Another Space in Time

We reach the top of the climb, having started up the `spiritual' mountain of Newland's metaphysical creation in the first book in the Diamond Peak series. Life's path is never easy for anyone if they are to fulfil their potential, the greater our gifts the more that others' normally expect us to give. So it is with the heroine, Ariel. In the end, this was not so much of the story of Ariel's struggle to conquer the blackness threatening her and the lives of those she cared about, but rather about her determination to help the `all' of humanity. The serpentine Ariel has to destroy is just as binding in landscape we all know as it is on her mythical mountain; a massive peak which seemingly buds from some part of urban Australia. There is a true moral theme, the idea of a saviour, the dream of resetting the clock back on all corrupting evil. This work draws on the powerful allegory of writers like C.S. Lewis, whilst remaining free of his well chiselled, establis

I am finding it hard not to be over complementary. Smith has a sure-footed competence as a writer that has helped her put together a very original and highly entertaining book. This near future science fiction cleverly links the progress of science, the general `progressiveness' of social norms, at least in Britain and a quite plausible future `gated' City of London, into a page turning read. The version I read had a few silly editing errors, but a word of concern to the author has led to the knowledge that these are being dealt with. The timeline on the story, set in 2080, seems feasible. This is important because at first the hedonistic world she portrays seems to be a vast distance from where norms of social behaviour are today. There are always extreme deviants, individual cases, but those deviant behaviours rarely and only slowly become mainstream. But sometimes they do, and especially when as in this book they are centred on a particularly powerful subset of peopl