Julia

A Very Unimportant Officer

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Genre

Review

Subtitled ‘Life and Death on the Somme and Passchendaele', and first brought to public attention on the BBC's Today programme, this book is an edited version of the World War I diaries of infantry officer Captain Alexander Stewart.

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The Enchanter's Forest

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Genre


Review

Subtitled A Hawkenlye Mystery, this novel is the tenth in a series of mystery stories set in the late twelfth century.

Readers addicted to the series will certainly enjoy the latest addition, in which a familiar cast of characters including the Abbess Helewise, the knight Josse d'Acquin and his mysterious lover Joanna unravel the events surrounding the death of one Florian of Southfirth, events involving a possibly fraudulent set of miracle working bones.

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Anita Mason 2008 on 'The Right Hand of the Sun'

Interviewee(s)

Interview

Julia very much enjoyed reading 'The Right Hand of the Sun ' and did the interview with Anita Mason for us.

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J: In your Acknowledgements, you mention ‘intractable difficulties' associated with the writing of this novel. Could you say what these were, and how you managed to surmount them?

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Swiftly

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Genre

Review

Adam Roberts is described on the back cover of his latest book as ‘one of the UK's most critically acclaimed SF writers', and Swiftly is a hugely ambitious work in both scope and length (406 pages).

Although the author's record suggests that it should be classified as SF, it ranges beyond the UFO/Galactic Beings scenario which I personally found one of the less satisfying, if logically necessary, elements of the novel, to intense literary allusions and some intriguing historical counter-factuals.

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The Right Hand of the Sun

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Genre

Review

The Conquistadors and their exploits, not to mention their exploitation of the native Empires of South America, have inspired daunting numbers of novels, plays, films and works of graphic art. Anita Mason's blockbuster (501 pages in a weighty hardback with a striking gold-accented Aztec-style dustjacket) has to rank amongst the most adventurous and thought-provoking examples of this genre.

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Will

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Genre

Review

‘After 400 years, Shakespeare breaks his silence', proclaims the front cover of Christopher Rush's 459 page stream of consciousness reconstruction of Shakespeare's deathbed thoughts and memories. Yes, ‘Will' is a quasi Elizabethan pun, since Will (Shakespeare) and his gourmandising Stratford lawyer Francis Collins are engaged in drawing up the famous will in which Anne Hathaway is left her husband's ‘second best bed', a bequest which has tantalised commentators ever since 1616.

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