purplecthulhu

The Merchants' War Charles Stross
Cowboy Angels Paul McAuley
End of the World Blues Jon Courtenay Grimwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Mark Haddon
Severed Simon Kernick
The Other Side of Night Natasha Mostert
Autofiction Hitomi Kanehara
The Prefect Alastair Reynolds
The Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Prador Moon Neal Asher
Beyond Fear Bruce Schneier
Halting State Charles Stross
The Road Cormac McCarthy



Way behind, so just drive-by reviews on these...

The Dreaming Void Peter F Hamilton

Back to the Commonwealth Universe of the previous diptych. Good fun, but it takes a good while to get going - standard Hamilton in other words.

Principles of Angels Jaine Fenn (wave!)

Very good first novel and an interesting world I'm interested in finding more about. My main criticism (he said coming over all Milford) was the closing sequence in the underground maze where it was all rather too convenient the way characters bumped into each other at just the right moment for the plot. But everyone really should go out and buy this book!

Demon and the City Liz Williams

Another entertaining Inspector Chen book.

Queen of Candesce Karl Schroeder

Excellent stuff from a writer who just keeps getting better! He should be a strong candidate for an award in montreal next year.

Godplayers Damian Broderick

With all the superlative blurbs on this I was rather disappointed. It seemed to be the result of someone who's read rather too much wacky cosmology with too little critical impulse pouring it all out into something that was close to 300 pages of infodump and no plot. There might be a plot in here, but it amounts to about the first few chapters of A Prince of Amber once all the infodump is removed. Or maybe he just spent too long talking to Max Tegmark... I'd be interested to know if a plot actually arrives in the sequel as there could be interesting stories to tell here, but only if I'm assured of this will I consider reading it.

Galactic North Alastair Reynolds

Now that's more like it! Short stories from the Revelation Space universe that fill in some back plot and give insights into some of the characters and, despite the hard science background, he never lets it take the wheel, with the possible exception of the title story which I bounced off in Interzone but which made a great end to the collection.