Category: Books

Swamplandia! by

ISBN: 9780701186029 Our mother performed in starlight. Ava Bigtree lives in Swamplandia! with her family. They wrestle alligators in front of tourists for a living. Until recently Ava’s mother Hillola was...

Son of heaven by

9781848875258 #1 in the Chung Kuoseries A thin layer of mist wreathed the meadows all the way to reeds that traced the meandering path of the river. It is the year...

Rainbow Pie by

a memoir of Redneck America ISBN: 9781846272578 Before picking this book up I’d never heard of Bageant, and in the middle of reading it I learned from Metafilter that he had...

Pretties by

In the world of Uglies once you turn sixteen you also get to turn “pretty”. That is you undergo surgery that’ll get rid of all your old imperfections and instead make you beautiful according to the conventions of evolution and society. In book one Tally was the last of her friends to turn sixteen, and so was left alone when they all turned Pretty and moved to Pretty-town.

Spoiler warning for book one in effect.

Shadow of Kilimanjaro by

Baraba is sent to accompany a German family of missionaries to Africa. He poses as their student, but in reality he has been sent by Lady Ada Lovelace in order to investigate the possibility of the dis-souled near the famed mountain of Kilimanjaro. Accompanying Mr and Mrs Rebmann, and their cousin Clare, he is there when a strange Englishman shows up, in his range rover. Bernard Bourne has been living in Africa for some time, and so can provide them with some much needed supplies. He brings Clare to his home in order to pick up some of these supplies, along with the servant Baraba. But Bourne is not as altruistic as he may seem.

Black Dogs by

ISBNs: 9781936689026 & 9781936689033 Book One: The House of Diamond – Book Two: The Mountain of Iron The world was green and grey, balanced on a serrated knife of pine and...

Mad Bad Richard Dadd by

Mad Bad Richard Dadd has been commissioned by Sir Thomas to paint a record of their journey through Europe. But travelling from Greece he is visited one night by a strange figure calling himself Osiris. But that is just a name this figure has taken, he is insistent that he is no supernatural character.

Dadd is a real-life character, a famous Victorian painter, and infamously a murderer. This is a possible telling of how he became this murderer.

Tongues of Serpents by

ISBN: 9780007256778 book 6 in the Temeraire series There were few streets in the main port of Sydney which deserved the name, besides the one main thoroughfare, and even that bare...

Brutal women by

Author Kameron Hurley has been getting a bit of coverage in the sff-world lately on account of her debut novel God’s War and to tie in with this publicity a collection...

Tor’s Best SFF novels of the decade

And how scary is it to hear that we’re a decade into the 2000s? Scary Scary, that’s how Scary Old Man’s War by John Scalzi[1] – 295 votes American Gods by...

Delusions of gender by

How our minds, society, and neurosexism create differences ISBN: 0393068382 ; Quotes I liked Suppose a researcher were to tap you on the shoulder and ask you to write down what,...

The Stainless Steel Rat omnibus by

When I spotted this in Chapters bookshop I knew I had to buy it, if only because it is the inspiration for Carl’s blog. Plus, you know, it is one of those sci-fi adventures that you really should have at least flicked through at some stage.

Slippery Jim is our narrator, and our hero, of sorts. He is also the Stainless Steel Rat, or at least that is how he describes himself. Slipping through the technological world and committing many daring acts of thievery and innumerable cons. Safe and secure in the knowledges that his wits, charm and logic will get him out of danger. Until, that is, he is caught. The Special Corps, so special that no one is really sure they exist until, of course, they catch you, succeed in arresting him. But instead of throwing him in jail, or punishing him they offer him a job. Come and work for them. So he does, after all, he was never a bad man, just one who wanted his bit of freedom.