To The Last Page

Better known as a fantasy writer, Garth Nix's first science fiction novel initially feels a little tentative in its approach to what appears to be the space opera field. Rather than take the time to build up to how the people of Earth find a means to travel in space and explore other planets, the author explains it all in the brief prologue before seeming to settle down into rather more mundane aspects of military life aboard one of these spaceships that gets caught up in a skirmish with an enemy fleet. For quite a while you have no idea where it's going, but there is a larger scheme building in the background around the mystery of the Massif. The origins of the Massif are laid out in that prologue, so I'm going to do the same. The first Massif appeared on Earth in 2097, arising into orbit out of the Marojejy massif in Madagascar, leading to the discovery of otherspace travelling Massifs, each with an enigmatic avatar entity. Visits and investigations to the MirinahRakoto M...

" Okay, this just got interesting ". Yep, you have to agree with that statement when it comes through just on page 21 of the 263 page graphic novel Alva in the Dark . It's been beautifully illustrated up to now in dark shadowy black and white, introducing a pair of burglars, Mini and Morten who have been given a tip where to find an apartment owned by a old man with a supply of gold. They are going to need Alva for this job, the young woman something of an acrobatic cat burglar, and she duly obliges for a cut. Maybe they should have thought more about it when a page earlier Alva says " Morten, I have a bad feeling about this place ", and you wonder why they haven't questioned earlier why an old man lives in a dump of a place when he apparently has a substantial hoard of gold. Realistically though, the lure of gold means a sign on the door of a concealed room saying LEAVE NOW is unlikely to be taken as a warning and more as a sign of ...well, isn't that i...

As you might expect, or hope, fantasy written with a Chinese cultural background and setting has a completely different feel and approach to the genre than the usual medieval settling of wizards, dragons, warring empires, ancient prophesies and long quests. That's a huge generalisation of course but it's an intentional comparison to reflect just how far away from the familiar we are in An Empire in the Clouds. Chinese-Canadian Ai Jiang's first novel-length work very much has its own interests and purpose. It's not quite as ambitious to stretch to a trilogy for a start, so without all the scene setting, you are thrown into the deep end (literally) of a water-based world with little preparation or time for adjustment, and no time wasted on information dumping. I was going to say 'grounding', but that would be a clash of metaphors as well as one too many. Still, there is time to get accustomed to the world and the principal character because, well, there's not ...

As with the previous two Ana and Din mysteries in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, they are called upon in A Taste of Blood to deal with a serious case that threatens the security and stability of the Empire, which as we are starting to realise, has more than giant sea beasts to contend with. Despite being a loyal and skilled Iudex officer of the Empire, Immunis Ana Dolabra is less than pleased with being sent out in charge of what appears on the surface to be nothing more than a tawdry murder investigation of the young daughter of the head of a high gentry family. When they visit the scene of the murder in Lacanthim in the canton of Sapirad in the third ring of the Empire, they find much that is strange in the nature of the killing and in the family history that surrounds it. The young woman is Zansay, daughter of Buritis Butav, the prime father of the Burav gentryclan, and the accused is a young man called Castus Armenta, the prime son of the equally important Armenta family, se...

The second Ana and Din mystery in Robert Jackson Bennett's Shadow of the Leviathan series, as you would hope, extends our view and understanding of how the Empire of Khanum works, revealing more about its realms and about the dark corruption that takes place there - corruption of the human kind as well as that caused by the extracts taken from the vast sea monsters that threaten its outer edges. Not that there was anything lacking in the first book The Tainted Cup , but you could see there was potential for further development. There are a few interesting developments that come up early here in A Drop of Corruption . As is part of their procedure now, Assistant Iudex Investigator Signum Dinios Koi arrives ahead of his chief Immunis Anagosa Dolabra to do an initial investigation. Their latest case takes him to Yarrow, to probe a report of the murder of a Treasury Officer there. Yarrow is a unique and unusual realm in the Empire; it's not officially part of the Empire, but actua...

Maybe I just haven't read enough fantasy novels - I know I haven't - but other than one book I've come across (Justin Somper's Allies and Assassins ), it strikes me that no-one has really exploited the idea of an investigative team within a fantasy realm. It's all the more surprising as Robert Jackson Bennett shows how much fun this can be when you have to imagine the kind of crimes that can take place in a world that doesn't conform to the one we are familiar with. There are endless possibilities that are laid out well in the first of his Shadow of the Leviathan  series, one that will be built upon in subsequent books.  The Tainted Cup , book one of the series, introduces us to the Empire of Khanum. It's a dangerous place, constantly under threat from leviathans, unimaginably huge sea creatures that in the wet season approach the Outer Rim of the Empire and threaten to breach the sea walls built for protection. There is another immediate and unusual problem...