After the harsh realism of his last novel, The Book Of Revelations, Rupert Thomson has returned to the ambiguous, fantastical environments of Dreams Of Leaving and The Five Gates Of Hell. It is Now, give or take, "roughly half a century" after the war. In the Culture Wars the worldview of The Daily Mail has triumphed and the government is terrified ( Read more... )

Pyr, July 2005, pp. 344, $25, ISBN 1591023149

In The Healer humans and tesques are always referred to as if they are separate species. There is nothing to suggest, however, that this is not a philosophical classification rather than a genetic one, a convenient fiction to support society’s relations of power. In fact the text presents hints that ( Read more... )

Ian Hocking’s debut novel from a non-genre small press has attracted a fair amount of critical attention. It is a nearish-future thriller set twenty years hence with a pretty good hook. Saskia Brandt is an agent with the European FIB. Dragged back from holiday for an important case she returns to office to find her secretary has been stabbed to ( Read more... )