I made the conscious decision to make a serious go at writing around about ten years ago, during a holiday with my wife (then fiancée), and set about pulling together an epic fantasy that was pretty much 100% ideation, and 0% planning. I had no idea how I was going to approach the task, soContinue reading “Aiming High Part 1: Write For The Stars”
Category Archives: Book Reviews
January Roundup
You know it’s funny, January always seems to drag its feet, taking forever and a day to haul us past that post-Christmas and New Year hump, and yet it’s been and gone in nothing flat.
Literature Long Read: Service with a Smile in Klara And The Sun
One of the great things about being a fiction writer – or any sort of artist, I suppose – is that we have the ability (one might almost say the obligation) to present the world not in terms of scientific logic but in terms of intention, orientation, motivation, and choice. But we still have toContinue reading “Literature Long Read: Service with a Smile in Klara And The Sun”
Book Review: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry’s exploration of the 19th century wildlands of Essex is masterful, heartbreaking and uplifting. It seems at first glimpse to be a late-Victorian X-File, when rumours of a strange creature called the Essex Serpent coincide with bad happenings in and around the small village of Aldwinter, where the ostensibly grieving Cora Seaborne heads toContinue reading “Book Review: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry”
Book Review: Needful Things by Stephen King
“If we take responsibility for the things that cause us pain, we can inoculate ourselves against the temptation towards malevolence.” After eating Christine’s dirt in the last episode of The Constant reader podcast, I’ve been invited back by host Richard Sheppard to do an episode on Needful Things, which I’ve just finished. I’m looking forwardContinue reading “Book Review: Needful Things by Stephen King”
The Constant Reader Podcast: Christine
This past month I was the guest contributor for the Stephen King podcast The Constant Reader, which takes a comprehensive, deep-dive into all things in the King universe. It’s hosted by Richard Sheppard, horror aficionado and King-enthusiast extraordinaire.
Book Review: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
“His scream is a vivisectionist’s scalpel, and the bloated, poisonous trunk of the Soviet state is his living subject.“ The magnitude of the part played by The Gulag Archipelago in the unfolding of twentieth century is already well known, and I cannot add to the sense of that greatness here. It is well acknowledged asContinue reading “Book Review: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn”
Book Review: Christine by Stephen King
I’m reviewing Christine as I’ve been invited to be a guest contributor on the Constant Reader, a podcast that is undertaking an exhaustive analysis of the Stephen King canon, taking in all of his books, as well as pretty much every film and TV adaptation that has been made. If it sounds like a mammothContinue reading “Book Review: Christine by Stephen King”
Book Review: Our Child Of The Stars by Stephen Cox
Our Child of the Stars is a refreshing adventure which follows alien child Cory and his adoptive Earth parents Molly and Gene, two American sweethearts who are products of the 1960s political upheaval in the United States. The book starts off as a very soft SF, almost a fantasy, and then, as the book progresses,Continue reading “Book Review: Our Child Of The Stars by Stephen Cox”
Book Review: Immortal by Nick M. Lloyd
Immortal is the third novel by British SF author Nick M. Lloyd, following the excellent and successful Emergence, and his follow-up Disconnected. With his first two novels he crafted a niche of tackling big science themes with a British twist, and Immortal is no different. To be sure, it’s a strange beast. Even a bookContinue reading “Book Review: Immortal by Nick M. Lloyd”
This Literature Life 