THE EXPLORER by James Smythe

THE EXPLORER James Smythe (james-smythe.com) Harper Voyager (www.harpercollins.co.uk/…/voyager/Pages/Voyager.aspx) £12.99 Released: 17 January 2013 My name is Cormac Easton. I am a journalist, and, I suppose, an astronaut. In the middle of the twenty-first century, man strives, once again, to further his knowledge. Turning once more to space, the vessel Ishiguro is launched, its purpose simple: […]

COLDBROOK by Tim Lebbon

COLDBROOK Tim Lebbon (www.timlebbon.net) Hammer (hammerfilms.com) / Arrow (www.randomhouse.co.uk/…/arrow) £6.99 Far underground, deep in a remote area of the Appalachian Mountains, lies the Coldbrook facility where, for ten years, Jonah Jones and his team have been trying to open a doorway to a parallel Earth. Three weeks ago, they succeeded and have been watching “the […]

GUEST POST: On the Origins of SHADOW OPS by MYKE COLE

Name: MYKE COLE Author of: CONTROL POINT (SHADOW OPS 1) (2012) On the web: mykecole.com On Twitter: @MykeCole I’m very pleased to introduce our first guest post here at Reader Dad. Myke Cole, author of Control Point, the first book in the Shadow Ops series, has very kindly written an essay about the origins of […]

CONTROL POINT by Myke Cole

CONTROL POINT (SHADOW OPS: Book One) Myke Cole (mykecole.com) Headline (www.headline.co.uk) £7.99 In the aftermath of the Great Reawakening, the world is a different place. Magic has returned, and people across the globe are turning up Latent, Manifesting in any one of a handful of schools of magic. Those who Manifest in the legal schools […]

TURBULENCE by Samit Basu

TURBULENCE Samit Basu (samitbasu.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 On a British Airways flight from London to Delhi, each of the passengers has a vivid dream. In this dream they see the person they want to be, the ideal them. When the plane lands, the passengers discover that the dreams were a precursor to reality – […]

RAILSEA by China Miéville

RAILSEA China Miéville (chinamieville.net) Macmillan (panmacmillan.com) £17.99 China Miéville’s latest novel, Railsea, takes us to a strange new world, and introduces us to Sham ap Soorap, a young boy working as an apprentice doctor aboard a moletrain. In the course of a moldywarpe hunt, the crew come across a wrecked train, and Sham discovers a […]

THE TESTIMONY by James Smythe

THE TESTIMONY James Smythe (james-smythe.com) Blue Door Books (www.harpercollins.co.uk/…/blue-door) £12.99 At first, we thought the noise was just a radio. Suddenly, the whole world is filled with static and, as it dies away, the words My Children. No-one has any idea where the noise has come from, or to whom the voice belongs. Hours later, […]

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE by Stephen King

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE Stephen King (www.stephenking.com) [See here for information on The Dark Tower] Hodder (hodder.co.uk) £19.99 Released: 24th April I have mentioned before my love for the work of Stephen King, so it’s difficult to describe how excited I was to find his latest novel – a Dark Tower novel, no less […]

PURE by Julianna Baggott

PURE Julianna Baggott (www.juliannabaggott.com) Headline Books (www.headline.co.uk) £14.99 As a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, I am always excited to see what new worlds can spring forth from the minds of writers whose contemplations all start at the same point: what if the world as we know it ended? In Pure, Julianna Baggott gives us a […]

11.22.63 by Stephen King

11.22.63 Stephen King (www.stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £19.99 It’s a daunting thing, sitting down to write a review of a full-length Stephen King novel, for someone who hangs on every word the man has ever written. The problem is that remaining objective – reviewing the work at a remove, as it were – is […]