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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...

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...

Ludovic Deblois, to judge by his previous novel Inversion - a frighteningly realistic portrayal of technological innovation and advances when placed in the hands of corrupt powers - doesn't have a particularly rosy outlook on the future. His latest novel Il suffit parfois d’un cri… (which you could maybe translate not literally as 'A Cry in the Wilderness' or 'A Voice in the Wild'?) is again set in the immediate future and, inspired by animal life and our relationship with nature, you would have to say it does not appear to be any more optimistic about our future. And you would have to conclude that it might be for a good reason. Concerned about the climate and mankind's lack of willingness to confront serious ecological and environmental issues, the author's lates novel again forces us to think seriously about some important matters that, having seen how quickly things have changed in the last few years, might not be that far away from becoming reality. B...

Neil Jordan's novels often (always?) feature figures dealing with trauma, loss, the past, each struggling with a disconnect in their lives. He has explored this through a number of variations including metaphorical or literal ghosts. In his latest novel, Jordan writing in the realm of futuristic science fiction for the first time, he deals with a speculative scientific approach where memories and trauma can be genetically altered, but the past and the future are linked in other ways that aren't so easily erased. Written in Jordan's familiar, evocative literary style, his latest novel is enriched by his extension into new realms. The novel is divided into two parts. In part one, the story takes in two timelines, one in the past in 1886, the other 200 years in the future in 2086, both periods lined by two figures from the Cartwright family. They are linked, Jordan style, by innumerable connections, by family evidently, but also by landscape, buildings and memory that is imbue...

Where AI is going to take us in the future is unimaginable and there is probably not much we can do to restrain what is coming, but that's no reason for not exploring what we would like to see happen or indeed consider and fear the direction in which it already appears to be heading. Of course the greatest concern is that self-evolving smarter intelligences will make humanity redundant or even bring about the end of humanity, but there are many paths that lead in that direction. The interesting view that Korean author J.M.Lee's Artificial Truth takes towards AI is that human existence through AI after death isn't necessarily a bad thing, or doesn't it have to be. Unfortunately, an Artificial Intelligence might have different views about that. Although the novel starts by telling us that KC Kim is dead. One of the great minds investigating AI, known indeed as the father of AI, we can very quickly assume - not least since he is telling us part of the story - that KC is s...

Chien 51 is a science-fiction novel set in what appears to be a near-future reality or an alternative reality. There are more than a few elements that have echoes with the present day, or extensions on them that don't feel too far away from where we are now. In an unspecified year, the world is run by global corporations, and at the start of the novel we learn that Greece has collapsed economically and been bought over by a corporation called GoldTex. (Interestingly, in an uncanny echo with the uncertainties currently in the real world we find that Venezuela has also been similarly 'purchased' with somewhat less disturbance than the protests and street riots that occurred with the collapse of Greece). The huge corporations are too powerful however and any insurrection is quickly put down. The fall of Greece was 20 years ago now, and the population of the country put to good use working for GoldTex, those with good qualifications sent to work in Magnapole as ' cilariés ...

Post-apocalyptic stories were concerning enough before the COVID pandemic. La terra dei figli ('The Land of the Children') was written and drawn by Gipi in 2016, and reading it now that we have all became aware of the reality of what could happen and how quickly a virus could spread across the globe, it’s surprising how effectively his story captures the whole sense of fear that comes with the recognition that things have changed irrevocably. What makes it even more concerning is the realisation that even having come though such a global shock is the apparent inability of humanity to learn from its mistakes. All of this just makes La terra dei figli even more ominous. In Gipi’s graphic novel, the old world is long gone or, considering how quickly a global catastrophe can strike happen, perhaps not that long gone, but definitely gone. The initial impression Gipi gives us of this world is a rather bleak and feral one. We are introduced to two youths in an unpopulated savannah l...

This Brutal Moon takes off right where it left off at the end of On Vicious Worlds , the second book in the Kindom trilogy . Which is where everything, or almost everything, is in a bit of a mess, and when I say mess, I'm not referring to the plotting or its complexity. That is easy to pick up even if you read the last book like I did a year ago. I won't give a summary of where we are now or how we got here. If you've read the first two books you'll know, if you haven’t it won't make any sense, but as a reviewer you still want to keep a review as free from spoilers as possible. So when I say mess, I of course mean a good mess, with the Kindom in turmoil, the fate of some of its characters unknown, the Treble facing rebellion and promising a brutal put down. Those most at risk from the vengeance of First Cloak Seti Moonback, the self-styled Kess, are of course the Jeveni refugees on Capamame. Betrayed from within by spies working for the Kindom, Seti has the key to ...

The Whisper of Stars is an ambitious work of fantasy fiction that lays its fantasy elements onto real-life history and even real-life historical figures. That's not entirely new of course, but what is impressive is in how convincing Cristin Williams makes it, building a folk-like legend around a particularly dark moment in world history without making light of the horrors surrounding it. The events of the novel are set in 1923 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, where the Bolshevik forces under Lenin are hoping to use the skills of a select group of citizens to serve the needs of the state: those with the ability of witchcraft. There are three individuals in particular in the novel with striking and different abilities. Yekaterina Efremova, comes from a family of anarchists, Katya the daughter of the famous Svetlana Efremova. Katya is volshevniki , born with magic powers, her speciality as a charovniki is in the casting of spells. After some experiments to try to control ...

Alastair Reynolds has been known to dip his toes into other genres besides the space opera science fiction he is known for. When I say dip into, that means literally just flirting with the conventions of crime fiction and historical adventure, but always within the science-fiction world. Sometimes more obviously than others - Eversion had me confused for a while - although to my mind those have all been successful ventures. Although Halcyon Years flirts with noir then - more parodies than flirts with really - it's clear nonetheless right from the outset, when we find out that we are dealing with private investigator called Yuri Gagarin, that this is another genre-with-genre exercise - and again a fairly entertaining one, very much on the pulp side of his SF writing. Future noir is nothing new either, but it needs to work hard not to fall into parody. Reynolds doesn't seem like he is too concerned with that, creating Gagarin Investigative Enterprises, a small time operation wi...

Although she is known for her work is the SF/Fantasy genre (and has lately taken to Greek mythology), Slow Gods is the Claire North's first genuine work in the space-opera SF genre. Her approach however is familiar, drawing from the world around us now, finding a different perspective or way to express all the things humanity is getting wrong and where it might lead. 84K , an updating of 1984, was a good example of that. Similarly, the concerns in Slow Gods can be seen to critique authoritarianism and the failure of capitalism, as well as contemporary concerns and attitudes towards nationality, racism, gender politics and asylum seekers. In space of course. Unfortunately, while its heart is in the right place, this time the treatment feels rather heavy-handed and mired in tired prose and invented SF terminology that never seems to get to grips with the scope and scale of the issues that the novel attempts to raise. The characteristics and experiences of the central figure in the ...

Behind all the unfamiliar science-fiction technological terms associated with its Martian setting and a sense of being thrown into the deep end, what happens at the start of R.T. Ester's  The Ganymedan is clear enough and sets the ball rolling in a thrilling style. The short version is that Verden Dotnet, or V-Dot as he is known, has just assassinated perhaps the most important man in the system, Archer Lenox-Pileser - known to all as LP - but while trying to make his escape on a spacecraft leaving Mars, he has been identified and killed while trying to evade the authorities. The longer version of what actually happened inevitably is a little more complicated. As indeed is the nature of 'death'. For some wealthy individuals - of which LP was definitely one - the technology that LP helped develop means that you can take frequent backups that can be restored to a new body. Indeed he has been assassinated several times already and used this technology before, but this time hi...

I hadn't heard the term campus novel until on the same day I started reading The Runes Have Been Cast by coincidence I also read a review that used the term in respect of RF Kuang’s latest book Katabasis - but coincidences seem to abound when you enter the mysterious worlds of Robert Irwin. The Oxford academic setting and the search to understand the workings and secrets of the world here also reminds me of Javier Marías’ Tu rostro mañana trilogy, which also has an old master with a history in the war who pulls strings, but although Le Carré is also referenced here as with Marías, it's more JRR Tolkien and runes that hint at more esoteric knowledge in The Runes Have Been Cast . It's fascinating to see the differing approaches that these two writers take, showing that there is much to be explored in this subject. There are also two ways of acquiring knowledge and absorbing it in Robert Irwin's book, leading to two different fates. Set in the late 1950s/early 60s, frie...