Book Review – Brasyl by Ian McDonald
A while ago I read McDonald’s collection Cyberabad Days, short fiction set in the same future India as his 2004 novel River of Gods. I was very impressed with this collection, so I decided to have a go at Brasyl. A novel that has been nominated for this year’s nebula award got to have something going for it. Because of the way this book was written I found it very hard to write a spoiler free review on it. If you haven’t read this book yet but advised there is probably a few things in the text you don’t want to know about yet.
Book Review – Saturn Returns
Sean Williams is an experienced author in the field of space opera, having written the Evergence, Orphans, and Geodesica series’ with collaborator Shane Dix. Saturn Returns is the first book of Williams’ solo Astropolis trilogy.
At the outer reaches of the galaxy, over 800,000 years in the futurea man named Imre Bergasmac is recreated from the ruins and of an ancient record- a huge iron cylinder with Imre’s DNA and memories carved into vast grooves circling the interior- and given life again. . .
Book Review – Cyberabad Days
Author: Ian McDonald Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Pyr Binding: Paperback Publication Date: February 2009 Cyberabad Days is a collection of short fiction set in the same future as McDonald’s novel River of Gods, published in 2004. It is set in India in 2047, one century after it declared it’s independence. I have not read [...]
Book Review – MultiReal
Author: David Louis Edelman Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Pyr Binding: Trade Paperback Publication Date: July 2008 The labels “science fiction” and “speculative fiction” have long been entwined, with speculative fiction variously considered synonymous with science fiction or an umbrella that contains science fiction. And indeed most science fiction is speculative, either in the form [...]
Book Review – A Betrayal in Winter
Author: Daniel Abraham Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Tor Binding: Hardcover Publication Date: August 2007 A while ago I read Daniel Abraham’s début novel A Shadow in Summer and I was very impressed. Of course I immediately got the second book in the Long Price quartet, A Betrayal in Winter*, after which it was swallowed [...]
Book Review – Escapement
Author: Jay Lake Publisher: TOR Publishing Date: June 2008 Binding: Hardcover Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Escapement is the sequel to Jay Lake’s critically acclaimed novel Mainspring, wherein he maps out an alternate Earth anno 1900. Lake has quite cleverly constructed a world that for the most part resembles ours yet differs in one very important [...]
Book Review – A Shadow in Summer
Author: Daniel Abraham Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Tor Binding: Hardcover Publication Date: March 2006 Daniel Abraham is something of a rising star in speculative fiction. Since the publication of this novel, his début and the first of a series of four, he has co-authored a novel with George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, fell [...]
Book Review – Fleet of Worlds
Author: Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Tor Binding: Hardcover Publication Date: October 2007 “Fleet of Worlds” is part of Larry Niven’s Known Space future history best known as the setting of the Ringworld books. However, while it utilizes characters and settings from other Known Space books, extensive knowledge of Known [...]
Book Review – Star Trek: The Next Generation – “The Buried Age”
Author: Christopher L. Bennett Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Simon & Schuster Binding: Paperback Publication Date: July 2007 There is a buried age of Captain Picard’s history. We know he commanded the Stargazer, which was lost in an attack. Then he became captain of the Enterprise. The tale of the loss of the Stargazer and [...]
Book Review – Mainspring
Author: Jay Lake Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: Tor Binding: Hardcover Publication Date: June 2007 “I am Gabriel,” said the angel, “come to charge you with a duty.” By the second page of Mainspring, the teenaged clockwork apprentice Hethor has been given the task of finding the Key Perilous to re-wind the world’s mainspring, which [...]
Book Review – Crossover
Author: Joel Shepherd Cover Artist: Stephan Martiniere Publisher: PYR Binding: Paperback Publication Date: August 2006 The three Cassandra Kresnov books (Crossover, Breakaway, and Killswitch) have already seen print in Australia, but thanks to Pyr, a new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Prometheus Books, they are garnering new life in the United States. Crossover introduces [...]
