Another Space in Time

There aren't too many science fiction books that are quite so positive about near future sciences that may well allow the 'cloning' of the human mind. I got the strong impression that Wolf is contemplating/dreaming a life for himself as an artificial intelligence when his body gives up the ghost, the 'soul'. We see the dream of a 'heaven', a life beyond the disposal of our corpses, a continued existence in the digital world. We see Wolf's hopes for adding the other senses, than just easily achievable hearing and sight; namely touch, sensation, sentient feeling to his future non-biological self. He guards against the evil inside us all by allowing the earliest freed mind, his Adam, to set strong moral parameters to all future behaviour patterns. Wolf seems to be considering his own moral architecture as the ideal, as seen in the many personal 'political' imperatives he works into the plot. The book comes through to me as being deeply unreligi...

This is an exciting fiction thriller, set in real life, real time events. The book has an important sub-text that explores the collapse of social norms in a population under extremes of stress. The backdrop to the plot is the catastrophic environmental disaster inflicted on the City of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is a classic modern thriller read, with the expected adrenaline surges sure to hit most readers at the end of every chapter. There are also many of the twists common to the 'Whodunit' genre, in this story that centres on paedophilia, depravity, the treatment of the old, the struggles of the poor and corruption in high and low places. Extra poignancy is given to the plot by the author's personal life experiences in and around the streets of that most exotic of cities. The great many real characters on which Findorff has based his fictional ones have helped him weave such an exciting and disturbing story. This work is less scary in a bloodthi...

Wow- Four main themes, plus what could be a heap of short stories in one of the most innovative and original works I have read in a long time. I couldn't possible pin point this work to a genre, as the metaphysical, the fantasy, the thriller, the speculative, and the literary combine and melt into each other. This is written on four levels of consciousness- the self disguised, the self as another, the self as omnipresent, and the self in a parallel existence. If that sounds heavy- it isn't. Really well written books are open to most readers, not just to genre, academic and literary world toffs. This is a brilliant general readers book. I have almost never read a novel in one sitting, I am a very slow and precise line reader, but I came very close to doing so this time. Newland's vision, writing in the first person as the writer Prunella Smith, worked for me on so many different levels. I forget most books within days, sometimes less. I won't forget this one. S...

First off, let me say that I didn't much like the book and certainly not the main character. That doesn't mean this isn't a good read, this is. The mix of not quite literary, not quite paranormal and at times over romantic wasn't my cup of tea. That may be in part because I am a male reader. I hasten to add that I found no hardship in reading every word, and in piecing together every loopback in the chronological progress. I enjoyed the long prose, the well worked descriptions, the first person narrative and the deep and convoluted analysis of main character as writer. A lot of the book reads like classic memoir. I like the way Bell so well conveyed the characters confusions through the slow construction of the plot, almost like building a house jumping between bricklaying on different floors in total defiance of gravity. Those that are expecting a classic paranormal read will be disappointed, because the abnormal never really rises far beyond what might be int...

First thing: - Just in case anyone doesn't know, this isn't a biblical studies book. As such that it is, some may find religious offence in the free interpretation. This is a liberal historical fiction based on the authors private view of what just might have happened behind the brief scripture sentences. I am not conventionally religious, but even if I was I'm sure that I would still find this writing very entertaining. It is reasonable, though, to warn the religious scholar rather than reader of fiction as to the nature of the content. Second thing: - I felt cheated by getting such a short-changed version of the whole story. I felt that the author was more concerned about stretching commercial value than giving the reader a treat. I've been unable to throw off the feeling that I've been offered a half portion. This great read just stops, so demanding more money from those wishing to complete the journey. There simply isn't a great deal of factual stuff ...

I lost my way in the middle, so I was relieved to find I was meant to have done so. There are only three main characters, Brennan, Thomas and Joan. The fourth character, the Old Man, never really distils until the end. McSwain deliberately fogs the mind of the reader as much as those of the two characters we are meant to have some empathy towards. So don't feel the need to backup in the middle looking for a missed direction; just enjoy the easy dialogue as it skips you effortlessly through the detached heads to its all revealing and exciting conclusion. McSwain writes in a way that I found compulsive, as though a word drug was administered in the opening chapter. I was addicted after a few pages, found myself effortlessly zooming through the middle, to then be left fighting and kicking as hard as Thomas to get over this strong compulsion before the close. Like all good ghost/ghoul horrors, I really, really hope that the all the spooky manipulations of our souls are i...

This is a good comic fantasy title off the same sort of humorous planet as writers like Tom Holt, Ben Elton, and Terry Pratchett. There is satire and certainly parody, and as with those listed she has the gift of dramatic timing. In other words, MT McGuire is in great, Great British, comic company. The fact that she used to do stand-up comedy doesn't surprise me one bit. I'm sure it helps to be a Brit to catch all the clever turns of phrase in this book, but those from once were distant outposts of Britannia will get just as much out of this read; even The US should be able to catch the crest of her comic wave. Of course, if you are not into Peter Cook, John Cleese, Jennifer Saunders, Sandi Toksvig, or MT McGuire Authorholic then you probably won't like K'Barthan books either. Get a life! AMAZON LINK

This book is typical of Ray's easy to read journalistic style. Writing is never effortless, though Ray leaves one feeling that it comes to him nearly as easily as breathing. This historical fiction about the legendary Deputy U.S. Marshall Bass Reeves is a delight, though I would have liked to have had more of the same to read. That we don't is no doubt simply because Ray has no wish to stray far from the factual history. The conversations created to put the bones on the known story ring so true that I found myself on the dusty trail, spitting tobacco with the best and worst of those tough pioneers. That a black man born to slavery, Bass Reeves, could do so well for himself and so soon after the emancipation that stemmed from the American Civil War is nothing less than astounding. Some of his success seems almost unbelievable, which makes it just as well that the real life author is every bit as big a picture as the man he portrays. I am sure that Charles and Bass would have g...

Is Jack Caufield a simplified Bob Waldner? My take is that he more or less is. So how much of the plot is taken from real life? All of it? Well not as a chronology of a single existence, but yes, this all can have happened. The plot is novel in construct, inventive, containing adrenaline kickers, psychological, thoughtful, page turning and ultimately frustrating in a very good reflective of unfolding true life. As individuals we never get all the answers to anything, do we? Crimes and their solutions are usually beautifully dovetailed in conventional genre reads but rarely in the grit and sweat of real life. To Jack, so much of the life he has cut-out for himself seems to be far short of what he would have liked to achieve, despite the fact that he is more than financially secure. He is pervaded by self-doubt. "I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up" and, "I'm not brave enough to be what I want to be" are ever familiar thoughts. ...

This wonderful book has already been heavily reviewed and highly praised. How can I usefully add to the many affirmations of brilliance? I will start by mentioning the only deficiency, which may be confined to the mobi version I read. A few of the changes of scene were abrupt enough to stagger the flow of my reading. I would have liked a few more new chapters to emphasise scene changes, or even a few dinkus between the paragraphs. I didn't find the extra line breaks sufficient on my reading device as they often aren't noticed between variably formed 'screen pages'. I fully acknowledge that this is pernickety― but the book is so well constructed in most other respects that this easily included little change would be worthwhile. If stronger breaks have been left out to account for differences in line length (dependent as it is on font size), then a compromise might be to position a 'dinkus' on a double or treble width indentation to that of the paragraph openin...

This is wonderfully inventive speculative fiction. Philosophical 'science' shines through from page one to the last word. Solari's first book certainly isn't one of the all too predictable adrenal hormone blasts that so many readers are addicted to. Rather, tension builds through the intelligence of the plot. There is plenty of excitement for those prepared to get involved in the story, in the well constructed characters, in the concept of looking at humanity from outside of the box. And yes, there are climatic moments to raise one's blood pressure, just not enough to maintain the constant interest of a gastropod. There are sentence constructions that will unsettle pedantic grammarians, though I don't think many of those reading for pleasure will be the least bit troubled. Anyway, much of the language is emanating from the minds of beings more advanced than mere 'preintelloids'. Solari uses some really gorgeous invented words. This is, after all, spec...

Friedman brings together so many normally closed circles of life's tapestry, dissects them and spreads them wide. Then she chews on them in a range of partly fictional and partially factual related lives, layer by non-sequential layer. The plot draws together and demonstrates the connectivity between the political, cultural and private life strands that mould the being. She studies a series of creative snap-shots to demonstrate the fact that we progress by knowing and understanding each other's paths and not just our own. This is a stand against the autistic political and social boxes that are used to justify aggressive action. Innocence knows to mend rather than destroy, despite the messages delivered by the cynical experienced. The strategy of peace, mending at all costs, is too easily abandoned. The Holocaust is connected to the election of Obama, life in Damascus is connected to the war in Vietnam, and a child adopted into suburban California is connected to the child co...

Stebbins has done it again. He has created a wonderful sequel to your marvellous 'Reader'. I suggest reading in order, though that isn't vital. However, doing so will help you understand and empathise with the expanding vision that is the mind of Ambra Dawn. I sure this book stands alone, but there is a definite downsides to the lack of story revision. All authors of book series have the same impossible problem of balancing back-story and progress that can never satisfy all readers. This is a second visionary, speculative fiction masterpiece; and yes, as is all the best fiction in this category, it is highly philosophical. Stebbins takes us through the lows of his dystopian vision to soar out like the Phoenix into a new and growing existence, a possible Utopia. Well at least the vision can be left to grow unmolested until the inevitable third instalment arrives. What will that be called? My speculation gives me, 'Creator'. I feel sure that we will then come to b...

To me, this novella is is more to do with extreme emotions in the one being, the author, than a romance between two characters. I read it as a mix of mystical realism and autobiographical mystical soul searching. I see it as a bipolar study of good versus evil personality traits, and an exploration of the inherent dangers in drawing back together compartmentalised emotional states. The prose is richly descriptive, but in places strangely inconsistent, almost as though the words were arriving on the paper through mystical translation from some other language. I couldn't decide whether the line editor was poor, or if the occasionally strange word choice was a deliberate attempt to reflect thoughts arriving from some half seen other place. Perhaps Jay suffered the indignity of having the original voice distorted rather than clarified by the edit. The book is well-worth reading, though not so much with the expectation of romance, but rather as a quasi-religious dialogue in wh...

I enjoyed this read very much. There are all the usual elements of the whodunit murder thriller, with a good range of twists and blind alleys. I particularly like the main character, the early retired academic trying something a bit different. He seems to me to be a very plausible stoical, rather than heroic, figure that I had a natural affinity with. The heavy hand of the law, the presumptions of guilt or innocence and the tensions around the distribution of family money are the bread and butter of the crime genre. These elements and others are very well employed with varying degrees of originality. There is enough in the plot for one to be able to get shadows of the ending and yet still be surprised. Agatha Christie, eat your heart out. Here is a modern writer with a similar flare for building plot that encourages the reading into stereotypical thinking and assumptions, only to then turn many elements on there heads. I will be intrigued to see whether Mackey can maintain the art o...

It is rare that I struggle to put a book down, with Lobo I really let my life outside the book slip. I'm a slow reader- so my list of 'must do yesterday' got very long. This is a well written book that oozes with the author's passion for his subject. The backdrop is the recent past of Monterrey, in Mexico, which like so many cities has deep divisions of class, income and expectation. The characters are deeply drawn, and well painted into the wide panorama over which I as the reader was made to feel I had an omnipresent view. The characters are as much the dogs as the people. Both species seem to almost mirror each other, except that the evil in the dogs is generally driven by man. This is not a 'Four Paws into Adventure' (Claude Cénac), or another, often copied, 'The Incredible Journey' (Sheila Burnford) though the dog is the true star, and the quality of the story is as high. Lassie didn't live in Monterrey, in an often violent, all too real world...

When you have had too much of the press, magazines, the paper towels we call newspapers and TV going on and on about nothing more than their favourite luvvies and an infamous and usually talentless army of variously damaged and or synthetic egos, then that is the time to read Charlie's short book. Charlie Bray is a very English raconteur, who here aims his satirical wit at those that our modern media driven society flaunts. This book gets my five stars for what it is- an irreverent look at individuals in the mixed quality pile of people that become, for at least a short time, a brand, a household name. AMAZON LINK

This is a fantastic historical fiction that beautifully tells us so much about the social history of Detroit from 1915 until the early 1930s. These were years in which the City was growing to be the combustion engine of the United States of America and then laboured through the hard years of the the 1920s, to only grow stronger. We see the development of this great city through the eyes of one particular Polish immigrant family in a new world of immigrants. In particular, we watch the streets through the life of Joe Jopolowski, boy and man. I don't know how far the real goes, but I do know that Scheffler is digging deep into her family memoirs and those of many others of the generations that lived through the Spanish Influenza Epidemic, the call to arms in Europe, the rapid growth of the car industry, prohibition and the Great Depression. We are drawn deep into a community of beautifully developed characters, all based on the melange of conversations the author had with tho...

This is a well written romantic novel, rather let down by a poor final edit. The infrequent typos jarred particularly deeply because Patzer's writing is so very good. I can't help but think that the author was badly supported by her editor(s) and meddlers. From early on in this read I was rooting for the 'nice' characters, and was relieved when romance eventually got the upper hand, though I have to say I was rather disappointed at how easily the black witch was finally overwhelmed. Perhaps, a bit more on the moral conflict within her would have made capitulation easier to accept. Someone so black should not have turned to a light tone of grey so easily. All the principle characters were well rounded and played an interesting dance, but I do rather question the authenticity of the historical background. The historical elements were too few and there details too often repeated, rather than explored, to give me any real confidence in the author's historical re...

This is a study of a mix of characters in life's emotional pressure-cooker, the boiling mass of hormones, memories, fears and pains that make us all. We come to know the two main characters very well and to build convincing pictures of many of those around them. We see that we often become far more than we might expect, through the quagmire of interactions we experience with others. Even the meek may learn to kill. Sometimes, we eventually break away from the bonds of our past, to be relatively free agents, and sometimes the past eventually destroys us. This is a well written look into the emotional turmoil of a group of intimately and sometimes unavoidably knotted together lives. We actually get some way to actually feeling what it is like to be someone else, to be submerged into the books characters. One can ask little more from such a book. We have all experienced some of this and others have lived lives far closer to this particular emotional mix than we may allow ourse...

This is well written, though it needs another edit to cut out sentences that repeat rather more than advance the dialogue. The story leans towards the happy ending fairy-tale rather than harder fantasy, not that that is a fault. What it does mean is that this book is, in my middle-aged opinion, suited best to older children rather than young adults. However, I have no intention of putting of adult readers. King's Warrior has plenty of depth of story for mature readers that like well written tales that don't feel the need to more than imply the bestial. There is a sense of the allegorical, the fight between good and evil, which I see as putting this on a shelf next to C.S Lewis's rather than J:K. Rowling's books. I was asked to assess this book, completely independently of the author, and gave it a pass as a well conceived, well plotted, and artfully written book. So my reservations are minor. If the author takes the trouble to revisit and tighten the prose I will be o...

This book is written in a lively, energetic style that bounced me through the story. The narrator is Swanson's main character, one Jimmie Barlow. The voice feels to me, though I am fairly long-in-the-tooth, to be a very authentic male teenage/young adult one. Seeing as the author is both female, and of nearer my age than a teenager, I consider her character's words have been delivered with a great deal of aplomb and credibility. In places, I could hear my own young adult children talking. To the outside world, Jimmie appears to have the profile of a classic off-the-rails young man. He is hooked on on-line gaming, dubious money-making enterprises, is often absent from school in which he has few friends, he associates with life's tragic and criminal cases, and he is not beyond being the part of almost any mischief. Nearly everyone underestimates and/or believes the worst of Jimmie. The plot has violent and tragic tones, an often irreverent humour, sad and dysfunctio...

Dixiane Hallaj is a particular good writer of social/historically placed, politically pointed, drama, both in her creative fiction and as in this case in the writing of Biography augmented with fictional reality. In fact, most biographies contain some invented content, and/or augmented interpretation. There are going to be gaps to fill in any knowledge that reports anything deeper than the bare historic/factual bones. Hallaj writes, very-broadly speaking, women’s literature, in that central female figures and through them family, are her bread and butter. That shouldn’t deter any but the most misogynistic of male readers. There is plenty of the gritty content and adventure to balance the childcare and dressmaking. This is a lot on female, and male, sensitivities, but certainly very little sentimental. Lola had as psychologically tough a life as most male heroes, and survived an extraordinarily mixed bunch of husbands and other male figures. I may have lost count, but she had certain...

This is a very well written fiction story that adds interesting fuel to the debate between those that support the `rights' of the individual and those that put the rights of community ahead of those of the individuals. Should the individual be expected to suffer, even to risk life, for a common good? Should we all, ultimately, be conscript soldiers of society? The principle character is fascinating, complex, and totally credible. Whether she is actually a hero, a coward, or a genuine conscientious objector, each of us has to decide for ourselves. For me Kelsey was a mix of all three, just as most of us would probably be, depending on the degree and type of cultural indoctrination we had experienced. The only flaw of the plot was for me the over close relationships of all the principle characters in Kelsey vs The State. This tightness helped drive the intensity of the drama, but it all proved to strain my buy in to its plausibility. Wouldn't the prosecution have ripped t...

Lumière is a delightful book. I particularly loved the start: the steam elephant. I hope he reappears in future stories. There are only two factors making this book less brilliant than its potential. Firstly, there are far too many deadly situations from which Eyelet `only just' escapes. She ran just fast enough too often, for my liking. The second was the generally over frantic pacing of events in the story, which left me feeling that I really didn't have enough opportunity to deeply explore this strange landscape. My view is that a page turning book need not be conducted at frenetic speed from cover to cover. I was held enough by the quality of both the writing and the story to have read a much longer book. I accept that possibly even most modern readers don't share my opinion. Me though, I wanted to know so much more about Eyelet's world. More words, more words! I liked the mix of reminders I got from authors like Mervyn Peake, L.Frank Baum and Ray Bradbury. I'...