Oh my bloody god this book. This series. This writer. Ninefox Gambit was my one book of 2016. The one I wanted to win all the awards. The one I was doubly-disappointed to be skipping a year with The Kitschies. Twisty-turny maths-based alteration of reality meets big evil empire and mad geniuses. It gets weirder […]
If I had any problem with The Girl with All the Gifts it was the same as I’ve seen elsewhere: It’s very good, but it’s Yet Another Zombie Book. This, despite being in the same universe, goes way beyond that. The hungries (zombies) aren’t the main feature: here it’s the humans, and what happens to […]
Ed note: This was written in 2013 and just turned up in my drafts folder. Oops. Have it now! Somewhere between the manger and gathering fishers of men, Jesus grew up. Lavie Tidhar presents us with a Jesus learning from three wise men: Pig, Monkey, and Sandy, from the Chinese classic Journey to the West. […]
This book is an astonishing gamble of object desire and fervent hope: that there are people out there who are filled with a combination of a love for language, the theatre, and Shakespeare that they’ll make a market for a book like this. It’s by no means perfect: it’s riddled with continuity errors, anachronisms, and […]
I missed these books the first time they came around – and on @kameronhurley’s recommendation, had a watch of the telly series, and thought it might be worth a read. It is. Take one part big idea space opera, add top worldbuilding and pretty progressive politics, and shake it together with a lot of […]
  What more can be said about this book? It won the Booker. Irvine Welsh called it amazing. I’ve finally got round to reading this book, and it… I don’t even know how to describe it. The style and craft of it is mind-blowing. There’s a bit of lush, prose, and just when you’re thinking […]
Poor, poor Rupert keeps dying. After managing to wriggle his cannibal chef’s hat out from under the thumb of the Kindly Ones, Ao Qin, and all the supernatural spirits in Kuala Lumpur, Rupert’s got a new mission: London – the Greek gods he’s on loan to are hungry and there’s a dearth of good cannibal […]
Kameron Hurley’s all-female universe of tentacled worlds and the cycle of life is absolutely and utterly insane. I read the entire thing torn between “what the hell is going on here” and “I’m really enjoying whatever it is”. Zan wakes up, a warrior without a memory, given conflicting information from those who insist they are […]
Poor Rupert Wong is in it deep: his Boss has him by the short-and-keeps-you-in-hell, the Dragon King can’t be denied, and he just keeps on dying. It’s a difficult life, caught between the powers that be in Kuala Lumpur. Khaw’s book takes on a world where pantheons live side by side – without comfort – […]
This is my favourite read from 2016, hands down. Lee has created the most inventive space opera universe… imaginable. The Hexarchate is an empire who can alter the laws of reality by enforcing belief on a population: altering the calendar. The Hexarchate is brutal, and its six factions don’t even trust each other. A calendrical […]