Dan
The second book I've read this year that riffs on classic slasher movies, after Grady Hendrix' Final Girl Support Group. Must be something in the air, I guess. This is a darker book than that one, with some real horror at its heart.
Our lead character Jade is a troubled teen, who is trying to navigate the difficulties of her life by constructing a persona based around slasher films.
The middle of the book is a slow burn, as other reviewers have pointed out, but it's not wasted space as we get further into Jade's head, and also get to piece together some of the things she's not telling us about herself (like her name, for a start). The ending delivers plenty of blood and excitement, but the real emotional punch comes in the last few sentences with their pointer to a life that could have and should have been.
It's funny that a book celebrating one of the most exploitative horror genres turns out to be a nuanced and sensitive character study, which I guess just goes to show that you can have your cake and stab it after all.
Was hoping this was going to be a great pulpy Indiana Jones meets Sherlock Holmes in China romp, but the prose is so pedestrian and cliche ridden it's an agony to read. The story is fine, and a film version could be fun, but the execution (in English, anyway - I can't speak for the original) is no good at all.
I like the setting and the universe created for this book, but I'm not sure it quite pulls its weight as a murder mystery. If you're coming at it as a crime aficionado you may be disappointed. Space opera fans will get a lot out of it (despite the author's claim in the afterword!), however. There's plenty of spaceship action, an interesting and unusual alien race, plus a nicely ambiguous ending.
A complete change of pace and scene from the Rosewater books, but maintaining their quality.
Richard Powers' new novel is a retelling of Flowers Of Algernon for the early 21st century (and to be fair, Powers dies explicitly tip his hat to Daniel Keyes' classic early on). It continues the ecological themes of The Overstory but adds a strong element of human drama as a widowed father struggles to cope with raising a son who comes with his own set of challenges, against a backdrop of the US (tbh, for all the protesting at doomed ecology that suffuses this book, the world outside North America might as well not exist) sliding into dystopian fascism. It's a quick read, but a memorable one, with a central character that sticks in the mind.
It's been a long wait for this one(partially explained in the afterword). Brian Staveley's Unhewn Throne books helped revitalise my interest in epic fantasy after a fallow period, so I'm happy to say they're back, and as good as they've ever been.
There's a good sense of place throughout, with very evocative descriptions that put you right alongside the characters. Staveley writes great action, and isn't afraid of the old ultra violence, with a visceral glee that will get you right in the gut. There's good character work as well, with internal conversations convincingly rendered and characters developing and having an actual arc. There are flaws, but they're typical first book of a series ones. Of the three storylines, only one comes to any sort of conclusion and the others are cut off in mid flow. Almost mid-scene for one of them! And those storylines don't crossover with each other at all (yet), spare a few very minor elements, so the effect is almost like reading three short books set in the same world spliced together. I trust that by the end of the trilogy these will look like silly moans and everything will come together and resolve, but I also hope it isn't another four year wait for the next volume!
This is a fantastic evocation of a particular time and place. I can only imagine it must have taken stacks and stacks of research, into furniture brands alone, but it's all worn lightly, there to serve the story rather than the other way round. Some of the prose is terrific, real I'm just going to go back and reread that paragraph to appreciate it again stuff. It's good to see Colson Whitehead returning to genre fiction. Zone One was one of the best zombie novels of the last few decades, and while, let's be honest, the crime fiction field is a lot more crowded, Whitehead can hold his head high with this one. Can't wait for his SF novel!
This is a serial killer thriller hung on a science fiction framework. It feels a lot like a script treatment or a film adaptation. Maybe that's been put in my mind because so much of the book deals with Hollywood and the acting profession, but it's also because the story is all about hustling you along from scene to scene without stopping to dig into anything lest it falls apart. Barry's previous novel Lexicon had a really interesting idea at its core, one that was considered and worked through logically in the story, but this one is much more handwavey, and a lot of the character motivations and mechanics of the macguffin don't stack up when you look at them too closely. Barry raises some interesting questions about the ethics of the multiverse hopping, but then doesn't even really try to answer them.
For all that, it's a snappy and entertaining read, and if you take it on its own terms it's pacy and fun, but I wish it had tried to be a little more
Grady Hendrix clearly loves a horror flick (the names of the characters here, let alone their backgrounds, ought to be enough to tell you that), and this is simultaneously an ode to and interrogation of the slasher movie. It asks what happens after the credits roll, and what's it like inside the head of the lone survivor, dealing with that unbelievable trauma, as well as considering the misogyny and violence against women that is the engine driving these movies we all thrill to. But it's not some po-faced treatise, as all these musings are wrapped up in a fast moving plot that takes in enough action, gore and thrills to satisfy any fan of Halloween or Friday 13th. It's an homage to the slasher movie that celebrate its heights while not excusing its lows, and open-minded fans of the genre are going to get a lot out of it.
As you might guess from the title, this is a new novel in the Revelation Space universe. It's set later than any other novel in the series, at a point where the Inhibitors have done most of their work, and what's left of humanity is just a few scattered and concealed enclaves trying to lie low. It starts off as a standalone, but (very mild spoiler) it wouldn't be a terrible idea to refresh yourself on the other books before reading.
I really enjoyed this. The usual Reynolds preoccupations of identity and transformation are to the fore, along with the body horror and cosmic awe you'd expect from an RS book, but he's also kept the breakneck pace of the Revenger series- this one fairly rockets along. Best of all, it opens up a whole new section of the timeline for exploration, so I hope the return to this universe is more than a passing fancy. It's good to be back.
This book is absolutely full of ideas. Almost too many you might say, since the opening third or so throws you right in at the deep end and you kind of have to push through it trusting that it will come good. Which it does, mostly.
The story is another take on the popular “ragtag crew in a beatup old ship” subgenre that seems more and more popular these days (see also: Becky Chambers and Gareth L Powell, plus this old TV show about an insect or something), but this has a grander and much more cosmic scope than most in that area. The whole plot is only just beginning to come into view at the end of this first volume but it's already clear the stakes are going to be about as high as they can get. In the meantime, we have some inventive and intriguing alien races, plenty of gripping tautly described action and some lead characters who are, if not exactly likeable, then well crafted and believable. It starts slow, but by the time we get to the climax things are racing along - it took me about a week to get through the first half, and then twenty four hours for the second.
My only real criticisms are that the opening stretch of the book is too much of a slog, and that it feels a bit...woolly? Some of the wanderings and travels in this one are a bit overlong and pointless, and I feel that some tightening up and cutting of 50 pages or so could have worked wonders for the pacing. Regardless, it's a very promising start to a series, with some great ideas that I'm looking forward to learning more about in the next volumes. Probably a 3.5 but I'll round up to a 4 on the promise that the rest of the series builds on these foundations.
This is essentially a comic book novel. It's an origin story of a superhero, with more than few nods to Superman's early days. It's apparently the first in a shared world series, and there's a sense that it's a little like the first Iron Man movie - a fun adventure that sets the stage for something bigger to come along in its wake. The book took a little while to click with me - I wasn't at all impressed by the opening chapters but after a while I realised I was getting through the pages pretty quickly. It's a fast moving read, and while I'm not sure there's an awful lot gong on under the surface, it's entertaining.
Jen Williams is better known for her fantasy work, and her Ninth Rain books are a genuine five star epic that come highly recommended. This one marks a new direction, set in our here and now and sitting somewhere between crime and horror. The move towards realism doesn't hurt the book, it's fast paced and the pages keep turning. The main character is relatable, and the setup is intriguing, giving rise to some genuinely nasty scenes. My main grumble is that the book just isn't long enough. The end comes quickly, and I would have liked it to run a bit longer with more of the backstory filled in. There's a folk horror undercurrent throughout, around ideas of sacrifice, myth and the land, that isn't quite teased out in the space available. It's a very good readable dark thriller, but it just misses being the landmark it could have been.
I've long been a Brookmyre fan, and I also like horror films and metal so this looked so far up my street it was practically knocking on my front door. This is very much the classic Brookmyre mix of nasty crime and dark, dark, humour, as an odd couple career around Scotland and Italy trying to find the truth about a decades old murder that might not be as open and shut as it seemed. The two main characters are well sketched and engaging, and I'd like to have spent a bit more time with them, and gone deeper into what makes them tick, but I suppose that could have robbed the book of its extraordinary pace. Brookmyre hasn't put out a dud yet, and this one maintains the streak. It's also a standalone novel, so could be a good jumping on point for readers new to the author.
This is a complex novel, that combines two very different stories which on casual inspection appear to have very little to do with each other. Or do they?
The title should clue you in that the novel takes some inspiration from Dante's classic poem, but it also becomes clear early on that it is also in dialogue with classic SFF - there's speculation about space elevators followed a few pages later by a namecheck for Arthur C Clarke, gullible misheard as Gully Foyle, and a frequent refrain of “the eagles are coming”. This idea of the past being inherent in the modern is also expressed in the preoccupation with original sin, memory and atonement that saturates the book. It's also interesting that of the two story strands, the one set earlier in the timeline has a distinctly YA feel, while the later is slower, more philosophical and more adult (to use a poor but easy term). You could tease out something here about how we grow from youth to age, and go back once more to the idea that our past defines our now - without being too spoilery, the reason why characters in the later strand are in the positions they are is embedded in the earlier story.
I might be making it sound very dry here, but it's worth noting that for all the philosophical musing of one strand and the convulsive violence and upheaval of the other, the novel is told with a lightness of touch and a delight in wordplay and puns that make it a very smooth read. There are frustrations - certain mysteries are left dangling - but overall this is very readable and very thought-provoking. Recommended.
This should be right up my street. It's a contemporary take on Lovecraftian cosmic horror, with guest appearances from our old friends Nyarlothotep and Azagthoth. There's some convincing evocations of those weird and eldritch dimensions just beneath our own, and epic battles against crawling tentacled horrors. The book also has interesting things to say about colonialism and empire, allied to Indiana Jones style globetrotting and adventure. So why aren't there five stars at the top of this review?
It's the lead characters, I'm afraid. One of them is just an awful awful person, and the other knows it but trails round after them like a little lovesick puppy dog. To make matters worse, while they are capable of talking to other characters like adults, the conversations between the two of them are smug self important banter full of lame humour and smart arsed oneupmanship that's more suited to minor showboating on Twitter than it is facing down alien threats to our very existence. It deflates any tension that's building, and frankly makes me want to punch the pair of them. I'd read the first book, so to be fair I knew this going in. I'd hoped that the revelations at the end of that one might have changed this dynamic, but they haven't really, not in any practical sense. It's probably just me. If you like Joss Whedonesque clever clever dialogue, and let's face it a lot of people do, you might well find it charming and fall in love with them, but it didn't work for me. It's unfortunate that the thing I didn't like is front and centre, because there's an awful lot otherwise that is good here, and I'll look out for more by this author.
I'll admit it, I was only so-so about Arkady Martine's debut despite all the awards it hoovered up. This sequel, however, is a jump up in quality. The characters are better drawn, the intrigue is better handled, the prose is better, and there are some of the nastiest, most alien, aliens I've seen in a long time. There are new characters, new points of views, and the whole thing feels so much more confident and assured. It's not often you get to see an author levelling up on the page, but it happens here. I loved it.
This one is a fast moving, propulsive thriller that takes place almost entirely on a bullet train out of Tokyo. It's full of twists and double crosses, and plays out a bit like one of those hip 90s indie crime films that came in the wake of Tarantino's initial success. It's terrific fun, if more than a little daft - when you put it down you'll stop and go “hang on a minute...”, but none of that matters when you pick it up again and continue racing through the pages. It also has that rarity in this genre, a satisfying ending.
Literary writers who dip their toes in science fictional waters can often become unstuck. Ishiguro is too good a writer to make a complete hash of this one, but it's still the least satisfying of his novels I've read. The central conceit is interesting, although not nearly as mysterious from the outset as the author would like us to think, but the real problems are in the plot and narrative, which are both very slight. There's barely any actual story here, and the narration is just too limpid and accepting of a fate that I'd expect to provoke rage and rebellion. It's all a bit vague and wafty, as evinced by the way you can see the central idea as an allegory for pretty much anything if you squint at it hard enough. Is it about racism? Or is it an indictment of capitalism and our unthinking consumption of resources? It could be a pro-vegetarian argument against industrial farming or perhaps an attempt to illustrate the class divide in modern Britain. There isn't enough in the book to firmly nail its colours to any of these masts, and the reader is left to apply her own prejudices to the set up in order to read it as anything other than a straight narrative.
I'm moaning more than I mean to here. I didn't hate reading this at all, and the pages kept turning quickly. Ishiguro is still an excellent prose stylist, and the evocation of place here, from an old fashioned boarding school to modern but run down facilities to house these people we don't want clogging up our regular lives (oooh, add maybe it's a metaphor for asylum seekers to the list above) is excellent. In the end, this is nowhere near his best work, but below par Ishiguro is still way ahead of the pack.
First off, I have to give this book props on account of it being set in my home county of Devon (even if it is spit North Devon). The story and setting have clear antecedents in classic SF. The post technological rural lifestyle is reminiscent of the sort of thing that happens in the home stretch of John Wyndham novels, and it has other British doom guys like John Christopher and Richard Cowper in its DNA. Probably the biggest single influence is Ursula LeGuin, whose fingerprints are all over the human / alien contact and coexistence posited here.
It's no retro exercise though - it's quite easy to read it as a Brexit parable, and the final quarter goes on and outwards into deeply strange territory that recalls Jeff Vandermeer and a certain cult classic horror movie. Neither is it just the sum of the influences cited - Whiteley has her own ideas, and expresses them in some lovely prose, as well as crafting characters whose relationships, frustrations and temptations all ring true. It's quiet, thoughtful and very very good.
This is the best thriller I've read in years, one of those books that keeps you turning and turning the pages, following the trails and traps the author has set out for you with a tremendous sense of building unease. It's impossible to describe without spoilers, but the setup is that a little girl went missing at the beach some years before. Her older sister, driven by guilt and trauma, has never let go of the case and had been conducting her own investigation, which has led her to a man named Ted. She begins to live in the house next door to Ted's and continues her investigation...oh, and there's a talking cat involved. It's cleverly plotted, with little snippets of information being doled out at precisely the right times to keep you off balance and make you reassess what you'd thought was going on up to then. All the characters in the book are orbiting a core of darkness, a hole in the world where something is very very wrong, but the nature of that wrong doesn't come into focus until the end. There's one scene in particular, maybe two thirds of the way through, where it will only dawn on you much later what was really going on, and the lurch in perspective that realisation brings is emblematic of this twisty, turny, unputdownable novel.
I really think I prefer Adrian Tchaikovsky at novella length. Walking to Aldebaran was excellent, and this is a similar slice of high concept, well thought through storytelling that doesn't outstay it's welcome. For a short book, it takes on big themes - time travel, the end of history, the nature of space-time, and reverses the grandfather paradox for an encore - in a mordant sardonic voice that is simultaneously funny and appalling. Very entertaining.
Loved this, perfectly captured that 80s creature feature vibe, with a small band of characters battling cosmic evil in a hostile and remote location. Think The Thing, Predator, any number of straight to VHS B-movies, basically everything I love. There's a character called Carpenter and ships named MacReady and Derleth, that's all you need to know.