A strange, quiet book, where the speculative elements are painted so lightly, you won’t realise you’re reading sci fi until you’ve been sucked into a story about love, family and community in a forgotten West Country village. Jem runs a small rural Inn, serving brew to a smattering of locals Read more…
A young, peasant girl, starving to death in small village, is confronted with the stark ignominy of her fate: She is nothing and she will die nothing. The girl refuses. In a devastating act of will, she pitches herself into a new destiny, one that will upturn the boundaries of Read more…
It’s halloween, and watching from an upper window, Jen sees her son kill a man. Her loving teenage boy barely looks at her, as tight-lipped and apparently indifferent, he is cuffed and taken away. At some point later that evening, shell-shocked and devastated, Jen falls asleep, and when she wakes, Read more…
This is a sophisticated book, long and meandering, which makes sense as it follows a character destined to live, die and be born again with his memory in tact, ad infinitum; a strange sort of immortality. After his entirely ordinary first life (and death), it takes Harry August a couple Read more…
I knew nothing about this book and had no idea what to expect, which made it all the more fun! I therefore won’t stray into any spoilers here. The story opens with the first person narrator crashing into consciousness, to find themselves in the middle of a foreboding wood. We Read more…
One of the most unexpected reads of my life – not an exaggeration. I thought I was picking up a novel, felt very hard done by after the first couple of pages which felt like slippery, stream of consciousness poetry, and then got wrapped up in one of the most Read more…
One of my favourite books from the last few years. It won the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction, the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2019, and the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella. If you’re only going to read one book this year, read this one. The story Read more…
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, Bewilderment is an important and beautiful book about empathy and the sadness and beauty which define living in our troubled world. The book follows a father, Theo, and his son, Robin, as they struggle to fill the spaces the world has cut out for them. Set Read more…
Winner of the British Fantasy, Locus and Nebula Award’s in 2021, this fast-paced, 180 page novella is an action-packed historical fantasy. It is set in the American deep South after the civil war, where a hardened bunch of sassy, gun-toting vigilantes, hunt demonic beings known as Ku Kluxes. The author is Read more…
The six book series has won various awards, including Nebula Award Winner for Best Novella and Hugo Award Winner for Best Novella. I fully expect to see a Netflix series or movie franchise one of these days. The main character is a dry-toned cyborg with a penchant for trashy TV Read more…