There are sage and oft-repeated words of warning that go something along the lines of, depending on your paraphrase of choice, that “if it looks too good t be true, it usually is.” It might feel like that phrase has been intoned so often that it has lost all meaning Continue Reading
Books
Book review: A Song For a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
Prescience, thy name is Sarah Pinsker. Released in 2019, Song For a New Day finds the USA, and possible the world though that is never made clear (and nor is it really necessary for the story told), dealing with the aftereffects of a pandemic, so virulent and so comprehensively destablising Continue Reading
Book review: The Two of Us by Andy Jones
If only life, and love, was more like a romantic comedy. In its rarefied world, love is complicated but achievable, misunderstandings are always sorted out (usually at airports) and the soulmate factor is so pronounced and undeniable that it’s all but a given that the couple in question will be Continue Reading
Book review: Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Love, as we know, can be a pretty powerful force. No, we’re not talking about the namby-pamby, floating on a gossamer cloud of pink fluffy nothingness that often obsesses the more romantically-inclined but the muscular, down in the trenches variety driven by searing connection and unyielding commitment that stares down Continue Reading
Book review: Two Steps Forward by Graeme Simsion & Anne Buist
We talk about “finding yourself” so often these days, it sounds like it’s as simple as sitting somewhere far away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, grabbing an existential map and going to places in your psyche that had hitherto eluded a visit. It is, of course, a Continue Reading
Book review: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
In a very real sense, there are no obvious spoilers in a novel like They Both Die at the End. Adam Silvera’s achingly beautiful, New York City-set story of two older teenagers who are forced to live an entire life in one after a phone call just after midnight from Continue Reading
Book review: Shrouded Loyalties by Reese Hogan
One of the great and laudable hallmarks of the human condition is our willingness to place trust in others. It is rarely an entirely rational act, fuelled as much by gut instinct and hope as it is by dispassionate weighing of the facts, and underpinned always by the need to Continue Reading
Book review: Shelf Life by Livia Franchini
You have likely read this type of novel a thousand times over. Couple breaks up over reasons devastatingly huge and languishingly trivial, one half of a once-tonight partnership finds themselves reeling and without initially wanting to, finds themselves being forced to reinvent themselves with heartwarmingly and predictably uplifting results. It’s Continue Reading
Book review: My Name is Monster by Katie Hale
With the human experience awash in apocalyptical tales, including a pandemic one that sits rather uncomfortably at the heart of modern reality, you could be forgiven for thinking that one of the end of the world story looks much like the other. And while it’s true that all of them Continue Reading
What might the near future be like? The City Inside has some ideas
SNAPSHOTJoey is a Reality Controller in near future Delhi. Her job is to supervise the multimedia multi-reality livestreams of Indi, one of South Asia’s fastest rising online celebrities—who also happens to be her college ex. Joey’s job gives her considerable culture-power, but she’s too caught up in day-to-day crisis-handling to Continue Reading