A superbly written and deeply human collection of SF stories that tugs at the heart from P.A. Cornell. I received a free advance reader copy/uncorrected proof of The Astronaut Among the Flowers from Stars & Sabers Publishing. I’ve been really enjoying a lot of short story collections recently—both from self-published authors and small presses, and The Astronaut Among The Flowers from the latter...

The explosive third and final instalment in Dave McCreery’s awesome Weight of the World trilogy. It’s been a while since I read the second book in this series, Recall Order, and I don’t know why I do this to myself. This trilogy is so much fun and I ought to have bumped this one up the TBR long before now! I have thoroughly enjoyed my run through this series and I’m excited to hear what Dave has...

Reading Le Guin again is like returning home. Any long-time followers of this blog will realise how much I have enjoyed Ursula K Le Guin’s work in the past. She fast became one of my favourite ever authors. At this point I’ve read all of Earthsea, most of the Hainish novels, as well as her sublime book on writing craft. The Lathe of Heaven was highly recommended to me, but I needed no convincing…

Another pick from a National Trust used bookshop, this time from Ham House last September. I had heard of Orbital but I didn’t really know much about it. The premise seemed pretty interesting when I read the blurb, and I was really drawn in by the cover art. It being a small hardback made it feel good in the hand as well, but ultimately it fell short for me in the reading. Disappointing for a...

I’ve had this book on my TBR since it won the second Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) back in 2023. Since then it moved from being an indie title to being picked up by a traditional publisher—a magnificent and fairly rare occurrence. Traditional publishing houses don’t usually like to go for books that have already been published, but it seems they are increasingly paying atten...

Science fiction series, The Elite and the Rogues by indie writing community stalwart, Niranjan, is getting a re-release with all new covers. I have the privilege to be able to help share the new cover reveal for the first book in the series: The Elitist Supremacy. It’s an excellent minimalist cover for this Indie Ink Awards finalist. Epic stakes, morally grey characters, complexity and conflict...

Literary fiction masquerading as sci-fi. I, like many others, first heard about This Is How You Lose The Time War because of the Bigolas Dickolas Twitter incident of 2023, in which an innocuous tweet from a Trigun (an anime series) stan account gushing about the book absolutely catapulted it up the Amazon charts. An impressive feat, and I had kept the book on my TBR wish list pretty much ever...

A wonderful, whimsical fantasy and science fiction short story collection from Jendia Gammon. I thoroughly enjoyed Jendia’s previous short story collection, The Shadow Galaxy, the review for which you can read here. And so it was only natural to pick up To Wonder and Starshine. Here we have a collection of fairy tale like stories (some literally involving fairies) mixed with whimsical sci-fi...

Together is a Distant Star is a sci-fi & fantasy anthology all about belonging. It’s a real privilege to be able to share this cover reveal on the blog and spotlight an anthology featuring stories from so many great indie authors. How far would you go to find where you belong? A shapeshifting alien changeling raised by humans. The “wicked” child selected as the village sacrifice. People trapped...

Would it really be Indie April without the Narratess Indie Sale? April is all about celebrating independent authors, and the Narratess sale, having grown to be one of the biggest sales around, has for the longest time, been at the forefront of that celebration. And this year it’s back once again, bloating your TBR for 2026, with around 300 books and authors participating, all discounted from...

Ever since I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, I’ve had a hankering for diving into other ancient works that I have missed out on. Beowulf was the first such tale that came to mind. Not ancient in the anthropological sense, having been written somewhere between the seventh and tenth centuries CE, it’s nonetheless a work of seminal importance in western culture. I have known the broad strokes of the...

A fugitive robot running around the inside of a Dyson Sphere? Sign me the hell up! A sublime standalone sci-fi from Frasier Armitage. If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know how much I’ve enjoyed Frasier Armitage’s work in the past. You can check out my review of his novelettes Rememory and Investation here. The cover for Cage of Stars instantly popped for me. It really looks...

It’s been a long time since I started reading this series, and it took me a lot longer to read this book than I thought it would. I started it back in October and then hit a reading slump that was in no way anything to do with the book. At one time I thought this was going to be the final book in the trilogy, but no, there’s more coming. This is some of the best modern sci-fi around, in my...

Revealing a brand new cover in honour of the fifth anniversary of The Re-Emergence! I can’t quite believe it’s been five years since I became a published author. Five years since I released The Re-Emergence into the world. Since then a lot has happened, but I’m still immensely proud of my little space bird book, and of series mascot, Seventeen. In honour of the occasion, (which isn’t actually...

2026 is a special year for me. It marks five years since I became a published author with the release of my first book, The Re-Emergence, in June 2021—the largely standalone space opera novella that kicks off the events of the Augment Saga. This little book with its plucky crew of space birds and endearing sentient AI, Seventeen (who has become somewhat of a mascot for my writing) has...

This is becoming somewhat of an annual tradition at this point. Reviews are often ephemeral, which comes across as rather paradoxical: Everything on the internet is there forever, but in the current landscape of heavy social media usage and algorithmic content feeds, review posts soon get buried. Sure they might receive a little boost when they’re initially posted, but they then fade into obsc...

I received a free advance reader copy/uncorrected proof of A Farewell to Humanity from the author. I also had the privilege of reading an early draft of this story that was much shorter and much lighter on details. I had really enjoyed that, and so when the offer came to read an ARC ahead of its release, I jumped at the chance. It has been fascinating to see how this story has changed in the...

This was the second of three vintage books I picked up on a trip to National Trust Ightham Mote last year. Their delightful little used bookshop had a locked glass cabinet of ‘rare’ and ‘vintage’ books which were reasonably priced. The first was the novelisation of RoboCop by Ed Naha which I read straightaway. The others were The Black Hole—the subject of this review—and Superman: Last Son of...

I will fully admit I bought this on a complete whim. I’ve heard a lot in passing about the Epic of Gilgamesh variously as a piece of ancient literature and the progenitor of the Great Flood myth in the biblical book of Genesis, but I didn’t know the story, and I fancied reading it for myself. This version by Stephen Mitchell seemed to be the most accessible to someone like myself with zero know...

I received a free advance reader copy/uncorrected proof of The Secret of the Sapphire Sentinel from the author. I very much enjoyed the first book in this lunarpunk sci-fantasy series—The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern and its wildly imaginative night-living world, so I was very grateful when Jendia reached out to offer an ARC of the sequel and I jumped in straightaway. Serving up another helping...