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Fans of Ian Rankin's Rebus series familiar with the authors' use of song titles for his books will undoubtedly have already been scouring iTunes to determine where the new one comes from. Even Dogs in the Wild by the Associates is a little bit of an obscure choice, but you can be sure it has resonance and relevance to the new novel on a number of levels. Lyrically (in as much as anyone could fully understand them from Billy Mackenzie's high-pitched singing), in terms of the mood it creates and the fact that the Associates were a Scottish band are all important, but primarily the song is a good choice for the period it evokes and the 'associations' we now have of that time. Time weighs heavily on Even Dogs in the Wild , Rankin's first post-retirement Rebus book. Dogs also have a minor role to play in the novel as a running theme, but there are also a lot of dog metaphors that you could apply to the situation in this new Rebus novel as well, involving as it does ...

Following the science-fiction exploration into the distant past of the Earth during the Earth's Ice Age in Shaman , Kim Stanley Robinson returns again to the far future and some of the themes of the Mars Trilogy books that made him famous; the issues around off-Earth colonisation, terraforming and the human questions associated with it. Moving on from there and from 2312, Robinson starts in the year 2545 and extends upon themes in the previous books in Aurora , taking a ship on a journey out of our solar system towards the sun of Tau Ceti, 11.9 light-years from Earth. Like many science-fiction stories dealing with multi-generational interstellar travel, there's obviously no-one around to remember exactly why the ship set out in the first place, and even their ultimate destination is uncertain until they more fully explore the planets and moons of Tau Ceti to establish which has the best Earth-like environment to establish a community. What we do know at the start of Aurora is ...

Norse mythology and medieval sword and sorcery tends to dominate the look and feel of the typical fantasy epic, but there are growing sub-genres that are now providing serious competition for the traditional format. In many ways the exotic Arabian Nights Asian and Oriental setting of Bradley Beaulieu's Twelve Kings even feels like a far more natural world for all the adventure and magic of a fantasy epic, but perhaps that's just down to how inventively Beaulieu makes use of the riches that the setting provides. Twelve Kings is set in the desert city of Sharakhai, where ships and schooners sail on seas of sand. The desert is still no place for a city, and indeed we soon find that the origins of the creation of Sharakhai and the Twelve Kings that rule it are shrouded in mystery and deals with dark forces such as the wraith-like asirim. The person who is going to delve into the heart of this dark mystery is an interesting figure herself. Nineteen year old Çeda is an orphan (natu...

Well, it's twenty years later and I've still haven't finished Sophie's World  (I keep meaning to go back to it) and I haven't kept up with Jostein Gaardner's work in the meantime, but the concept of the author's latest book to be translated into English is still a familiar one. The protagonist of The World According to Anna  is again a young girl who receives mysterious messages of grave importance to the world we live in. It's not the history of philosophy this time written for a young reader, but the future of the world itself that Anna is concerned about. Specifically, global warming and the consequences it is going to have in the future. And maybe a little bit of philosophy in there too. It could be very preachy, but Gaardner does his best to make The World According to Anna  a little more novelistic and interesting. The idea that these messages are being sent to Anna from her great-granddaughter in the future is a good science fiction device, partic...

Although English translations of Haruki Murakami's two earliest short novels have been made available in now rare Japanese editions, these new approved translations of Hear the Wind Sing  and Pinball, 1973  are the first time the works have been published in the UK and USA. Despite the author never previously wanting the books to be made officially made available outside of Japan, both early novels are good examples of Murakami's distinctive voice, a voice that is admittedly more obvious in Japanese, but clearly something must come through in the English translations as well. The author muses on how this 'voice' was developed in the introduction to Wind / Pinball . Having worked as a translator for a while (an occupation that is important to Pinball, 1973 ), Murakami hit on a style of writing his books in English first and then 'translating' them into Japanese. The distinct rhythm of this style does come through, and is obviously what is important to a translato...

You must need some kind of twisted mind yourself as a writer to be able to get into the head of a serial killer in a crime thriller. There's a considerable amount of planning required to devise a history and perhaps even motivations for such a character, but in the case of Blood and Bone , V.M. Giambanco has to also work it into the world of Seattle Police Detective Alice Madison, and that's a complicated place in its own right. There's no real need however to have background knowledge of Alice Madison's earlier cases in the two previous books by Giambanco ( The Gift of Darkness , The Dark ). Even if you haven't read them - and I'm new to this one myself - it's clear that there's an interesting detective creation here. Not only do you get an introduction to see her self-confidence and capabilities in action early on in a minor personal incident outside a bar, but there's even an intriguing glimpse of a troubled childhood here. This is really just a s...

It sounds like the plot of just about any youth fantasy novel, but there is more to Skin than meets the eye. Ailia, a foundling half-born, her parentage unknown, lacks the one thing that is important to everyone in the land she lives in - a totem animal, a 'skin'. Your skin - whether its that of dog, salmon or deer - not only defines who you are in this society, but who you can be. Without a skin, 14 year-old Ailia is lucky even to be working as a servant for her Tribequeen, Fraid of Northern Duntriga, but she has an unknown destiny ahead of her that will be important to her tribe. Wandering near the forbidden Oldforest one day, Ailia meets an injured young man called Taliesin, and from that moment on, her life starts to move in a new and unexpected direction. The location mentioned there might provide a bit of a clue that Skin is not set in some fantasy world, but in the real world, in England in fact, or Albion as it would have been known in the first century AD. Although t...