It was not his war. On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives–even the Emperor himself–against Imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fighting a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love Hadrian Marlowe is bound by tradition. He is the first son of a noble family and is expected to follow his father’s orders. The only problem is that Hadrian is his own man. He wants a different life. He wants to explore the cosmos, following in the footsteps of his heroes then forging his own path. During the early chapters of the…

The Long Autumn is coming to an end. For almost a century after the coming of The Sisters, the surviving peoples of rainswept England have huddled in small communities and on isolated farms, scavenging the remains of the old society. But now society, of a kind, is starting to rebuild itself. In Kent, a brutal tyranny is starting to look West. In the Cotswolds, something terrible and only vaguely-glimpsed is happening. And in a little corner of Berkshire two families are at war with each other. After decades of simply trying to survive, the battle to inherit this brutal new world is beginning. A couple of years ago I picked up Europe in Autumn on a whim. I was travelling and needed something to divert my attention while on a flight (don’t get me started on how much I loathe flying). In the departure lounge I purchased the novel with absolutely no expectations. Something about the blurb captured my attention, but I had never heard of the author and had no idea what was in store. A couple of hours later the plane landed and I don’t think I had blinked during the entire flight. Dave Hutchison’s Fractured Europe novels…

What if your life were defined by a number? What if any crime could be committed without punishment, so long as you could afford to pay the fee assigned to that crime? Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. But when Theo’s ex-lover Dani is killed, it’s different. This is one death he can’t let become merely an entry on a balance sheet. Because when the richest in the world are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just don’t add up. The End of the Day was hands down my favourite novel of 2017, you can check me raving positively about it here. When I received a copy of 84K in the mail I was beyond excited. Turns out I had every cause to be.    Claire North’s latest manages the trickiest of tasks. Not only does have something important to say, it is also a genuinely affecting tale.  The author is extremely skilled when it comes to crafting her characters. Like most people, Theo Miller is a hodge-podge of contradictions. He has spent years attempting to be seen…

Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister’s. It adopts her sister’s personality, recreating her through a life lived online. But this virtual version of her knows things it shouldn’t be possible to know. It’s almost as if the missing girl is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? I’m sure many of you have a digital assistant in your home. It doesn’t matter if you use Siri or Cortana, Google or Alexa* it’s all still a bit of a novelty isn’t it? Flash forward five or ten years from now, and it will be commonplace. We’ll all have our own assistants that are with us twenty-four seven. A virtual presence that knows you better than you know yourself and caters for you every whim. Sounds blissful doesn’t it? Heather Child’s debut novel, Everything About You, uses this as a jumping off point.  The big question it ponders – what if this most intimate of relationships wasn’t all it appeared to be.  Many of us live big chunk of our lives online. Who…

When anything can be owned, how can we be free Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack’s drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand. And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned? A distinct change of pace this week. From the whimsical fantasy of Arm of the Sphinx, we move on to some cutting-edge science fiction. Autonomous by Annalee Newitz is a near future thriller where the world is split down the middle. If you can afford it, your health can easily be managed so you can live longer and avoid a whole host…

Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In Western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family–and to locate his teenage daughter, who has disappeared. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra–a ship assumed lost to the darkest currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence. Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence or insight that will crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it’s not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time’s horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself. I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow back when it was released back in 2014. I loved it.  I’ve been waiting patiently for Tom Sweterlitsch’s next book and…

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. I’m always happy when I hear that a genre novel is being adapted for the screen. It doesn’t matter if it is a movie or television, the prospect of seeing an author’s vision reinterpreted makes me happy. The growth of streaming services like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix means that…

It makes us. It destroys us. The Feed is everywhere. It can be accessed by anyone, at any time. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it. Tom and Kate use The Feed, but they have resisted addiction to it. And this will serve them well when The Feed collapses. Until their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing. Because how do you find someone in a world devoid of technology? And what happens when you can no longer trust that your loved ones are really who they claim to be? Imagine that there was a single social media network, far more invasive than what we know now. In The Feed everyone is connected to everything. You can speak to friends and family immediately; all knowledge is available to you, humanity lives in a golden age. People’s emotions don’t need to be second-guessed anymore, you just know what they are feeling. Sounds pretty wonderful doesn’t it? You’d rely on this technological miracle wouldn’t you? I’d imagine you would give yourself over to the experience. Maybe you’d discover you were not able to function without it.  Now, imagine that The Feed was suddenly gone. Everything you had taken for granted…

Lynn McBride has learned much since society collapsed in the face of nuclear war and the relentless spread of disease. As memories of her old life haunt her, she has been forced to forge ahead in the snow-covered Canadian Yukon, learning how to hunt and trap to survive. But her fragile existence is about to be shattered. Shadows of the world before have found her tiny community—most prominently in the enigmatic figure of Jax, who sets in motion a chain of events that will force Lynn to fulfill a destiny she never imagined. It always pleases me when I start to read a novel, and within a handful of pages I find myself completely hooked. The debut novel by Tyrell Johnson, The Wolves of Winter, is a perfect example of this. You can’t beat a bit of good old post-apocalyptic fiction, can you? Lynn McBride is a survivor, she’s had no choice in the matter. She has grown up in a world where incendiary politics has led to war, and that war has led to the release of biological weapons. Her family have tried to stay one step ahead of the conflict and the disease, and have ended up in…

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first. More science fiction this week, but rather than an intergalactic space opera, we have something on a much smaller scale that is just a little bit closer to home. Before we begin, full disclosure, I’ve only seen the film and not read The Martian, so I can’t tell you whether Artemis is better or worse than Andy Weir’s first novel. How best can I describe Jazz Bashara? A platinum rogue, a devil may care career criminal, a…

Please note, Beyond the Empire is the third book in The Indranan War trilogy. If you haven’t read books one and two then read no further. This review will likely contain minor spoiler. I’d suggested picking both books, reading them and and then coming back when you’re ready. It’s ok, I’ll wait. Gunrunner-turned-Empress Hail Bristol was dragged back to her home planet to take her rightful place in the palace. Her sisters and parents have been murdered, and the Indranan Empire is reeling from both treasonous plots and foreign invasion. Now, on the run from enemies on all fronts, Hail prepares to fight a full-scale war for her throne and her people, even as she struggles with the immense weight of the legacy thrust upon her. With the aid of a motley crew of allies old and new, she must return home to face off with the same powerful enemies who killed her family and aim to destroy everything and everyone she loves. Untangling a legacy of lies and restoring peace to Indrana will require an empress’s wrath and a gunrunner’s justice. Sadly, all good things come to an end. I always get a little misty eyed when I get…

Rex is a Good Dog. He loves humans. He hates enemies. He’s utterly obedient to Master. He’s also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he’s part of a Multi-form Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Southeastern Mexico. Rex is a genetically engineered bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he’s got to kill a lot of enemies. But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash? 2017 seems to have been quite the year when it comes to animal protagonists in genre fiction. Dogs of War is the third book in the last two months I’ve read that…

The soldiers of the Simulant Operations Programme are mankind’s elite warriors. Veterans of a thousand battles across a hundred worlds, they undertake suicidal missions to protect humanity from the insidious Krell Empire and the mysterious machine race known as the Shard. Lieutenant Keira Jenkins is an experienced simulant operative and leader of the Jackals, a team of raw recruits keen to taste battle. They soon get their chance when the Black Spiral terrorist network seizes control of a space station. Yet no amount of training could have prepared the Jackals for the deadly conspiracy they soon find themselves drawn into – a conspiracy that is set to spark a furious new war across the galaxy. A complete change of pace this week. We are still very much in the realms of science fiction, but where Ann Leckie’s Provenance is thoughtful and introspective, Jamie Sawyer’s The Eternity War is an explosive interstellar action-fest. We are solidly into the realms of intergalactic war, bring it on! Kiera Jenkins commands a squad of marines known as Jenkins’ Jackals. With the exception of their leader, they are a pretty green bunch. Between them all they have only participated in a handful of missions. Fortunately…