This book is everything I want from cyberpunk. I want morally grey characters. I want a dystopian world. I want mind-bending tech. I want to question what is real. I want the story to ask the difficult questions. I want everything that 36 Streets delivered – a challenging and rewarding story.
Science Fiction
Series Review: The Hybrid Helix Series by JCM Berne
The Hybrid Helix Series is superhero space opera fantasy. It’s action-packed, entertaining, witty, and with wonderful slice-of-life moments that give it an episodic feel that works so well.
The series is a melding of genres – sci-fi, fantasy, space opera, and superhero – perfectly mixing action, humour, and mystery. Ultimately, it is supremely character driven in the style that makes the superhero genre so enduringly popular.
Review: Battery Life by Brennan Gilpatrick and Gregory Lang
Summary: Equal parts Z for Zachariah and Mad Max, Gilpatrick and Lang’s darkly funny debut follows a girl from outer space and an aging scavenger who must learn to trust each other in order to survive. Welcome to the Junkyard, a toxic wasteland where humans, machines, and everything in between fight for survival among the […]
Review: The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
The Death I Gave Him has a great hook and, like a cyborg Agatha Christie, Em X Liu presents a sombre Sci Fi STEM mystery. Dare I say … STEMpunk?
Review: Down Below Beyond by T.A. Bruno
Synopsis Levort Aatra is a prospector on the planet Tayoxe. While scavenging the wastes of the abandoned world, he discovers a mysterious starship and stakes his claim on it.Little does he know, he just put a big target on his back. DOWN BELOW BEYOND is a sprawling sci-fi fantasy adventure filled with aliens, planets, and […]
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown – Rising Above to Remarkable Heights
I’m always shocked that Iron Gold is considered the weakest book in the series by many people. It’s the best book in the series by a significant margin. With Light Bringer’s recent release, I’ve been seeing rankings popping up again. This is my response to the crime being committed at seeing Iron Gold consistently ranking at the bottom.
Review: The Hand of God (Dark Legacies #1) by Yuval Kordov
Synopsis The world ended—twice. Once at humanity’s hand and a second time at God’s, according to legend. Only Esther, the Eternal One, saw it all happen. Chosen by the Messiah to redeem humanity, she heads a holy sisterhood that rules Cathedral, the Last City. Except Cathedral isn’t the last city, and the source of the Revenant […]
Review: Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts
Summary: An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its destination is V538 Aurigae ?, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above the atmosphere. The ship’s crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed builders made such a colossal thing, […]
Review: I AM AI (A Novelette) by Ai Jiang
Synopsis If you have the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations. . . would you? Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her […]
Review: One of the Boys by Jayne Cowie
A thought-provoking and humbling novel about what we would do if we were given the opportunity to test our sons for a gene of violent predisposition.
Review: The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
Synopsis The archipelago of Prospera lies in the middle of a vast ocean. Created by a mythic genius known only as The Designer, Prospera exists in splendid isolation, forgetful of whichever untold horrors inspired its creation. Citizens of the main island enjoy fulfilling and privileged lives, attended to by the obliging support staff who live […]
The Diamond Device (Accidental Capers, 1) by M. H. Thaung
This is a review in conjunction with the 2023 Self Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC2 for short!) The Diamond Device is one of six semi-finalist that the judging team, Team Escapist, is reviewing as they seek a finalist to move forward in the competition. Synopsis After diamond power promises to replace steam, an unemployed labourer […]