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  • 07/02/2025 09:12 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Freakslaw cover

    Freakslaw by Jane Flett

    (Doubleday, 2024)

    Reviewed by Allen Stroud

    Freakslaw by Jane Flett is an interesting novel. In 1997, the carnival comes to the Scottish town of Pitlaw, disrupting the italic boredom of the residents, providing a source of intriguing excitement for younger characters like Ruth MacNamara. The travellers are exotic, strange and confrontational. There is a magic about them that manifests in moments of danger, there is a sense they are not limited by the everyday concerns of the locals.

    Flett’s writing navigates a careful line. The magical exotic nature of the carnival never strays into endorsing prejudice. However, her story does reveal it and describe it as the two communities interact with one another. There is a clear connection between this story and Ray Bradbury’s, Something Wicked this Way Comes. The subject material is similar, although Flett’s work is set in an English town, rather than rural America.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 24 - Download your copy here.


  • 31/01/2025 19:04 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Floating Hotel cover

    Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

    (Hodderscape, 2024)

    Reviewed by Steven French

    If you liked Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, or ‘cosy’, character-focussed SF in general, then you’ll most likely enjoy this too. In a galaxy-spanning empire that enforces a rigid social hierarchy and chews up planets for their resources, together with their inhabitants, The Grand Abeona Hotel offers a measure of respite as it sails majestically from one star system to the next. (Appropriately enough, ‘Abeona’ was the Roman goddess of departures.) The staff are led by Carl, himself a former refugee, taken under the wing of the original owner and manager, Nina, before rising through the ranks. Remaining unflappable throughout, it is Carl who ensures that everything runs as it should, while the hotel itself slowly and gracefully runs to seed. His duty of care embraces both guests and staff and even the tough and battle-scarred, like Dunk, the sous-chef, or the sharp and sarky, like Rogan, the life-guard, turn out to have hearts, if not of gold, then at least of something noble-metal adjacent. Indeed, one of the pleasures of the book are the glimpses into their past lives, as each chapter presents their distinct points-of-view.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 24 - Download your copy here.


  • 24/01/2025 09:53 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Charming cover

    Charming by Jade Linwood

    (Rebellion, 2023)

    Reviewed by Dev Agarwal

    Charming declares its raison d’etre on its opening page. Author Jade Linwood offers her book, “To all those princesses who realised that they could rescue themselves.”

    With that dedication in mind, Linwood takes on the task of re-fashioning well-known (and arguably well-worn) fairy tales that most of us grew up with. Fairy tales have been adapted to visual pantomime, which over time, has re-worked the source material to conform to audience expectations of slapstick, in-jokes and innuendo. The enduring popularity of both fairy tales and pantomime reflects their ongoing appeal, and neither forms should be condemned when measured on their own merits. They are designed with humour and family entertainment in mind. However, the issue for twenty-first century fantasy readers is whether there is anything new that a writer can do with these ingredients.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 24 - Download your copy here.


  • 31/08/2024 09:19 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Transparent Minds in Science Fiction cover

    Transparent Minds in Science Fiction: An Introduction to Alien, AI and Post-Human Consciousness by Paul Matthews

    (OpenBook Publishers, 2023)

    Reviewed by Steven French

    Almost fifty years ago, the philosopher Thomas Nagel posed the question “What is it like to be a bat?” as a way of illuminating the ineluctably subjective nature of consciousness. Noting that Nagel himself acknowledged that imagination offers a way of approaching the issue (p. 8), Matthews displays an impressive array of examples throughout this introductory survey to support his core claim that,

    ‘…science fiction with a psycho-emotional flavour can provide new insight into both current human consciousness and also possible future states of consciousness in both ourselves and the machines we create.’ (p. 2)

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 24/08/2024 09:26 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    The Book of Beasts cover

    The Book of Beasts by Andrew Screen

    (Headpress, 2023)

    Reviewed by Stuart Carter

    I was born during the 1970s, when Nigel Kneale’s Beasts was on TV, but this was long before I knew who he was. However, I became a fan of his work from a young age after seeing the Quatermass films repeated in various BBC2 science fiction seasons (usually, I seem to recall, around six o‘clock on a weekday).These seasons were mostly composed of Cold War-era US movies, so these films stood out because, well, they weren’t American; but also because they had a middle-aged scientist as the hero, and managed to be subtle yet exciting, in a way that my ten-year-old self—somewhat to his own surprise—loved.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 20/08/2024 19:26 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Writing the Future cover

    Writing the Future: Essays on Crafting Science Fiction edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst

    (Dead Ink, 2023)

    Reviewed by Nick Hubble

    I work as an academic within what is now called a Division of English and Creative Writing, which began life illegitimately (just ask ‘Quality Assurance’ about the provenance of the paperwork and the insufficiently distinct ‘learning outcomes’) and has gradually transformed into a marriage of convenience. Once sharp distinctions and hierarchies have blurred over the years as the balance of power (i.e., relative student recruitment rates) has shifted and changes to the way universities are managed in recent years mean that virtually no one outside the Division has a clue what any of us do or that there ever was a binary divide between us. We all write stuff and do research that other academics don’t consider to be real research. As a result, we and all our equivalents across the UK HE sector melted together into a primordial gloop some years ago and strange new hybridised creative-critical forms have been lumbering forth, monster-like, ever since. Writing the Future is part of a growing body of evidence that this new species is now fertile and populating in the wild.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 17/08/2024 09:40 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground cover

    Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground by Stu Horvath

    (MIT Press, 2023)

    Reviewed by Alex Bardy

    Here’s a book that was always going to be ‘up my alley’, especially as it comprehensively covers the earliest generation of roleplaying games back when they really began to gain popularity and momentum here in the UK. This is what I’ve always considered ‘my RPG generation’, so to speak, and it’s a time in which magazines like White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, The Space Gamer, Different Worlds, Challenge, Travellers’ Digest, and untold fanzines flooded the market and helped inspire a generation of gamers and wordsmiths, myself included.

    For those readers wondering just who Stu Horvath is, may I direct you to the www.vintagerpg.com website—it’s an extremely pleasant, tidy little corner of the internet in which Stu regularly talks about his massive collection of historic tabletop RPG goodies, alongside a thorough appreciation of classic comic/RPG art (mostly pre-millennial). It’s also the home of the Vintage RPG Podcast, a weekly podcast Stu hosts with John McGuire, and a great listen, too!

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 13/08/2024 19:59 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Mothtown cover

    Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker

    (Angry Robot, 2023)

    Reviewed by Niall Harrison

    It begins After. The narrator of Mothtown, David Porter, is “a human knot”, falling. He hits his head, lies in the earth awhile, then forces himself upwards. He is looking for “the two shadows”, but they seem to be hiding. He’s running, sliding, scrabbling down a craggy valley that is “coated in dead brown grass like hair on a giant”. The sky is “a dirty chalkboard”. It’s quiet. Michale had told him it hadn’t been that kind of town for thousands of years, but David is still amazed by its emptiness, “its naked hills burning beneath the stars.” And it shouldn’t have taken this long to reach the door. But perhaps—he hopes—he can still get there before the shadows catch him.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 10/08/2024 08:46 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    The Pale House Devil cover

    The Pale House Devil by Richard Kadrey

    (Titan Books, 2023)

    Reviewed by Kate Onyett

    This novella may be shorter in length, but it is long on heart and has some fantastically revolting moments that drop you right into a very special type of “ick”. Fans of darkly humorous, supernatural, violent urban fantasy will love this story. Hey, that’s not so niche if each type of fan got together and agreed to a movie night, because if this was on screen, they would all have a baller of a time.

    This is what I hope is the first in a new series for Kadrey, who earned his dark fantasy/horror chops with the highly enjoyable Sandman Slim series. Likewise, this book is set in a world where magic and monsters are real, and properly applied violence can be a force for good. Well, a force for better. C’mon, you’re reading fantasy horror, morals take a seat at the door (it’s more fun that way).

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


  • 06/08/2024 16:25 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Bloom cover

    Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson

    (Titan Books, 2023)

    Reviewed by Harry Slater

    The forbidden basement has always been the horror genre’s most heavy-handed metaphor. Beneath the above-ground facade lurks a horrifying truth that the antagonist is trying to hide; plumb the depths of their psyche and you’ll discover severed limbs, swinging rusty chains, fluids of unspeakable origin.

    There are interesting ways to handle this trope, avenues that can be explored that shift the expectation of the reader. Or it can be tossed at them like a lump of heavy flesh, subtle as a cleaver. Bloom, by New York Times bestselling author Delilah S. Dawson, is a twee romance that stumbles towards its inevitable subterranean bloodbath with a lazy gait, never really seeding the horror it intends to unleash, and once it arrives delivering it with an unsatisfying squelch instead of a glorious arterial spray.

    Continue reading…

    Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.


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