The Stone Sky

N. K. Jemisin, 2017

(January 2018)

Wrapping up another trilogy as the New Year dawns. (Dawned). I think don’t think it’s an understatement to say that Jemisin’s Broken Earth will eventually come to be seen as significant as Gibson’s Sprawl. While not perhaps the strongest entry of the series (it lacks The Fifth Season’s tripartite trickery and The Obelisk Gate’s almost claustrophobic development of character) it’s nonetheless an excellent climax for an outstanding series. I’ve read a fair number of SFnal three-parters over the last few years, but this is easily the best of the decade, and I can’t see anything coming close to challenging it.

Archivist Wasp

Nicole Kornher-Stace, 2015

(September 2015)

Brought this without realizing it was YA. Heart sank a bit when I realized it was YA. Heart sank even further when I realized the protagonist was a teenage girl caught in a dystopian society and which compels her to fight her peers in an annual match to the death.

Memory of Water

Emmi Itäranta, 2014

(June 2015)

  

I guess I’ve only got myself to blame for this one. I’ve a limited tolerance for dystopia anyway, so going for a third in the space of a couple of weeks was probably pushing it. But look, this one’s been racking up the award nominations in a fairly spectacular style, and Random Acts of Senseless Violence was excellent, so strike while the iron is hot, eh?

The Country of Ice Cream Star (Revisited)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons.

The Country of Ice Cream Star

Sandra Newman, 2014

(July 2014)

  

This is a little off-the-radar, if reviews in the Guardian and Independent can count as off-the-radar. What I suppose I mean is that in the grubbier SFF corners of the web I occasionally inhabit this has received absolutely no play whatsoever. Arguably writing a widely-read and controversial (for want of a better word) article about old-school SF isn’t the best way to ingratiate yourself into that little community, but your Tors and your SF Signals don’t seem to have clocked to this at all. This is both a surprise and a shame because The Country of Ice Cream Star is a very special book indeed.

What Lot’s Wife Saw

Ioanna Bourazopoulou, 2007 [Yannis Panas, 2013]

(June 2014)

  

What Lot’s Wife Saw is a speculative cruciverbal epistolary murder mystery novel. Yeah, another one, but let’s forgive the thundering generic unoriginality and look at the story itself, which is actually pretty good.

We See a Different Frontier

Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad (eds), 2013

(December 2013)

Right, let’s get this out of the way straight off: that’s a pretty weak cover. I realize it’s probably aiming for some jerry-rigged bioengineering kind of thing, but I doubt “failed experiment to crossbreed a sickly croissant with a camper van” was the effect anyone was after. Never mind, move past it; the stories are what matter and I’m pleased to report that they’re really very good.

  

Harmony

Project Itoh, 2008 [Alexander O. Smith, 2010]
(July 2013)

Satire. And, it must be said, not particularly sharp satire, either. No scalpel here, it’s not even sledge-hammer blunt – this is a massive wrecking ball sent crashing through Japanese notions of conformity and, unsurprisingly, harmony. As it’s being aimed at a target I wholly approve of I found it all rather thrilling, in it’s own way. Nothing like an angry diatribe every once in a while to shake things up and knock them down.

The author apparently wrote this whilst receiving palliative treatment for cancer and as ways to leave this world go, it’s a pretty impressive effort.

Nod

Adrian Barnes, 2012

(May 2013)

  

Tone and style are perhaps the most important aspects of any work of literature written primarily to be enjoyed. They can make it fly or kill it stone dead. They are also the most hard to define aspects, the most subjective, the most personal. I think that while it is sometimes possible to definitively say, ‘This is good writing,’ or, ‘This is bad,’ in the majority of instances it all hinges around personal taste.

Indistinguishable from Magic

1.    Lukewarm in Ulsan

My first spell in Japan coincided with the the Japan/Korea Football World Cup. That was fun. England’s training camp was on this Bond-villain island lair somewhere, in keeping with their friendly and approachable image, but Ireland’s was in some rural backwater in western Japan, so I tagged along with a couple of Irish mates to see their team train and play a practice match against Sanfrecce Hiroshima.

Hothouse

Brian Aldiss, 1961

(January 2013)

              Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.

So ‘growing’ very much the theme, then.

Who Fears Death

Nnedi Okorafor, 2010

(October 2012)

A confession: I’m pretty crap with blood. Though that’s not right, really. I’ve spilled enough of my own, as well as dealt with other people spilling theirs, to know that the actuality of blood is something I can manage with the minimum of fuss.

Offensive Things - Number One

This is another occasional series in the annals of this is how she fight start. Part of my continuing mission: to impose some sort of coherent structure on my thoughts, to rationalize and focus the conversations in my head, to boldly yadda yadda split infinitive rousing finale.

Let’s start with a biggie, shall we?

1. Bottled Water

Water from Canadian glaciers = Import to Japan = Burn carbon
= More melting Canadian glaciers = Foolproof business plan

Trouble and Strife

Every once in a while my wife will invite her friends from university over for lunch. These are the same friends who dressed my up like a prize twat for the ‘entertainment’ at our wedding, so I actually like them quite a lot. I’ll usually make a bit of an effort on the food front - a cake or a roast or something - and this is politely, if not always enthusiastically, received. 

One of the others in the group had a foreign husband, so I’m not so much of a novelty any more, and I always get the feeling that my cooking is received in the same fashion as Samuel Johnson received women preachers; it’s not that it’s done well that’s notable, so much as the fact that it’s done at all.