Category Archives: Books

Richards & Klein – Guy Haley

Originally published in 2011 and 2012, Guy Haley’s SF detective adventure novels Reality 36 and Omega Point are back in print in a hefty new omnibus edition entitled Richards & Klein, both books revised, updated and combined into a single volume. Set in 2129 it sees freelance security consultants Richards (a Class Five AI) and Otto Klein (German ex-military cyborg) investigating the murder of Professor Zhang Qifang, a prominent activist for AI rights, whose death heralds a rising threat that’s felt across both the physical and digital worlds. People connected to Qifang are dying or disappearing, some of Richards’ fellow Class Fives are acting weird, and someone really doesn’t want Richards and Klein to find out what’s going on. As they dig beneath the surface, their investigation takes them across the Real, the digital space of the Grid, and even the virtual worlds of the Realities.

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A Game of Broken Minds – Tom Jolly

Released in ebook by Distant Shore Publishing, Tom Jolly’s novella A Game of Broken Minds is a high concept modern-day science fiction tale of desperation and expanding horizons. Living on the streets of Santa Maria after a disastrous series of events, Cory is reduced to taking part in unlicensed pharmaceutical tests for money, taking drugs designed to induce tap into the unused parts of the human brain. To his considerable surprise, after he takes the latest pill he finds a strange voice manifesting in his head, claiming to be some kind of networked superbrain. While this seems like a good thing to begin with, Cory realises that the new, expanded world he’s become a part of is dangerous indeed.

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The Beautiful Ones – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

First published in 2017, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Beautiful Ones is back in print in a lovely new 2021 edition from Jo Fletcher Books (or via Tor in the US), and deservedly so. With the carefully observed characters and social customs of a novel of manners, set in a fictional world influenced by late-19th Century Europe and with a dash of telekinesis added in for a little bit of a fantasy edge, it’s a rich and characterful social drama, a slow-burn romantic love triangle, and a tale of conformity and conflict. The story begins in the city of Loisail during the Grand Season, with its glittering balls attended by the Beautiful Ones – the cream of society – and revolves around a trio of characters caught in a tangle of history, passion and deception.

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Rogue: Untouched – Alisa Kwitney

The third volume in Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Heroines series, Alisa Kwitney’s Rogue: Untouched offers a modern origin story for one of Marvel’s most famous X-Men. In Peck, Mississippi, population 1,063, Anna Marie (or Marie, as she prefers) works diner shifts to try and earn enough to get out and make a better life for herself. Life is tough for a young woman on her own, not least when she has a history of strange things happening around her, but little does Marie suspect that latent mutant powers are to blame for many of her difficulties. Things start to change, however, when she meets charismatic Cajun thief Remy and rich businesswoman Lucretia, both of whom seem to understand what she’s been through, and learns for the first time about her mutant nature. An unexpected new opportunity quickly turns into more trouble than ever before, but if only she can find a way to survive she might at last be able to choose who she wants to be.

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Fugitive Telemetry – Martha Wells

After briefly veering into full novel territory with 2020’s Network Effect, Martha Wells’ brilliant Murderbot Diaries series returns to its novella-length roots with Fugitive Telemetry, the sixth book in total and the fifth novella in the series. Set (slightly confusingly) between Exit Strategy and Network Effect, it’s essentially a detective story as Murderbot turns investigator in the wake of an unexpectedly dead human turning up on Preservation Station. Concerned that the death might be a sign that GreyCris are attempting to strike at Doctor Mensah, Murderbot begrudgingly agrees to work alongside station security – who seem equally unhappy about the arrangement – to investigate the murder.

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Priest of Gallows – Peter McLean

Book three in Peter McLean’s phenomenal War for the Rose Throne series, Priest of Gallows delivers another gripping tale of gangsters, intrigue and espionage, family bonds, harsh justice and escalating danger. Picking up where Priest of Lies left off, it begins with Tomas Piety – army priest, businessman, Queen’s Man – in the uncomfortable position of governor of Ellinburg. When word arrives of the Queen’s untimely death, however, Tomas returns to Dannsburg with his closest companions, where he finds himself pulled ever deeper into the murky world of the Queen’s Men. Under the orders of Provost Marshall Dieter Vogel, Tomas sinks further into the role of Queen’s Man while rising higher in Dannsburg society, but even as he does so he’s forced to consider how far he’s prepared to go in the pursuit of respect, power and authority.

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Sistersong – Lucy Holland

Retelling a traditional murder ballad in the shape and style of an epic fantasy, Lucy Holland’s Sistersong is a fascinating, evocative and at times shockingly dark tale of family, magic, faith and suppressed voices set in post-Roman Britain. In the kingdom of Dumnonia, the three daughters of King Cador each search for their place in life and in their family, while war gathers on the horizon and their father’s connection to the land and its magic wanes as the Christian church gains power. As the danger of Saxon invasion grows and the fortunes of the kingdom fade, the sisters are each faced with choices that will have significant consequences for themselves, their family and their people.

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Network Effect – Martha Wells

After four excellent novellas, Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series gets its first novel-length instalment with Network Effect, which offers everything that makes this series so much fun…just more of it! Their research mission completed with only one minor incident of life-threatening drama, Murderbot and its human charges return to Preservation space, only to come under attack from a mysterious enemy ship. When several of its humans – including members of Dr Mensah’s family – are kidnapped during the attack, Murderbot puts its media consumption aside and goes immediately on the offensive. Passing through a wormhole and encountering both suspiciously alien-like enemies and the unexpected presence of an old sort-of-friend, Murderbot quickly finds that the situation is stranger and much more uncomfortable than it could possibly have expected.

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Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest – Cath Lauria

Part of the Marvel: Heroines series from Aconyte Books, Cath Lauria’s Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest is a madcap thrill-ride full of monster battles, jet-setting and bickering siblings. Elsa Bloodstone – badass monster hunter, daughter of the famed Ulysses Bloodstone, definitely not a team player – is quite content with her life spent travelling the world, slaying assorted horrors for money. When a simple monster hunt is interrupted by mercenaries wanting her bloodstone shard, however, it seems as though her life is about to get a bit more complicated, an impression only reinforced by the appearance of a previously unknown half-sister asking for help in recovering her own, recently-lost bloodstone. Begrudgingly, Elsa agrees to help Mihaela, and the two of them set out to track down whoever’s behind the bloodstone theft.

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The End of Enlightenment – Richard Strachan

After tackling the human followers of Chaos in his debut novel for Black Library, Richard Strachan returns to Age of Sigmar with The End of Enlightenment but focuses on two very different factions – the Lumineth Realm-Lords and the Ossiarch Bonereapers. In the wake of the Necroquake, the Lumineth march on Shyish determined to bring Nagash to account. Stonemage Carreth Y’gethin holds himself aloof from the war, determined to leave behind the violence of his youth during the Spirefall, but when his sister is killed fighting the Bonereapers he finds himself drawn into the conflict regardless. Tasked by Teclis himself with defeating a dangerous general of the Ossiarch legions and staving off a terrible future, Carreth struggles to balance his god-given duty with his own spiritual equilibrium.

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