British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is widely celebrated for his literary fiction, including the Man Booker Prize-winning Remains of the Day (1989), and more recently his sci-fi sampling Never Let Me Go (2005), which saw a film adaptation by Mark Romanek in 2010. Ten years after his last novel, The Buried Giant (2015) saw Ishiguro once … Continue reading The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro – Review
Books
BFS FantasyCon by-the-sea 2016 – Report
This year’s annual British Fantasy Society FantasyCon took place over the last weekend of September, featuring three packed days of panel discussions, guests of honour, masterclasses, book launches, and awards ceremonies. Attendees of all stripes – from forty-year veterans to wide-eyed debutants – converged on Scarborough, North Yorkshire, for a long weekend dedicated to celebrating … Continue reading BFS FantasyCon by-the-sea 2016 – Report
Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners – Review
Kelly Link’s award-winning short story collection, Magic for Beginners, whisks the reader along a meandering trail through several unique and inventive twists on the fantastical. Strands of myth, sci-fi and fable commingle with characters who yearn, mock, steal and bicker throughout these nine stories. That might not seem like many but, once read, they leave … Continue reading Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners – Review
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell – Review
If you’ve come into contact with any of David Mitchell’s work before, you’ll be well-acquainted with the sort of genre-switching, time-slipping, scene-shifting fiction that the author is best known for. A film adaptation by the Wachowski siblings in 2012 brought his lauded tapestry of souls, Cloud Atlas (2004), to a wider audience. 2014 heralds the … Continue reading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell – Review
The Drowned World by J G Ballard – Review
Long before the issue of climate change had really impacted on popular consciousness, there was J G Ballard’s The Drowned World. Ballard’s 1962 debut novel (or rather his second – his first novel, The Wind from Nowhere, he went on to disown) was a product of its time, yet speaks to us today with perhaps … Continue reading The Drowned World by J G Ballard – Review
Opera di Cera by Kelley Swain – Review
Threaded through the twisted physiology of Opera di Cera is a fairy tale of the most fluid sort. It’s as if all the latent symbolism of the venerable story type has been set in a pot and put on a long simmer. The reduction is the concise yet flavoursome verse form of Kelley Swain's unique … Continue reading Opera di Cera by Kelley Swain – Review
The Vorrh by Brian Catling – Review
“My name is Muybridge and here’s the answer to the letter you sent my wife.” The trigger pulls, the muzzle flashes, the bullet cracks, and Major Harry Larkyns is dead – shot at point-blank range in an act of pre-meditated vigilantism. This event is not fiction. It happened in California on October 17th, 1874. The … Continue reading The Vorrh by Brian Catling – Review
Love and Eskimo Snow by Sarah Holt – Review
Ideas-driven fiction is perilous ground for writers at any stage of their career. It poses the constant challenge of balancing the insistent voice of theme with the integral components of the story itself – character, plot and pacing. Too much theme, and you risk turning your fiction into a political pamphlet – too much story, … Continue reading Love and Eskimo Snow by Sarah Holt – Review
A Game of Thrones: Worth the Commitment?
So you’ve all seen it. No? What do you mean, no? Ah, I see. Because it’s on an obscure, subscription-only Sky channel. Well that’s fair, but you could always watch it courtesy of HBO Go (I feel there needs to be an exclamation mark on the end there, but never mind), the network’s free online … Continue reading A Game of Thrones: Worth the Commitment?
Monsters in Eden 