Cat Fitzpatrick profile

Place of birth: Bury, Lancashire
Now living: Finchley, London

3 favourite authors

  • JRR Tolkien
  • Robin Hobb
  • Terry Pratchett

3 favourite books

  • Lord of the Rings
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  • Jane Eyre

3 favourite films

  • Aliens
  • The Shining
  • The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Cat Fitzpatrick's 91 reviews

The Real Town Murders by Adam Roberts

Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying.Alma's partner is ill, and has to be treated without fail every...

7.5/10

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Waking Hell by Al Robertson (Station)

Leila Fenech is dead. And so is her brother Dieter. But what's really pissing her off is how he sold his afterlife as part of an insurance scam and left her to pick up the pieces. She wants him back so she can kick his backside from here to the Kuiper Belt.Station is humanity's last outpost. But this battle-scarred as...

9.0/10

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Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them…Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's t...

6.5/10

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From Darkest Skies by Sam Peters

Five years after the murder of his wife and fellow agent Alysha, Keon Rause returns to the distant world of Magenta to resume work with the Intelligence Service.With him he brings an illegal artificial recreation of his wife, an AI built from every digital trace she left behind.She has been constructed with on...

8.0/10

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Blackwing by Ed McDonald (The Raven’s Mark)

I received an advanced copy of Blackwing through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank Ed McDonald, Orion Publishing Group and Gollancz.*Minor spoilers may follow*McDonald begins this tale by placing the reader in the Misery - following the action of Captain Galharrow and his crew of Bla...

9.1/10

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Stranger of Tempest by Tom Lloyd (The God Fragments)

I received a free copy of Stranger of Tempest in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank Tom Lloyd and Gollancz.I am not ashamed to admit that I was drawn to reading this book by how stunning Jon McCoy's cover artwork is. The second thing that made me think this novel was well worth my time is that it has one of the best ...

8.0/10

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Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

'Buy my stepfather's ghost' read the e-mail. So Jude did. He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books a...

7.5/10

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House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

Johnny Truant, wild and troubled sometime employee in a LA tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampano, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Report.Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotap...

8.0/10

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The Troop by Nick Cutter

For the scouts of Troop 52, three days of camping, hiking and survival lessons on Falstaff Island is as close as they'll get to a proper holiday. But when an emaciated figure stumbles into their camp asking for food, the trip takes a horrifying turn. The man is not just hungry, he's sick. Sick in a way they have never seen before. Cut of...

7.5/10

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Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan

She works for the Resistance - an organisation dedicated to improving the world by stealth; by tiny, incremental acts of kindness. Her life is a bit of a mystery. Truth is, Pearl doesn’t really know what she is, let alone who she is.And now she is on a pell-mell chase across the world. In pursuit of a killer wearing another man&rsqu...

9.0/10

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Friends of the Dusk by Phil Rickman (Merrily Watkins Mysteries)

When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found amongst the roots of a tree blown down on the city's Castle Green. But why have they been stolen?At the nearby Cathedral, another storm is building around a new, modernising bishop who believes that if the Church is to survive...

7.0/10

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The Handsmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I’ve been meaning to read The Handmaid’s Tale for a long time - it’s probably one of the most famous dystopian novels alongside Brave New World and 1984, and maybe because it’s so well regarded I hesitated to pick it up in case it didn’t meet my expectations. I’m very glad I did eventually get round to reading...

10.0/10

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A Quantum Murder by Peter F Hamilton (Greg Mandel)

Dr Edward Kitchener, a brilliant researcher into quantum cosmology for the Event Horizon conglomerate... but no good to anybody now, lying dead with his lungs spread out on either side of his open chest. The security system at Launde Abbey was premier-grade, yet a mercenary could still have got through, and plenty of people anxious to stop Kitch...

8.0/10

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The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano

There’s always been something about Cynthia’s next door neighbour. And when Miss Hatfield tricks Cynthia into drinking a drop of the Fountain of Youth, she finds herself immortal. She is the new Miss Hatfield and the next in line to the curse and blessing that is her legacy. But immortality has a price. Tasked by her predecessor with...

3.0/10

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Ringworld by Larry Niven

Ringworld starts off as nothing more than a brilliant blue eclipse, off in the deep reaches of space; a mysterious, ancient structure one million miles wide and 600 million miles in circumference. Who created the ring nobody knows, but an alien race known as Puppeteers (a tri-legged organism with two heads), threatened by its existence, want to ...

6.0/10

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Old Venus by George RR Martin

Old Venus - edited by George RR Martin and Gardner DozoisA collection of 16 short stories, this compendium aims to celebrate the golden age of Venus in sci fi writing, where this cloud-shrouded planet - dedicated to goddesses of love - was a swampy, Jurassic, rain-lashed world of dinosaurs, blue skinned Venusians, vast tr...

8.0/10

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The Monk by Matthew Lewis

The Monk, written by 19 year old Matthew Lewis in 1796, is one of the classic 18th Century gothic novels - famously mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey - and has had a significant influence on the genre due to its convoluted plot, salacious content and a vast array of gothic imagery.The Monk of the title is Ambrosio - left o...

8.0/10

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Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley

The Jackaroo has given humanity 15 worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo's previous clients.Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could forever alter human...

8.5/10

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Coming Home by Jack McDevitt (Alex Benedict)

Thousands of years ago, artefacts of the early space age were lost to rising oceans and widespread turmoil. Garnett Baylee devoted his life to finding them, only to give up hope. Then, in the wake of his death, one was found in his home, raising tantalizing questions. Had he succeeded after all? Why had he kept it a secret? And where is the rest...

6.5/10

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Night After Night by Phil Rickman

Contains scenes some viewers may find disturbing... Leo Defford doesn't believe in ghosts. But, as the head of an independent production company, he does believe in high-impact TV. Defford hires journalist Grayle Underhill to research the history of Knap Hall, a one-time Tudor farmhouse that became the ultimate luxury guesthouse... until tra...

8.5/10

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The Empress of India by Michael Kurland (A Professor Moriarty Novel)

Another of a series of Sherlock Holmes novels written with the focus on Moriarty instead of the better-known sleuth, The Empress of India takes us out of 1800s London and to the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire – India.A vast and extremely important shipment of gold is being transported to the Bank of London fr...

7.5/10

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The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin

George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality and he has no means of controlling this extraordinary power.Psychiatrist Dr William Haber offers to help. At first sceptical of Ge...

9.1/10

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Sherlock Holmes: The Spirit Box by George Mann

Summer, 1915. As Zeppelins rain death upon the rooftops of London, eminent members of society begin to behave erratically: a Member of Parliament throws himself naked into the Thames after giving a pro-German speech to the House; a senior military advisor suggests surrender before feeding himself to a tiger at London Zoo; a famed suffragette sud...

8.5/10

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The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs

In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it - from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly ...

8.5/10

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The House of War and Witness by Mike Linda and Louise Carey

In the year 1740, with the whole of Europe balanced on the brink of war, a company of Austrian soldiers is sent to the village of Narutsin to defend the border with Prussia. But what should be a routine posting is quickly revealed to be anything but. The previous garrison is gone, the great house of Pokoj, where they're to be billeted, a dil...

8.0/10

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The Darwin Elevator by Jason M Hough (Dire Earth Cycle)

The Builders came to Earth and constructed an elevator from Darwin, Australia into space. No one know why, or if they will return.It’s 2283 and planet Earth has been decimated by a virus which turns humans into mindless subhumans. Those who survived are either immune - a tiny minority - or managed to get within the several kilometre...

8.5/10

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The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman (Merrily Watkins Mysteries)

A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning - until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there has him consulting Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal.It's nearly forty years since the town of Hay-on-Wye was declared...

7.5/10

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The Knife's Edge by Matthew Wolf (The Ronin Saga)

When legends come to life the world trembles from a single name. Ronin. Once-heroes from a different age, they wield elemental powers… wind, water, fire, stone, forest, sun, moon, flesh, and metal.At the same time, a young man discovers his best friend with a sword in her stomach, and dark wings sprouting from her back. Guards rush...

7.0/10

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Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

It’s 2033 and the human race has obliterated itself. A few thousand survivors managed to get underground into the Moscow metro to escape the radiation and there is no way for them to know if anybody else on the planet had survived. Decades later the metro is their entire life - stations are city states where ideologies take hold and cartri...

9.9/10

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The Revenant of Thraxton Hall by Vaughn Entwistle (The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is 1894, and Arthur Conan Doyle has just killed off Sherlock Holmes, making him the most hated man in London. So when he is contacted by a respected medium and asked to investigate a murder, he jumps at the chance to leave the city. But the murder has not yet occurred - the medium, Hope Thraxton, has foreseen that she will die at a séa...

7.5/10

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The Infernal Device by Michael Kurland (A Professor Moriarty Novel)

Recently reprinted by Titan Books, Michael Kurland’s Edgar Award-nominated The Infernal Device is the first of his Professor Moriarty novels and takes the familiar Victorian detective fiction themes but casts Sherlock Holmes’ famous nemesis as the main protagonist.We follow an American journalist, Benjamin Barrett, who meets M...

7.0/10

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The Steampunk Adventurer's Guide by Thomas Willeford

Bringing together an action-filled story full of automatons, airships and a dastardly plot to take over the world and instructions on how to make your own gadgets, The Steampunk Adventurer’s Guide by Thomas Willeford (aka Lord Archibald ‘Feathers’ Featherstone) is a fantastically fun way to get immersed in the Steampunk world....

9.0/10

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Weaveworld by Clive Barker

Weaveworld is an epic adventure of the imagination. It begins with a carpet in which a world of rapture and enchantment is hiding; a world which comes to life, alerting the dark forces and beginning a desperate battle to preserve the last vestiges of magic which Humankind still has access to.It is a book of visions and horrors, a story of...

8.8/10

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The Drowned World by JG Ballard

This science fiction novel may be over fifty years old but it retains its neurotic potency even today with the descent into archeo-psychic madness of its few protagonists during fateful months in the Triassic neo-world of a submerged London.It is a novel where every word seeks to counter the titular sea; where the “colossal fireball...

9.5/10

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Wolves by Simon Ings

Augmented Reality uses computing power to overlay a digital imagined reality over the real world. Whether it be adverts or imagined buildings and imagined people with Augmented Reality the world is no longer as it appears to you, it is as it is imagined by someone else.Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and whe...

9.0/10

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The Black Guard by AJ Smith

The city of Ro Canarn burns. The armies of the Red march upon the northern lords. And the children of a dead god are waking from their long slumber...The Duke of Canarn is dead, executed by the King’s decree. The city lies in chaos, its people starving, sickening, and tyrannized by the ongoing presence of the King’s mercenary ...

6.0/10

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Drug of Choice by Michael Crichton (Hard Case Crime series)

On a secret island in the Caribbean, bioengineers have devised a vacation resort like no other, promising the ultimate escape. But when Dr Roger Clark investigates, he discovers the dark secret of Eden Island and of Advance Biosystems, the shadowy corporation underwriting it…Drug of Choice, another of the recently reissued Hard Cas...

7.5/10

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At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft

At the Mountains of MadnessHP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was written in 1931 as a novella, written from the point of view of a geologist, William Dyer, writing about a terrible event that happened on a scientific mission to the Antarctic some years previously. His aim is to prevent a separate mission fro...

7.3/10

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The Time Traveler's Almanac by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the largest, most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, here is over a century's worth of literary travels into past and the future. The anthology covers millions of years of Ea...

10.0/10

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Scratch One by Michael Crichton (Hard Case Crime series)

Michael Crichton writing as John LangeTo prevent an arms shipment from reaching the Middle East a terrorist group has been carrying out targeted assassinations in Egypt, Portugal, Denmark and France. In response, the US sends one of its deadliest agents to take the killers down. But when the agent is delayed in transit, l...

5.5/10

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Channel Blue by Jay Martel

Earth used to be Galaxy Entertainment's most lucrative show. The inhabitants of the Western Galaxy - the savviest, richest demographic in the Milky Way - just couldn't get enough of the day-to-day details of the average Earthling's life. But Channel Blue's ratings are flagging and its producers are planning a spectacular finale. ...

7.7/10

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Deathless by Catherynne M Valente

A handsome young man arrives in St Petersburg at the house of Marya Morevna. He is Koschei, the Tsar of Life, and he is Marya's fate. For years she follows him in love and in war, and bears the scars. But eventually Marya returns to her birthplace - only to discover a starveling city, haunted by death. Deathless is a fierce story of life and...

9.5/10

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Never The Bride by Paul Magrs (Brenda)

Brenda has had a long and eventful life, and she has come to Whitby to run a B&B and enjoy some peace and quiet. She and her best friend Effie like nothing better than going out for tea and keeping their eyes open for mysterious goings on in town. And what with satanic beauty salons, roving psychic investigators and the frankly terrifying ow...

8.5/10

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The SatNav of Doom by Will Macmillan Jones (The Banned Underground)

The Banned Underground – a rock band led by the jazz-loving saxophonist and troll, Fungus – are back and on tour. Meanwhile, The Grey Mage is once again trying to get his hands on the dwarf treasure The Amulet of Kings (the main focus of the first Banned Underground story which I reviewed) but is thwarted in his efforts, largely due ...

6.5/10

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Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (The Grisha)

“Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fo...

8.0/10

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The Clown Service by Guy Adams (The Clown Service)

Toby Greene has cocked up one too many times in the eyes of his section chief, a man with a surly disposition and a healthy dislike of our hero. Toby is therefore transferred to the department within the British Secret Service, dubbed the Circus, where all doomed agents are consigned to die - section 37. This is the department which deals with s...

9.0/10

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Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson)

The human population now knows that werewolves and fae exist, but not how powerful they are, and that they have their own way of dealing justice. After the revenge murder of a senator’s son, who had killed a fae, the fae have retreated to their reservations and declared them a free state. This makes life for Mercy more difficult than usual...

8.0/10

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River Marked by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson)

A newly married Mercy and Adam are attempting to have a peaceful honeymoon in Columbia Gorge in the Cascade Mountains, but trouble always manages to find Mercy and it isn’t long before the real reason they were asked to go there by the fae is made clear. A river monster is killing people along that stretch of the river, and it is Mercy&rsq...

8.0/10

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Shadows Over Innsmouth by Stephen Jones

Shadows Over Innsmouth - a collection of short stories edited by the prolific anthologist Stephen Jones - starts off with HP Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth in 1920s Massachusetts before moving through the decades in 16 subsequent short stories either based in the town of Innsmouth or related to the town’s strange inhabitants a...

8.0/10

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Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch)

They made me kill thousands, but I only have one target now.The Radch are conquerors to be feared - resist and they'll turn you into a 'corpse soldier' - one of an army of dead prisoners animated by a warship's AI mind. Whole planets are conquered by their own people.The colossal warship called The Justice of Toren ...

9.3/10

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Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson)

The fifth book of the Mercy Thompson series, our werecoyote heroine is still recovering from her most recent run in with the vicious vampire queen of the local seethe and powerful fae, as well as dealing with her new place as mate of the area’s alpha werewolf and looking after her unstable lone wolf roommate Samuel, when once more somebody...

9.0/10

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Blonde Bombshell by Tom Holt

The third planet out from the star was blue, with green splodges. Dirt. Oh, the bomb thought. And then its courage, determination and nobility-of-spirit subroutines cut in, overriding everything else, adrenalizing its command functions and bypassing its cyberphrenetic nodes. Here goes, said the bomb to itself. Calibrate navigational pod. Engage ...

8.0/10

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The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin

When railwayman Jim Stringer moves to the garish and tawdry London of 1903, he finds his duties are confined to a mysterious graveyard line. Perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him. And his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is trave...

7.0/10

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The Machine Stops by EM Forster

Well known for novels such as A Room With A View and Howard’s End, EM Forster also wrote a range of short stories, including the dystopic and quite brilliant The Machine Stops.In a distant future humans live in single cells underground, connected via a communications network which, despite being first published in 1909, strikingly p...

10.0/10

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Haunted by Kelley Armstrong (A Women of the Otherworld novel)

Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savann...

8.0/10

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The Executioner's Heart by George Mann (A Newbury and Hobbes Investigation)

When Charles Bainbridge, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, is called to the scene of the third murder in quick succession where the victim’s chest has been cracked open and their heart torn out, he sends for supernatural specialist Sir Maurice Newbury and his determined assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes. The two detectives discover that the ...

7.5/10

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Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

The burgeoning new economies in near-Earth space are fuelled by a steady stream of comets, steered back home by huge nuclear-powered mining ships like Bella Lind’s Rockhopper. They call it pushing ice.Bella and her crew are desperate for some much needed R&R – until Janus, one of Saturn’s ice moons, inexplicably leav...

9.5/10

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A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer

Henry Milliner thinks his days of being the school pariah are over forever when he attracts the attention of Wadham College's coolest Fellow Commoner, St John Clement, the Lord Calipash. St John is everything Henry isn't: Brilliant, graceful, rich, universally respected. And as if that wasn't enough, St John is also the leader of the...

7.0/10

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And the Devil Will Drag You Under by Jack L Chalker

Asmodeus Mogart was not a bad fellow, as demons go. Having gotten in trouble back in the home office, he had been assigned to duty on Earth. There he toiled, doing the kinds of things demons do and turning into something of a drunk. Then a rogue asteroid threatened to crash into Earth and destroy all life on the planet - demons included! There h...

7.0/10

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Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy

The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel mill. A manhunt ensues - though the authorities aren't sure if it's a man they should be looking for. Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the God...

9.0/10

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The Grim Company by Luke Scull

Set years after mages stormed the heavens and brought down the gods, casting their bodies to the world below where the corpses now leak wild, unpredictable and extremely dangerous magic, The Grim Company focuses on the aftermath of this feat, where three cities ruled by three immortal mages struggle for control over finite sources of magic. The ...

8.0/10

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The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss (Lucifer Box series)

Lucifer Box - the gorgeous butterfly of King Bertie's reign, portraitist, dandy and terribly good secret agent - is feeling his age. Assigned to observe the activities of fascist leader Olympus Mons and his fanatical Amber Shirts in a snow-bound 1920s New York, Box finds himself framed for a vicious murder. Using all his native cunning, Box ...

8.0/10

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Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris (A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences)

These are dark days indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing washed up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences - the Crown’s clandestine organization whose bailiwick is the strange and the unsettling will not allow its agents to investig...

8.3/10

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The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next)

There is another 1985, where London’s criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of a new crime wave’s Mr Big. Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing. Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to re...

9.5/10

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Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

It’s a world of anonymous hackers, codenames, women shrouded by veils, hidden worlds and things that can barely be fathomed by human eyes. It’s a world where the cutting edge of computer programming becomes a battleground against a dusty backdrop of centuries-old religious beliefs and caste systems.Alif the Unseen by G Willow ...

9.0/10

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Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

Rogue Moon, published in 1960 by Russian SF writer Algis Budrys, is considered to be part of the ‘New Wave’ of SF in the 1960s and 1970s, which was more focused on literary experimentation than hard science.An alien object has been found on the dark side of the moon by Americans and a transporter built to materialise volunteer...

9.0/10

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Blood Divided by Kevin James Breaux (Soul Born Saga)

The second of Kevin James Breaux’s Soul Born Saga, Blood Divided is set about twenty years or so after the war at the end of Soul Born in which Karn, the vessel of an ancient warlord’s soul and saviour of the kingdom of Illyia, died. Since then, the kingdom has been ruled from Kel Tora by King Ethan who married a pregnant Tala, Karn&...

7.0/10

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2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

The novel version of 2001 A Space Odyssey came to be because the director Stanley Kubrik wrote to Arthur C Clarke in 1964 to ask him if he had any ideas for a 'proverbial good science fiction movie'. Kubric wanted a story to then form a script for the 1968 film of the same name. Developed from a short story Clarke wrote called The Sentin...

10.0/10

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The Black Cloud by Frank Hoyle

The Black Cloud, published in 1957, is the first science fiction novel written by the astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle and an in a modern day setting charts the arrival of a gigantic cloud of gas into our solar system from deep space, and the consequences of its appearance.At the Palomar Observatory in California a young astronomer...

8.5/10

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The Secret Book of Sacred Things by Torsten Krol

The Secret Book of Sacred Things is the third novel by enigmatic author Torsten Krol, which takes societal themes from his previous two books and sets them against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic Earth where small communities struggle against the forces of nature and cling to ritual and primitive gods.Set as a first person narrative we...

8.5/10

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The Banned Underground: The Amulet of Kings by Will Macmillan Jones (The Banned Underground)

The Banned Underground follows the adventures of a brother and sister who have to stay with their weird aunt in the countryside when their mum has to go into hospital. This weird aunt is a witch, and the teenagers soon get sucked into a world of dwarves, magic, and a bog troll called Fungus that lives in her cellar and plays the saxophone....

6.0/10

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The Soddit by Adam Roberts

Bingo Sac Grabbins is asked by the coughing wizard Gandef and some (oddly Welsh) dwarves to help them relieve the great dragon Smug of his gold.We’re going all the way back to 2003 with this stocking-filler spoof of The Hobbit, written by novelist and parodist, Adam Roberts. Paradoxically it’s a sequel to Bored of the Rings, a...

4.0/10

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May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt

May Contain Traces of Magic is one of a long list of comic fantasy books by Tom Holt, published in 2009. It follows sales representative Chris Popham who - with a failing marriage and long hours on the road - comes to form an attachment to his SatNav. And have conversations with it. In a world where weird things are lurking just out of sight, Ch...

8.0/10

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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Turn of the Screw is a short ghost story published in 1989, which begins with a gathering of people at a country house at Christmas telling each other ghost stories. One member of the party, rather than making a story up, decides to send for a manuscript he has possession of which is the testimony of a governess, recounting events that had h...

8.5/10

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The Assassin's Edge by Juliet E McKenna (A tale of Einarinn)

A thundering climax to Juliet E McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series, The Assassin’s Edge, the fifth and final novel, goes all out as Livak and her friends make a final mission to the Ice Islands to put a stop to the aetheric mage Ilkehan.Things have been quiet on the island colony of Kellarin since Livak came back from the moun...

8.5/10

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Hit List by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Blake)

Recently released, Hit List is Laurell K Hamilton’s 20th novel in her Anita Blake series, following the life and many loves of Anita - a necromancer, vampire hunter, and police marshal, amongst others.This time she’s treading the line between working for the police and trying to keep them away from whoever or whatever is slici...

5.0/10

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The Warrior's Bond by Juliet E McKenna (A tale of Einarinn)

In the fourth of Juliet E McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series we are back with the chosen man Ryshad, elevated from a sworn man as a reward for his earlier investigations into the ice island wizards. This is set in the same time period as the third book, so whilst his love Livak is travelling to the forest and mountain communities to find o...

7.0/10

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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The year is 2045 and life in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, resembles scenes from every Hollywood sci-fi, dystopian flick you’ve ever seen. Chrome and glass skyscrapers soar into the heavens towering over buildings as grey and miserable as the dystopian, Bladerunner-esque weather. Society is high tech with glowing neon everywhere. Orphaned 18-ye...

9.3/10

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The Killing Way by Anthony Hays

It is impossible to criticise a novel of Arthurian Britain for historical inaccuracy given the man himself has come down to us wreathed in the mists of myth and legend; much of that through Mallory and Taliesin. This, coupled with the Author's Note, means that any indignation at the portrayal of Camelot, Arthur, his Knights and the surroundi...

7.2/10

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The Gambler's Fortune by Juliet E McKenna (A tale of Einarinn)

The third of Juliet E McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series, this continues Livak and co’s fight against the invaders from the ice islands. Livak has found a book of old songs in the wizard island of Hadrumal’s archives and is on a quest to recover translations for these songs and any new material that may reveal old traces of aet...

8.5/10

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The Swordsman's Oath by Juliet E McKenna (A tale of Einarinn)

The second of McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series, this starts not long after the ending of the first book where the thief Livak and the swordsman Ryshad returned from their terrifying trip to the islands of the Elietimm, ruthless users of aetheric magic.Ryshad is now the owner of an ancient sword, which is influencing his dreams, a ...

8.5/10

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Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke

Rendezvous With Rama, published in 1972, is one of Arthur C Clarke’s most famous works after 2001 A Space Odyssey, and begins his tale with a meteorite hitting the Earth in 2077, decimating the cities of Padua, Verona and Venice in northern Italy. This prompts the creation of SPACEGUARD for the monitoring of objects in space, with the aim ...

10.0/10

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The Thief's Gamble by Juliet E McKenna (A tale of Einarinn)

The Thief’s Gamble is Juliet E McKenna’s debut novel, the first of her Tales of Einarinn. It follows the fortunes of the thief Livak as she tries to make a quick pile of gold from a stolen item, but ends up getting caught up in a world of wizardry.Wizards have been self-exiled to the isle of Hadrumal after years of war turned ...

9.5/10

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Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes (Aeons Gate)

Adventurer.The name never uttered without scorn, they are long loathed for their knowledge of nothing beyond violence and greed and their utter disregard for human life, least of all their own.And Lenk, a young man with a sword in his hand and a voice in his head, counts them as his closest company.Charged with retrieving th...

8.5/10

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The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Blake)

The Laughing Corpse is the second Anita Blake novel, following the young vampire hunter and animator in her work for Animators, Inc., who’ll raise the dead with an animal sacrifice and a fee.Unfortunately, this time the job they’ve been offered is to raise a corpse that’s been dead a very long time, which requires a huma...

7.0/10

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A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K Hamilton (Meredith Gentry)

A Kiss of Shadows is the first of currently eight novels that make up Laurell K Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series, and introduces us to faerie princess turned private investigator Meredith NicEssus, who fled the Unseelie Court to hide as a human, calling herself Merry.Set in modern day Los Angeles, the faerie and humans live together, ...

7.5/10

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Soul Born by Kevin James Breaux (Soul Born Saga)

Soul Born is the story of the mage Opal, who possesses impressive magical gifts but is side-lined in the male-dominated academy, which she studies at. Hoping to prove her ability to those who pass her over, she jumps at the chance to finally prove her worth when the warlord Mustaffa threatens to invade.By taking the soul of an ancient war...

6.7/10

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Son of Heaven by David Wingrove

Son of Heaven is the first book in David Wingrove’s new Chung Kuo series, and sets it around 2050 in a world, which has suffered a complete collapse back into a roughly pre-industrial society. This is a reworking of the eight-book Chung Kuo series published between 1989 and 1997, which is now being republished as eighteen shorter novels, w...

6.0/10

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Warden of Greyrock by KV Johansen (Warlocks of Talverdin)

This is the third book in the Warlocks of Talverdin series, carrying on from Nightwalker and Treason in Eswy, and the story follows Maurey, a half human, half Nightwalker Warden of Greyrock. Greyrock is a stronghold on the island of Eswiland where Nightwalkers, people who can travel in the shadow world, retreated to save themselves from the pers...

7.5/10

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The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter by Steve Vander Ark

This is the second time Steve Vander Ark has produced a Harry Potter Lexicon, which is an encyclopaedia of the characters, spells, object and places from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with reference to the chapter and book in which they are mentioned.Vander Ark runs the Harry Potter Lexicon fan site and this is a book version of ...

3.0/10

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The Price of Glory by Seth Hunter (Nathan Peake)

'The Price of Glory' is Seth Hunter's third novel in his series featuring Captain Nathan Peake. The first two books, 'The Time of Terror' and 'The Tide of War', having taken Nathan from the beginnings of the war against France and a trip down the catacombs of Paris to the seas of the Caribbean to protect British inter...

7.0/10

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