Author Archives: Iain

Estragon, or in A Hologram for the King Alan, has travelled to Saudi Arabia. Nearly bankrupt, he needs the fee from Reliant’s sale of IT services to the developing city to carry on with his life. Having put his house … Continue reading →

I’ve just read Chu’s Day which is, admittedly, shorter than I was hoping for. It is one of Neil Gaiman’s novels for younger children, in the vein of the Blueberry Girl. When Chu, the small panda, sneezes, the world really … Continue reading →

Redshirts are a well known part of media Sf. The short lived extra characters who die early in the show or to prevent a main character being killed have already been mentioned in passing on the Galaxy Quest parody of … Continue reading →

Jeremy de Quidt’s The Feathered Man, his second novel, continues the same strong style which he showed in The Toymaker. Neither of this novels shy away from difficult subjects and assume that his readers will pick up clues rather than … Continue reading →

Lemony Snicket’s latest set of (un)fortunate adventures have moved on from the Gothic pastiche adventures to a take on the detective story. This latest series is to be a quartet rather than the 13 volumes of a series of Unfortunate … Continue reading →

An Apple for the Creature is a collection of stories on the theme of education, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. It approaches horror and the supernatural from a range of directions, some of which are more successful than … Continue reading →

The ghost story, a type which is never quite in or out of fashion, is the frame for Cornelia Funke’s latest novel, Ghost Knight. Jon resents being sent to boarding school in Salisbury. Believing the move to be powered by … Continue reading →

Kenneth Oppel’s Such Wicked Intent is the second novel in the prequels to Frankenstein, the Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. In a similar vein to Priestley’s Creecher, this prequel explores the making of the central character, though with far less a … Continue reading →

Philip Palmer’s Artemis is more of the same: a frenetic, action heavy novel which almost revels in its inhumanity. Like Version 43, the central character is a version of a human, reborn after major damage or death. The entity lives … Continue reading →

Terry Pratchett’s Dodger is a wonderful skit on early Victorian London which plays with Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens. Rather than fashionably going with steam punk, Dodger is a historical fantasy with a distinctly darker social history of manners. Dodger … Continue reading →