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Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds brings us back to the Revelation Space universe with the magnificent Inhibitor Phase. It’s a story about sacrifice, redemption, rebirth and basic human bonds of friendship, love and loyalty that builds to a powerful conclusion. Now, a confession here. When I started reading science fiction seriously almost 20 years ago, Alastair Reynolds and […]

Filed Under: Reviews, Space Opera Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, alien life forms, consciousness, human survival, identity, inhibitors, memory, rebirth, redemption, Revelation Space, sacrifice

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Shards of Earth

Adrian Tchaikovsky has an immense imagination, and the scope of Shards of Earth gives it vast space. Literally vast since the novel and its strange crew of salvagers moves from one planetary system to another through the terrifying bent space-time depths known as unspace in what seem to be moments. But those moments are pure […]

Filed Under: Reviews, Space Opera, Taking on My SFF TBR Tagged With: alien life forms, altered minds, consciousness, family, galactic empires, symbionts

Machine (White Space 2) by Elizabeth Bear

By John Folk-Williams

Machine by Elizabeth Bear

There’s nothing like a scary family illness (fortunately all over with now) to take my mind far from blogging for a couple of weeks, and there’s nothing like a compelling Elizabeth Bear novel like Machine to bring me right back. Machine is the second White Space novel, following Ancestral Night, set in the Synarche universe, […]

Filed Under: Reviews, Space Opera Tagged With: alien minds, Elizabeth Bear, medicine, sentient beings, space governance, spaceships, Synarche

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

By John Folk-Williams

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

With a cascade of luminous and psychologically intricate prose, Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace picks up shortly after the conclusion of A Memory Called Empire. It’s another brilliant book that I find even richer than the first volume of this series on the Teixcalaan Empire and its remote satellite, Lsel Station. The two novels […]

Filed Under: Great Series Read Project, Reviews, Space Opera Tagged With: alien minds, Arkady Martine, communication, galactic empires, identity, language, love, society

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott: A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

From the moment an enemy fighter squadron breaks out of the sky for a sneak attack on a key industrial park, Kate Elliott’s Unconquerable Sun delivers an intricate yet fast paced adventure like few I’ve ever read. The 20 year-old Princess Sun, heir to Chaonia’s terrifying queen-marshall, Eirene, is put to the test again and […]

Filed Under: Great Series Read Project, Reviews, Space Opera Tagged With: alien civilizations, battle strategy, culture, galactic empires, Kate Elliott, religion, space opera

The Lost Solace Series by Karl Drinkwater: A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Lost Solace, the Solace Series by Karl Drinkwater

Karl Drinkwater starts off his Lost Solace series in a daring way. A deserter named Opal has stolen a ship with an experimental AI, which she names Clarissa, and sets off to a location in deep space. There she finds a mystery ship, a luxury liner abandoned and strangely altered. Could it be the one? […]

Filed Under: Great Series Read Project, Indie SciFi, Space Opera Tagged With: alien life forms, artificial intelligence, family, Karl Drinkwater, lost space ships, neutron stars, rebirth, relationships

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Something is struggling to be born in this damaged and inspiring world, and I believe science fiction and its speculative cousins are helping us figure out what it is. It’s pushing the imaginations of fiction writers to bend and twist familiar forms to try to capture the forces that are hurling us into a barely conceivable future. This blog is my small way of exploring the half-perceived … Read More about About

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