Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005

(November 2017)

Gyah. What a singularly frustrating book. What, to be more specific, a singularly frustrating narrator.

Central Station

Lavie Tidhar, 2016

(June 2017)

  

Central Station is a mid-future cyberpunkesque novel comprised of a dozen or so chapters, many of which were originally published as stand-alone short stories. They’ve obviously been reworked fairly carefully (or, more generously, were originally written with a very clear eye on the big picture), and for all that there is something of a central plot running through the book, its focus is very much on these interlinked vignettes exploring migration and belonging, faith and memory.

The Dangerous Type

Loren Rhoads, 2015

(July 2015)

  

Awesome cover, dreadful title. The story itself hovers somewhere in between the two, if, unfortunately, closer to the latter than the former. Fighting and fucking, basically: the SF equivalent of a summer bonkbuster. And it’s a good thing I read it on my holidays, as if I hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have finished it.

Archangel

Marguerite Reed, 2015
(March 2015)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons.

The Boys from Brazil

Ira Levin, 1976

(January 2014)

  

So after the almost not quite where is this going what is she trying to say with this I don’t quite get the point faffery in The Best of All Possible Worlds, it’s something of a relief to read a book with some plain, simple, honest-to-goodness eugenics at its core. ‘Cos if you’re going to treat people as breeding stock you may as well do it with Nazis, eh?