.

May 152015
 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/18590476-zero-hour

The fourth in Will Hill’s excellent Department 19.

Horror and action aren’t really my cups of tea. NEVERTHELESS I’m a fan of Will Hill’s books. They fill the gap that can be read as “mindless fun”, but they’re more than that.

The crux of the story: Van Helsing et al were real – and set up Department 19, the secret bit of the (UK) government that hunts vampires. They were winning, but now they’re losing.

Terrorism, torture, GCHQ, propaganda, and drug policy take centre stage, as in an allegory. Fun books – with a little bit more thought than strictly necessary.

May 132015
 

Lou Merriweather is a psychopomp in 1860s San Francisco: She’s androgyne, (allegedly) unattractive, mixed-race Chinese and English, and she unhaunts houses for a living. The first scene shows us her personality: a bit of a rogue, and a woman who isn’t afraid to be mistaken for a man.

She has to leave San Francisco, however, to chase down the disappearing Chinese immigrants, gone seeking work. On the way she’ll befriend bears and make enemies – it’s a rip-snorter of a book that blends action and adventure with a minimum of bodice-ripping. It manages to be progressive

and entertaining all at once.

May 112015
 

Beautifully enjoyable dustpunk (very) weird western: In an alt-American-Western setting, instead of science you have demons bound up. They heat water for steam. They expand and push bullets. They may – or may not – corrupt a bit of your soul each time you use it. Jacobs has honourable mercenaries riding alongside a ship filled with nobles – there’s as much Rome in the world as John Wayne. In the background are the inscrutable stretchers – the superhuman natives with their own agenda, inscrutable and confusing, but they seem to have a strong moral code – just their own. Fascinating stuff, and very good indeed.

May 072015
 

In Victorian England, a famous Reverend scientist has secrets, and a personal shame. He has a series of sickly sons, most of whom have died, and the last of whom is writing left-handed. He is driven away from his home by scandal. His daughter, Faith, remains steadfast despite any evidence she has against him. She is his true daughter, clever and quick-witted and interested in science and used poorly, again and again.

This Faith’s story of discovery of her own strength and what it means to be a modern woman; it is heartbreaking, true and absolutely wonderful in its awfulness.

May 052015
 

Sarah Lotz is disgustingly good, and the worst part of it is how easy she makes it look.

This is a follow-up to The Three and, while it’s definitely in the same creepycrazywtfisgoingon universe, the story is built in a completely different fashion – told from the point of view of a handful of central characters rather than as a tabloid disaster porn memoir.

This book is terrifying, but it’s not horror, or terror. It’s a masterful character study of a group of people as the boat they are on stalls, drifting without purpose or pilot, and their social structure fragments.

Apr 072015
 

This is a debut.

It is massive in scope, telling the story of the rise and fall of empires, using classical Chinese storytelling tropes and wuxia heroes.

It is breathtaking in its language and ambition. 640 pages of instructive fable and myth and history of a fictional series of countries at war with each other and with themselves.

It deals with class, race, gender, and the fruits and drawback of empire. Power as a corruptive influence, and hard decisions.

It’s not perfect – the cast of women is tiny, though dealt with well.

But it is a debut.

And bloody good.

Apr 022015
 

Detroit, Michigan. A broken city filled with broken people – from the overworked police department through to the underfunded school system, the homeless, and the the transplants trying to make something new out of something broken, or at least having good parties in the city’s apocalypse.

What happens when the world starts to break, the edges of reality start to open up? Is it all happening in one person’s mind or is there something larger going on, something terrifying?

Beukes has gone out of her way to capture the Detroit in time and space, on the edge of renewal or disaster.

Apr 012015
 

Welcome to America, kid.

Ariel (ah-riel) is adopted into a middle-class American family after he survives the massacre of his entire village during a civil war by dressing as a clown and hiding in a refrigerator.

He ends up in summer camp. A very particular type of summer camp. Digital detox camp, filled with all the horribleness of summer camp.

Also, a giant evil corporation.

A parallel story of an Arctic mission gone wrong. A parallel story of a melting man bent on revenge.

The book is at times heartbreaking, funny, wicked, irreverent, and wrong. And yet so very right.