The fantastic speculative fiction short story collection from Gary J. Mack. Grab a punnet! One of the really unexpected things I’ve discovered since getting back into reading fiction is how much I enjoy anthologies. I started on that route with the excellent Nine Streams of Consciousness and was pleasantly surprised, and I’ve since added a few to my TBR list. Impossible Fruit by Gary J. Mack is my second such short story collection, and it is absolutely fantastic.

The multi-award winning utopian science fiction novel in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish universe. Jeez, people, just please read this book. Honestly. This is the first time I’ve gotten to open up my new Library of America hardbacks of Le Guin’s Hainish series, and they’re wonderful. This story is in volume two of the set. The reading experience was much better than I expected. Normally I’m a lover of paperbacks, and to a lesser extent, ebooks. I’ll choose either of those over a hardback.

I have a confession to make: I read one of these novelettes around the middle of last year, but I totally blanked on doing a proper review of it here on the blog. That was Investation, the perma-free short fiction available from Frasier’s website for newsletter signups. So, since I recently got done reading his newest work, Rememory, I thought I would rectify my error and review both now

Time for another review for an indie book I encountered from the ever-wonderful Twitter Writing Community. This time it’s Aerth’s Aetheric Aegis: The White Mantle by Velora Venn. I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while, and I finally started it in December, finishing it in the last day or so, which makes it my first review of 2022! Hooray! Now, they say not to judge a book by its cover, but when I first saw this book, I was immediately entranced by its fantastic artwork (and come on, admit it, we’re all suckers for great cover art to varying degrees). In short, I think it’s a stunning looking book and the author should be rightly proud of the incredible work she’s done illustrating this.

I’ve probably done this in the wrong order. I watched the Apple TV+ adaptation’s first season (and made comment on it here) before starting to read the book. I’ve had the book for a little while though - I bought it before the TV series came out in September, but TBRs are a funny thing like that. All it really means is that this review will have a short section of comparison to the show, seeing as I first gave my views on it without having read the book. Now that I have, I understand the stark contrast between the two from a first-hand perspective, and I have some thoughts that I’ll put together after the review of the book itself. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is held to be one of the greatest science fiction series of all time, it spawned the concept of the Galactic Empire and was highly influential for almost everything that came after it - including Dune. This is a long one, so strap in.

The dark but utterly brilliant second book in the Embers of War trilogy by Gareth L. Powell. Even better than the first, Fleet of Knives is a fantastic sequel that dives right into the action and pulls no punches. Much moreso than in Embers of War, there’s clear inspiration taken from the movie Aliens and, reader, I’m here for it.

A strange and powerfully imaginative space opera novella from Gareth L. Powell and Peter F. Hamilton. Light Chaser is the result of a collaboration between two masters of space opera: Gareth L. Powell and Peter F. Hamilton. It’s a new novella that was published back in August, and I’ve been looking forward to reading it ever since I saw the preliminary marketing earlier this year…

I first heard of this book in the Twitter writing community, where I saw it being posted regularly in #writerslift threads and its premise immediately caught my attention. After a while I saw that the author, P.J. Sky, had the Kindle version up on a free promotion and I took the opportunity to claim it for later. And it has taken me quite a long time to get to, to be honest…

So I… Guess I like spiders now? #TeamPortia. Children of Time is the Arthur C Clarke award-winning science fiction novel from Adrian Tchaikovsky. I first heard about Adrian on Twitter and I knew instantly that I had to put his SF work on my TBR. As I’ve mentioned a few times before on this blog, I wasn’t particularly well read in SF when I started writing and I’ve spent the better part of the past year rectifying that, going from some of the classics of the genre to the modern day.

After having been asked by absolutely no-one, I thought I’d share a list of all the books I’ve got on my TBR. And because I have taken it upon myself to post up a review for every book I read, you can consider this a kind of sneak-peek at the reviews you can look forward to in the future on this blog, plus get an idea of the kind of books that have captured my interest…

I think The Farthest Shore is my Earthsea book so far. It certainly secures Le Guin’s place in my heart as my favourite author of all time, and I am so glad that I discovered her writing, even if belatedly. The Farthest Shore rounds out the YA trilogy of Earthsea, bringing the story of Ged to a soft close…

Right, first things first, I know this author personally - she’s a family member. So, feel free to take what I say with a pinch of salt or disregard entirely if you feel it’s inappropriate of me to review it. At the same time, I really want to support what this author is doing and get some more eyes on her work - plus my brain won’t allow me to not review every book I read anymore. I will be giving an honest review, however, and after having read Blanche Amour, I’m pretty confident that I would come to the same conclusions about it even if I didn’t know Charlotte, simply based on the type of reader I am. So let’s get into it.

I’ll be honest: before joining the Twitter writing community, I had not heard of Gareth L. Powell. But as soon as I announced myself as a writer on the platform and started using the hashtags, Gareth was there, following me because he’s awesome and follows all writers. Though my attention was drawn by his humourously titled Ack-Ack Macaque series…

A beautifully-written fantasy adventure with steampunk elements from SJ Hull. I have to admit I was very excited when I learned that SJ Hull had released his debut novel. We went to university together, and though that was over ten years ago now, even back then I knew he was very interested in the fantasy genre, and it didn’t surprise me in the slightest that he’d written his own…

As a sci-fi fan, you’d probably expect that I had already read Frank Herbert’s Dune a long time ago. Sadly that’s not the case. It’s yet another of those books I strangely missed. Knowing this, and knowing that Denis Villeneuve’s movie adaptation was on the horizon, it was one of the first books I had in my sights when I decided to get back into reading…

Coming not directly after A Wizard of Earthsea, but after Le Guin found success in the science-fiction genre with The Left Hand of Darkness, this second book in the Earthsea Cycle was apparently an unintended sequel.

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for science-fiction, and the book which established Le Guin as a major player in the genre, The Left Hand of Darkness is a truly fascinating read. The book has strong feminist themes and explores the concept of androgyny against the backdrop of an alien first-contact scenario…

This being the very first time I’ve read Asimov’s work for myself, I had absolutely no idea what to expect going in. Isaac Asimov is one of the heavyweights of science-fiction; a pioneer for many of the ideas and concepts that we take for granted in the genre today…

The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills… One of my beta readers for From the Grave of the Gods asked me one day whether I had read the Wheel of Time series. Of course, at that point I had barely heard of it, but he recommended it highly. I also started hearing great things about it from Booktubers such as Daniel Greene. I was intrigued, so I thought I would see what all the fuss was about...

I was very late to the Culture party. The first time I heard of Iain M. Banks was when The Hydrogen Sonata came out in 2012, and that, only in passing. Years went by and I kept hearing snippets of things about the Culture series, from people who respected it highly. So on the strength of that, I decided to pick up one of the books, and what better place to start, I thought, than at the very beginning?