Come and escape from the world in some great books!
Some writers just blow you away. The depth of their world-building, the vividness and humanity of their characters, the beauty of their language, the thoughtfulness - the philosophy - of their concept. Hardinge is definitely one of these writers. I was a little concerned picking up Deeplight, however much I adore Hardinge because her most… Continue reading Deeplight, Frances Hardinge
Top Five Saturday is a meme hosted by Devouring Books to discover and share books that all have a common theme. Previously, the focus has included witches, werewolves, thrillers, faeries, fairy tale re-tellings, high fantasy and many more. This week, the Top Five is "Set in Space". This is the problem and the pleasure of… Continue reading Top Five Saturday: Set in Space
This is a delightfully fun and engaging tale with all the confidence you'd expect of Phillip Reeve, returning to the steampunk genre, if in a very different world, of Mortal Engines. Here, rather than walking cities, we have sentient trains and K-gates - wormholes or portals, taking trains and their passengers instantly to different worlds and different… Continue reading Railhead, Philip Reeve
It being March, the CILIP Carnegie Medal Shortlist has been announced and I'm embarking on the ritual of trying to read them. This year, the list is:
I tend to have three books on the go simultaneously most of the time: an audiobook for the drive to and from work; a thoughtful, dare I say literary, book for when I'm at home; and a just-entertain-me book for when I don't actually want to think too much. We all need a just-entertain-me book… Continue reading The Bands of Mourning, Brandon Sanderson
Okay. I'm going to 'fess up here. This is no great work of fiction. This is not a literary masterpiece. It is neither lyrical, resonant or thought-provoking - those three adjectives appearing more and more regularly on my blog as praise-words for novels. It does not sparkle with intriguing new metaphors; its prose does… Continue reading The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, Mark Hodder
Miéville is one of my favourite authors: acutely political, wildly imaginative and linguistically sparkling. I discovered him through Perdido Street Station and adored the sprawling city of New Crobuzon: mercantile, rapacious, brutal but utterly compelling. It is a city populated by renegade scientists, scarab-headed khepri, eagle faced garuda, the amphibian vodyanoi, the cactacae and brutally… Continue reading The Scar, China Miéville
You can't go wrong with Pratchett: he never fails to offer up decent stories with a sparkle of wit, a smattering of engaging characters and a bucketload of humanity - in all its various forms and species! And Raising Steam continues the pattern: here, Ankh-Morpork's journey towards modernity is quite literally driven by the arrival… Continue reading Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett
Some books are born great. Some books achieve greatness. Some books have greatness thrust upon them. This book is not one of them. It's not great. It's not beautifully written. It's not literary. But it is immensely fun! Mark Hodder propels us into Victorian London: the search for the source of the Nile, Stanley, Livingstone,… Continue reading The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder
Right, following on from seeing Philip Reeve in person - gabardine clad, animated and inspirational - and having had the question posed to me of how you could not read a book whose opening paragraph is “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town… Continue reading Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve; Railsea, China Miéville
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