Books

All of us, somewhere deep down or agonisingly close to the surface, long for a place or a person to call home. It seems to be (understandably) hardwired into us, an impelling desire to not simply find someone or some place, because anyone can do that with enough bars, datings Continue Reading

We live in mysteriously varied worlds. That’s right – worlds. When Disney opined that’s a small world after all, they likely weren’t taking into account the theory of the multiverse which posits that the Earth we know and if not love, somewhat tolerate, is just one of many multiple versions, Continue Reading

We live in an increasingly blighted world. This is not an assessment borne of alarmism or sensationalist tendencies; study after study is showing that the Anthropocene age, the dates of which have not been conclusively agreed but which aligns roughs with humanity’s impact on the Earth’s geology and environment, is Continue Reading

For all its love of creature comforts and security, humanity does loves a good scare. There is something soul-excoratingly visceral about sitting in your armchair or snug in bed reading about people in peril, especially when they are characters whose reality is not manifestly removed from our own. The residents Continue Reading

Finding a place to call home is all any of us really want. We may talk about a thousand and one other needs and wants but if really pressed, and everything else is taken away from us, all that matters is that we have people to whom we are connected Continue Reading

ARC courtesy Hachette Australia – release date 28 July 2020. We are a people who exist uneasily between expectation and consequence. In our heady younger days particularly, but even as we get older, especially if we are optimistically inclined, we can’t help but approach a given situation with the fixed Continue Reading

If there’s one thing a space opera worth its galactic salt needs as much as a rip-roaring endlessly expansive narrative, it’s a larger-than-life protagonist as its core. You know the kind – a take-no-prisoners, swashbuckling soul who dares to challenge the orthodoxies and powers that be of the day and Continue Reading

One of the inestimable joys of well-written speculative fiction, which encompasses a broad range of genres including fittingly for this review, futuristic, is how it turns an engaging premise into a story so believably and immersively well-executed that it feels as real as the seat you are reading the book Continue Reading