Aug 182015
 
100 word review: The House of Shattered Wings, by Aliette de Bodard

Paris, after the war. You know. The big one. The one with the massive bombs that ended the age of empires. The one that meant that angels were kicked out of heaven. The first world war. De Bodard has linked the wars to create a postapocalyptic Paris as her backdrop. This is a story of […]

Jun 042015
 
100 word review: Department 19 – Darkest Night

When I started Department 19 it felt like a very well done but pretty standard hero’s journey story: Young teenager discovers a secret government department hunting vampires and of course he’s got a place in it. What’s evolved over five books is something much richer and much darker – the final volume should be humanity’s […]

Jun 012015
 
100 word review: All that Outer Space Allows, by Ian Sales

Ian Sales has finished his Apollo Quartet, and the final book is brilliant. You should read the first three first, as they will loop you into this series of worlds all linked by the Apollo programme, all four obsessively researched, in very slightly alternate histories. The fourth book focusses on the wife of an astronaut […]

May 252015
 
100 word review: The Rock and the River, by Kekla Magoon

1968, Chicago. Thirteen year old Sam is the son of a prominent civil rights activist, a protegée of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the Black Panthers have come to town; his older brother Stick believes in their message. What’s amazing about this book is how it does not fulfil expectations: Hollywood will […]

May 252015
 
100 word review: Osiris, by E. J. Swift

I came to this first-in-a-trilogy after reading its sequel Cataveiro – there isn’t much in the way of spoilers and it’s perfectly comprehensible. Osiris is a city at sea, cut off from a world presumed dead. It’s overcrowded but Osiris’ hereditary families live lives of unimaginable luxury whilst the western poor struggle, staying awake at […]