It is the near future, following a devastating Holy War. Once part of the US colonies, Maalside, the New Republic, now stands alone in the Pacific, separated from the heartland by 200 miles of salty ocean. Lark City is its capital, watched over by a 50 foot, pouting, stiletto-heeled and garter-belted ‘Miss Liberty’, a crude parody of the famous landmark across the water.  In this brutal neon jungle, Code Guy Johnny Lyon writes a Jesus social networking AI, to rebrand religion following the war. But something goes wrong; a virtual hell breaks on the streets of Lark – a violent, surreal and uncontrollable social breakdown.  Caught in this terrifying web of danger are Sarah Lee, Johnny’s co-worker, drug lord Paul McBride who is determined to exploit the chaos to wipe out his enemies, and McBride’s junkie daughter, a prostitute called Kitty.  Now, only Johnny can save Sarah, Kitty and the city. All the characters in Plastic Jesus are lost or broken in one way or another. They’re all looking for something that’s missing from their lives. For Johnny Lyon, the rawness of a recent bereavement still weighs heavy. He’s conflicted, looking for some sort of closure, but in the same breath unable…

Forget everything you know about the big bad wolf. It’s not that simple any more. Here are werewolves, skin walkers, demons and unknown dangers. Nothing can be relied upon, not species not shape, not gender. In this second Fox Pocket collection of short flash fiction we explore what happens when nothing is what it seems. You’ll need more than a red hood this time. The idea of this collection immediately appeals. It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of weres and shapeshifters. Hell, I‘ll even go so far as admit I was a devotee of Manimal back in the day (oh yeah, I went there). The promise of an entire book full of shape-shifting tales is just too good to pass up. Fifteen stories from fifteen different authors, each promising insight into the animal within. Here are some of the standouts – Carlos by K.A. Laity – Poor old Carlos. Everyone deserves the chance to indulge in the thing that they love, but the life of a shape-shifting rodent isn’t always a happy one. This rather beautiful little story ends on a pitch perfect bittersweet note. Eigi Einhammr by Rahne Sinclair – Harald has been caught poaching the King’s…

Corvis Correll is a lethal revenant, sworn to serve the Umbra Syndicate in destroying the Moratalis Church. After six long years in cold war, his death looks like a better possibility. When a mission goes horribly wrong, Corvis finds himself stranded in the middle of the Outlands desert, thousands of miles from home and at the complete mercy of cannibalistic tribes. His only companion is a mysterious woman left for dead amid the wreckage.  She might not remember who she is or how she got there, but one thing’s for certain: she remembers how to kill. For the Moratalis Church, religious doctrine is everything. Their faith controls everything they do. They have no medicines, only relying on the power of prayer to heal wounds and diseases. To the members of the Church, technology is a total anathema. Meanwhile the people of the Umbra Syndicate have thrown off the constrictive yoke of the old religion. Fleeing the all-powerful Church the Syndicate have embraced technology and are using it to eke out an existence under their own terms. The growth of these two opposing ideologies has led to an inevitable war, both factions utterly convinced that they are in the right. On…

WEWELSBURG CASTLE, 1940. The German war machine has woken an ancient threat – the alien Vril and their Ubermensch have returned. Ultimate Victory in the war for Europe is now within the Nazis’ grasp. ENGLAND, 1941 Foreign Office trouble shooter Guy Pentecross has stumbled into a conspiracy beyond his imagining – a secret war being waged in the shadows against a terrible enemy. The battle for Europe has just become the war for humanity.   I don’t read a massive amount of alternate history, but I have to admit that something about the premise of this novel immediately appealed to me. Secret Nazi schemes involving advanced alien races and the quest for the Nietzschean superman. A plot like that sounds as though it could certainly hold the promise of something entertaining. Rising against the Nazi/Vril threat are the men and women of Station Z, the British department who exist shrouded in the utmost secrecy. They are tasked with stopping Axis plans by any means necessary, even if that involves working with “the most evil man who ever lived”. There are also a handful of chapters that cover the action from the perspective of the Axis soldiers. These provide a nice…

Something a bit different today from The Eloquent Page. A bit of non-fiction with its own unique sci-fi slant. Neil loves Sue. He also loves Doctor Who. But can he bring his two great loves together? And does he have the right? In January 2011, Neil Perryman set out on an insane quest to make his wife Sue watch every episode of the classic series of Doctor Who from the very beginning. Even the ones that didn’t exist any more. And so, over the next two and half years, Sue gamely watched them all: William Hartnell (the Miserable Git); Patrick Troughton (the Scruffy Drunk); Jon Pertwee (the Pompous Tory); Tom Baker (the Mad One); Peter Davison (the Fit One); Colin Baker (the Court Jester); Sylvester McCoy (the Crafty Sod) and Paul McGann (the One-Night Stand). The result was a wildly successful and hilariously revealing blog called Adventures with the Wife in Space. But the adventure continues. From awkward years at school, terrified of giant insects, Daleks and rugby players, to even more awkward years as an adult, terrified of unexpected parenthood and being called a Whovian, here Neil tells the all too true story of life as a Doctor Who fan. Funny, honest and surprisingly brave, he…

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease. We owe our good health to a humble parasite – a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system – even secretes designer drugs. It’s been successful beyond the scientists’ wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them. But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives . . . and will do anything to get them. Sally ‘Sal’ Mitchell owes her life to an Intestinal Bodyguard™, a parasite that has allowed her to recover from a massively traumatic car accident. Without this medical miracle there is no way that Sal would have survived the severe injuries she sustained. Six years after the event and Sally has had to re-learn everything. Her life before the accident is gone, her memories a total blank. I was surprised how much this particular element of the story struck a chord with me. I’ve been in a very similar situation to Sal, minus the tapeworm I’m pleased to say, and I often ponder the person I was…

Ecko Burning is a direct sequel to Ecko Rising. Beware! If you haven’t read the first book this review may contain potential spoilers. Just sayin. The Bard is gone, and with him Ecko’s only possible way home. Told the grasslands are diseased and the blight is spreading, his companions demand his help. Together they seek weapons in a ruined city where both nightmare and hideous truth await them.  Ruthless and ambitious, Lord Phylos has control over Fhaveon city, and is using its forces to bring the plains under his command. Back in London, the Bard is offered the opportunity to realise everything he has ever wanted – if he will give up his soul. As the blight spreads, Phylos’s brutality escalates. When the people’s anger finally erupts, the force of the violence threatens to destroy everything.  At the tail end of 2012 I read Danie Ware’s debut, Ecko Rising. I’d heard lots of good buzz surrounding the novel but nothing could have adequately prepared me for the marvellous mash up of science fiction and high fantasy that it turned out to be. The sequel is now upon us and the good news is that it’s just as good, if not better,…

Nineteenth century London is the centre of a vast British Empire. Airships ply the skies and Queen Victoria presides over three-quarters of the known world – including the East Coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775. London might as well be a world away from Sandsend, a tiny village on the Yorkshire coast. Gideon Smith dreams of the adventure promised him by the lurid tales of Captain Lucian Trigger, the Hero of the Empire, told in Gideon’s favourite “penny dreadful.” When Gideon’s father is lost at sea in highly mysterious circumstances Gideon is convinced that supernatural forces are at work. Deciding only Captain Lucian Trigger himself can aid him, Gideon sets off for London. On the way he rescues the mysterious mechanical girl Maria from a tumbledown house of shadows and iniquities. Together they make for London, where Gideon finally meets Captain Trigger. But Trigger is little more than an aging fraud, providing cover for the covert activities of his lover, Dr. John Reed, a privateer and sometime agent of the British Crown. Looking for heroes but finding only frauds and crooks, it falls to Gideon to step up to the plate and attempt to save the day…

Control is the direct sequel to Shift. If you haven’t read that first then it is possible, in this reality, that there may be minor spoilers ahead in this review.  Scott Tyler is not like other teenagers. With a single thought he can alter reality around him. And he can stop anyone else from doing the same. That’s why he’s so important to ARES, the secret government agency that regulates other kids like him: Shifters. They’ve sent him on a mission. To track down the enigmatic Frank Anderson. An ex-Shifter who runs a project for unusual kids – as if the ability to change your every decision wasn’t unusual enough. But Anderson and the kids have a dark secret. One that Scott is determined to discover. As his obsession with discovering the truth takes him further away from anyone he cares about, his grip on reality starts to weaken. Scott realises if he can’t control his choices, they’ll control him. When Scott Tyler discovers he has the power to undo any decision he’s ever made he thinks it’s going to be really cool. But as his world starts to unravel he realises it’s going to get him killed. In a world that…

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura. Skyler Luiken has a rare immunity to the plague. Backed by an international crew of fellow “immunes,” he leads missions into the dangerous wasteland beyond the aura’s edge to find the resources Darwin needs to stave off collapse. But when the Elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler is tapped—along with the brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma—to solve the mystery of the failing alien technology and save the ragged remnants of humanity The arrival of mysterious technology has managed, in a short period of time, to move humanity forward and then stop it almost dead in its tracks. Briefly, the Earth experienced a golden age and then suddenly a disease has put pay to all that. Society has effectively split, becoming two distinct groups – the haves and the have-nots. Those that live off planet in a series of space stations that connect via the elevator to Earth. Meanwhile, those…

Please note Countdown City is the direct sequel to The Last Policeman. If you haven’t read the first book in this series then this review will likely contain spoilers. Got it? Good, now forward to the end of the world.  There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank’s days of solving crimes are over…until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.  Brett Cavatone disappeared without a trace—an easy feat in a world with no phones, no cars, and no way to tell whether someone’s gone “bucket list” or just gone. With society falling to shambles, Hank pieces together what few clues he can, on a search that leads him from a college-campus-turned-anarchist-encampment to a crumbling coastal landscape where anti-immigrant militia fend off “impact zone” refugees.  Countdown City presents another fascinating mystery set on brink of an apocalypse–and once again, Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond “whodunit.” What do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing…

This is the story of M. Francisco Fabrigas, philosopher, heretical physicist, and perhaps the greatest human explorer of all ages, who took a shipful of children on a frightening voyage through dimensions filled with deadly surprises, assisted by a teenaged Captain, a brave deaf boy, a cunning blind girl, and a sultry botanist, all the while pursued by the Pope of the universe and a well-dressed mesmerist. Dark plots, cannibal cults, demonic creatures, madness, mayhem, murderous jungles, the birth of creation, the death of time, and a creature called the Sweety: all this and more waits beyond the veil of reality. It’s the eternal question isn’t it, should we judge a book by its cover? Well, the book blurb for Theatre of the Gods does make some outrageous claims. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially we’re talking a surreal, mind-bending journey to the furthest reaches of the known universe and beyond. Sounds like a winner to me…oh go on then, let’s give it a shot. This novel features quite a large cast of characters, all revolving around the quiet island of calm that is M. Fransisco Fabrigas. What can I say about Mr Fabrigas that hasn’t already been said? Joining other such curiously…

Mercurio D Rivera has been tipped as ‘the next big thing’ by critics and readers alike.  He first burst onto the scene in 2006 with “Longing for Langalana”. Featured in Interzone, “Langalana” won the magazine’s readers’ poll for best story of that year and became the first of many pieces to gain honourable mention in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best anthology.  Since then, Mercurio’s work has appeared regularly in Interzone, as well as such venues as Asimov’s, Nature, Black Static, and Solaris Rising 2.  In 2010, his story “Tu Sufrimiento Shall Protect Us” was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award and gained honourable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror.  Across the Event Horizon contains the very best of Mercurio’s work to date; fourteen stories selected by the author himself, including “Langalana” and “Tu Sufrimiento”. I don’t read a massive amount of science fiction but when Newcon Press got in touch and offered me the opportunity to check out this collection of short stories by Mercurio D Rivera I had to admit I was intrigued. I thought I’d give it a go. Fourteen stories, there was bound to be something that piqued my interest… Turns out I may have under-estimated just a little, this is an utterly splendid collection from beginning to end….