Simon Appleby
Great North Road, by Peter F. Hamilton
Reviewed on October 23, 2012
At over one thousand pages, Peter F. Hamilton’s latest standalone blockbuster will not disappoint fans, who are used to his books being chunky affairs. If you don’t want to read it, you could use it as a doorstop, knock an unwary intruder unconscious with it or stand on it to reach something on a high [...]
Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie
Reviewed on October 15, 2012
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say he’s a clever chap. Since the completion of his début trilogy, the First Law, he’s focused on standalone novels set in that same world, with each one co-opting and subverting a particular kind of story. Best Served Cold was a revenge novel, The Heroes was full-bore military yarn, [...]
1356, by Bernard Cornwell
Reviewed on September 30, 2012
Bernard Cornwell’s latest is a detour from his current series-in-progress, The Warrior Chronicles, to revisit a previous protagonist and, one suspects, to have an excuse to write about a battle he’s always wanted to work in to one of his books. The character in question is Thomas Hookton, the hero of the Grail Quest trilogy, [...]
Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1), by Steven Erikson
Reviewed on September 29, 2012
The world created by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esselmont for their Malazan Book of the Fallen and Malazan Empire Books is so rich in mythology and folklore, so heavy with the pathos of the many immortals that stalk its lands, that a prequel trilogy was a logical avenue to be explored. The three Elder [...]
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
Reviewed on September 13, 2012
In Dodger, Terry Pratchett’s latest novel (ostensibly for young adults, though sure to be enjoyed by old adults as well), we have a rare beast indeed – a non-fantastical Pratchett book. There are no gods, no talking animals, no magic (or magyck), no science fiction – and as I look back over the scores of [...]
Caliban’s War (Expanse Series), by James S.A. Corey
Reviewed on August 26, 2012
This slab of space opera is a worthy successor to Leviathan Wakes, the début of the writing partnership that goes by the name of James S.A. Corey. In the first book, a mysterious alien entity possessed an orbital space station and turned the unlucky inhabitants in to vomit zombies, only to be thwarted by a [...]
An Agent of Deceit, by Chris Morgan Jones
Reviewed on August 2, 2012
In the past you knew where you were with espionage thrillers; but we have left the certainties of the Cold War long behind us now. Where once there were unsmiling KGB men and their CIA counterparts, now you are as likely to find private intelligence companies and state-sponsored industrial espionage. John Le Carre, doyen of [...]
Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, by Geoffrey Roberts
Reviewed on July 30, 2012
Ask the average person in the street to name a WW2 British or American general, and you have a good chance of hearing the names Montgomery, Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur; ask them for a German and you would probably get Rommel; ask for a WW2 Soviet General, and it’s a good bet you will get blank [...]
Sharps, by K.J. Parker
Reviewed on July 27, 2012
With a style of cover that’s slightly more mass-market than previous volumes, there is a suggestion that Sharps is an attempt to grow K.J. Parker’s audience – and no fantasy writer deserves that more in my opinion. Set in the same milieu as the Engineer Trilogy and the previous three standalone novels, Sharps is perhaps a [...]
The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Reviewed on July 25, 2012
As if the Discworld wasn’t enough to keep him occupied, Terry Pratchett has teamed up with fellow genre giant Stephen Baxter to launch a new science fiction concept – the Long Earth – and this is one that could run and run, a strong speculative fiction concept married with an interesting plot and some intriguing [...]
The World of Poo, by Terry Pratchett with Bernard and Isobel Pearson
Reviewed on July 23, 2012
Poo. A source of endless amusement and fascination to children of a certain age. A universal subject too, for it’s hard to deny that everyone has to do it. And now Terry Pratchett’s written a book about it. To give it its full title, Miss Felicity Beedle’s The World of Poo is a companion volume [...]
Albert of Adelaide, by Howard L. Anderson
Reviewed on July 21, 2012
Anthropomorphic animals are something of a rite of passage for developing readers. Of course books for young children depend heavily on them, and as we grow up we don’t necessarily lose the taste for them, hence the massive and enduring popularity of Watership Down (rabbits), William Horwood’s six Duncton books (moles) and of course The [...]
Into the Valley of Death, by A.L. Berridge
Reviewed on July 9, 2012
After her two very enjoyable Thirty Years War adventures following the antics of the Chevalier de Roland, A.L. Berridge has turned her attention to one of the most wretched wars of the 19th century: the Crimean. After victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain enjoyed a period of relative peace in Europe during which their generals [...]
Johnny Red: Falcon’s First Flight, by Tom Tully and Joe Colquhoun
Reviewed on July 8, 2012
Falcon’s First Flight is the first collected volume of Johnny Red comics, which originally appeared in Battle Picture Weekly. They tell the story of Johnny ‘Red’ Redburn, a failed British aviator who is kicked out of the RAF for his involvement in the accidental death of an officer. Serving as a merchant seaman as part [...]
Batman: Knightfall, Volume One
Reviewed on July 6, 2012
Published in the run-up to the eagerly anticipated film The Dark Knight Rises, Knightfall tells the story of the villain who will be facing off against the Caped Crusader in that movie: Bane. It includes Bane’s origin story, and then pits an exhausted Bruce against him and a plethora of other villains – because one [...]
What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes
Reviewed on June 26, 2012
Karl Marlantes’ superlative novel Matterhorn was one of my books of 2010, heavily informed as it was by his own experiences serving with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam – and in this timely volume, he considers further the effect that going to war has on people and the ways in which those who serve [...]
Railsea, by China Mieville
Reviewed on June 23, 2012
China Mieville can always be relied upon to deliver genuinely innovative new slices of science fiction, and Railsea is no exception. Although it’s not packaged any differently to his other recent works, it will be clear to those who open the book, from the ever-so-slightly larger type and the use of illustrated section plates, that [...]
The Bleeding Land, by Giles Kristian
Reviewed on June 19, 2012
The English Civil War is not a particularly popular period in which to set historical fiction, when compared with blockbuster periods like the Tudor dynasty and the Napoleonic Wars – and when you think about it, that’s pretty hard to understand. It has religious conflict, political and class conflict, it has Englishman set against Englishman, [...]
The Stranger’s Woes, by Max Frei
Reviewed on June 4, 2012
This second volume of Russian literary sensation the Labyrinths of Echo picks up pretty much where The Stranger left off: loser-in-our-life Max Frei is in charge of the night shift at the House by the Bridge, home of the team of magical investigators led by the charming and enigmatic Sir Juffin Hully. Max is now [...]
Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy 1943-1945, by David Stafford
Reviewed on May 25, 2012
Winston Churchill’s famous injunction to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was to “set Europe ablaze”, and in this official history of its activities in Italy from the Allied invasion until the end of the Second World War, David Stafford describes in enjoyable detail just what that entailed in Italy. It’s important to understand the mission [...]
Daylight on Iron Mountain (Chung Kuo, Book 2), by David Wingrove
Reviewed on May 23, 2012
The second new prequel in David Wingrove’s recast Chung Kuo series (the second of a planned twenty volumes) sees a considerable emphasis on the Chinese new world order that has emerged from the ashes of the old world. In the first prequel, Son of Heaven, we saw the Chinese expansion reach the British Isles, and [...]
The Popes: A History, by John Julius Norwich
Reviewed on April 25, 2012
My interest in the Borgias recently piqued by Samuel Black’s The Ground is Burning, and by Jeremy Irons’ enjoyable turn as Pope Alexander, born Rodrigo Borgia, in Showtime’s racy tale of Renaissance Rome, the arrival on my doorstep of John Julius Norwich’s single volume history of the Papacy from its earliest origins to the present [...]
London Under, by Peter Ackroyd
Reviewed on April 2, 2012
Peter Ackroyd has previously authored massive tomes on the history both of London and of its main artery, the Thames; now, with this slim volume, he’s focused on all aspects of London’s subterranean life: railways, sewers and hidden rivers, bunkers, war rooms and vaults. He also makes much of the extent to which London is [...]
Stonewielder, by Ian C. Esselmont
Reviewed on March 27, 2012
Stonewielder is the third of Ian Cameron Esselmont’s tales of the Malazan Empire, and I read it out-of-order, having recently finished the fourth, Orb Sceptre Throne. For the most part this didn’t matter: Esselmont’s tales tend to be largely self-contained (though there is one story thread that began in Return of the Crimson Guard that [...]
The Arab Spring: Rebellion, revolution, and a new world order, edited by Toby Manhire
Reviewed on March 15, 2012
If journalism is the first draft of history, then what does that make news media forms like liveblogging and microblogging? The first draft of journalism, perhaps? The Arab Spring is an edited selection of the material that appeared on the Guardian’s website during the course of the momentous events unfolding in the Middle East and [...]
The Clockwork Rocket: Orthogonal Book 1, by Greg Egan
Reviewed on March 12, 2012
In The Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan demonstrates an ability to create genuine ‘otherness’, a quality that is all too rare in both science fiction and fantasy much of the time. It concerns a race that are totally unlike humanity – yet Egan does not set out to describe them, he writes from the point-of-view of [...]
Orb Sceptre Throne, by Ian C. Esslemont
Reviewed on March 4, 2012
Orb Sceptre Throne is the latest Malazan offering from Steven Erikson’s co-creator of the Malazan world, his fourth book and a great demonstration of how he’s improved as a writer and storyteller since joining the Malazan party with Night of Knives. This latest novel is set in the continent of Genabacksis, where Erikson has set [...]
Capital, by John Lanchester
Reviewed on February 28, 2012
John Lanchester ‘s new novel is a sprawling tale of the lives of a broad cast of characters who live in London. The focal point is Pepys Road, a cul-de-sac of single- and double-fronted houses that, thanks to the inexorable rise in property prices are now worth well over £1.5m each. In a series of [...]
Degrees of Freedom, by Simon Morden
Reviewed on February 4, 2012
Degrees of Freedom completes the trilogy that began with Equations of Life and continued with Theories of Flight, and once again Samuil Petrovitch is in the thick of the action. Some time has passed since the events of the previous book, and Petrovitch has been hard at work rebuilding the Freezone, the northern half of [...]
Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway
Reviewed on February 2, 2012
Nick Harkaway may be the son of John Le Carré, but for his second novel, the follow-up to The Gone-Away World, he demonstrates once again that his literary genes come from an altogether different part of the pool – because Harkaway’s work owes much more to other writers who have managed to meld the fantastical [...]
The Ascendant Stars, by Michael Cobley
Reviewed on January 26, 2012
So the trilogy ends (how many times have I written that in the last few years?) – and Humanity’s Fire reaches its conclusion. Following on from the packed Seeds of Earth and The Orphaned Worlds, Cobley has given himself plenty of loose ends to tie up: the fate of Darien hangs in the balance, with [...]
Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII, by Nicholas Rankin
Reviewed on January 12, 2012
After the great success of Churchill’s Wizards, Nicholas Rankin returns to the same formula by finding an unusual angle for telling the story of a relatively obscure, though highly distinguished, military unit. 30 Assault Unit was an innovative formation – a specialist group of commandos whose job was to go in with frontline troops and [...]
Snuff, by Terry Pratchett
Reviewed on October 24, 2011
Snuff is the 39th Discworld novel, and Sir Terry Pratchett’s 50th novel overall, a staggering achievement. This half-century seems a good moment to reflect on how far the Discworld has come since The Colour of Magic was published in 1983. From being a straight send-up of fantasy tropes (dragons, wizards, barbarian warriors, and so on), [...]
The Demi-Monde: Winter, by Rod Rees
Reviewed on October 23, 2011
For his début novel, the first in a four-book story cycle, Rod Rees has taken on the well-used SF theme of virtual reality and the consequences when worlds collide. From cyberpunk novels to some particularly well-known episodes of Star Trek (which, with its holo-decks, could conjure up virtual realities for its characters at the push [...]
Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell
Reviewed on October 21, 2011
Uhtred’s back – after a detour in to a one-off novel for his last outing, doyen of British historical novelists Bernard Cornwell has returned to continue the saga of Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Born an English noble but raised by Vikings, he straddles the divide that runs across what is now England in a way few [...]
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
Reviewed on October 20, 2011
Neal Stephenson is something of a literary chameleon – his oeuvre includes Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic with which he made his name, the sprawling historical trilogy of the Baroque Cycle, the massively popular geek thriller Cryptonomicon and most recently a book to put the ‘science’ back in to ‘science fiction’, the massive Anathem. The [...]
The Iron Jackal – A Tale of the Ketty Jay, by Chris Wooding
Reviewed on October 17, 2011
Here we go again: the Captain and crew and of the ship Ketty Jay burst back in to our lives in the third of their adventures, and a very welcome diversion they prove to be too. Since we first encountered them in Retribution Falls several years ago they have grown and developed as a team, [...]
Private Eye: The First 50 Years, by Adam Macqueen
Reviewed on October 17, 2011
Happy 50th Birthday to the Eye, that curious and enduring mixture of investigative journalism, satire and outright silliness which has been a fortnightly feature of my life since my teens. Like many people at that age did (and hopefully still do) I picked it up because I liked the cartoons, and as I matured I [...]
In the Name of the King, by A.L. Berridge
Reviewed on September 22, 2011
After his initial, formative adventures in Honour and the Sword (during which I convinced myself that the noble André de Roland was going to meet a premature end, on account of the fact that the book consists of lots of people talking about him in the past tense), the Chevalier de Roland is back to [...]
Theories of Flight, by Simon Morden
Reviewed on September 21, 2011
A welcome return to the Metrozone and the adventures of Samuil Petrovitch. In the previous volume of the Metrozone Trilogy, Equations of Life, he took on and defeated the sentient intelligence of the New Machine Jihad, devised a set of equations that completely redefined physics, and got the girl. Now he’s back, and the book [...]
The Godless Boys, by Naomi Wood
Reviewed on September 15, 2011
Naomi Wood’s debut novel takes as its premise the idea of a religious schism in England – but this is not a split between sects, rather a reckoning between the forces of the Church and militant atheism. England has become a theocracy, and the Godless have been banished. Some of them, the first wave, were [...]
The History of England, Volume 1: Foundation, by Peter Ackroyd
Reviewed on September 14, 2011
Novelist, historian, biographer, Peter Ackroyd is a multi-talented writer and now he’s put his historical hat on once more and turned to possibly his most ambitious project yet: after ‘biographies’ of London and the Thames, we have the first installment of a multi-volume history of England, starting in pre-history and concluding with the death of [...]
Darkie’s Mob: The Secret War of Joe Darkie, by John Wagner and Mike Western
Reviewed on September 2, 2011
It says a lot about the impact of World War II that war comics in Britain became, from the 60s, a pervasive artistic form that lasted for several decades. No other war inspired the same volume of war stories in this way – but then, no other war had action on land, sea and air, [...]
The Terminal State and The Final Evolution, by Jeff Somers
Reviewed on August 16, 2011
So, Avery Cates’ adventures, which began with The Electric Church way back in 2007 have come to an end four years later – and in many ways, they end with both a bang and a whimper. Legendary gunner Cates, the Gweat and the Tewwible, twice more contrives to be in the thick of the action, [...]
Stands a Shadow, by Col Buchanan
Reviewed on August 13, 2011
The follow-up to Buchanan’s excellent debut Farlander sees the continuation of the terrible war set in motion by the Empress Sasheen as she continues her quest to conquer the Free Ports, last bastions against the depravity and cruelty of the Empire of Mann. Her son is dead, killed by Roshun assassins who paid a terrible [...]
A Dance with Dragons, by George R.R. Martin
Reviewed on August 10, 2011
It’s a mark of how long GRRM makes his fans wait that this website was not even conceived of when I read this book’s predecessor – but the long hiatus aside, the question must be, was it worth that wait? The answer: an emphatic, resounding, roaring YES! My appetites awoken by the televisual feast that [...]
Honour and the Sword, by A.L. Berridge
Reviewed on July 9, 2011
In an unashamed homage to Alexandre Dumas and the Three Musketeers, A.L. Berridge brings us a swashbucking tale of honour and, er, swords set on the borders of France during the bloody religious conflict that was the Thirty Years War. She (for Berridge is a woman, something that neither the book jacket nor the writing [...]
The Caspian Gates, by Harry Sidebottom
Reviewed on July 5, 2011
Ballista is back! The Caspian Gates is the fourth outing for Harry Sidebottom’s barbarian-turned-Roman hero, and he’s still up to his neck in trouble. Having been unwilling acclaimed as an Emperor by his troops at the end of the previous book, The Lion of the Sun, Ballista is now viewed with deep suspicion by the [...]
Red Runs the Helmand, by Patrick Mercer
Reviewed on July 2, 2011
The third and final book of former soldier Patrick Mercer’s Anthony Morgan novels, Red Runs the Helmand is the first of Mercer’s book I have read, but fortunately no familiarity with Morgan’s previous adventures is necessary to enjoy the adventure. Set in the Afghan province of Helmand, this is clearly intended to have parallels with [...]
Jack Absolute, by C.C. Humphreys
Reviewed on July 1, 2011
The first of C.C. Humphrey’s Jack Absolute novels to be published, but actually the second tale, chronologically speaking (The Blooding of Jack Absolute being the prequel), Jack Absolute is an enjoyable slice of Georgian military adventure that’s executed with plenty of verve. The character of Jack Absolute, a Captain in the British Army, is positioned [...]
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Mark Oldfield
Mark Oldfield has worked in criminological research for over 20 years. He has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Kent and has carried out research in the areas of risk assessment and prediction and as well as evaluative research on policing, prisons and probation. He has also taught in various Universities on research, crime and criminal justice.
