Walking To Aldebaran - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Walking to Aldebaran is a sci-fi novella from Adrian Tchaikovsky, whose other sci-fi works, including the seminal Children of Time have a very strong reputation. This one is an intriguing blend of stone cold horror, a well-voiced, convincingly characterised protagonist, and some Big Ideas which I’d like to see looked into a little more.

So, lets talk about the world. It’s a rock. An inhospitable rock, floating in a less-than salubrious neighbourhood of the solar system. A rock without much going for it at all. Except that once you’ve walked into the hoes in this rock, once you’ve left behind the world you know – there are rooms. Some of them are lethal. Some of them are decrepit. Some are filled with treasures. It’s like a lucky dip, where half the prizes are bear traps. And why would you want to go in there? Because some of these chambers empty out into somewhere else. You can walk a day or two through a rock that wasn’t two days across when you entered it, dodging horrifying creatures and environmental hazards – and come out in Alpha Centauri. Or…somewhere else, anyway. But the place is a maze, and a puzzle, and it’s not at all unlikely to stick something sharp in your ribcage. It also has a penchant for darkness, for tunnels you want to creep along very carefully, in case you run into something with more teeth and tentacles than thumbs. And for darkness, because if what you’re likely to see is teeth and tentacles, why would you want to.

All of this is realised in the protagonist’s monologue, a person who’s been trapped in this somewhat-deadly environment for a while. Their chatty, colloquial style overlays the bedrock tunnels, the sinuous tentacles, the bloodied claws, the necessary blood and murder and isolation and death with a folksy charm that manages to both lighten and accentuate the mood of creeping horror.

This is not a place for people. It’s a wilderness, with a razor under every rock, and a rattlesnake under every razor. The quiet, uncaring lethality is evoked with precision, and you can’t deny the emotional impact – the creeping horror, the disgust and terror that moves inexorably from the page to the reader.

Speaking of disgust and terror – the protagonist is our voice, our eyes in an absolute darkness. He is Gary, a human astronaut, from a mission dragged halfway across the solar system to investigate this rock that leads to elsewhere. And he is alone. As the text progresses, we discover more of the context around his isolation, about how Gary ended up wandering the halls. In the meantime, his voice is relentlessly, worryingly calm. It digs at the past with forensic razors, and it approaches the present with concern and a blend of enthusiasm and fatigue which is worryingly familiar. Gary is tired. Gary has been walking for a long time. Gary wants to see other people again, to see something other than the rock again. And we see some of the past with Gary, in his memory – in the mission to the rock, in the way that people interact with him then, in the stories he tells of friends and antagonists. At the same time, there’s a slow, crawling sense that Gary is telling a story, in a place where any mis-step can be monstrous, in order to stay sane. There are changes, movements in the dark. The reader is following their narrator down a rabbit-hole of terror and transition. Gary in the world is a person, a person you’d be more than happy to take out to dinner -a hero. Gary in the rock is, perhaps, something else. There’s a sublime artistry to the prose, making Gary at once sympathetic and troubling; the reader can feel his pain and loneliness and despair, and the madness creeping along at the edge of vision. We can see the golden idol, and we can see the feet of clay. This is Gary’s story, and we’re along for the ride – and for that, it feels real – often horrifyingly so.

The plot? Well, it’s the story of Gary trying to find his way home. Of walking through fire and water to find his people. Of defeating death-traps, and making friends (or making enemies). It’s the tory of how the walk changes Gary, how it takes what he wants and what he expects, and who he is, and gets inside him, changes his perspective. It’s a story of change, of the horrors and wonders of exploration and the horrors and wonders of humanity. There’s a lot there – the normal, the cold coffee and banter between astronauts on a mission, the strange - the crushing rocks and strange entities beneath the earth – and the liminal barrier between the two, as Gary tries to find his way home.

Is it any good? Oh my yes. It’s sharp, thoughtful and tightly plotted. The dialogue is pitch-perfect and the story will have you hanging on every word. It’s a clever story, too, with some high-concept ideas to play with which will reward curiosity. And it’s a multi-layered character-piece, in a story which demands character from both those in the story and those reading it. It’s a great story, and one I thoroughly recommend picking up.

Luna: Moon rising - Ian McDonald

Luna: Moon Rising is the third in McDonald’s Luna trilogy. The first two stories, set on a moon where everything is for sale, even the law, were tightly plotted sci-fi thrillers, packed with byzantine politics and some genuinely heart-pumping action, alongside interesting big ideas. The conclusion of the trilogy has the same notes, but turned all the way up to eleven. The short version, before we get into it below, is that in a time when it seems difficult to end a series well, this one concludes pretty much perfectly. If you’ve been reading the series, you’ll want to see how it ends – it delivers on all the promises made by the earlier instalments.

Getting into the grit, then. As with previous books, this one largely takes place on the Moon. The Moon is a free place, in the sense that everything is up for sale, or at least for negotiation, including the law. Every citizen has their balance of credit, and that credit pays for air, for water, for a roof over their heads. Without credit, they’ll literally draw their last breath. Fiercely independent, this is a culture where everything is believed to be earned. At the same time, there are several key families which own most of the infrastructure for the moon – from orbital transport to mining equipment. Those families act in an almost feudal relationship to their clients, keeping people in jobs – and therefore food and air – in return for loyalty. Of course that loyalty is also negotiable.

But the Moon is going through changes, and we get to see that here. After a massacre removed most of the Corta family from play, their counterstroke has delivered them into high office on the Moon, even though the survivors are scattered. But their new victory comes at the price of increased interest from Earth in what’s going on above their heads. Corporations have arrived, with rules, regulations, and a different way of doing things. They’re rapacious predators in their own right, the wolf at the door, and they aim to change the face of the moon.

That clash of corporate cultures is something the story does well, giving us clashing viewpoints, and a sense of the cut-throat nature of corporate maneuverings, as the Earthers start trying to extract value from the moon, and the Corta family (and their allies) try to fend them off whilst also stabilising the Moon’s politics. It must be said that in this case, cut-throat can also be taken literally. Corporate assassination is a way of life, and these are people playing for high stakes. There are a lot of negotiations, a lot of words spoken softly carrying big decisions with blades sliding under them. That’s the Moon for you, this one anyway – sharp suits and sharper knives.

Speaking of Earthers, while they’re trying to get a foothold on the Moon, we do get to dip below the atmosphere, to keep an eye on Marina, Ariel Corta’s one-time bodyguard, who gave up on the Moon to go home, before the physiological changes wrought by Moon living became too great. The perspective allows us to see the social problems of Earth as well – the seething overcrowding, the decaying infrastructure, and the governments turning to blaming the Moon for the woes of their citizens. Exploring these systemic issues happens in the background, as our bodyguard struggles to reintegrate with her family and a society which views her as a traitor for leaving, and for coming back. The personal story, as with that of the families as a whole, has an honesty to it; McDonald’s characters are, as a whole, complex and thoughtful beings who appear more than able to step off the page at a moment’s notice.

If the vivid and intricate worldbuilding makes the book seem real, it’s the characters which really make it come alive. Lucas Corta, now Eagle of the Moon, and very aware that he’s riding the back of a tiger in the form of the Earth Corps, is at once ruthless and tender, a man doing the best he can for himself and his family, while also carrying around a grudge so large it has its own gravity well. At the same time as Lucas is consolidating power, we see Ariel, whose relationship with Marina grounded her in the previous books, exercise a razor mind to try and extricate the Moon, and her family, from the consequences of her brother’s plotting. They’re the centrepiece, a loving, bladed, broken relationship, the mechanism which kept the pages turning in my hands like a metronome. But they’re surrounded by a vast cast – the other Corta family members, and individuals from the other corporate families, whose own agendas have been simmering, coming to a head somewhat explosively over these pages – and changing the face of the moon forever. But again, the heart is in the characters – in the nuance, in the small gestures, in the callbacks to events in previous books. In sweet words and quiet murders.

It’s not all clandestine meetings in smoky back rooms and family drama, though. There’s enough fast-paced action here to keep anyone happy. Indeed, there are moments here which will leave you heart in mouth, waiting to see what happens next – and this is a book which isn’t afraid to give the catharsis you need, as consequences fall heavily across the board. We’ve seen the wind sown, and Moon Rising is the reaping of the whirlwind.

This is a great end to a fantastic series, filled with real, complicated, human people, in a society which lives and breathes, with a story which will grip you from start to finish. If you were wondering how the Luna series turned out, you should go out right now and pick up a copy of Luna: Moon Rising. You will not be disappointed.

Seven Blades in Black - Sam Sykes

Seven Blades in Black is the start of a new fantasy series from Sam Sykes, who has form in the area of smart, character focused fantasy. Well, this book takes that form, and turns it up to eleven.

Sal the Cacophany is a bounty hunter, and a killer, and a woman with quite a lot on her mind. Mostly where to get the next drink from, and who, in her personal list of targets, to hunt down next.
Sal is also a fast hand with a gun, which is just as well, because her enemies – of which there are a great, great many – are powerful, magical, fierce, and deadly. Which, given she’s a woman with a gun and a bad attitude, means she has to be at least twice as quick as they are, just to stay alive.

Sal is an absolute wonder, and a horror. She’s obviously intelligent, masking behind a quietly folksy demeanour a determination and focus that could cut through steel like warm butter. But at the same time, there’s a lot that’s human in there. Sal is seeking revenge, and she has a list of people whom she has to kill to put things right. Quite what that revenge is for? Well, it’ll come out over the course of the text. What also comes out is Sal’s humanity. Sure, as we find ourselves observing a weapon of a woman, with a gun that fires shells with some very interesting properties, and a willingness to do almost anything to get the job done – we thing we know that woman. Sal the Cacophany, who bestrides her world as a rumour, a quiet voice, a silence in your skull. A myth, and a killer. But she’s also a woman who is able to feel friendship, to feel love, to feel connection to everything around her. The story gives her room to express that pain in the present, to let us feel for a woman living with some of her choices, and maybe making new, possibly worse ones. But another strand of the narrative takes us into her past, shows us a woman shaping herself, and the choices that brought her where she is now – in a wasteland, tracking down a cabal of lunatic wizards, one by one.

This is Sal’s story, and I won’t spoil it by telling it her. But I will say this.. Sal the Cacophany is a fractured, lethal bundle of smarting-off and fragile razor edges. A person who thinks they have nothing to lose, and is willing to give up on having anything else to feel like they can make that loss end.

It’s not all doom, gloom and revenge though. Did I mention the folksy charm? Sal has a wonderful voice, which is just as well, as the framing device lets her tell her own story. It has a slow drawl to it, and an immediacy and honesty of emotion and motive which leaves her feeling unflinching and real. But in that story, Sal is also her façade – a woman with a brain, not afraid to use it, willing to take any advantage, and unwilling to apologise for being herself. Also she’s fun. The refusal to bow in the face fo fear, sure. The almost anti-nobility of purpose, sure. But In between, there are the human moments – a cracked joke, a hug, a burgeoning friendship – which kept me turning pages, and which keep Sal grounded in her world.

Sal is a lot of fun to watch, running around, casting aspersions on the baddies, and trying to kill them. She does, no doubt, kick arse. And the action, when it comes, is frenetic and kinetic. But because of the human links, because of the way that the author has made Sal come alive, along with her friends, her loves and her losses – because of those human stakes, we care about the woman spitting epithets in the face of a magical storm, we care about the woman trying to drop the hammer on those she wants to see dead. We even care about those enemies, when they get up close and personal. This is a book which will give you all the intrigue and explosions you could wish for, but it’s Sal’s book, a book about people, and about the way they feel.

I mean, also it’s about mages blowing the living crap out of each other. And about politics. And about lost love and lost innocence and lost illusions, and about the crafting of emotional armour and about the lies we tell ourselves to stay sane, to stay alive. Sure, it’s all of those things. But at its heart is Sal the Cacophany, whose humanity makes it all work, and makes us care.

Sal lives in a broken world, a world where mages were once kings of everything they saw before them. A world where their servants rose up to overthrow their masters. And where those servants aligned themselves with powers and morals which might be even worse. While Sal is the individual face of loss and the cost of struggle, and of the necessity, sometimes, that drives us forward – around her, a war is playing out. It’s a hopeless, total war, whose only result seems to be the slow, grinding destruction of everything in grudges and blood. But as a backdrop, it’s a very compelling one. There’s a universe at play here, and we only see fragments of it – the alchemists who live for knowledge and construct devices and desires of their own devising. The blind priests and their hounds looking for wizards. The bargain every mage makes for his power, and the cost they pay. The rumbling mechanisms of the revolution, and the ethical dilemmas that people who don’t make decisions have to decide if they can live with.

It’s a vividly broken world, sure enough. One with the dry dust feel of a western, with Sal the Cacophany, legend, mage-killer, slouching along within it, with a magical six-iron on her hip, and a rather nice hat. It’s a world which you’ll live and breathe, as Sal kicks in doors, fights for herself, fights for others. As she tosses the dice between her revenge and the connections she’s made, the love she feels. As she tries to save the world and herself, one bullet at a time.

So what is it? It’s a fast-paced, arse-kicking magical western, with bullets that spit fire, and demons that will break your soul. It’s the story of wizards and revolutions, ad the way that conflicts spiralling out of control will affect those who just want to stay alive, and those who don’t know the cost of the choices they’ll be asked to make until it’s too late. It’s Sal’s story, a human story of life and love, possible redemption and possible revenge. It’s a compelling page turner which will keep your eyes on the page wanting to know what happens next.

It’s really rather a good book, is what I’m saying. I, for one, look forward to hearing more. In the meantime, I recommend you give Seven Blades in Black a try.

A Brightness Long Ago - Guy Gavriel Kay

I want to give you a quick reaction, which I put together a few minutes after finishing this book - hopefully that will convince you to give it your attention. If not, there's more below. But this was my first, unfiltered thoughts:

This is numinous, illuminating work. Expectations high, expectations surpassed. Very emotional. Going to be thinking about it for a while.

Not convinced? OK. Let's get into it a little more:

A Brightness Long Ago is a fantasy novel from Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s also a remarkably hard novel to talk about. That’s to its credit; the reason it’s hard to talk about is that there’s so much going on, so many layers, so many personalities, so much story, that getting a handle on it to explain why it’s so great has proven a bit difficult. So, lets start with this: This is a fantastic book, which explores life, death, sacrifice, age, the role of chance in history, and the role of people in the world. And that’s only a narrow sampling. 

This is a book with a lot to say. But it’s not just that, not just a pick-up-and-play philosophy text. It has characters whose lives feel as real as the reader’s own, whose loves and hatreds, dreams and duties, whose enmities and hopes all shape them, and the people around them. These are living, breathing people, with a rich inner life to match the political machinations and world events they find themselves entangled by. The world? The story’s set in the world of one of the parallel, almost-histories that Kay does so well, and I drew parallels with the renaissance Republic of Venice, which we’ve seen once before in another work of Kay’s.

So that’s the elevator pitch. Deep, complex, believable characterisation. Vividly realised, semi-historical setting. A story that draws you in and won’t let go, through all its tides of hope and torment. The narrative is about people, first – about the way their personalities, their ambitions their affections and enmities shape the world around them.

The world is classic Kay, in both senses. It feels like a lightly shifted version of Europe in the 1400’s, with a focus in a peninsula of warring city states with more than a passing similarity to Italy of that period. Regular Kay readers will have seen this world before – and even this small part of it, which was also heavily featured in his last novel, Children of Earth and Sky. New and old readers alike can delight in the lyrical prose, which builds a world up brick by brick, a world which feels instantly familiar, but with flashes of strangeness woven through it – a dream of sea-foam in the mortar. It’s a mark of Kay’s skill that every  tree, every leaf, every stone, every wall feels alive, a luxuriant tapestry for his characters to run through. And while the detail is there, the wider aspect doesn’t suffer. There’s feuding cities, driven toward conflict by politics negotiated on a knife’s edge. There’s mercenary armies on the march, with all the destructive potential that implies. And there’s joys, as well – horses running their hearts out, and unexpected friendships found between cups of wine.

This is a sprawling epic, engaging with difficult questions about ethics and systemic and personal morality, while also getting up close and personal – be that romance, individual crises of conscience, duels or any other of the plethora of human experience. This is such a densely packed story, and throughout, is absolutely captivating.

I normally go on about the plot and the characters a little more – here, I wanted to give impressions of the breadth and scope of the work, of the way it made me feel, of the depth and emotional integrity of it because getting into the detail quickly got a bit spoilery.

Suffice to say, if you’ve picked up a Kay novel before, this is another masterclass in fantasy from him; smart, emotionally raw, incredibly well characterised, wrapped in some truly beautiful prose. If this is your first step into this world – it’s fantastic. That simple. Pick it up and you won’t want to put it back down. It’s an ambitious, compelling story whose ambitions are realised, and which it’s a genuine pleasure to read.

If you need to know whether it’s worth buying? Yes. Stop reading this, and go pick it up instead. You won’t regret it.

The Kingdom Of Copper - S.A. Chakraborty

The Kingdom Of Copper is S.A. Chakraborty’s follow up to the really rather good The City of Brass, and like its predecessor, promises to be a tale of magic, djinn, high fantasy and low politics. Does it deliver? I’d say so.

The focus here is on the world of the djinn, individuals with magical powers, largely kept out of sight of humanity by magic surrounding the walls of their city of Daevabad. The djinn are themselves split into different tribes, and the history between the groups can be…fraught, to say the least. One of those tribes, the Daeva, ruled Daevabad for generations (perhaps unsurprisingly , given the name!). But relatively recently, they were overthrown in a bloody revolution by the Geziri tribe, who now rule instead. The conflict between these two tribes is tied to the personal relationships of their representatives, and the political machinations for power, for control, and even for personal agency, are at the core of the book.

The Daeva have Nahri, whom most of you probably remember from the first book. Nahri grew up on the streets of Cairo as a quick-fingered urchin, a con-artist with a penchant for medicine. Now she’s the leader of a group that sits out of power, and hasn’t forgotten about it. She can read people, and isn’t afraid to assert herself in the face of a misuse of authority. Nahri’s own qualms over being a face of that authority are perhaps less pronounced now, as she grows into the role previously thrust upon her. Still, there’s a strain of compassion, of a humanitarian nature and a desire to find a better, more co-operative way about her. Where others will seek to take and hold control through sheer ruthless will, Nahri is trying to build something different. The text uses Nahri’s struggles to look at themes of authority and moral certainty, as well as unpick toxic narratives of historical grievance. Every time she stands against those who want to start fights over old battles, or claim authority based on historic atrocities, I couldn’t help but smile. This is an intelligent story with a strong message, and it wants to engage the reader in a dialogue about the big issues – even when it’s using magical monsters to do it.

Alongside Nahri is Ali, prince of Daevabad, scion of the Geziri tribe. Ali has, in the past, been a bit of a stick in the mud. But hurled from the corridors of power after the end of the previous story, he’s out in the world, meeting new people and making new friends (and enemies). This requires a little more flexibility, sure. But Ali’s strength has always been that he’s basically a decent person, just with a moral code that makes him a pain for everyone else to be around. Still, he’s dealing with new issues of his own, and one can’t help but empathise as a man once certain of everything is left wading in  extremely uncertain waters. That he has an emotional entanglement with Nahri is almost inevitable; that they approach it like adults, emotions captured behind walls of silence and political necessity, is a delight. Not for them (obviously) but for the reader, watching their affection wax and wane in the face of the social and political moves they find their duty forces them to make. It’s a credit to the author that this intense masked affection seems to simmer on the page, just looking for an opportunity to boil over. It’s a fraught relationship, but its intensity and complexity feels genuine; it’s a lot of fun to read.

The same can be said of much of the rest of the book, really. The world-building is rock solid.  Daevabad, with its thriving neighbourhoods, social tensions and gossamer strands of amazing magic, is guaranteed to astound, whilst also keeping you grounded. It’s a playground for its people, for Nahri and Ali as they struggle with both each other, and the existing power structure of the city, which isn’t entirely accepting of young people with new ideas – to put it mildly. In particular, Ali’s family, the rulers of Daevabad, somehow manage to be astonishingly broken, often terrible people – but even as they shape the system which oppresses those around them, it’s possible to see that once they were the young people with the fresh ideas, and that the same system they now operate has ground them into new shapes – and is continuing to do so. Sure, Ali’s father is a tyrant, one who views half the city, whose heritage is mixed, as an inconvenience at best, and sure, he has a tendency to brutally execute dissenters. But he’s also terribly pragmatic, and seems to genuinely want to bring about a détente between his ruling family and the Daeva. Siimiilarly, Ali’s brother is often drunk, with a tendency to indulge a vicious temper, and perhaps a smidge of the jealous about him; and yet he loves his family, and will fight for them.

These are complicated people, living in complex times.  They’re driven by wants and needs that feel genuine, their hopes and fears, pain and love brought to life for us on the page. There’s so much more, of course – I’ve avoided going into it here for the sake of spoilers. But there’s a lot going on, and it’s presented in a precision crafted, captivating story which will capture your heart. This is a more than worthy sequel, and if you’ve been waiting like I have to return to Daevabad, let me assure you: it’s been worth the wait.

One Word Kill - Mark Lawrence

One Word Kill is the start of a new science-fiction series from Mark Lawrence, whose other series I’ve always found very enjoyable. That meant this book landed with the weight of expectation behind it. I’m bound to say that those expectations were met. This is a book about a lot of things; pain, death, growing up. The things you choose to keep, and those you leave behind. It’s about being a teenager, and the intensity of feeling that entails, and about chosen families, and those you’re born into. It’s about living in the London of the eighties, about being better, about recognising evil and stepping up to fight it.

It’s a book about a lot of things. Many of them contradictory, all of them fascinating.

The centre-point for this whirlpool is Nick. Nick is a geek before I’s cool. A smart kid, just trying to get through the day without being bullied, and doing so with the help of his friends. Nick is also, somewhat inconveniently for him, dying. The voice of the story is Nick’s, and it’s one which is both fierce and exhausted, unsure of itself and uncertain of its decisions. There’s a fragiliy there which I suspect many readers will recognise from their own youth, fronted by a black irony at the state of the world, and a determination not to appear fragile which will…also, probably be familiar. In any case, this is top-notch character work. As Nick fights against the disease slowly eating him alive, you can feel the tension in his bones, the mordant humour overlaying a rising realisation of how own mortality. The persistence in refusing to break down in front of his friends is so sharp I could almost taste it. Nick is, with all the prideful flaws of adolescence, and all its joys, a thoroughly believable, entirely human character.

In this he’s helped by being surrounded with an absolutely scintillating ensemble cast. Nick’s posse is a wonderful agglomeration of socially awkward spods with serious intellectual focus. They’re smart enough to know people don’t like them, and to have organised coping strategies for it. These are less enlightened times, as well, and there are undercurrents here of facing the sort of prejudice which would be unacceptable these days. In any event, the awkward squad are funny, naïve, charming – and the loyalty which binds them to Nick, and to each other, is strong enough you can almost see it flickering in the air as they talk.

Which they do quite a lot. They get together to play Dungeons and Dragons, and these gatherings are the social core of the story. There’s a lot of wizards, barbarians, and orc slaying going on. But it’s heartwarming in its portrayal of outsiders who just want to be together and have a good time, and behind the rush of nostalgia for those of us who spent our weekends the same way, here’s a genuine emotional depth and warmth that makes you smile as you turn the pages.

On a similar note, the villains are wonderfully repulsive, the sort of bullies and sociopaths who infest every school and every neighbourhood. As Nick and his friends confront their adversaries, it’s almost possible to feel the terror they feel, realising that the enemy has no moral compunctions, and is more than happy to give them a good kicking, and maybe something else. These antagonists are individuals radiating the kind of electrically unhinged danger or acceptance of violence that will eventually leave them in jail; but Nick and his friends need to decide if they’re willing to be the ones broken during the process. I really do want to shout out on this one – these are spot on portrayals of lost teens and people with something a little broken inside them, the one possibly blending into the other. They are Not Nice, and I felt an escalating tension and sense of danger on every page in which they appeared. Even that is nostalgic, in its way – and again, absolutely pitch perfect, a portrayal of unsullied malevolence which makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and the pages go by faster in the hope you’ll see what happens next.

Speaking of nostalgia, the world-building is top notch. London in the eighties was sitting on the cusp of something, a bright-lights city where it was possible to make a lot of money very quickly, and equally, where social equality and social cohesion were taking second place to the acquisition of cold, hard cash. The story takes place throughout London – on packed, sweltering Tube trains, along the banks of urban rivers. In decaying tower blocks, where the delicate scent of urine mixes with despair. It’s cold a lot fo the time, rains a lot of the time, and often feels like a grey morass. The text doesn’t shy away from that vision, embraces it, gives us a London which makes the bones ache and the pocket lighter – but it shows off the heart, as well. There’s the neighbours in the towers, who will look out for each other even while they turn a blind eye to the dealers on the stairwell; there’s the streets that will come out in support of their neighbours, too. There’s the mist rising off the parks and making the city into a liminal space every morning. And there’s the scalpel blade of technology, of skyscrapers and research labs pushing the city into the future.

All of it is here, between the lines or on the page, and it makes the space in which Nick walks feel dynamic and alive. Here, the idea of London in that one moment is captured on the page, and it feels real, from the tops of the towers down to the much clogging the drains. If the characterisation is top-notch, the world-building, in constructing that recognisable place, is superb.

So, it’s got some cracking characters, ones you’ll love and ones you’ll love to hate. But what about the story?

As usual, no spoilers. But I’ll say this It works. In part it’s a coming of age, as Nick tries to deal with his own imminent mortality, and with the struggles he’s having with his friends, and even (horrors), romantically. But it’s also got a personal dimension, as Nick and the gang work to save, if not the world, at least themselves – while figuring out who exactly they are. There’s some wonderful dialogue, which made me chuckle at its teen awkwardness in one breath and wrung my heart at its genuine, raw emotion in the next. It’s a story which opens strongly, and one which won’t let you go. It’s a story about making hard choices, and about growing up. It’s a story about deciding who you are, or want to be. And it’s an absolutely cracking read, for that. I genuinely couldn’t put it down once I started, and if the characters and the world helped build that, the need to see what happened next, the way the story pulled me into the world, the way I was gripped by every page – that surely put the capstone on it.

This is, to be simple about it, a really enjoyable, clever work of science fiction, which invites you to wrestle with some big ideas alongside a compelling and personal story. Pick it up, you won’t regret it.

The Poison Song - Jen Williams

The Poison Song is the finale to Jen Williams’  ‘The Winnowing Flame’ trilogy. The previous two books were great fun to read, whilst also having a lot of heart, so the conclusion had rather a lot to live up to. Fortunately, this is a book which delivers the goods:  characters who matter, who feel real, in a backdrop of action, adventure, and saving the world.

The characters sit at the heart of the text here, and if you’re coming back to the series after some time away, they’ll feel like old friends. Tor, who I may have previously described as “a vampire elf with a drinking problem” is struggling to take responsibility in a world looking for heroes. He’s wracked by guilt, both institutional and personal. The institutional is perhaps easier – Tor is an Eboran, and they have a recent history of massacres in order to drink the blood of others, and keep themselves alive. Tor was too young to be part of that history, but as we sit beside him, it can be felt in his bones. Then there was the plague, which ravaged the Eborans who drank human blood – and the slow, tortured demise of an entire grand civilisation. Tor’s regrets evoke a certain amount of pathos; even as he claims to be a rake, a ne’er-do-well who accompanies Vintage in search of good wine and good company, the light behind his eyes is dimmed in remembrance. Tor also does rather a good line in affectionately edged banter with Vintage, and his relationship with Noon is something else. So yes, the Tor here is one on the cusp of change, an inch from either plunging over a cliff, or learning to fly. Either way, his scenes are always an affecting, albeit sometimes painful, read.

Vintage, whose friendship with Tor and Noon is the keystone of the text, is also a delight to read. She absolutely seizes any page that she’s on. Bluff, no-nonsense, and utterly unwilling to let either of the others indulge in their worse natures. But behind the façade we can catch glimpses of a compassionate woman, a romantic whose travails have left her a little vulnerable; admittedly, that vulnerability is masked by some top-marks sarcasm and a penchant for shooting things that annoy her with a crossbow. I have, it must be said, a lot of time for Vintage, who manages to show off some of the fragility inherent in humanity, while also demonstrating the benefits of emotional honesty and a quick trigger finger. Say what you will about Tor, moping around looking for excuses for things to be his fault; Vintage takes things to heart, yes, then deals with them and cracks on. She’s an absolute joy to read, a masterclass in character with heart and soul.

Then there’s Noon. If Vintage is the heart of the group, Noon is the fire in the blood. She has passion and enthusiasm and a courageous stubbornness which lets her leap off the page fully-formed. Noon is captivating – in part because of her nuanced, awkwardly growing and from time to time bloody difficult relationship with Tor. Seeing the two of them struggle to deal with the emotional connections they’ve built around each other is by turns painful, amusing and aggravating – but the feelings are recognisable and genuine. But Noon isn’t just there to keep Tor company. She has her own agenda, her own goals. Getting into it would be a bit spoilery, but suffice to say, Noon is fierce. She absolutely won’t be denied, and her ability to throw literal fire to accentuate her points is one that is likely to come in handy. As a survivor of a brutal regime, Noon is also cautious, coming out of her protective shell and looking around to work out what to do next – and determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

They’re backed by a fantastic ensemble cast, whose relationships and actions feel organic, feel human. These aren’t faces put on a page to be devoured by a baddie, but living, breathing people who sacrifice, who wake up with a bad hair day, who love and feel as much as we do. A shout out to the villains in particular. The slithering Queen of the Jure’lia remains terrifyingly alien, with a brutal precision that invites horror, and a curiosity about humanity which hints at possibilities unspoken. Hest, Tor’s sister, and her war-beast are as conflicted and broken as ever, a pair looking to make something of or for themselves, to doom a world which didn’t want their help in saving itself. They’re complicated people, capable of kindness, of anger, of violence, and of some very poor decision making. A triumph of the text is giving us antagonists who can be loathsome and understandable by turns, whose wounds sit beneath the surface and shape their actions, even as the reader tries to talk them out of it (well, I certainly did, turning pages in the hope of redemption).

Alright, you say, the characters are fabulous, but what about the world? Well, these players are what drives the finale, as the author draws a world on the edge of destruction. From lush jungle to plains scarred by the touch of the Jure’lia, to the towers of the witches of the Winnowry, this is a world filled with small touches that make it feel alive, make it feel worth saving. The broken towers of the Eborans carry a poignant history and are the sign of a price to be paid; the fortified cities of the plains a sign of a military might that hopes to avert catastrophe, the scars on the ground a reminder of the absolute consequences of defeat

And the story? I mean, no spoilers, but it is the last book after all. This one pulls no punches. It’ll pull your heartstrings taut with tension, then emotionally gut you with no hint of an apology. Or it’ll have you turning pages trying to beat a ticking clock, trying to find out what happens next; be prepared to miss out on some sleep, is what I’m saying. It’s a story which has spend two books giving you emotional investment in the characters and their world, and I can only assure you that the investment absolutely pays off. There’s kinetically elaborate fight scenes that left me feeling every slash of a blade, and heartfelt talks that could bring you to tears. Prices are paid, costs borne, and in the end, it’s a story which you’ll both want to tear through to the finish, but also not want to be over.

As endings go, this one’s an absolute cracker. Pick it up, you won’t regret it.