The final two of the year...

#60 The Rapture by Liz Jensen

Read for review for Strange Horizons.

#61 Witpunk, edited by Claude Lalumière and Marty Halpern

Discussed here. Dire.

My winners and losers of the year are up on my blog.

#56 Sex In The System, edited by Cecilia Tan

(Belatedly) read for review for SF Site. Discussion of the individual stories here.

#57 The Apple by Michel Faber

This is a sort of rarities and B-sides collection to accompany The Crimson Petal And The White. I've often been curious about such a thing and Crimson is the kind of novel which deserves ( Read more... )

#55 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson (translated by Reg Keeland)

I had somehow mistaken this for The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. I'm not sure how. Instead it is a standard airport thriller which somehow sold 12m copies (as the jacket loudly trumpets). Larsson was a journalist and it shows in his prose and the translations is ( Read more... )

53 The Crimson Petal And The White by Michel Faber ( Read more... )

#51 Underground by Tobias Hill

You can tell this is a debut novel and you can tell he is a poet (excess of simile) but it is still bloody good (piercingly accurate simile). Extremely confident and ambitious for a writer who was still in his twenties.

I think this means I have read all Hill's fiction apart from his latest one, The Hidden, which ( Read more... )

#49 The Broken World by Tim Etchells ( Read more... )

#47 Thirsty by MT AndersonIn the spring, there are vampires in the wind. People see them scuffling along by the side of country roads. At night, they move through empty forests. They do not wear black, of course, but things they have taken off bodies or bought on sale. The news says they are mostly in the western part of the state, where it is ( Read more... )

#44The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan

Morgan's first fantasy novel and a really rather odd one. It fits alongside Market Forces, mixing sincere and righteous anger with what can only be pisstaking. It is also an uneasy balance of the brutal and the emo.

The Steel Remains wears its influences to previous novelists, particularly Poul Anderson and ( Read more... )

#40 Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve ( Read more... )

#35 Glister by John Burnside

Disappointing. Some further thoughts over at my blog.

#36 Wireless by Charles Stross

Read for review for Vector. Some other thoughts.

#37 Captives Of Cheyner Close by Adriana Arden

I'm being made to shit golf balls, she thought dizzily. Who'd have thought it?
Indeed. This is another Nexus novel and if anything it is ( Read more... )