Come and escape from the world in some great books!
In the centre of the swarm, hundreds of figures attending to its complex fussy needs, protected by guards, lookouts at the hills and treetops and in the air, came the cause of it all, the train. Marked by time. It was altered. The train had gone feral. It is a time of revolts and revolutions,… Continue reading Book Review: Iron Council, China Miéville
Okay, so short stories. Part of me loves short stories. The precision, the concision, the economy of language within them - read The Dead by James Joyce. Part of me, however, longs for the lengthy, relaxed familiarity you get with the characters in a novel, even in the best of the genre. In the worst collections… Continue reading Three Moments Of An Explosion, China Miéville
Oh I'm in two minds about this book. I so wanted to like it. A alternate history world in which the borders between reality and books is flexible and malleable. Who would love to pop to Wuthering Heights for a cup of tea with Nelly Dean? Or stroll through the 100 Acre Wood? Or play hide-and-seek… Continue reading The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
Hmmm... where to start with this one? It's a book on which I am still ruminating and which is still rattling away inside my brain after a couple of days. Nagging at me. Gnawing at my consciousness. And Miéville's writing does that: it dwells and lingers and questions and challenges you. That is why Miéville… Continue reading Embassytown, China Miéville
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
I am a huge Patrick Ness fan! Let me put that out there at the start of this. I hugely admired his Chaos Walking Trilogy but was utterly blown away by the visceral emotion and mythic scope of A Monster Calls. There are few books that dig inside you as much as that one. This… Continue reading More Than This, Patrick Ness
Miniature review due to absence of Internet and wifi. In fact, only now possible because phone can - sometimes - get some reception... I can imagine the genesis of this novel. It seems to have started as an idea, a concept. A damned good idea but very much an idea rather than a novel. I… Continue reading The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
There are some books that revel in plot, action and events. Other books - perhaps quieter books - are content to develop narrative: characters and settings, relationships and language. This book by Ali Shaw is very clearly and very effectively one of the latter: little really happens, but so much is created. Lets take the… Continue reading The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
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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