A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness
Diana Bishop is a witch, an extremely reluctant witch, an extremely reluctant witch with a family that can trace its lineage, and the power it implies, back hundreds of years. Diana, however, wants to be as far from magic, and the complications it brings, as possible. With that in mind, she has found work as an historian and is currently buried among the manuscripts at the Bodleian, searching for connections between alchemists and the Scientific Revolution. Even with her magic carefully hidden, Diana attracts the attention of the local coven, and the daemons and vampires that walk the streets of Oxford are all aware of her presence. Diana is convinced they are merely interested in her because of her famous lineage, but her carefully circumscribed life begins to fray at the edges when she finds a long lost alchemical text that is more than meets the eye.
Harkness’ witches, daemons, and vampires inhabit a world just a step sideways from the one we are familiar with. In this Oxford, hidden just beneath the surface, lurk the three “other” races, sliding into as close to ordinary lives as possible, but always just that little bit more: more scientific, more artistic, more connected, more dangerous. Diana Bishop, for all of her denial and insistence on a non-magical life, is connected to this world, and her insistence on innocence, and ignorance, may end up putting her life at risk.
The Dragon’s Apprentice, by James A. Owen
What do you do when the dragons have gone, and you need them? When the evil you thought defeated has risen more terrible than before? When the world you have sworn yourself to protect, and the world you have left behind, face a terrible danger? Charles, John, and Jack, the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica, have finally made it back to the Archipelago of Dreams, but the world they have come to love is in desperate danger, and Time itself is fracturing.
As always, James A. Owen offers up a story full of danger, excitement, humour and the pleasure of visiting with characters who now feel like old friends. The Dragon’s Apprentice is the fifth in the Imaginarium Geographica series, and by now Charles, John, Jack, and the Grail Child have saved the Archipelago time and time again, but the world itself is unravelling, and the sacrifices the Caretakers must make are becoming more and more desperate.
This book begins with a warning, an obscure prophecy, a fogged vision of the future, a mysterious ghost. The Caretakers, investigating an odd happening, come across the ghost of an old friend with a message that creates more questions than it answers. After this mesmerizing visitor, Rose receives a message of her own
“What is this?” asked Rose.
“Ariadne’s Thread,” Mother Night replied, as if that answered everything. “The skein of eternity has come undone. History itself has unravelled, and none remain who may yet reweave it. None,” she said, her voice rising with emphasis, “save for you.”
A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes
A High Wind in Jamaica is an adventure story set in the colonies, filled with pirates and life-changing weather and a group of small children. A tall tale of accidents and dangerous misunderstandings, it leads you into some unexpected territory in the world that lies between adults and children. There is plenty of adventure and more to laugh at, even when you are filled with dread.
A High Wind in Jamaica tells the story of two families of children, living a colonial and eventful life in Jamaica. Their parents decide to send them to school in England following a dangerous hurricane but on the way, the children are accidentally captured by pirates. Far from living in terror, and despite the mysterious disappearance of one of their number, they learn to live on board and create their own worlds there. The pirates can’t decide what to do with their new charges and over the months that the children live with them the ship changes. And this is bad news for the pirates. When the first murder in the history of the ship is committed, it is an unexpected culprit who has brought violence on board. What will the pirates do and how will they defend themselves against the children’s dangerous innocence?
Son of Heaven (Chung Kuo, Book 1), by David Wingrove
The Chung Kuo series was originally published between 1989 and 1999, in 9 volumes – but with an apparently rushed ending that author David Wingrove was unhappy with. Now with a new publisher (Corvus), two new prequel novels, a planned series of 20 (yes, 20) volumes in total and a release schedule taking us through to 2015, Chung Kou is back. Son of Heaven is the first of the two new prequels, and tells the story of the fall of civilisation that was engineered by the Chinese as a means of taking over the world without nuclear war, the aftermath of the fall of the West and the re-appearance of the Chinese to impose their new world order.
Living in a rural Dorset community that is largely post-technological, Jake is a middle-aged man with a teenaged son, a lot of friends and a dark past that he does not share with anyone – for in the glittering technological epoch that preceded the fall, he was a login, or web-dancer, who entered the virtual reality environment known as the datascape that represented the world’s money markets, capital flows, investments and economies, there to interpret trends and data for his wealthy banker bosses. It was in the datascape that the first signs of the calamity began to emerge, but when the physical world outside, a world of haves and have-nots, of walled suburbs and urban deprivation outside them, starts to go to hell too, Jake is on someone’s hitlist, and is lucky to escape with his life.
The Wilding, by Maria McCann
Maria McCann’s Orange Prize nominated novel The Wilding is a passionate, illicit romp set in seventeenth century post Civil War ruhttp://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2011/01/27/the-wilding-by-maria-mccann/ral England. McCann adds conviction to her setting, by using a convincing, and uncomplicated voice, and although at first this voice seems artificial, it quickly draws the reader into her scandalous mystery and envelopes the reader in an earlier time.
The novel’s protagonist Jonathan Dymond is a thriving country cider maker, who makes an honest living working the apple harvest with a portable device made for him by his father. At the onset of the novel Dymond’s life is one of simple enjoyment and innocence, his livelihood is that of his childhood interest, and it is Dymond’s obvious innocence and honest nature which drive his actions throughout the novel.
McCann’s depiction of this country idyll echoes the rural/pastoral settings of Thomas Hardy, however the novel is set before the threat of industrialisation and its subsequent blight on this way of life. Dymond’s prosperity is in stark constrast to the conditions of a novel such as The Woodlanders, and foreshadows the industrial epoch. However, Dymond’s idyll is shattered by the death of his uncle Robin, and having been plagued by haunting nightmares, he must uncover the mysteries surrounding his uncle’s life and death. Read more
Beneath the Surface, by Simon Strantzas
First appearing in 2008 Simon Strantzas’ debut collection Beneath the Surface promptly disappeared, becoming virtually unobtainable for years due to the premature folding of the publisher, the late Humdrumming Press. Thanks to Dark Regions the book is now available again, in an expanded and revised version.
Was it worth the wait? Yes and no. The collection was certainly a remarkable debut for a newcomer and includes some very good, thought-provoking stories. On the one hand, the book compares unfavourably with the author’s second collection, the outstanding Cold to the Touch, a superior volume, more accomplished, more varied and more mature.
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro
Selected Stories by Alice Munro is a real treat for those who appreciate the short story genre and who like their fiction to be unashamedly true in tone. Comprised of twenty-three bittersweet tales of Canadian life, Selected Stories is a perfect example of Munro’s writing talents, allowing her to demonstrate her incisive understanding of human nature and to offer entertaining meditations on everyday life.
All of the stories in this collection are a delight to read, but a few do particularly stand out. “Walker Brothers Cowboy” is the collection’s opening story and is a masterful evocation of life on the road and an exploration of the father/daughter relationship in which a young girl accompanies her salesman father on one of his regular post-Depression era selling trips. In one particular small town they encounter an ex-girlfriend of the father and the girl is left poignantly weighing up her own mother’s disappointments with marriage against the ex-girlfriend’s disappointment in losing out on a life with the man she loved.
The Hammer, by K.J. Parker
The third of a triptych of standalone novels (the previous two being The Company and The Folding Knife), shows K.J. Parker once again doing what she does best: fantasy fiction that’s much more about the fiction than it is about the fantasy. Set on a distant peninsula, Parker shows that she understands the effects isolation can have on a community – and in Gignomai met’Oc, she once again delivers one of her trademark evil geniuses, the extent of whose evil is only very gradually revealed.
The met’Oc family came to the Colony a long time ago – they had to leave their home because they picked the wrong side in a major political dispute, so they came to the Colony, took over the plateau known as the Tabletop and stayed. They have nothing to do with the inhabitants of the rest of the Colony, apart from sallying forth occasionally to rustle their cattle, because they hold themselves apart – for the the met’Ocs are both noble and dirt poor at the same time. Youngest son Gignomai watches his brothers eking out a living on the poor land of the Tabletop, and watches his father continue to act as if their exile is a temporary state of affairs. But Gig decides he has to leave, and escapes to start a new life with the Colonists. As he does so, it gradually becomes clear that everything that follows is part of an elaborate desire to take revenge on his family for a terrible crime.
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
It’s a feat of writing when an author can write an entire book about just one evening. More so to invoke with blushing familiarity the nerves and trepidation of one’s first sexual experience; to accurately recall one’s naive expectations and the shattered preconceptions of that, the most significant of milestones in one’s youth. It is, in fact, faintly embarrassing to be reminded with such sudden clarity those long-forgotten feelings and memories.
This is a difficult historical context, not usually the stage for novels; two young people meet and fall in love in the post-war years, not far removed from the restrained courting of the 30s and 40s, and not quite in the liberated free-love of the 50s and 60s. It’s not easy to convey the atmosphere of changing social convention as one era evolves into another. The backdrop of sunny, lazy Oxford; the earnest opposition of youth to the Bomb; gin and tonics in the garden, and picnics in Hyde Park set the scene of relaxed post-war life, that later evolve into relaxed attitudes, as the two age into a more modern word inhabited by internet and rock music.
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The Replacement, by Brenna Yovanof
Every child, every teenager, every adult, knows the feelings of despair and loneliness that come from not fitting in, from having secrets to keep, from struggling to figure out the difference between the person who looks good and the person who is good. But what if that was going on and the whole world was toxic? What if you had the normal teenager worries, but, layered below, was a whole host of not-fitting-in, a basic disconnect and allergy to the world itself?
That is where Mackie Doyle’s life is in Brenna Yovanoff’s The Replacement. He’s a Replacement. An intruder. A fairy, switched at birth with a human child. A being left to struggle in a world that rejects every part of him, but, still, somehow, also just a teenage boy, with friends, enemies, and a crush on one of the prettiest girls at school. It’s this conflict between instinct and birthright, between what Mackie is and what he desperately wishes to be, that sits at the heart of this debut. For all of his allergies to iron and steel, in spite of his too-dark eyes, even though he cannot step on consecrated ground, Mackie, at the start of the novel, is very human. He grumbles his way through homework; he hangs out with his older sort-of sister; he has a huge crush on a pretty girl. But he is also terrified, because if anyone outside of his family finds out he’s a replacement, his life may be in danger, and in a town with a history of fairy involvement, he doesn’t have to do much to risk discovery.
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Beer in the Snooker Club, by Waguih Ghali
This 1964 novel, recently re-released by Serpent’s Tail, sketches out the concerns of a generation of Egyptians torn between old and new political allegiances. The country’s confusion and contradictions following the 1952 coup d’état are neatly embodied in the novel’s narrator, Ram, who is a product of his time and class but, equally, a typical young man torn between an awareness of the sufferings of others and an urge to live his own life as fully as possible.
The young characters live in Egypt and London in the 1950s, a time when relations between the two countries are fraught and rapidly changing, from the coup to the Suez crisis. These events form the backdrop to Ram’s story, but the effects they have on his everyday life are the real thrust of the tale. Beer in the Snooker Club is certainly political, yet it never points the reader towards one political stance – that would be too easy, and the book shows repeatedly that all allegiances are complex, all viewpoints contradictory. Read more
Texts for Nothing and Other Shorter Prose, by Samuel Beckett
Texts for Nothing is the third and final volume in Faber’s new editions of Samuel Beckett’s short prose, following The Expelled and Company, and includes almost 30 pieces written between 1950 and 1976, some in English and some in French subsequently translated by Beckett. The works collected here are almost unanimous in their brevity, both stylistically and in terms of length. The shortest is less than 100 words, most are only two or three pages long. In terms of form and content they are closer perhaps to prose poems than to short stories, intense in their attention to language but rarely following any sort of narrative; as the fourth of the ‘Texts for Nothing’ states: “no need for a story”.
This abstraction is perhaps most evident in the title section, comprising 13 monologues, each only a few pages long, which contains some of the most explicitly lyrical passages of Beckett’s writing: “All is noise, unending suck of black sopping peat, surge of giant ferns, heathery gulfs of quiet where the wind drowns, my life and its old jingles”. At other times the language is, unusually for this arch-minimalist, noticeably multisyllabic: “With his consolations, allusions to cancer, recollections of imperishable raptures, he’d prevent discouragement from sapping my foundations.” These ‘Texts for Nothing’ are the most approachable of the pieces included here and certainly deserve to be ranked alongside the other short prose of his recently published by Faber. Read more
Lenore: Cooties, by Roman Derge
A long time ago, little Lenore died of pneumonia. She knows this because she asked some people about it at her funeral. Post-funeral, she wandered the earth for a hundred years as a pint-sized member of the undead, befriending various oddments as she did so. Perhaps the most important member of her cavalcade of misshapen and generally freaky folks is Ragamuffin, a former vampire cursed by a diabolical witch to forever remain a cutesy, puffy doll. Towards the end of this period, and certainly without sufficient warning, Lenore fell sick and died again, this time ending up in the bowels of Heck. She sat there for almost two years and then left because Heck smelled funny. The Dark Overlord was not pleased.
An unstoppable bounty hunter named Pooty Applewater was dispatched to retrieve Lenore and restore her [once again walking] corpse to the underworld. A good plan on the part of the Dark Overlord that unfortunately failed once Pooty decided that he preferred the world above to Heck and that he really liked hanging out with Lenore. Ragamuffin was greatly displeased by this development, but the Dark Overlord was even more narked and so came up with an even more nefarious plan to thwart Lenore’s undead antics. Let the killing and gory bloody mess begin… Read more
The Black Prism (Lightbringer 1), by Brent Weeks
The emergence of so many new and boundary-testing fantasy authors in the last ten years or so – Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, K J Parker to name but three – as well as the development of urban fantasy as a genre, has as times felt like it is in danger of making traditional, swords-and-sorcery high fantasy irrelevant, a genre devoid of innovation and inspiration. I confess that such thoughts were much in my mind when embarking upon reading The Black Prism: at first glance, everything about it, from the cover to the classic story elements laid out in the first hundred pages or so, seemed to say mediocrity to this reviewer. However, I am delighted to report that with one massive and totally unanticipated twist, Brent Weeks blew my mind and made every page that followed eminently more engaging, leaving me desperate for book two of this trilogy.
The world Weeks has created is completely dominated and defined by the magic system he has come up with. In it, those with the gift of drafting can use light to create a material called luxin, which can be used for everything from fighting to building. Most drafters can only work in one or possibly two colours – so a red drafter can turn red light in to red luxin, and so on, with different colour luxins having different properties. This means that they need daylight to work, and either to be able to see red objects, or to have a pair of red-tinted spectacles for their power to be any use. This magic system is clearly very well thought through, and is explained at length – the fact that its practitioners are subject to the limitations of light and colour, as well as its masters and mistresses, is a nice touch. There is one drafter, Gavin Guile, who can draft in every colour, but even he cannot work in the dark – despite the fact that he is the Prism of the title.
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
Emma is the beautiful daughter of a farmer in provincial northern France where she receives a good convent education but is secretly inspired by passionate novels of d’amour and extravagance. When she meets Dr Bovary, a kindly yet doltish man of little remark and less career ambition, she is seduced by the belief that romantic fervour has finally arrived. She marries him, only to become disillusioned and bitter when her marriage to a dispassionate man, and the boredom and banality of provincial life, does not meet the ideal she has waited for.
Unbeknownst to her husband she embarks on two affairs; one to a man who seeks only to add her to his list of conquests, and another to a man who adores her but cannot sustain her immoderate indulgence and delusions of grandeur. Feeling short-changed by life, she seeks to overcompensate with expensive trinkets, dinners and hotels, and ensnared in a series of ill-advised borrowings and repayments she leads her family into crushing debt and bankruptcy. Read more
Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson, by Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith
“I want you to keep in mind that I’d just as soon not be dismissed as some drug-addled clown.” While this question of image and public perception isn’t one that troubles the majority of us, it was certainly an issue that plagued Hunter S. Thompson. By turns described as the great American iconoclast, the great American outlaw, the great American hedonist and, depressingly far less regularly, the great American writer, Thompson carried for years a justified fear that he had succeeded best in becoming a caricature of himself. It’s true that the legend very nearly eclipsed the man. Despite his fairly prolific literary and journalistic output, Thompson is still, even after his relatively quiet final years and untimely death, best known for his excesses rather than for his creativity and innovation. With Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith aim to redress this fact by offering an account of Thompson’s life that highlights those achievements and events of which the man himself was most proud. Read more
London Fields, by Martin Amis
I’m a big fan of Martin Amis, which is going against the grain since he has never been the critic’s favourite. His books are always unique in style and plot, with prose so true to life you feel physical pangs of recognition. Not only that but they are littered with a profusion of words that language-lovers revel in; words one rarely sees in print these days, and one feels a sense of gratitude to read a book where the full spectrum of the English language has been made use of.
From the perspective of such a fawning fan then, I regret to say that London Fields was not my favourite of his works.
Nicola is a beautiful, composed, femme-fatale who has a sixth sense for what will happen next. When she walks into a London pub one day she knows she has seen the man who is going to kill her. Narrator Sam is a dying author who immortalises her story as his final work to be published posthumously; while the two protagonists are Keith – council-estate scumbag, philandering swindler, and wannabe TV darts star; and Guy – tall, posh, hapless dreamboat with a terminal lack of charisma. To Keith, Nicola is a high-class temptress, leading him on with dirty videos; to Guy she is a naive virgin, fond of poetry and literature; and to Sam she is herself; a beautiful woman on the verge of death, puppeteering the players in her final drama, until the final conclusion.
Heart’s Blood, by Juliet Marillier
Caitrin is a young scribe who, fleeing her own demons, finds a safe haven in Whistling Tor – a crumbling, derelict fortress full of mystery and secrets. A seemingly unbreakable curse lies over the chieftain, Anluan, and his family. At Whistling Tor, Caitrin finds friendship, love and also evil. At first Anluan’s strange tempers and unusual appearance frighten Caitrin, but soon she realizes there is more to this seemingly weak young man than she first thought. As they grow closer, they help each other overcome their fears.
When Caitrin and Anluan first meet, he seems like an unkind man, but as the story goes on, we learn more about his past and how he came to be confined to Whistling Tor. Anluan is not an aggressive, overbearing man, like most lead male characters in stories today, and it’s good to see him grow and change, with the help of Caitrin he finds a hidden confidence in himself that helps him on the journey to becoming a capable leader to his people. Read more
The Riddler’s Gift, by Greg Hamerton
Greg Hamerton’s first book of his Lifesong series, The Riddler’s Gift, is a doorstop of a book. Coming in at just shy of 650 pages, it tells the story of Tabitha, a young woman fighting her way through dystopian hellhole Oldenworld. Struck by tragedy early on in the book, she is then taken on an almighty journey, through Hamerton’s blackened, decaying universe which is controlled by all powerful wizards. She does though come across a ring, a very special ring, which makes her the target of every evil doer and power seeker in the kingdom.
The Riddler’s Gift has one enormous cloud looming over it and that’s the fact that Tolkien stalks every page of The Riddlers’ Gift. His wide eyed vision of the world and characters with straight cut morality are all resplendent in this book. Plus the main character has a magic ring, which everyone else is after. Additionally, every person who speaks seems to do so as if they’re addressing a large crowd, flinging their words out as if every utterance is worth preserving for a thousand years. Read more
Sing, Sorrow, Sorrow: Dark and Chilling Tales, edited by Gwen Davies
In a genre currently crowded by vampires and zombies, Sing, Sorrow, Sorrow, is a strange and schizophrenic title. A collection of the traditional and the contemporary, beginning and closing with the supernatural themed stories, Puck’s Tale and The White Mountain, while finding room for the science fiction tinged The City, the book is a refreshing read. There is plenty here to satisfy fans of the horror genre, or anyone just looking for a scary story or two to dip in and out of.
By far the most chillingly effective of the stories included, the ones which really stick with you, are told from the perspective of the deranged, horrific villains. The title story, Sing, Sorrow, Sorrow, is a clinically described scene of drunken victims, and flirty, murderous waitresses. In Box, the grisly contents are given a frightening, morbidly funny account of clipped ears, baby teeth, and lovely lengths of ribbons, with clumps of hair still attached. And The Pit follows the tragic, disastrous life of a miner, curiously called Davy Jones, and his developing taste for cannibalism. Davy Jones easily emerges as an entire, fully defined character, a young man the reader can both feel for, while retreating from in revulsion. Read more
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Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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