Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don’t get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will. Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don’t venture beyond the walls. What he doesn’t know is – what happens when you aren’t given a choice? I’ll begin with a short apology. Over the last few weeks, I’ve struggled with keeping on top of my book reviewing schedule. My reading has been fine (it’s helping to keep me sane to be honest) but writing has been a real problem. Hopefully now that I’ve managed to get a better handle on the strange times we currently find ourselves in, normal service has been resumed. The Girl with All the Gifts and The Boy on The Bridge are two of my favourite post-apocalyptic novels of recent years, so when I was given the opportunity to read M R Carey’s latest dystopian tale, I jumped at the chance. Koli has spent his…

“Come inside and play with G.O.D. Bring your friends! It’s fun! But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!” With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even. But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win? And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you…

Please note, Salvation Lost is a direct sequel to Salvation. It is possible, if you have not read the first book in this trilogy, what follows might contain some minor spoilers. Consider yourself warned. Fight together – or die alone . . . In the twenty-third century, humanity is enjoying a comparative utopia. Yet life on Earth is about to change, forever. Feriton Kane’s investigative team has discovered the worst threat ever to face mankind – and we’ve almost no time to fight back. The supposedly benign Olyix plan to harvest humanity, in order to carry us to their god at the end of the universe. And as their agents conclude schemes down on earth, vast warships converge above to gather this cargo. Some factions push for humanity to flee, to live in hiding amongst the stars – although only a chosen few would make it out in time. But others refuse to break before the storm. As disaster looms, animosities must be set aside to focus on just one goal: wiping this enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means preparing for a future this generation will never see. Events pick up almost immediately from the point…

Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities. But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses…well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering. Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him. As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here. Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go…to make the world a better place. Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business–and who will pay the ultimate price. Every…

Self-anointed guru of the Digital Age, Guy Matthias, CEO of Beetle, has become one of the world’s most powerful and influential figures. Untaxed and ungoverned, his trans-Atlantic company essentially operates beyond the control of Governments or the law. But trouble is never far away, and for Guy a perfect storm is brewing: his wife wants to leave him, fed up with his serial infidelities; malfunctioning Beetle software has led to some unfortunate deaths which are proving hard to cover up; his longed for deal with China is proving troublingly elusive and, among other things, the mystery hacker, Gogol, is on his trail. With the clock ticking- Guy, his aide Douglas Varley, Britain’s flailing female PM, conflicted national security agent Eloise Jayne, depressed journalist David Strachey, and Gogol, whoever that may be – the question is becoming ever more pressing, how do you live in reality when nobody knows anything, and all knowledge, all certainty, is partly or entirely fake? I’m sat here writing this review on my notebook PC while my smartphone randomly provides new music based on previous choices I’ve made. Meanwhile, my smartwatch feeds me a constant stream of various e-mails and alerts. Technology is just super convenient…

For Teagan Frost, sh* just got real. Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she’s got telekinetic powers — a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she’s normal for once. But then a body turns up at the site of her last job — murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She’s got 24 hours to clear her name – and it’s not just her life at stake. If she can’t unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that’s on the brink of exploding . . . There has been a trend over the last couple of years when it comes to book titles, you may have spotted it. In fact, this phenomenon has become so common I have given it a name, I call it The Person With The Thing effect. Don’t believe me? There are plenty of examples – The Girl With…

Bone Adams is a legend, the best mortician in the Spires, and a man without modification in a world where body mods define humanity. When a new killer begins leaving bodies stripped of mods but twisted and bent into grotesque pieces of art, City Officer Stark tasks Bone to unravel the clues, few though they may be. As more victims are discovered, Bone and Stark get drawn deeper into a world where pain and personal statement blend and blur, and finally end up hunting for a semi-mythical, man-machine named Burneo deep within the labyrinth of the sewers. But things aren’t what they seem, and while searching for Burneo, Bone and Stark discover a hidden lab full of evidence of horrific abuses of science and experimentation. Meanwhile, the killer is still on the loose, and, as Stark becomes more and more obsessed with the case, Bone is forced to a shattering realization. Everything is connected, the killings, the gang activity, the labs, and his own past, and unless he can figure out how, he’s not going to survive. To my mind, the best detectives are the ones that are flawed. Their only redeeming quality is their masterful ability to do their…

In the iconic film Back to the Future, Marty McFly travels from the 1980s to the 1950s, changing the path of his parents’ destiny. Now fans of the movie can travel back even further to the 16th century, where the Bard of Avon unveils his latest masterpiece: William Shakespeare’s Get Thee Back to the Future! Every scene and line of dialogue from the hit is recreated here, with authentic Shakespearean rhyme, meter and stage directions, and with jokes and Easter eggs for movie fans and Shakespearean buffs alike. By the time you’re finished reading, you’ll be convinced that Shakespeare had a flux capacitor of his own, and traveled to our era so he could pen this time-tossed tale. Greetings fellow bibliophile, tis I, Pablo Cheesecake with another exploration of all things literary.  There art rare times when reviewing the latest manuscript of a wordsmith that gives me the opportunity to flex mine own creative muscles. Today, for the first (and likely only time) I present to you a critical missive appraising the latest tome of one William Shakespeare*, Get Thee… Back to the Future! Without a shadow of doubt, most amongst the assembled throng will have a passing fore-knowledge of…

They said the war would turn us into light. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world. The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat. Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on. Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference. What makes a hero? Is it their actions? How they comport themselves when surrounded by death and destruction? Or is it the side…

Simon Kovalic, top intelligence operative for the Commonwealth of Independent Systems, is on the frontline of the burgeoning Cold War with the aggressive Illyrican Empire. He barely escapes his latest mission with a broken arm, and vital intel which points to the Empire cozying up to the Bayern Corporation: a planet-sized bank. There’s no time to waste, but with Kovalic out of action, his undercover team is handed over to his ex-wife, Lt Commander Natalie Taylor. When Kovalic’s boss is tipped off that the Imperium are ready and waiting, it’s up to the wounded spy to rescue his team and complete the mission before they’re all caught and executed. The Commonwealth and the Illyrican Empire are, on paper at least, at peace. The truth however is far more complex. Factions within factions have distinctly different ideas about this uneasy truce. Simon Kovalic exists in the front line of an invisible war. He and his team of counter-intelligence agents are tasked with attempting to stop any plot from boiling over into the resumption of direct conflict. It’s probably unsurprising to discover the Kovalic is a complicated soul. The political machinations he must try and navigate are not clear cut. There is…

When people shed their skin every seven years, it’s just a fact of life that we will cast off all the attachments of our old life. And when our loves are part of us, those memories of love can be bought, if you know the right people. Introducing the new drug, Suscutin, that will prevent the moult. Now you can keep your skin forever. Now you never need to change who you are. But it’s not so simple for celebrity bodyguard Rose Allington, who suffers from a rare disease. Her moults come quickly, changing everything about her life, who she is, who she loves. Meanwhile, her former client, superstar actor Max Black, is hooked on Suscutin, because he knows moulting could lose him everything. When one of his skins is stolen, and the theft is an inside job, he needs the best who ever worked for him on the job – even if she’s not the same person. Very occasionally, I’ll read a piece of writing that takes my breath away. It’s rare, but it does happen from time to time; The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough immediately springs to mind. The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley has found a…

An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe, part of a colonial audit team investigating a disappeared lottery winner on Mars. But when Madekwe is abducted, and Hakan nearly killed, the investigation takes him farther and deeper than he had ever expected. And soon Hakan discovers the heavy price he may have to pay to learn the truth. Time for some gritty science fiction from the brain of Richard Morgan, he of Altered Carbon fame. Down on your luck and given a choice between jail time or a body guarding gig, what are you going to do? Hakan Veil, Hak to his few friends, Veil to everyone else, opts for the latter. The only problem is that within a matter of days, and an epic error of judgement on his part, his charge has been kidnapped. Veil could just walk away but he is far too stubborn for that. No one is going to stop him from doing his job. There is a blissful lack of complication when it comes to Veil’s methods of retrieving auditor Madison Madekwe; direct doesn’t even begin to cover it. His game plan, at first glance, appears to be shoot anything that…

Know your enemy – or be defeated AD 2204 An alien shipwreck is discovered on a planet at the very limits of human expansion – so Security Director Feriton Kayne selects a team to investigate. The ship’s sinister cargo not only raises bewildering questions, but could also foreshadow humanity’s extinction. It will be up to the team to bring back answers, and the consequences of this voyage will change everything. Back on Earth, we can now make deserts bloom and extend lifespans indefinitely, so humanity seems invulnerable. We therefore welcomed the Olyix to Earth when they contacted us. They needed fuel for their pilgrimage across the galaxy – and in exchange they helped us advance our technology. But were the Olyix a blessing or a curse? THE FAR FUTURE Many lightyears from Earth, Dellian and his clan of genetically engineered soldiers are raised with one goal. They must confront and destroy their ancient adversary. The enemy caused mankind to flee across the galaxy and they hunt us still. If they aren’t stopped, we will be wiped out – and we’re running out of time. When I’m looking for science fiction with epic scale and a plot that is guaranteed to…