Tag Archives: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie

As debut novels go they don’t come much more ambitious than Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, a complex, politically-themed science fiction epic. Heavily reminiscent of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, from the huge scale of its setting to the use of powerful ship-based artificial intelligences, it nonetheless feels fresh and characterful, distinct enough to stand proudly within the space opera genre. The story follows Breq, an ancillary – a ship’s once-human avatar – previously one of many, but now separate and alone. We meet her nineteen years into a mission that she is pursuing with single-minded determination, and which might be finally drawing to a close.

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The Illustrated Wee Free Men – Terry Pratchett

With the final Discworld book confirmed to be the fifth Tiffany Aching novel, the time seems right to go back to where her story started, in Terry Pratchett’s second Discworld book for young readers, The Wee Free Men. Taking place on the Chalk, a quiet part of the Disc populated by no-nonsense sheep farmers, it introduces nine-year-old Tiffany as a sort of proto-witch, already equipped with the tools she will need to protect her land, but not yet fully aware of what it will mean to be a witch. When her little brother is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies, it’s up to her to bring him back safely, armed with a frying pan and a little help from some unusual friends.

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The Water Knife – Paolo Bacigalupi

In his first novel, The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi created a bleak future world with which to highlight issues around sustainability and genetic modification. Continuing the theme of big issues, in his latest book, The Water Knife, he turns his attention to water scarcity and how America would cope without a plentiful supply of H2O. Another bleak, alternative world, where drought is the norm and individual States battle to maintain their grip on the few sources of water still remaining, it’s a powerful and scarily believable concept.

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Ack-Ack Macaque – Gareth L. Powell

While science fiction as a genre can occasionally take itself too seriously, with Ack-Ack Macaque Gareth L. Powell has shown that he understands how important it is for books to sometimes just be fun. Set in an alternative future where Britain and France are about to celebrate the centenary of their political and economic union, it follows a journalist hunting her ex-husband’s killer, while hosting a backup of said ex-husband inside her brain, and the British Crown Prince trying to extricate himself from a life of tedious duties in favour of the quiet life as a student. All the while the titular Ack-Ack Macaque, a violent, foul-mouthed monkey, is beginning to question the world around him as he battles German planes from the cockpit of his Spitfire.

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Johnny and the Dead – Terry Pratchett

The second in his Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and sixth young adult novel overall, Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Dead was published in 1993, twenty-two years after his first novel (The Carpet People) and ten years after his first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic). Set in the village of Blackbury, a sort of Pratchett-ised standard of suburbia, it sees Johnny and his friends trying to carry on with the normal lives that most 12-year-olds live; hanging out in the mall, trying to avoid getting beaten up by older siblings, and coping with the well-meaning attention of parents. When Johnny starts seeing the dead (post-senior citizens, not ghosts) however, and they find themselves caught up in a campaign to save the local cemetery, life soon becomes more complicated.

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The Slow Regard of Silent Things – Patrick Rothfuss

As a genre, Fantasy isn’t generally known for beautiful prose, generally focusing more on plot and worldbuilding. With his first two novels, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss went some way towards reversing that trend, and now with his novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things he has proven once and for all that great Fantasy can be beautiful as well. Set within the world of his Kingkiller Chronicles, this explores the character of Auri, the shy, semi-feral woman who lives deep beneath the University in a place known only as the Underthing.

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The Girl With All The Gifts – M. R Carey

The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey is the kind of book that benefits from the reader knowing as little as possible beforehand; the blurb on the cover gives almost nothing away, save to hint at the protagonist’s plight and begin to build the reader’s sympathies. For those who don’t want anything that might spoil the story, suffice to say this is a tightly-plotted, compulsive read that’s at once a bleak look at how mankind might react under terrible circumstances and a compassionate tale of what makes us human. If you are a fan of Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson or more modern writers like Justin Cronin (author of The Passage) then look no further; this should appeal. If you want to know a little more, without any actual spoilers, then read on.

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Foxglove Summer – Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch, author of the Peter Grant series that started with Rivers of London and is now up to its fifth book, is a cruel man. First he ends his last book, Broken Homes, with an earth-shattering twist that nobody can have seen coming, then he makes us wait extra long for the next book to be released. Now it’s finally here, in the shape of Foxglove Summer, he’s teasing us, withholding the information we really want in favour of having Peter dragged off to the middle of nowhere to help look for missing children, 150 miles away from London, Nightingale and the Met. All the while he’s feeding us little titbits regarding the events at the end of Broken Homes; clearly he has big plans for the next instalments in the series.

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Broken Homes – Ben Aaronovitch

The fourth in Ben Aaronovitch’s popular Peter Grant series, Broken Homes continues the story that started in 2011 with Rivers of London, followed by Moon Over Soho (also 2011) and Whispers Under Ground (2012). Part police procedural, part supernatural detective thriller, each book follows Grant around different parts of London as he tackles the kind of crimes that most coppers just don’t like having to deal with. Along the way he’s encountered argumentative river deities, jazz vampires, various ghosts and plenty of unhappy senior officers, seen his best friend possessed by the violent spirit of Mr Punch, and been buried underneath one of the platforms at Oxford Circus.

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The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss

After the jaw-dropping, life-devouring debut novel that is The Name of the Wind, comes The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. At 600+ pages the first in the series was a proper, epic fantasy-length novel, but it pales in comparison with The Wise Man’s Fear which runs to 992 pages in hardback (paperback is 1000+). Make no mistake, this book is huge. It’s not only its physical size either, but also its scope; the increased wordcount allows Rothfuss to broaden the horizons of his story, exploring more of his world and starting to fill in some more of the blank spaces on the map.

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