Another Space in Time

I am not sure what one more review can add to a book that has been so positively endorsed. However, I feel compelled to try. Apologies if I add nothing worthwhile. This is highly competent story telling that explores some of the worst abuses of the psychological and physical power often wielded by sick individuals. This book is worthy of wide readership. If it isn't available or willingly sourced by your local library, then libraries deserve to be the increasingly rare places that they are becoming. So often in real life the most selfish of individuals are able to become the most powerful. When those individuals are other than `normal', which is all too often the case, then the honest and innocent suffer. This book is an exploration of that phenomenon. All power is only as good or evil as those that wield it, with our institutionalised procedures all too often only further empowering the abuser. It makes little difference to the victim whether the corruption is instigated in...

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...

This is the second book from the quill of Chance Maree, following the innovative metaphysical delight that is "Alexios, Before Dying". I criticised that wonderful book for a lack of plot and an over-brevity of description, whilst praising it as a truly creative and original work. This book has gone a step further. The plot is detailed, unpredictable, and exquisitely constructed. The reader has to keep the elements together, but the effort of memory is truly worth it. There is still a fashionable under playing of description, which so plagues modern writing; but there is enough structure to free our imaginations without allowing the reader to run away form the author's control. I can never see the point of using such brevity that we can all mould vital scenes as we want, rather than accurately read the mind of the writer. Chance at least gives us most of the colours to fill in the drawing, though she still leaves a little danger of some of her bright contrasts being smu...

This book starts in comedy, drives through humour and tragedy, and all the time maturing into a serious social commentary on early 80's recession hit Scotland. The attempt of a group of adolescents to make a bit of pocket money, even if not a living, by setting up a mobile disco business, makes for a very good major plot-line. The difficulties encountered in achieving this in the town of Kilmarnock of the early 1980's, with a lack of money, difficult private lives and in while continuously falling foul of both local gangsters and the law, seem insurmountable. The dialogue is written in the vernacular of Glaswegian slang, and is further complicated by being in the authentic voice of assertive youth, so that it is sometimes "punctuated" with crude expression. The descriptive writing is in standard British English, so that even those who really struggle with the dialogue aren't in any real danger of for long losing the plot. The mix works very well. Imagine the co...

As the book is subtitled, this is "an odyssey reconciling science to God". That is Rees's ambitious aim at least. I'm not so sure that she succeeds unless we, physical living mankind, are understood to be part of a flow of consciousness that is actually God. That is a difficult place for me to go. I need the division of the soul of man from the divine. However, to the main theme, that on a spiritual level we may already know all that science is steadily revealing to us, that we are all at core a part of a consciousness that is this Universe; I fully concur. I am not a person that finds it easy to connect with poetry, so was never going to find inspiration in the epic poetic story telling that amounts to our total history. I get the concept, and applaud it, but I've such a chaotic, dyslexic and ambidextrously muddled mind that I need the directness of prose. The splitting of the book into separate themes, half to connect with the artistic right hemisphere and...

This is a very exciting story that in my non-expert view is suitable for children of eight and upwards. I'm trying to think back over 40 years to the books I was reading at that age. They were Enid Blyton's Famous Five and later, Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings and Captain W. E. John's Biggles books. Edwards covers some adult topics in a very young person friendly and modern way; whilst in quality and plot style following very much in the footsteps of the best 1940's- 1960's children's authors. The scene is set in rural Otago in New Zealand, with a full array of the elements that life there entails. The landscapes and the farming life of backblock NZ feels very real, and the young townies introduction to rural life hits the tin roof panel nail right on the head. Edwards brings into this environment many of the issues that face any growing child; shifting friendships, adult frailties, substance abuse, abandonment, physical abuse, the nuclear family and the c...