SFBook Reviews

I first met RJ Barker some years ago at FantasyCon in Glasgow, on an interactive panel about public speaking, which is roughly the worst possible context in which to take the measure of another writer. Public speaking panels at conventions tend to attract people who are either visibly terrified or visibly performing, and very few who manage to be neither. Barker, ...

I read quite a lot of horror, to the point that it does not really affect me anymore, flesh eating clowns, aliens that tear off limbs, none of this is going to happen to me. A child being bullied at school, another joining a rough crowd, work becoming too stressful, a parent with dementia. These this could happen, these real horrors of the mundane are the stuff th...

There is something magical about childhood, you do not need a genre novel to tell you this. Everything is new, experiences that will map the person that you are going to be and stay with you for a lifetime. If you are lucky, these will be good experiences and not bad ones. In the case of Jeff Noon’s Moon Over Brindle, it is a little of both as Joe...

Science Fiction and Westerns have a long history, many stories are your classic stranger coming to a new town, but instead of carrying a six-shooter, they carry a Ray Gun. Fresh Start by Johnny Worthen is the latest and this is one strange stranger. Is Qays Mendoza a monk or a marine? Is his mission one of redemption or one of revenge? Qays is all...

Before we get started, given that this book is number 18 in the series, the review inevitably has spoilers for what's happened previously. This is unavoidable, but if you haven't read Battle Ground or indeed the 16 books before that, then this review isn't for you.

Still he...