Books

For all the many and varied ways that humanity could slash its collective throat, the trip to the apocalypse almost always looks eerily the same. Some great cataclysmic event occurs, people die en masse (or rise up again), civilisation totters and falls, and the survivability of Homo Sapiens takes an Continue Reading

It’s hard to say what separates a character in a novel that you absolutely fall head-over-heels in love with from those who you appreciate and like but are happy enough to leave behind, but one thing is certain – Queenie is very much the former and not even remotely the Continue Reading

When you typically think of fairies and the kind of home they might inhabit, you imagine ethereally winsome beings who drift around in naive delight, seeking to help those they encounter and awash with optimistically-uplifting joie de vivre. There’s no doubt that’s an appealing vision and one which entities like Continue Reading

If you look around at any given moment, on a world of towering buildings, fast trains and everything available at the touch of a button or a quick walk into a store bursting with products, it’s tempting to think that it’s all inviolably permanent. We have enough dystopian literature around Continue Reading

One of the most troubling aspects of getting older must be the way you suddenly become invisible to those around you as an actual person who has had a rich and varied life, or really, any kind of life at all. You don’t have to be old yourself to watch Continue Reading

People love new beginnings. There is something intoxicatingly appealing about the idea that poor decisions can be remedied, mistakes erased and in the case of the comprehensive slow destruction of planet earth and humanity itself, a whole new world, complete with a verdant virginal society, brought into being. It’s a Continue Reading

Grief is often portrayed as a hydra, a multi-headed beast of pain and loss that defies any attempt to get a true grasp on it. While humanity may over-complicate many things, this depiction of an escapable part of life, the mourning of who or what we have lost and the Continue Reading

If you have ever wondered if there is magic lurking within and without the banal cruelties of everyday life, if it is possible for dolls to talk and make active narrative companions or for apartments to change their architecturally-decreed configurations at will, then you need to dive a delicious deep Continue Reading

Live long enough, and there’s a fair chance that you’ll reach a point where you question everything about your life. Some people do it early, questioning the meaning of everything while sweating midnight deadlines for uni essays and wondering if life will play out the way they expect; other people Continue Reading