Books

  The apocalypse ain’t what it used to be. That’s not to say it’s dropped all its end-of-the-world, doom-and-gloom garb in favour of bright summery colours and a jaunty gait, but an increasing number of writers are beginning to ask themselves, in ways usually poetic and insightful – once the Continue Reading

  There is already a distinct of otherness about Tommi Grayson, way before the transformative (literal and otherwise) experiences of Who’s Afraid?, the impressive debut novel by Maria Lewis, take hold. Hers is clearly an identity forged in the fires of exclusion, of not quite fitting in growing up, of Continue Reading

  Retirement is supposed to be a golden age. A chance to read your newspaper, watch some cricket (if you’re so inclined), ponder life, and engage in long fattening lunches and idle conversation. And of course, tend to your newly-delivered baby elephant Ganesha left to you by your quirky uncle Bansi. Continue Reading

  Like cat videos and the word “Like”, memes, the perfect joining together of picture and word, find their natural home on the internet. One in particular, “I Can’t Adult Today. Please Don’t Make me Adult”, is especially popular with grown-ups everywhere, an exquisite summation of the exhaustion that comes Continue Reading

  New beginnings, truly new beginnings, are a rare thing in life. Either they are not looked for at all by people caught in the slothful yet iron grip of the devil-they-know, or if time and circumstances do demand their provision, not granted by whatever mysterious powers in the universe Continue Reading

  For a place and time that humanity is yet to reach, the future dystopian era certainly bears all the hallmarks of a road well travelled. In fact, so well depicted have been its tropes of ruin and decay, its harbingers of humanity’s demise and whirlwind-reaping that you could be Continue Reading

(image via Tor Books UK; I was going to photograph my own cover but all my enthusiastic reading left some of the letter a little less than glossy)[/caption] It is a conundrum almost as old as time itself – do the ends always justify the means? It’s one of the Continue Reading

  “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” So begins the only novel that has ever made me to want to run off and join the Continue Reading