Synopsis The Ballad of Halo Jones meets Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers by way of 3:10 to Yuma; a clash of law and lawlessness, storytelling and truth in a headlong romp across the stars. After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives – AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz – has finally run […]
Dystopian
Review: Fallout Season One by C.T Phipps
Premise Based on one of the greatest video games of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. 200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly […]
Review: Deliverance (Hell Divers #3) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Synopsis They will dive, but will humanity survive? Left for dead on the nightmarish surface of the planet, Commander Michael Everhart and his team of Hell Divers barely escape with their lives aboard a new airship called Deliverance. After learning that Xavier “X” Rodriguez may still be alive, they mount a rescue mission for the […]
Review: Beyond The Burn Line by Paul McAuley
Synopsis What will become of us? In the deep future beyond the burn line of the Anthropocene and the extinction of humanity, the city states of an intelligent species of bear have fallen to a mind-wrecking plague. The bears’ former slaves, a peaceable, industrious and endlessly curious people, believe that they have inherited the bounty […]
Book Review: Mushroom Blues by Adrian M. Gibson
TL;DR Review: Engaging, fascinating, and set in a unique and riveting world. Strong characters and a compelling sci-fi detective noir story. A truly stunning debut. Synopsis: TWO YEARS AFTER a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hoppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. […]
Review: The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
Synopsis When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA. Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again. The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help. While […]
Review: Saint Elspeth by Wick Welker
Synopsis Why did they come? When they appeared across the sky, speculation wheeled around the world—the aliens were from heaven, the invaders were from hell… or they were proof that neither existed. But when they landed, curiosity gave way to suspicion and the nations reacted with nuclear force, setting off a chain reaction that left […]
Review: Mushroom Blues (Book #1 of The Hofmann Report) by Adrian M. Gibson
Synopsis Two years after a devastating defeat in the decades-long Spore War, the island nation of Hōppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty, and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their […]
Review: FauxVille by D.K. Pike
Synopsis ‘After the pandemic, people hugged, friends and families reconnected, but a few short years later we were back to shooting each other.’ David Miller is an amnesiac war veteran struggling to put the pieces of his life back together and adjust to civilian life in 2049’s PortCity. His life is turned upside down when […]
Review: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Alien Clay provides further evidence of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s unparalleled and unfathomable imagination. A master storyteller and world builder, Tchaikovsky delivers another fascinating speculative vision of an alien ecology, that is innovative and immersive.
Review: Price War (Price War #1) by Richard Holliday
Synopsis WHEN THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS IS BLOOD, ONE MAN MUST SAVE WHAT’S LEFT OF HIS FAMILY FROM PAYING THE PRICE… In a future wrought by traumatic events, the people of the UK come to rely on retailer Yellowstone for their every need. The futuristic company is a newcomer to the country but it’s […]
Review: Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Synopsis “A fearless novel that probes ideas of surveillance, misogyny and class. . . . Tsamaase brilliantly tackles ideas of motherhood and autonomy.” —New York Times Book Review This genre-bending Afrofuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale and The School for Good Mothers with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman’s right to […]