Release Date: 09/05/13
Publisher: Solaris
SYNOPSIS:
One of the most exciting new voices in British fiction has written an extraordinary novel. In an L.A. where fictional characters are cloned into living beings, the author Niles Golan is on the verge of hitting the big-time - if he can just stay on top of reality long enough to make it. Hollywood: Niles Golan is writing a remake of a campclassic spy movie. The studio has plans for a franchise, so rather than hiring an actor, the protagonist will be 'translated' into a cloned human body. It s common practice Niles' therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. So (maybe) is the woman in the bar he can t stop staring at. Fictionals are a part of daily life now, especially in LA. In fact, it's getting hard to tell who's a Fictional and who's not...
REVIEW:
Science Fiction, in the classical sense are books that are always looking for ways to challenge the reader and make them think whether it’s a question about things that are greater than us or questioning our own choices in the greater scheme of things, so when Al’s latest book landed I was more than intrigued to see how he would play the characters out in not only a world that is different from our own but one that generated a new culture for the reader.
What occurs within is a story that questions our abilities to choose, would we want to be greater than the sum of our parts or would we chose to have others make our choices for us and what does it mean to be human?
Al’s book is interesting, has some solid twists but to be frank I felt that it was a book that would have sat better as a novella rather than a full novel as part of the script felt a lot like filler rather than giving it any real direction. Don’t get me wrong it was something that distracted the reader whilst Al questioned you about your beliefs but all round I felt it would have been punchier had a lot of the story search been avoided.
Release Date: 11/04/13
Publisher: Tor (Pan Macmillan)
SYNOPSIS:
The Family Trade and The Hidden Family - The first two installments of the Merchant Princes series combined in one volume. Miriam Beckstein is a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine. So when she discovers a huge money-laundering scam, she thinks she's hit the big time. But when she takes it to her editor, not only is she fired, but she starts to receive death threats. And that's just the beginning. To distract her furious daughter, Miriam's adoptive mother unearths mementos from her real mother, murdered when she was an infant. But these reveal a secret that will ultimately throw entire governments into disarray. For what Miriam thinks is a simple locket has the power to fling her into an alternate timeline. In this less-developed world, knights on horseback wield automatic weapons, and world-skipping assassins lurk -- all on the other side of our reality. Here, her true family runs a criminal empire -- and they want her back. But Miriam has other plans.
REVIEW:
To be honest this isn’t a new book by Charles but a republishing of the first two titles in Merchant Princes series (The Family Trade and The Hidden Family) so fans hoping for a new title will be sadly disappointed with this. Yet worry not, if you’ve not read these books yet, you have one hell of a ride ahead.
Blending Sci-Fi and Fantasy together, Charles really gives the reader one hell of a ride for their buck, it has some cracking characters, great prose and a whole set of events that have far reaching consequences within the worlds concerned. All round it’s a cracking read and when you add Charles own unique writing style to the fore really gives you a couple of books that will keep you glued from start to finish, trust me, it’s well worth picking up this series in order to read them back to back. Great stuff.
Release Date: 21/03/13
Publisher: Gollancz
SYNOPSIS:
A thousand miles east of Mirgorod, the great capital city of the Vlast, deep in the ancient forest, lies the most recent fallen angel, its vast stone form half-buried and fused into the rock by the violence of impact. As its dark energy leeches into the crash site, so a circle of death expands around it, slowly - inexorably - killing everything it touches. Alone in the wilderness, it reaches out with its mind. The endless forest and its antique folklore are no concern to Inspector Vissarion Lom, summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist - and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown terrorism with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head at the children's home. Lom's investigation reveals a conspiracy that extends to the top echelons of the party. When he exposes who - or rather what - is the controlling intelligence behind this, it is time for the detective to change sides. Pursued by rogue police agents and their man-crushing mudjhik, Lom must protect Kantor's step-daughter Maroussia, who has discovered what is hidden beneath police headquarters: a secret so ancient that only the forest remembers. As they try to escape the capital and flee down river, elemental forces are gathering. The earth itself is on the move.
REVIEW:
To be honest this book is difficult to categorise as, depending upon who reads it, it’ll fall into any number of categories, so the best way that I have to analogise the book, is that think of genre as a person and this is title is a chestburster. It has certain genetic imprints within it from the host but contains a whole lot of its own DNA to create something not only alien but unique to their donor.
This book is something that I found not only gripped me but one that left me puzzling things for quite some time as the machinations of the society to which the principle character pertains, led me a merry dance as I tried to figure it out. The world building is solid, the prose sharp and to be blunt it’s a story that has so many twists and turns within that you are left at times without a clue about which direction up is.
Throw into this rounded characters that take on a life of their own; some cracking dialogue which when backed with an author with a great idea of misdirection and sleight of hand which all round made this a book that I had a hell of a time putting down. Great stuff.
