On the Lonely Shore by Silvia Moreno-GarciaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This short story is available at Uncanny Magazine, March 2019 and on audio at LeVar Burton Reads, September 2021
Delicately done fantasy tale of bitter sweet love.
Saturday, 18 September 2021
Review: On the Lonely Shore
On the Lonely Shore by Silvia Moreno-GarciaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This short story is available at Uncanny Magazine, March 2019 and on audio at LeVar Burton Reads, September 2021
Delicately done fantasy tale of bitter sweet love.
Monday, 6 September 2021
Book Review: The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni FaganMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jenni Fagan's second novel and my second read of hers too, The Sunlight Pilgrims
brings us an odd bunch of characters at a caravan park in northern
Scotland in the leadup to and beginnings of the most extreme winter
known. There's Dylan, a giant of a man, who has just lost mum and gran,
and the arthouse cinema they lived in and ran in London. His mother has
left him a caravan. He arrives ashes in luggage en route to send them
off in the islands beyond. Stella, a determined transgender kid at a
critical moment, already lives on site with her mum, a bit of a
survivalist who upcycles discarded furniture and sells it on as
shabby-chic. Barnacle, a hunchbacked old man who loves the skies is one
of their neighbours. He has had lots of money and lostit, drunk it away
and otherwise spent it all . These are marginal lives, rooted in realism
but their story is written which poetic touches of mysticism. Fagan is
herself a poet. The plot is relatively straightforward, somewhat slowly
revealed, but the book holds the reader. As a second novel this clearly
signed a future worth attention. I have her third and latest novel Luckenbooth on my to be read pile.
Thursday, 2 September 2021
Book Review: Under the Blue by Oana Aristide
I came across this book when I caught a few minutes of an interview with the author at this years Edinburgh Book Fest https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-fest... . She had started this dystopian novel before the COVID pandemic and it was published near the start of it.
It consistes of two threads, which seem quite disconnected as one begins to read the novel even though you know they must be, and as you read you think or might assume you understand how.
One concerns an artist, living in London, who immersed in his own work doesn't register what is happening to the rest of the world as it succumbs to a fatal plague. Harry, his neighbour Ash and her sister Jessie end up as the apparent survivors and start to head out across Europe into Africa to try to escape the impending nuclear meltdown as they run out of emergency power to maintain their cooling systems. En route they pick up a car, an old, well maintained indulgence Mercedes, they nickname Lioness.
The other thread are past and present computerscript conversations over the years between Dr Lisa Dahlen and Talos XI , an AI and between Lisa and her coworker Paul who are Talos's constructors.
It is through the conversations and thoughts of the two threesomes that the two storylines unravel and finally merge. These are philosphical, about the value of Art, of AI and the idiosyncrasies of being human and hold the ethos of the book. I thought it was well constructed and an enjoyable, quick read.
It consistes of two threads, which seem quite disconnected as one begins to read the novel even though you know they must be, and as you read you think or might assume you understand how.
One concerns an artist, living in London, who immersed in his own work doesn't register what is happening to the rest of the world as it succumbs to a fatal plague. Harry, his neighbour Ash and her sister Jessie end up as the apparent survivors and start to head out across Europe into Africa to try to escape the impending nuclear meltdown as they run out of emergency power to maintain their cooling systems. En route they pick up a car, an old, well maintained indulgence Mercedes, they nickname Lioness.
The other thread are past and present computerscript conversations over the years between Dr Lisa Dahlen and Talos XI , an AI and between Lisa and her coworker Paul who are Talos's constructors.
It is through the conversations and thoughts of the two threesomes that the two storylines unravel and finally merge. These are philosphical, about the value of Art, of AI and the idiosyncrasies of being human and hold the ethos of the book. I thought it was well constructed and an enjoyable, quick read.
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