Tag Archives: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Embers of War – Gareth L. Powell

Book one in a trilogy of the same name, Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War is the first instalment of an instantly familiar-feeling sci-fi story, a tale of sentient ships and down-at-heel characters in the aftermath of a terrible war. Captain Sal Konstanz and the crew of the Trouble Dog race to the site of a downed ship, among whose passengers is someone of surprising importance to both sides of the war. Members of the humanitarian House of Reclamation, the Trouble Dog and its crew are on a rescue mission, but they soon find themselves tangled in something much more complex and dangerous.

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The Bastard Legion – Gavin Smith

This was first posted on the British Fantasy Society website. Click here to check out more fantasy, sci-fi and horror reviews.

A hugely entertaining military-ish science fiction novel, Gavin Smith’s The Bastard Legion (originally released as The Hangman’s Daughter) kicks off a series of the same name, set 400 years into a dark but still recognisable future. Livewire, smart-talking mercenary Miska, commanding a force six-thousand strong, is commissioned to pacify a group of rebellious miners on a remote asteroid. The problem is, her army is made up of dangerous criminals from a stolen prison ship, trained only in virtual reality and compelled to fight under threat of execution, while her only help comes from the digital presence of her dead father.

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Barricade – Jon Wallace

Barricade by Jon Wallace, the author’s debut novel, is the first in a trilogy set in a post-apocalypse Britain. It’s a pretty standard dystopian setup – humans build artificial life, stuff goes wrong, war ensues and ruins everything for everyone involved – except, unusually, it’s seen through the eyes of one of the artificial beings, or Ficials. A construction worker by ‘optimisation’, Kenstibec is now a taxi driver, and is hired to take a journalist (another Ficial called Starvie) from Edinburgh to London. To do so he has to find a way out of the Edinburgh barricade, past the besieging army of Reals (normal humans to you and me) and through a country prowled by tribes of half-feral humans out for Ficial blood.
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The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch’s latest novel in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series – The Hanging Tree – brings us back to London after Peter’s foray into the countryside in Foxglove Summer. The focus is on Mayfair this time as Peter investigates a drug-related death where one of the suspects is the daughter of Lady Tyburn, physical manifestation of one of London’s rivers and not one of Peter’s biggest fans. As the fateful events are gradually revealed and the implications uncovered, new players in the magical scene are introduced, some familiar faces reappear, and a bigger mystery might just be solved.

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Savant – Nik Abnett

From Solaris Books comes Savant, the first full novel from Nik Abnett, who might be more familiar to some under the name Nik Vincent. A brave, adventurous book, it’s set in a recognisable but clearly different world where the Earth is protected from the rest of the galaxy by a shield generated by the minds of certain key individuals. A complex system of roles and organisation keeps minds like these around the world calm and functioning in order to safeguard the shield, but when one man begins to stray from his usual routine the entire system risks falling apart.
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Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

A bona fide dystopian classic, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was published 63 years ago but remains worryingly relevant to this day. In a world where ignorance is aspirational, the role of the ‘fireman’ is to seek out and burn books – considered to be the source of unhappiness, they’ve long been banned and only a few remain, hidden away in attics and back rooms. When fireman Guy Montag starts to question the views and values of his world, he begins to see everything he knows in a different light – his neighbours and colleagues, his blissed-out wife, and even his job.
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Trigger Warning – Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman’s third volume of short stories, Trigger Warning is a strange, eclectic collection that fails to follow one of Gaiman’s own tests by assembling stories ‘hodgepodge and willy-nilly’ but nevertheless still feels totally appropriate for a book of Gaiman stories. There’s a little bit of everything in here – poetry, stories both long (ish) and (very) short, ghosts, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, saints, dogs, David Bowie, and all sorts of captivatingly strange goings-on. They range in length, style, structure, genre, each one standing separate but contributing to a whole that’s occasionally confusing but always interesting, and very, very appropriate to Neil Gaiman.
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The Vagrant – Peter Newman

The debut novel from Peter Newman, The Vagrant is a genre-straddling, expectation-defying book that represents both an assured debut and an impressive willingness (from author and publisher) to take risks. Set in a world that’s equal parts dystopia, fantasy and science fiction, where living swords and ephemeral demons coexist with futuristic firearms and vast sky-ships, it follows the titular Vagrant as he journeys through lands long corrupted by a conquering foe bearing a sentient sword and incongruously caring for a baby. Never speaking, communicating through body language alone, he stubbornly makes his way ever northwards in search of home, and safety.
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Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

First published in 1966 and no less potent fifty years later, Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon is a justifiable classic, a science fiction story which, like so many of the genre’s finest, holds a mirror up to reality and gives us a glimpse at what might be. It follows Charlie Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68 who spends his days sweeping floors in a bakery, happily ignorant of how the world sees him, until he’s chosen for an experiment to artificially enhance his intelligence. The procedure has been successfully completed once before, on a white mouse called Algernon, but Charlie is the first human test subject.
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The Sand Men – Christopher Fowler

The stark contrast between its gleaming modernity and deep-rooted middle-eastern conservatism makes Dubai an ideal setting for a sort-of-science-fiction thriller, so Christopher Fowler’s The Sand Men seems an intriguing prospect. Promising a look under the surface of a modern technological utopia, it sees the Brook family move from their old life in London to a gated community set up for the families of the men brought over to work on Dream World, a vast, sprawling hotel complex offering every luxury for the most wealthy visitors to the country. Once there, the realities of life for Western outsiders start to become clear, with the family fragmenting while dark secrets start coming to light.
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