Good fantasy tales often rise and fall on the strength of their world-building. Sure, you need compelling characters in whom you can become invested and a driving narrative that takes you to utterly extraordinary places but none of which really stacks up if the world in which it all takes Continue Reading
Books
#Eurovision 2022 – Italian cultural festival book review: The Eight Mountains (Le otto montagne) by Paolo Cognetti
People often define themselves in terms of context and relationships, and both these important markers of human expression are on poignant display in The Eight Mountains (Le otto montagne) by Paolo Cognetti, a novel which explores how both impact the life of one young Italian man who is surrounded by Continue Reading
Book review: The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird by Diane Connell
If only real life could be as good as the ones we imagine for ourselves. Twelve-year-old Ricky Bird, the titular protagonist of The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird, knows how good these made-up wafts of storybook confection can be; while her actual life falls apart around her as her parents Continue Reading
Book review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Whenever you pick up a book, the hope, always springing eternal, is that this will be a read that will touch you deeply on some level. After all, what is a book if it doesn’t whisk you off to other realms or peer incisively into your soul, or at the Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings
SNAPSHOTTwo Ships. One Chance To Save The Future. Fleeing the final days of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven’s freighter the Jonah breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue—until they encounter the research vessel Gallion, which claims to be Continue Reading
Book review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
There are a great many novels out there that explore the idea of a multiverse, or at least the idea of alternate realities or time shifts, and which do so in a way that is often imaginative, compelling and fantastically immersively readable. The new novel by Emily St. John Mandel Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The retold power of myth in Ithaca by Claire North
SNAPSHOTThis is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses—that will change the course of Continue Reading
Book review: The Secret World of Connie Starr by Robbi Neal
The Secret World of Connie Starr releases 1 June 2022; ARC courtesy NetGalley. If you cast your mind back quite some decades, specifically the middle swathe of the twentieth century, your overwhelming impression is of impressively impervious social cohesion and conformity, bolstered by church and state in resolute lockstep and Continue Reading
Happy Easter reading kids! Time to tuck into We’re Going on an Egg Hunt, The Great Eggscape! and Mr. Impossible and the Easter Egg Hunt
Easter is all kinds of colourful, eggs-citing fun! Kids, most of all, love heading out for time with friends and family and embarking on Easter egg hunts which can be quick or slow but which are never ever dull. The theme of these three gorgeous books is how good it Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The “poetic ferocity” of Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers
SNAPSHOTDestry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn’t supposed to exist, Continue Reading