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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – a Squee post.
Its rare that I feel compelled to write about something I’m reading before I’ve finished reading it but Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time has crawled under my skin and it is preying on my mind so I need to tell you all why.
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Review: Shattered Minds by Laura Lam
Shattered Minds by Laura Lam is the second of her Pacifica novels. It isn’t a sequel to False Hearts but it does have links between the two. Shattered minds is a tense thriller with a cast of flawed characters. Lam conjures a tense yet vibrant world and creates characters the reader can empathise with even when they are dark. Carina is an ex neuroscientist with a dark secret. A zeal addict on the slippery slope to oblivion when one of her ex-colleagues, Mark hacks her zealscape to give her information about her old company Sudice. She knows he must already be dead. This is fast paced and feels quite cyberpunk.…
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Nineworlds 2017
For the last three years the highlight of my summer has been Nineworlds AKA London Geekfest and this year was no exception. Coming to Nineworlds feels like coming home to my chosen family. This was my fourth Nineworlds and it began like the previous two with the Icebreaker quiz that my friends and I run. As usual it was attended well and everyone seemed to have a good time. Even if getting things ready was a little bit stressful. This year I was determined to make it to most of the panels that I wanted to and by and large I did. The stand out panels for me were: Police…
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Review: 13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough
13 Minutes is an incredible novel. Sarah Pinborough’s writing really got under my skin in a way that very few authors really manage to do. It is about the shifting allegiances that make up teenaged girls friendships and frankly it is terrifying.
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Review: The Silver Tide by Jen Williams
Trilogies are tricky things to work properly they should do more than simply be one long story there should be themes that ebb and flow. Narratives which build and peak and then build again. I usually count myself lucky if the trilogy I read is three decent books which hold together well. And then there’s Jen William’s Copper Cat trilogy which I am so deeply in love with right now it is a little bit obscene.
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Review The Silver Witch by Paula Brackston
The Silver Witch is a lovely story. Set in Brecon Beacons it features two women a millennium apart with a story that is told between them. I really liked this premise, Tilda is the modern lead a young woman with albinism, widowed dealing with the stress and trauma of losing her husband in a road traffic accident. Her historical counterpart is Seren, witch and seer for the Prince Brynach and his followers on the crannog. This novel really is about Tilda’s recovery, at the beginning she is raw from her loss and embarking upon this new life, the one that she should have been starting with Mat. She is incredibly…
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The Winter Crown by Elizabeth Chadwick – Review
This is the second part to the trilogy about Eleanor of Aquitaine. I have not read first part The Summer Crown and unusually for starting a series mid-way I don’t feel punished for not reading it. Ailenor (Eleanor) is already married to Henry at the beginning of the novel and whilst she is very fond of him she finds his lack of respect to her ideas galling. She is constantly reminding him that she is more than his brood mare to which he basically says yes dear. In that respect Ailenor feels very modern, she is very clever and there is a real sense that she knows her worth. Henry…
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Being More Unicorn
I have had a rough couple of weeks with anxiety dogging my steps as I try and go about my work and socialise. I am feeling very fat at the moment there is a lot of self loathing swashing around in my head. I am feeling stressed and my self-confidence has taken a bit of a nosedive of late. I am skittish, I cannot settle, I have had trouble sleeping, I was worried I was on a bit of a slippery slope into full blown insomniac/head hamster mode. I have spent too much time at work procrastinating and just not buckling down to what I need to do. I’ve been…
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The books I do not read
I am a recovering book snob. I’m in the process of overcoming the baggage I picked up whilst studying English Lit at university. I’m now able to read widely not caring for some invisible judge and yet there is one line I do not want to cross. Why can’t I read romance? That’s not to say I haven’t read any I’ve dabbled in the paranormal romance end of things and faeries who like to get hot and heavy. But straight romances in genre terms are problematic. A lot of this is bound up in my heavy allergic reaction to the tag chick lit. I have never been a chick, I…
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Review: Planetfall by Emma Newman
Planetfall is a breath-taking sci-fi debut from Emma Newman. It is a claustrophobic look at life in a human colony on a far flung planet with utopian ideals. The colony itself is self-sustaining with all waste being recycled. At the centre of it all is Ren the colony’s most accomplished 3-D printing engineer. Along with Mack, the closest thing the colony has to a leader they harbour a secret about its founding, one that has the power to destroy all they have achieved in the last twenty years. The arrival of Sung-Soo the grandson of Lee Suh-Mi the pathfinder, mission founder and ex-lover of Ren sparks change in this fragile ecosystem, one…
