Number
stars
Times
awarded
02
1%
½2
1%
17
4%
6
3%
24
2%
11
7%
322
14%
24
15%
430
19%
23
14%
524
15%

The box on the left shows the distribution of re-read factors this author has given in the reviews below, out of a total of 155 reviews.

Underneath each of the re-read factors below is a bar indicating the reviewerʼs opinion about the accuracy of his factors; the bar indicates the range of re-read factors which might be applied to each book.

While the idea behind a BookBlog is that you read a book and then put a review into a web log for posterity, most of the books I review here were actually read a long time ago (before web logs were invented), and thus many of the reviews are not so detailed, and sometimes not so accurate, as I would have liked. This manifests itself in some wide red bars underneath the re-read factors below. It also means that many of the reading dates are noted as ‘1970-01-01’, which is to be interpreted as ‘a long time ago’!

Enjoy!


  • Click on a column heading to sort according to that column;
  • click on a book title to get the full review (and comments) on that title.
Re-read factor   Title   Author(s)   Comments   Review date
yyyy-mm-dd
Title: Doors Open Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2024-02-16

Rock-solid if not run-of-the-mill heist, with a mild twist at the end. Some confusion halfway through about the nature of the heist (which paintings went where?) gives the reader something to thi...

Title: Excession (2) Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-11-23

Second reading. First time I was awed by the way the book transcends scale in time and space. Now I realize that the book really is about the different scales, as typified by the ending ...

Title: Virtual Light Author: William Gibson Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-10-05

Virtual light is simply a process whereby retinal nerve endings are directly stimulated to give the same effect as if light had fallen on them, thereby allowing computer-generated images to be se...

Title: The Holy Machine Author: Chris Beckett Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-09-08

Mash of stories and their respective tropes: ‘Frankenstein’ in ‘1984’, ‘Loganʼs Run’, and ‘Neuromancer’.

A decrepit woman spends all her time hooked up to cyberspace. B...

Title: The IPCRESS File Author: Den Leighton Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-09-04

James Bond-alike, with less gadgetry and misogyny but more MOD machinations and cleverer plotting. The action scenes do not come across as very punchy, and you only realize there was any signifi...

Title: Lessons in Chemistry Author: Bonnie Garmus Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-09-02

Scooby Doo meets Great Expectations. The meat of the story is bereavement and gross sex discrimination in the 1960s, but the story is mysterious and meandering. Five (or s...

Title: The Postscript Murders Author: Elly Griffiths Comments: 0 Review date: 2023-09-01

A fast-moving, easy-to-read who-dunnit: gentle entertainment. It doesn’t quite break the fourth wall but lives very close to it, e.g., “A pretty memorable few days in anyone’s book, ev...

Title: Agency Author: William Gibson Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-11-19

Overarching concept is good: people 200 years in future able to interact with people in present day through an advanced drone, and have been able to send a very advanced artificial intelligence b...

Title: The Business Author: Iain Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-10-03

Incredibly inventive book in which Banks manages to create, in some detail, an ancient, globe-spanning business with a finger in every pie, and even an entire small nation which the Business seek...

Title: In a House of Lies Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-10-03

A John Rebus instalment without any action and without any of the Edinburgh atmosphere which this series usually oozes. However the plotting and characterizations, especially the character inter...

Title: Neuromancer Author: William Gibson Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-07-27

For the first time since I was studying George Orwell at school I had to go back before I'd even finished to give the book a second reading.

Incredibly complex with a fantastic cast of w...

Title: The Red House Author: Mark Haddon Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-07-27

This is probably the most boring book I've ever read.

The families of a brother and sister spend a week together in a house after the death of their mother, and it is a day-by-day accoun...

Title: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies Author: Alexander McColl Smith Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-07-27

The usual gentle, happy writing style which describes the gentle, happy life of Mma Ramotswe, a Botswanan lady.

Core of story is her ex-husband turns up and tries to blackmail her on th...

Title: Galactic Patrol Author: E. E. Smith Comments: 0 Review date: 2022-07-27

Dated book of two halves, the first an origin/quest story, then the hero is given super-powers by an overseeing advanced civilization and it turns into a worthless smash-bang adventure.

Title: Winter's Orbit Author: Everina Maxwell Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-03-26

After a royal state representative is killed, his (male) partner is forced to marry a replacement otherwise a trade agreement cannot take place. The two men have a difficult mis-understanding re...

Title: The Secret Barrister Author: The Secret Barrister Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-02-03

Insight showing how slow and inefficient the British jurisdictory service has become, after many years of underfunding. Page turner by virtue of the nature of the content.

Title: The Great Gatsby Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-02-03

A quarter of the book is taken up by an academic-written introduction, which sets it up as the best American book ever. This rather puts expectations on a high level, and initial reading feels k...

Title: A Sight for Sore Eyes Author: Ruth Rendell Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-02-03

Horrible story about the development and exploits of a serial killer, in some considerable detail. Personally, I can’t understand why anybody would want to write anything like this.

...

Title: I'm Only in it for the Parking Author: Lee Ridley Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-02-03

Funny autobiography of comedian with cerebral palsy who is unable to speak. Very open and honest with flowing writing style, and makes everything seem rather straight-forward. None of the real ...

Title: The Prison Doctor Author: Amanda Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-01-28

Some memoirs of a person disillusioned with the general practitioner profession finding herself perchance working in prisons, for the new challenges. The voice of the author is quite strange, co...

Title: The Prison Doctor: Women Inside Author: Amanda Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2021-01-28

Much the same as the original book, but now based at Europe’s largest female prison, where we learn that almost all of the inmates are women who have been forced into a very hard life, and many...

Title: Super Cannes Author: J.G. Ballard Comments: 0 Review date: 2020-09-01

My first Ballard, and supposedly his best work. Thus my extremely high expectations were sure to be confounded. But the work genuinely has a sense of place: the near-future Cannes industrial co...

Title: The Last Days of New Paris Author: China Mieville Comments: 0 Review date: 2020-09-01

This is just so different to anything else I’ve ever read. Paris was hit by a cataclysmic disaster engineered during World War II, wherein surrealist art comes alive with consequences obverse ...

Title: Woken Furies Author: Richard Morgan Comments: 0 Review date: 2020-09-01

Starts off as a bit of a slam-dunk adrenaline powered kill-fest, but gradually sublimes into a surprisingly delicate work, culminating in the protagonist--more later--entering the mind of a body ...

Title: Broken Angels Author: Richard Morgan Comments: 0 Review date: 2018-04-30

After reading Elizabeth Moon, it came as a great relief to read prose with texture and depth. Richard does a really good job of imbuing said texture and depth into the richness of the characters...

Title: Cold Welcome Author: Elizabeth Moon Comments: 0 Review date: 2018-03-30

A ship carrying a distinguished soldier is sabotaged and goes down on a continent considered to be uninhabitable. Story drags out survival at sea, then on land, then they discover a secret desse...

Title: Creation Machine Author: Andrew Bannister Comments: 0 Review date: 2017-09-22

Well constructed story: An entire star system was manufactured in distant past using a machine which is recently discovered. Daughter of evil Emperor-wannabe escapes his clutches, works for a re...

Title: The Wars of the Roses Author: Trevor Royle Comments: 0 Review date: 2017-04-02

A history book. First time Iʼve ever read such a thing. Reads like a bland novel bereft of dialog: pure exposition. Royle makes the sequence of events entirely believable, and does his best t...

Title: The Hydrogen Sonata Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2016-12-20

An entire, massive, civilization is about to sublime to a higher state of living. In their wake are predators who will be taking their left-over possessions, and the Culture will be overseeing e...

Title: Embassytown Author: China Mieville Comments: 0 Review date: 2016-11-28

There are three races of people known variously as Ariekene, Terre, Hosts, Ambassadors, `monsters' which defy generic description, people who always go around as (more or less) tethered pairs; th...

Title: Gateway Author: Frederick Pohl Comments: 0 Review date: 2016-03-24
The essence of this book is how utterly terrifying deep-space exploration is going to be: like exploring underwater caves, leaving the oxygen tanks behind to explore narrow crevasses beyond the point ...
Title: Standing in Another Man's Grave Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2016-02-27

Disappointing Rebus installment, mostly let down by the ending. It takes time before the atmosphere really establishes, and on the whole there are too many characters to be able to follow. ...

Title: War Dogs Author: Greg Bear Comments: 0 Review date: 2016-02-12

The opening paragraph on the first page tells you he got off Mars, and since the whole story is told from the first-person viewpoint of a soldier in peril on said planet, suspense is dead at the ou...

Title: Raising Steam Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2015-09-03

It is well-established that Terry Pratchett has a universe in which he can be, and is, as diverse as he wants to be, especially with regards to ethnicity and race relations. Nevertheless, it is ha...

Title: The Naming of the Dead Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2014-08-14

Once again revolves around DI Rebus. The G8 summit at Gleneagles is going on, an MP falls to his death over Edinburgh Castle ramparts, his colleague's parents take part in a peace rally and are ...

Title: House of Suns Author: Alastair Reynolds Comments: 0 Review date: 2014-06-16

Big ideas

The only realistic way for mankind to explore the galaxy is to clone oneself (shatter) into 1,000, not quite identical, parts, send them on different round trips around ...

Title: Witch Hunt Author: Ian Rankin, Jack Harvey Comments: 0 Review date: 2013-12-10

A book without much mystery as all the characters, including a local police team, a national one, an institutional researcher, and the sole assassin, are introduced at the beginning and all of th...

Title: Hull Zero Three Author: Greg Bear Comments: 0 Review date: 2013-03-11

A book which tries hard and ultimately fails to live up to its potential. The opening tries to put a human being into the ultimate horrific situation (wakes up in a strange, freezing place, star...

Title: The Ghost from the Grand Banks Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2012-07-24

Okay, so two competing teams spend the whole book scheming to raise the Titanic--nothing as exciting as even a race--, and then in the last chapter an underwater avalanche covers it in mud and that...

Title: Revelation Space Author: Alastair Reynolds Comments: 0 Review date: 2012-05-26

Easily one of the best books I've read.

Massive pretext: universe has fewer civilizations than it should because there has been a previous mega-war (we're talking millions of years ago), and ci...

Title: Surface Detail Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2011-10-23

Straightforward plot: A woman born into sexual slavery is killed by her owner, gets re-vented by a Culture eccentric ship, and goes back to exact revenge with the culture and other interested parti...

Title: Kraken Author: China Mieville Comments: 0 Review date: 2011-05-29

A giant squid goes missing from the Natural History Museum, and it turns out to be an actual dead god worshipped by a church who have taken it, through the expedient of seducing a Trekkie into usin...

Title: Twisted Metal Author: Tony Ballantyne Comments: 0 Review date: 2010-12-19

A story set on a world populated by anthropomorphic robots, which procreate by the man providing special blue wire containing 'life force' to a woman who knits it into a child's mind, from which po...

Title: Ilium Author: Dan Simmons Comments: 0 Review date: 2010-12-19

I can't believe this book is so big mostly due to the fact that the pages turn very easily, but also because the story seems simple enough to pass by in fewer pages. Despite that the pages turn ea...

Title: Divergence Author: Tony Ballantyne Comments: 0 Review date: 2010-03-24

The dysfunctional crew -- everybody necessarily a world apart: robot, android, human, AI mind, simpleton, old lazy woman -- of a spaceship uses software it does not understand to enact trades of ca...

Title: Altered Carbon Author: Richard Morgan Comments: 0 Review date: 2010-03-24

A story which could only be told in a universe where human souls can be freely replicated, stored and moved between bodies, both artificial ones and real ones (termed ``sleeving''). A very rich th...

Title: Brasyl Author: Ian McDonald Comments: 0 Review date: 2009-11-25

Incredibly over-eclectic mix of hard science and psychedelic flowery writing, over-permeated with Portuguese phrases. To be fair the Portuguese does distract an awful lot from the story, and in pl...

Title: Market Forces Author: Richard Morgan Comments: 0 Review date: 2009-11-25

A near future in which promotion in the workplace occurs through duels to the death with peers, enacted in souped-up cars on a motorway network deserted by a broken society in which the vast majori...

Title: Exit Music Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2009-11-25

As an entry in the long-running series of John Rebus novels this one charts an interesting time: that of the week of his retirement. Given that the series has been fairly true to time -- charting ...

Title: Swiftly Author: Adam Roberts Comments: 0 Review date: 2009-11-25

Book set in an extension of Jonathon Swift's Lilliputian universe, but really any load of giants and dwarfs would have done. The more factual representation of the mid-nineteenth century is actual...

Title: Hyperion Author: Dan Simmons Comments: 2 Review date: 2009-11-25

This wonderfully imaginative book is a play on the Canterbury Tales where the author uses the pilgrimage of seven people to unravel the details of an almost mythological creature (but actually quit...

Title: The Steep Approach to Garbadale Author: Iain Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-10-13

I've been avoiding Iain Banks since I read Dead Air, but just couldn't resist. It turned out to be a wonderful read, full of whacky characters which are eminently believable by virtue of their ful...

Title: Pushing Ice Author: Alastair Reynolds Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-10-13

This is a book of three parts, and while they join together seamlessly they are on altogether different scales and for all practical purposes take place in different universes. The first part conc...

Title: The Lovely Bones Author: Alice Sebold Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-10-13

A most delicate handling of a most atrocious situation: the murder of a young female family member.

The story is told from the vantage point of said female, in heaven. The book makes pains to ...

Title: Gradisil Author: Adam Roberts Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-01-23

Almost-epic, almost-saga space-opera needing outworldish science and political infrastructure for its success.

The book begins after the introduction of travel to Earth orbit by riding the ...

Title: Air Author: Geoff Ryman Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-01-23

Internet-in-the-head is introduced to the world. But for one soul in the world's most undeveloped village, the initial test goes wrong leaving her both permanently connected to the new web, and wi...

Title: The Stone Angels Author: Stuart Archer Cohen Comments: 0 Review date: 2008-01-06
A rubbish author goes to Buenos Aires, does some research into how the local police operate, and then writes a book about a rubbish author writing formulaic slush who gets killed by a combination of a...
Title: Perdido Street Station Author: China Mieville Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-20
First off, I don't like horror and I don't really like fantasy; this is fantasy-horror-adventure. However, the problem I have with this book is that it can be described in one word: sad.

The book...

Title: The Man in the High Castle Author: Philip K. Dick Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-18
I started this book with high hopes knowing that it was widely regarded as Dick's best. It turns out to be a quirky, dated near-Orwellian story about antique dealing in a world run by the Germans an...
Title: Capacity Author: Tony Ballantyne Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-16
This book uses a lot of science ideas which are very contemporary to the 20th century: von Neumann machines, Schroedinger cubes; maybe this work will age quite quickly.

A word the author likes to ...

Title: The Sunborn Author: Gregory Benford Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-16
Although this is a continuation of The Martian Race, the two books are in fact quite different.

In the former Gregory very carefully described the whole process of extra-terrestrial travel and the...

Title: The City and the Stars Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-16
Superb. Surely written by one of the very best SF writers at his very peak.

Mankind has encased himself in a sealed city, except that every million years a soul is let loose to test the water and...

Title: From a Buick 8 Author: Stephen King Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-16
This book has precisely the feel of one which has been written and produced in the shortest time by a well-established author.

The story is shallow -- a strange car turns up which every now and th...

Title: Newton's Wake Author: Ken Macleod Comments: 0 Review date: 2007-06-16
Sweet and sour, chalk and cheese. Ken has a simple writing style, like a Star Trek pulp, and dresses the story simply, but the plot in fact is deep and rich, and then somehow dumbed down (the book's...
Title: Thud Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 1 Review date: 2007-06-16
In ways this is the very best kind of science fiction you can get. Terry creates an alien civilization, imbues the various different lifeforms (dwarfs, trolls, werewolves, vampires, and humans) each ...
Title: The Martian Race Author: Gregory Benford Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-02-25

This starts out as a book which alternates mechanically from one chapter to the next; from the year of the launch of a mission to Mars, to the last days of the astronauts' time on Mars. I've come ...

Title: American Gods Author: Neil Gaiman Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-02-25

A book with a long beginning, no middle, and a very broken, disjointed ending. The beginning seems to take up two-thirds of the book, and continually draws you in, deeper and deeper. The plot is ...

Title: Jocasta Author: Brian Aldiss Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

A very self-conscious re-telling of a Greek play, the outcome is already known, and there are really no surprises, which is in itself a surprise because the book describes a universe of mythical mo...

Title: Nightfall (2) Author: Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

It is a push, but the scientific plausibility can be obtained. For example, six suns surround a planet, and change positions randomly every day. This would imply that the biological clocks of the...

Title: The Algebraist Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

It is a big book. Banks enjoys his writing. Starts out being in essence a quest for the holy grail. The final reveal is brilliant. Always hinted at through the book, but never anticipated. I c...

Title: Use of Weapons (2) Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

My second reading of this, and it's not the book I remember. It's a book basically about the life of a Culture whipping-boy, who gets sent into ridiculous war situations to sway the odds on one si...

Title: Shattered Icon Author: Bill Napier Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

Unchallenging, easy-reading Dan Brown-a-like without much excitement. An antique dealer gets hold of a journal from someone who sailed on a British Navy ship, which describes a journey in which he...

Title: Fleshmarket Close Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2006-01-28

Another installment in the John Rebus series. If it was the first one I had read, I would probably pronounce it brilliant and look forward to reading the other fifteen. As it is, the same old for...

Title: Frankenstein Author: Mary Shelley Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-05-30
This is my all-time favorite book. Despite its age, the science fiction is still fresh and far-reaching. But the real strength that this book has is the way that it uses science fiction to explore t...
Title: Angels and Demons Author: Dan Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-05-29

This is Dan Brown's best. People opposed to the Vatican have taken antimatter from CERN and hidden it in Vatican city, where it will annihilate in a few hours, taking all of Vatican city with it. ...

Title: The Time Traveller's Wife Author: Audrey Niffenegger Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-05-29

I have got nothing good to say about this book.

I found it really shallow and emotionally detached. Here's a woman who met a time traveller, had six miscarriages, saw him after being blown to p...

Title: Deception Point Author: Dan Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-04-02

I struggle to put a rating on this book. It is absolutely riveting and in parts had me on the edge of my seat, but on the other hand it contains ridiculous action and is a shallow political thrill...

Title: Digital Fortress Author: Dan Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-03-26

Quick comparison: Digital Fortress is even better than the Da Vinci Code. For a long time while I was reading this book I was making plans to modify the BookBlog software so I could award six star...

Title: The Full Cupboard of Life Author: Alexander McColl Smith Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-03-26

Another episode in the rosy life of Mma Ramotswe. Like all the others it is naive, quaint, quirky, mildly funny, and immerses itself in the tiny nuances of life in Botswana. The series has grown ...

Title: Set in Darkness Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-02-26

This is the most boring Rankin book I've ever read. It all takes place in Edinburgh, starts with the discovery of two bodies in the half-constructed parliament building, and then is basically a da...

Title: Different seasons Author: Stephen King Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-02-13

Well, this is the first Stephen King novel I've read, and it might well be the last. He may be the best selling author in the world, but this stuff is not for me. This is a book of four short s...

Title: The Da Vinci Code Author: Dan Brown Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-01-30

This is incredible. It has all the opposites in all the right proportions. There is hard action and deliberation, historical truth and fictional nonsense, heroism and anti-heroism. The story inv...

Title: Black and Blue Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2005-01-01
This book is too big for its own good. It seemingly involves a dozen police officers, a dozen criminals, and a dozen other sundry characters. At the beginning there are four plot lines, which eventual...
Title: Darwin's Children Author: Greg Bear Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-12-12

There are types of literature I'm not so keen on: disaster stories, planet-bound sci-fi, microbiology/biology/chemistry sci-fi. This book has all this, but I was hoping Greg Bear would provide some...

Title: The Caves of Steel Author: Isaac Asimov Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-11-28

Agatha Christie whodunit job this one. I'm not even sure that the plot relies on the famous laws of robotics, or even on the futuristic `womb city' landscape for its realization (it could probably ...

Title: Watchman Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-10-23

A reissue of an early Rankin spy novel. Surprisingly Ian tries and manages with some success to convey a sense of atmosphere in this book, as well as demonstrating his skill at developing character...

Title: Monstrous Regiment Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-10-17

This is not a Terry Pratchett book in the normal sense. Reading this after the others is like moving from the west coast to the eastern seaboard of America, and finding the pace of life taken more ...

Title: The Naked Sun Author: Isaac Asimov Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-10-02
Robot novel with layer on layer of brilliance. There are moments while reading the book that you feel it is actually quite simple - someone has coerced a robot into committing murder, despite the laws...
Title: The Wind from the Sun Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-09-12

Collection of about twenty short stories, one being long enough to class as a novella. Trouble with short stories and me is that immediately after reading them I get a glowing impression, and short...

Title: The Hanging Garden Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-09-12

This is as good as I can imagine crime writing ever getting. An established criminal is in jail, and an upstart has moved onto his old territory to take over. But the Japanese Yakuza (bit like Chin...

Title: Greed Author: Chris Ryan Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-09-12

Quick comparison: Chris Ryan is not half as good as Andy McNab. This book reads like it has been dictated to an average typist by a fourteen year old. It is, almost literally, only half there; ther...

Title: Eon Author: Greg Bear Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-08-27

First some shallow observations: the book is full of typographical errors, which must be a production problem as the author is clearly capable of impeccable work; the chapter breaks are erratic, so...

Title: Tears of the Giraffe Author: Alexander McColl Smith Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-08-13

More of the same after The Number One Ladies Detective Agency, but the form is still refreshingly naive, and the characters continue to engross. The storyline is equally simple, and although it is ...

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Author: Mark Haddon Comments: 3 Review date: 2004-07-24

Story about a spastic who's father murders the dog of a neighbour who has run away with his wife. When the spastic finds out who did it, he becomes scared and runs away to live with his mother. The...

Title: Maul Author: Tricia Sullivan Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-07-24

Up to the halfway line I thought I was getting the gist of this book. A man (in a world where most men have died out due to a plague) is held in captivity where he is being used to farm some bugs, ...

Title: The Martian Way Author: Isaac Asimov Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-07-04
This book is comprised of three excellent novellas, plus a fourth which fails to hold Asimov's credibility. It relies on the idea that in an advanced galactic civilisation everybody has forgotten what...
Title: A Question of Blood Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-05-29
Straight after my first Rankin read, I couldn't help but buy another (I didn't particularly want to buy another, just couldn't help it). These things remind me of Frank Sinatra songs: start with a flo...
Title: Resurrection Men Author: Ian Rankin Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-15
Whodunit set in the Scottish Police service. By far the best attribute of this book is the depiction of the characters: there are plenty of them and they are believeable down to the toes. Less good is...
Title: Childhood's End Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-10
Can't remember it.
Title: Garden of Rama Author: Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-10
Continuing adventures of the intrepid explorers. As usual the attention to detail is remarkable, and the science fiction is crisp and sharp. There are times (like when big birds start talking) when yo...
Title: Imperial Earth Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-10
Book about a family who own a mine on Mars. It's a long time since I read it, but I seem to recall it being pretty plausible science fiction, with an interesting plot.
Title: Rama II Author: Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-10
Brilliant expansion of the first book. A UFO reappears in the sky and this time they're ready. A mission is launched to get people inside, and the rest is pure Arthur Clarke; the attention to detail i...
Title: Rama Revealed Author: Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-04-10
Final and ultimate expansion of the Rama universe. Arthur still manages to keep the science fiction believeable, but this one really does teeter on the edge. It turns out that Rama is a big guinea-pig...
Title: Rendezvous with Rama Author: Arthur C. Clarke Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-10
UFO sighting leads to mission to investigate. The science fiction is impeccable.
Title: Against a Dark Background Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-04
Banks' darkest fantasy novel to date. The action takes place around a `Sea House' - actually a morbid monastery in which a sister has incarcerated herself and the other sister has to persuade her out ...
Title: Feersum Endjinn Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-04
Experimental in the extreme. In places the unorthodox style of writing makes this a difficult book to chew, but the rewards for perservering to the end are upmost satisfaction. The book introduces fou...
Title: Look to Windward Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-04
Iain Banks' biggest novel so far, describing many different cultures on several (very) different worlds. Some of them are so imaginative they have not even been seen on Star Trek!! There is also some ...
Title: Use of Weapons Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-04-04
Iain Banks' most shocking book to date. The action takes place around a land-locked battleship, whose weapons are still live. The plot is a tad meandering but there is some good human interplay and so...
Title: Richter 10 Author: Arthur C. Clarke, Mike McQuay Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-28
Forget that Arthur Clarke has his name on the book (although I admit I wouldn't have read it otherwise); the book was written entirely by Mike McQuay. I was expecting a tedious train of volcanic erupt...
Title: A Scanner Darkly Author: Philip K. Dick Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-28
A book of inhuman imagination. There is a banned substance called `D' (for Death) which isolates the two halves of the cortex, and eventually kills the addicted user. A police investigator finds himse...
Title: Ubik Author: Philip K. Dick Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-28
Probably the most abstract book I've ever read. Ubik is a substance with very many uses. Unfortunately I find myself incapable of producing a review which does the book any justice - I just can't matc...
Title: Contest Author: Matthew Reilly Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-28
At the outset, Matthew explains that this is the first book he wrote, and is the one that set off the others. Thus it is not as big or as good as the others. With these words I was ready to forgive an...
Title: Excession Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-25
By far and away Banks' best ever. This is my second most favorite book of all time (after Frankenstein), and contains all the elements top-notch sci-fi needs: rock hard science fiction, fast-paced act...
Title: The Player of Games Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-25
This is the simplest of Iain Banks' sci-fi novels, being not much more than a year in the life of a professional games player.

He finds himself making an epic journey to a planet in a distant reac...

Title: The Gods Themselves Author: Isaac Asimov Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-03-24
This is a book about a rather unique population: there are three sexes who melt into one another for procreation (and melt into solid walls for masturbation), and they are overlooked by a superior rac...
Title: Nemesis Author: Isaac Asimov Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-24
If I remember rightly: a planet is going to be destroyed by an asteroid, and the population fractures into two groups. The first climb on board another asteroid which is heading out to space, and the ...
Title: Nightfall Author: Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-24
Here's a novel plotline: a world is blessed with five suns, and the population have never experienced true nightfall. Then one happens...

This is a thoughtful study of how such a population might ...

Title: Captive Universe Author: Harry Harrison Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-24
One of those stories where a race of people live in an enclosed environment, and find their way out (think Logan's Run). The `universe' is the inside surface of a spinning cylinder (think Rama). The l...
Title: Acqua Alta Author: Donna Leon Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-22
This is a book with no mystery, no suspense, and very little atmosphere. Donna lacks the expressive power needed to make either the place (Venice in winter, during floods) or the people (an opera sing...
Title: Alien 3 Author: Alan Dean Foster Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
It's a long, long time since I read this, and I cannot remember the plot or style of writing. I seem to remember it as the sort of pulpish work you expect to be a spin-off from a film (or did the book...
Title: Technicolor Time Machine Author: Harry Harrison Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
Novel story this: someone invents a time machine, so a Hollywood director decides to go back and film the landings of the first white settlers on North America. The whole thing is told somewhat tongue...
Title: The Colour of Magic Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
The book that introduced us all to Discworld, and indeed the first of Terry Pratchett's books I read. I was totally mesmerized and couldn't put the book down until I'd finished it.
Title: Equal Rites Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
It's lucky for all of us that Terry Pratchett didn't insist on following the same storyline, or keeping the same cast of characters he had in the first two books. This book introduces a new-born eigth...
Title: The Light Fantastic Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
I read this one straight after being enthralled by the Colour of Magic. It continues the hilarity (and the storyline) the original novel kicked off, but halfway through this book I suddenly felt satur...
Title: The Lost Continent Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-21
This is probably the most hilarious of Pratchett's books I've read. In the prologue, he says `This is not a book about Australia; it is simply a place that sounds a lot like it'. There then unfolds a ...
Title: Komarr Author: Lois McMaster Bujold Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
Highly forgettable. [Maybe I'm not doing it justice, but it's a long time since I read it, and I remember it being not very memorable. Really.]
Title: Fisherman's Hope Author: David Feintuch Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
Another of the Seafort saga. Nothing on the original. I can stretch my imagination to believing that the earth is being attacked by aliens which look like fish, but when a book keeps going on about be...
Title: Midshipman's Hope Author: David Feintuch Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
What a brilliant start to a new sequel of books! The science fiction is soft but the universe is very original and the action is razor sharp.

Fleet is run along lines of the British Navy, circa 19...

Title: Patriarch's Hope Author: David Feintuch Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-03-17
Another of the Seafort sequence. By now Nicholas Seafort is an old man, always complaining about his aching knee.

None of the Seafort sequels I've read have anything like the sharpness of the orig...

Title: Mort Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
Another brilliantly unique storyline, and another relentless onslaught of hilarity. This time Death gets an apprentice, who basically tags along with Death for a while, having fun and adventure, and t...
Title: Sourcery Author: Terry Pratchett Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
Another Terry Pratchett, and another unique storyline. This time an eighth son is born to the eighth son of an eighth son, and that means he's got an unimaginable power (it doesn't normally happen bec...
Title: The Death and Life of Superman Author: Roger Stern Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-17
I'm not for one minute going to pretend this is anything serious, and I'm not going to give a serious analysis of it. It is an important installment in the chronicles of the life of Superman, but as a...
Title: Revelation Author: Bill Napier Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-15
Intensively clever retro-historical science fiction in which the protagonists are such likes as Eisenhower, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr and Schroedinger. I've never before or since read anything like i...
Title: Destiny's Road Author: Larry Niven Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-15
An interesting rather than exciting book. It's completely planet-bound, and it's one of those stories about two races with one holding rule over the other through the controlled supply of narcotics (I...
Title: The Other Side of Time Author: Frederik Pohl Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-15
Given the legendary status of the author, and the profound ideas that the title conjures up, this book's subject matter turns out to be rather mundane. It's nothing more than an alien abduction story,...
Title: Bios Author: Robert Charles Wilson Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-15
Well this is different! A science team visit a planet whose biosphere is so evolved that only indigenous microbes/viruses/flora/fauna can hope to survive. Exposed humans just get their immune systems ...
Title: Star Trek: Stargazer: Oblivion Author: Micheal Jan Friedman Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-14
An adventure story starring Captain Picard and Guinan (though he is not acquainted with her yet). The Stargazer (the captain's ship before he got the Enterprise) has been sent to extract a defector wh...
Title: Cosmonaut Keep Author: Ken Macleod Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-14
Strange, this. The book comes highly recommended by such likes as Iain Banks, the author has had several nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke award, and yet I failed to see anything special. To my min...
Title: Acorna's World Author: Ann McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-03-14

Believe this plotline if you can. There's this woman called Acorna (dunno why; maybe it's because she's got this great mass of white hair and a bloody great horn sticking out of her forehead), and ...

Title: Rules of Engagement Author: Elizabeth Moon Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-14
It's got everything that soft sci-fi should have: action and adventure, on-planet, off-planet and interstellar backdrops, strong human emotions and complex interactions.

Unfortunately it also has ...

Title: Speed of Dark Author: Elizabeth Moon Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-14
Having read this book, I'm glad I did. If I had known before I started what the subject matter was, I probably would not have read it. But I'm glad I did.

It's about a bunch of autistic people. Th...

Title: Consider Phlebas Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-13
Perverse as it may seem, even though this is the book that launched Banks' foray into science fiction, it is (at this time) the last of his books that I read after having read all the others. I can we...
Title: The State of the Art Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-13
A small collection of mostly short stories, with one `novella' from which the book gets its title.

The novella is significant because it recounts the time when the Culture comes into contact with ...

Title: The Mayor of Casterbridge Author: Thomas Hardy Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-13
Quite a funny idea this: a sailor gets somewhat inebriated and accidentally sells his wife. They go their separate ways. Some years later the ex-wife is visiting Casterbridge with her new husband, and...
Title: Tess of the d'Urbervilles Author: Thomas Hardy Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-13
There is a young lady called Tessa Derbyfield who lives a lowly (but happy) life working in the fields, in the shadow of the big house on the hill that belongs to the d'Urberville family. Guess what? ...
Title: Ivanhoe Author: Sir Walter Scott Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-13
I wish I had read this when I was fourteen years old! It is the only book of chivalrous knights I have ever read, and is a wonderful blast through the middle England of Robin Hood and the Black Knight...
Title: True History of the Kelly Gang Author: Peter Carey Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-12
Before I read this book I held as questionable the wisdom of novelizing historical events.

Peter Carey presents a story as if the hero was the narrator, telling things from his own perspective. N...

Title: Catch-22 Author: Joseph Heller Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-12
So this is where they got the drift behind M*A*S*H! It must be that all American general infantrymenʼs response to shell shock is abominable dead-pan sarcasm. Of course, itʼs easy to pull that off o...
Title: Midnight Author: Dean Koontz Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-12
This is one of very, very, very few books I didn't want to finish reading. Actually, I slammed it shut a third of the way through and threw it against the wall on the opposite side of my bedroom.
Title: Last Light Author: Andy McNab Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-12
This is the first time I've read one of McNab's books, and what a blast it is! It is a really suspenseful page turner. It can be said that the action is described with military precision, but Andy als...
Title: Lord Prestimion Author: Robert Silverberg Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-12
Fantasy's not my thing. I bought this book because I felt I should give the genre a fair chance, but it's just not for me. I can't say it's badly written or anything, I just don't like it.
Title: Dead Air Author: Iain Banks Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-11
This is a nasty, nasty, horrible book. It is fully of totally obnoxious characters, a straightforward plot which contains banter that you hear on the radio every day, and an ending which is totally go...
Title: Inversions Author: Iain M. Banks Comments: 1 Review date: 2004-03-11
To my mind this is by far Banks' worst sci-fi novel (which still deserves its three star rating!) The chapters alternate mechanically (and somewhat tediously) between two sets of people, and the plot ...
Title: Liberation Day Author: Andy McNab Comments: 0 Review date: 2004-03-11
Another of McNab's fictional adventures. The hero is contracted (in underhanded ways) by the American government to abduct three money launderers from around Monaco in the south of France, so off he g...
Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Author: Alexander McColl Smith Comments: 2 Review date: 2004-03-11
What a refreshment! This is one of only two books (currently) on my bookshelf which is written in deliberately simple english (at least I think it is deliberate!)

A woman living in Botswana throws...