Feb 252015
 
The Race, by Nina Allan (NewCon Press) (Red Tentacle)

Allan’s almost-debut The Race is an odd beast of a novel – four parts that link together across ideas of reality and illusion, structured almost like a surrealist French film but in its bones a deeply British novel, of the working-class type whose loss has recently been lamented in the press: there are tones of […]

Feb 242015
 
The Way Inn, by Will Wiles (4th Estate) (Red Tentacle)

Neil Double is a professional conference attendee – saving executives time while gathering cards and insights. He spends his life on the road in anonymous hotels like The Way Inn, meeting, sleeping with, and being annoyed by the same people, season after season. He’s come to the new MetaCentre to attend a conference for the […]

Feb 242015
 
The Peripheral, by William Gibson (Viking) (Red Tentacle)

A short distance into the future – the American economy an d its environment is busy collapsing and, somewhere further down the line, the “jackpot” has struck and the world has recovered, somewhat. Gibson does lots of things rather well: inventing language that feels real, perversely not letting you know what’s going on, making you […]

Feb 232015
 
Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith (Egmont) (Red Tentacle)

In a small, midwestern American town called Ealing, Iowa two boys are misfits who are bored, in the way people can only be bored growing up in a small town. Modern suburban-style rural sprawl clash with high school jock politics and the underage smoking of cigarettes and drinking of beer. Smith paints a very clear […]

Aug 222014
 
Hundreds of HodderWordScape Review: Smiler's Fair, by Rebecca Levene

100 words: Introduction The twelfth, and final, Hodderscape Review project title is Smiler’s Fair, by Rebecca Levene. It’s a big, world-built secondary world fantasy with maps that all three of my regular readers will have some idea that it’s may not be my personal cup of tea. I was still intrigued to read it – […]

Aug 202014
 
100 word review: Our Lady of the Streets, by Tom Pollock

Pollock’s third trilogy winds up with a storm raging across fevered streets. It’s very difficult to talk about without spoilers, but let it be said that, although this is a cohesive trilogy, every book stands on, and as, its own beast, fundamentally different from the others, but fitting together in a whole. Mater Viae is […]

Aug 042014
 
100 word review: Paper Aeroplanes, by Dawn O'Porter

In a simpler world, before the Internet and mobile phones, in a small village on a tiny island there’s a girl who has problems. Everyone’s got problems, of course, but not like Renée, and not like Flo. Neither of them have any proper friends, and it looks like they’re not likely to get them. Bullies […]

Jul 312014
 
100 word review: No Harm Can Come to a Good Man, by James Smythe

What does it mean to be a good man, and is that something you can predict? This is the question that Smythe asks through this… I don’t know what you call it. Anti-allegory? To read this is to get caught up in a story that fits comfortably inside a litfic longlist: there’s a man, with […]

Jul 242014
 
100 word review: The Bunker Diary, by Kevin Brooks

Dark. Grim. Sadness. This is a book for young people won the Carnegie prize, with much controversy. Apparently, children can’t read dark books. Except The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, or Brave New World. This book is good. It’s astoundingly bleak, but it’s a fascinating portrait of the lives of six people who, one […]