Science Fiction & Fantasy

December 2007

The title-underlined links will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Lord of ruin : a tale of Malus Darkblade by Dan Abnett & Mike Lee. (2007)
"In the world of Warhammer, no race is as cruel and treacherous as the dark elves, and no member of this race is more infamous than Malus Darkblade. Now that he has retrieved the five missing artefacts, Darkblade must return them to the daemon before the year is up. But can Tz'arkan be trusted to honour his part of the bargain or will he try to trick Darkblade one last time?" (Amazon)

Mainspring by Jay Lake. (2007)
"This is the story of a young clockmaker's apprentice. Visited by the Archangel Gabriel, he is told that he must take the Key Perilous and rewind the Mainspring of the Earth. It is running down, and disaster will ensue if it's not rewound. From innocence and ignorance to power and self-knowledge, the young man will make the long and perilous journey to the South Polar Axis, to fulfil the commandment of his God." (Amazon)

Making money by Terry Pratchett. (2007)
"Who would not to wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and the bank next door? It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There's something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A 300 year old wizard is after his girlfriend, he's about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins Guild might get him first. In fact lot of people want him dead, and every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies. Everywhere he looks he's making enemies." (Amazon)

Roadside picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. (2007)
"Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the Zone and the thriving black market in the alien products. Even the nature of his daughter has been determined by the Zone and it is for her that Red makes his last, tragic foray into the hazardous and hostile depths." (Amazon)

Axis by Robert Charles Wilson. (2007)
"Lise Adams is searching for the secret of her father's disappearance. She ends up trekking across the desert with Turk, who runs a tourist plane and whom she met in the midst of her divorce, and Diane, who, like many of her father's associates, is a Fourth, whose lifespan has been artificially extended. Fourths are illegal on Earth and have a complex series of cultural checks placed on them on Mars. But some of the people Lise is after are further out on the fringe than most Fourths." (Amazon)

Acorna's children : first warning by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. (2006)
"Khorii, the adolescent daughter of Acorna , has her share of problems while at school on an asteroid that serves as a refuge for war orphans after her parents go off to use their Linyaari healing powers against a deadly plague. Khorii's roommate doesn't like her feline companion; a bully doesn't care for her android foster brother, Elviiz; and she learns about human nudity taboos the hard way. Matters only get worse as Khorii has to use her powers to save some fellow students' home planet, then keep bureaucrats from quarantining the asteroid's supply ship and the aforementioned bully from hijacking it." (Amazon)

Auralia's colors : a novel, by Jeffrey Overstreet. (2007)
"The kingdom of Abascar is cloaked in gloom, sentenced to an ongoing "wintering" by a jealous queen, in which colours have been done away with and are only allowed in the royal court. But young Auralia, found as a baby by the river and raised by outcasts, has a talent for finding colours everywhere and bringing them to life in a way no one has ever seen before. The fate of the kingdom rests on what Auralia chooses to do and how the king responds." (Amazon)

Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder. (2007)
"Virga, is the vast enclosed realm containing a miniature cosmos of floating worlds, wheel-like townships and intriguing mysteries about the construct's origins and creators. Heated and lit by numerous artificial suns, the individual populations have evolved on divergent paths. When the delightfully amoral Venera Fanning finds herself on Spyre, an ancient and decaying cylindrical world that's slowly breaking apart, and realizes the Key of Candesce could not only unlock the secrets of a long-lost technology but also destroy entire worlds, she inadvertently disrupts Spyre's delicate political balance and rigid cultural mores and ignites a revolution." (Amazon)

The Larion senators by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon. (2007)
"This is the third instalment of this classic portal fantasy. Returning to the land of Eldarn, the race has begun to save the people of two worlds." (Amazon)

The year's best fantasy and horror 2007 by edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. (c2007)
"There are numerous ghost stories in Datlow's horror picks, including Christopher Harman's The Last to Be Found, Stephen Volk's, 31/10, Stephen Gallagher's, The Box and Glen Hirshberg's The Muldoon, whose spooks are equal parts psychological and supernatural. Link and Grant's eclectic fantasy picks range from the haunting magical realism of Geoff Ryman's Hugo and WFA nominated, Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter to the light urban fantasy of Ellen Klages's In the House of Seven Librarians, Jeffrey Ford's blend of whimsy and the macabre in The Night Whiskey." (Amazon)

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