This electrifying novel set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 follows a group of strangers as they discover that the dangers of Night City are all too real. In neon-drenched Night City, a ragtag group of strangers have just pulled off a daring heist on a Militech convoy transporting a mysterious container. What do each […]
Hard SciFi
Review: Iron Truth (Primaterre #1) by S.A. Tholin
Iron Truth is in the finals of the first ever SPSFC. I read it as part of the judging process.
Wow, just… wow. I knew Iron Truth was a chonker going in but I didn’t expect to get such an incredible, epic story. Where Iron Truth starts and where it ends are two very different places plot-wise. This isn’t a slow paced book, instead you get through into a story of epic hollywood cinema proportions that will hurtle you along. Not only that but the story itself is addictive and unputdownable so you won’t mind in the slightest.
Review: Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Many sci-fi fans speak of the Golden Age of Science Fiction as something that has long since passed. Whether it’s the 1930’s, ‘40s or ‘50s, the days of Asimovs, Heinleins, “Doc” Smiths, Bradburys and more are a forlorn memory… right? From my perspective, the answer is “Hell no!” The last decade or two has seen a stunning resurgence of sci-fi and space opera that recaptures the magic of far-flung galaxies, grand ideas, scientific marvels, strange aliens and more, but at the same time delivering fast-paced, engaging narratives and characters who are actually relatable. One author who stands at the forefront of this modern movement is Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky showed his natural talent for the genre with the 2015 novel Children of Time. Since then, he has honed his craft with every release (and he releases a lot of books with unbelievable frequency), and his new series The Final Architecture, starting with last year’s Shards of Earth, is space opera at its very best.
Review: Resilient (Book #2 of The Fractal Series) by Allen Stroud
Synopsis AD 2118, Earth. The world is about to change as a terrorist strike obliterates the planet’s biggest solar farm. AD 2118, Mars. Phobos Station is ready to receive an emergency shuttle full of wounded miners, but when those miners turn out to be insurgents, Doctor Emerson Drake realises he’s trapped and must fight to […]
Book Tour: Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick
Synopsis Terraforming — the mega-scale engineering of a planet’s surface to one more Earth-like — is now commonplace across the Solar System, and Pluto is set to be the most ambitious transformation yet. Four billion miles from the Sun and two hundred degrees below zero, what this worldlet needs is light and heat. Through captured […]
Review: Dark Theory (Dark Law #1) by Wick Welker
Synopsis A robot yearns to remember. A thief struggles to forget. A galaxy on the verge of chaos. On the fringe of a broken civilisation, a robot awakens with no memories and only one directive: find his creator. But in the village of Korthe, Beetro finds only radioactive pestilence, famine, and Miree — a tormented […]
Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch
Synopsis An ordinary man undergoes a startling transformation—and fears that all of humanity may be next—in the mindblowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion “You are the next step in human evolution.”At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to […]
The Cruel Stars (The Cruel Stars #1) by John Birmingham
Combat Intellects, mechs with humans written from a source code, old family dynasties, more advanced tech than you can throw a stick at, and that’s just in the first chapter. It’s a smorgasbord of everything that’s cool about modern science fiction; it’s bonkers in all the right ways. It would definitely suit fans of explosive space battles in series like the Expanse and the body-switching, souls uploaded into chips, and other weird tech of Altered Carbon.
Review: Sinopticon by Xueting Christine Ni (Translator and Editor)
collection. Xueting Christine Ni has done an incredible job in translating and editing these stories. They showcase some incredible Chinese Sci-Fi talent that I would never otherwise get to experience.
Review: Sinopticon by Xueting Christine Ni (Translator and Editor)
An incredible omnibus of Chinese Science Fiction compiled and edited by self-confessed geek, translator and author of From Kuanyin to Chairman Mao, Xueting Ni.
Review: The Quantum Magician (The Quantum Evolution #1) by Derek Künsken
The book follows the exploits of Bel (isarius), a Homo quantus (genetically engineered human quantum computers who crave knowledge about the fundamentals of space/time). Due to a ‘flaw’ in his engineering, he chose to abandon his people and lives as a con-man in outer edges of space. He gets an offer to move ships across a wormhole where both of its ends are protected by a species called the Puppets. To do his he recruits a team of genius people with diverse talents, each having their own agenda. What happens next makes for the plot of the book.
Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
It’s a blockbuster of a book, a space epic, a race against time, and a novel about cooperation, friendship, and the greatest sacrifice of them all. I cannot recommend this book enough!