Showing category "Book reviews" (Show all posts)

Micro-reviews (September 2023)

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, September 30, 2023, In : Book reviews 

Bad Traffic, Indelible City, The Bandit Queens





Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis

This novel is a really engaging and unusual twist on the crime thriller genre.  Inspector Jian, a tough cop from the “Life on Mars” school of policing, travels from China to the UK to look for his daughter, Wei Wei, who’s disappeared after getting involved with some rather unsavoury characters.  It’s also the story of Ding Ming, an illegal migrant from a dirt poor part of China who’s been trafficked to the UK ho...

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Micro-Reviews (May 2023)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, May 31, 2023, In : Book reviews 
Assembly by Natasha Brown, Johnson At 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell




Assembly by Natasha Brown

This is a short work - barely even a novella - which contains some quite striking and at times challenging writing.  And it’s encouraging to see something like this being given a big marketing push by a major publisher.  But I’m still not quite sure what I think of it and whether it actually works.  

Our narrator is a high flyer at a City bank.  She’s also black - but the bank’s appro...

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Micro-reviews (March 2023)

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, March 13, 2023, In : Book reviews 
The Anomaly, The Animals In That Country, In A Good Light



The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier

This was a really enjoyable high concept literary thriller.  The plot revolves around a duplicate of Air France Flight AF0006 suddenly appearing 3 months after its first version landed in the US - so now there are 2 versions of the same plane and 2 versions of each individual who was on board.  How can something so unlikely have happened? This is where the high concept comes in, because it emerges that the...

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Micro-Reviews (October 2022)

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, October 15, 2022, In : Book reviews 


Educated, The Paper Menagerie and A Ghost in the Throat

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts (the last one was a year ago, which is hardly the level of regularity I was aiming for).  That’s partly because I’ve been busy with other things, including trying to make some more progress with a story about China that I started ages ago (I’ve got about 25K words so far and it’s not like I’ve got stuck with the plot or anything - it’s just finding the time to write that...

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Yard Sale by Charles Hibbard

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, December 27, 2021, In : Book reviews 




This beautifully written book - available for free on Smashwords - occupies a not particularly well-colonised fictional space somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories.  

It’s like a novel in the sense that it depicts various episodes in the life of one character, Ruth, who was born - I am guessing - at some point in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  We first meet Ruth in (late) middle age, having gone on a solo road trip to escape marital difficulties - but ...

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Micro reviews (October 2021)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, In : Book reviews 

China Mountain Zhang, All That Man Is, The Vanishing Half





China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh

This book is set in a world where China is the dominant power, both economically and culturally.  The US, meanwhile, is subservient to China, having apparently undergone a protracted and violent Communist revolution, followed by something similar to China’s cultural revolution known as the “Cleansing Winds Campaign.”  Slightly frustratingly perhaps, we don’t find out too much about this hist...

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Sci-fi, litfic and AI

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, May 28, 2021, In : Book reviews 



Reviews of: Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, Speak by Louisa Hall and The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

I’ve been thinking about genres lately because I’ve been trying to get more downloads of my novel on Amazon - and if you’re using various book promo services, as I am doing right now, you usually need to tell them what genre it’s in.  The trouble is, the novel effectively straddles 2 genres which publishers and platforms don’t usual...

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Micro-Reviews (February 2021)

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, February 28, 2021, In : Book reviews 
Forbidden, How to be a Liberal and The Defections



Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Young Adult (YA) fiction isn’t usually my thing but on this occasion I’m glad I made an exception - and in any event, I would argue that this book shouldn’t be viewed as “only for a YA audience”.  It strikes me as yet another case of publishers’ unhelpful obsession with genre - although to be fair, hats off to them for having the guts to publish this book, because Forbidden is about (consensual) brother-si...

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Micro-reviews (September 2020)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, September 30, 2020, In : Book reviews 
Kingdom of the Wicked, The Translator and A Woman of No Importance



Kingdom of the Wicked by Helen Dale

This was a really interesting piece of alternative history (so far in 2 volumes).  Its starting point is a set of characters and a story we’re all familiar with – Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate, the High Priest Caiaphas and the end of Jesus’ life.  It then transplants them into a world where the Romans have had an industrial revolution, leading them to develop technology quite similar to...

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Micro Reviews (May 2020)

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, May 31, 2020, In : Book reviews 
Little Eyes, State of Wonder and The Capital



Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

This has had lots of glowing reviews but I’m afraid I gave up half way through. The premise sounded interesting.  A craze develops for cute-looking 5G gadgets called Kentukis. These are intended as a kind of artificial pet for their owners, but are only active when “inhabited” by other individuals who have signed up to be “Kentuki-dwellers” (they can see and hear through the Kentuki’s camera and mic and ma...

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Micro Reviews (April 2020)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, April 29, 2020, In : Book reviews 
What Was Lost, Middle England and The Quantum Spy



What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

I really enjoyed the first section of this novel – which is set in the 1980s and features an eleven year old girl, Kate, who’s obsessed with becoming a detective.  It reminded me a little of an excellent self-published novel by Stephanie Newell called The Third Person, which I reviewed here.  Kate then disappears in mysterious circumstances.  The middle section jumps 20 years ahead and introduces us to Ku...

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Micro-reviews (January 2020)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, January 29, 2020, In : Book reviews 
Myxocene, The Last and Spaceman of Bohemia



Myxocene by Troy Ernest Hill 

“Myxocene” is a name that some have proposed for where we might end up if we continue to degrade the planet at current rates (the “myx” comes from the Greek “muxa”, meaning slime; adding “-ocene” on the end gets you “age of slime”).  Anyway, that’s the jumping off point for this excellent and thought-provoking speculative thriller (which, by the way, is also self-published).  Freelance journalist Sara...

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Micro-reviews (July 2019)

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, July 21, 2019, In : Book reviews 
Dreams from Before the Start of Time, Bad Blood, The Secret Barrister



Dreams from Before the Start of Time by Anne Charnock

This is a thoughtful, episodic novel following the lives of several generations from 2034 to 2120, focusing on potential advances in reproductive technology – and critically, how they lead to changes in the way that people feel about their lives.  Although slow-paced, it drew me in sufficiently to keep me reading and I enjoyed it - but a little Googling around suggests t...

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Micro-reviews (April 2019)

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, April 29, 2019, In : Book reviews 
Semiosis, Court Out and A Gentleman in Moscow



Semiosis by Sue Burke

The initial premise of this novel is a bit of a hoary old sci-fi cliché:  idealistic refugees from an Earth beset by environmental disaster travel to an alien planet (which they name Pax) and attempt to create a better society there, aiming to live more in harmony with their environment.  But it was very well reviewed, so I thought I’d give it a try.  Things get off to a rocky start for the colonists when Pax turns out to be...

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Micro-reviews (March 2019)

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, March 11, 2019, In : Book reviews 
Show Them What They Won, The Book of Strange New Things, The Sparrow



Show Them What They Won by Sean Boling

Ever wondered how many people have to die before gun-enthusiasts in the States start to question whether the easy availability and widespread ownership of fire-arms in their country might be part of the problem?  Somehow though, the latest mass shooter incident always seems to get turned on its head, with the gun lobby managing to deflect blame by deploying absurd arguments about how the ...

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Micro-reviews (December 2018)

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, December 24, 2018, In : Book reviews 
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks against the United States, Standard Deviation and Perfidious Albion


The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

Christmas 2018 is almost upon us – and what better way to get into the festive mood than by pondering the chances of North Korea actually using its nuclear weapons?  Jeffrey Lewis is an expert on North Korea’s nuclear programme and this novel starts off in ...

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Tragedy or farce?

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, November 24, 2018, In : Book reviews 



I recently read “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis – the former Greek Finance Minister’s account of his experiences trying to negotiate with the EU over the Greek bailout after the financial crisis.  Based on his media profile, I had tended to view Varoufakis as a bit, well, full of himself.  And it’s certainly true that, as the computer-programmed match commentary on my son’s FIFA Xbox football game was almost guaranteed to say if you dribbled the ball around an awful lot w...

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The Prancing Jacana

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, November 9, 2018, In : Book reviews 



The Prancing Jacana by Steven John Halasz is (for me at any rate) what Graham Greene liked to call “an entertainment”:  it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it has an intriguing thriller-style plot that ticks along at a nice pace, but it’s also written with a literary sensibility and manages to deal with some serious issues along the way.

Caroline Parker, a best-selling American author of crime fiction, has set her latest novel in Senegal – where it has just been banned, having offe...

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Micro-reviews (August 2018)

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, August 29, 2018, In : Book reviews 
The Speed of Sound, The Bees and The Three Body Problem



The Speed of Sound by Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby has had an unusual career – he had some success in the eighties as a solo artist, a film music composer and a producer of other artists (e.g. Prefab Sprout and – rather less successfully, as he freely admits - Joni Mitchell).  But he became increasingly disillusioned with the music industry and switched to being a tech entrepreneur, eventually coming up with the software that enabled mobi...

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Micro-reviews (June 2018)

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, June 22, 2018, In : Book reviews 

Station Eleven
, The 7th Function of Language and Night Heron




Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

The central premise of this novel is not especially new – a virus wipes out most of human race and civilization as we know it collapses. However, the approach is a bit different from most treatments of this scenario.  These tend to focus on either the event itself and its immediate aftermath, or a point in time when it’s become something of a dim and distant memory and a new post-apocalyptic ...

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Micro-reviews (May 2018)

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, May 14, 2018, In : Book reviews 
Theory of Bastards, Munich and The People's House

I've tended to write longish reviews on this blog and I'll probably carry on with that for some books - especially self-published ones.  But I thought I'd have a go at doing some shorter reviews alongside these.  Let's see if I manage to keep it up.  At any rate, it's got to be better than just feeding star ratings into the hungry maw of Big Data (aka Goodreads/Amazon in this case).  Here goes:



Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman

Set a few year...

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Bad Faith by Jesse Tandler

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, April 30, 2018, In : Book reviews 


We seem to be living through an age that puts an unhealthy premium on “authenticity”.  Politicians who are said to have this characteristic are excused any number of glaring faults - just look at Donald Trump or, closer to home, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and (at the opposite end of the spectrum) Jeremy Corbyn. They can say or do things that would be career-ending for other politicians – but they are tolerated, even praised for this, because they are regarded as being “true to themse...

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Me Blackberry Fool, You Apple Tart

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, March 12, 2018, In : Book reviews 



"Me Blackberry Fool, You Apple Tart" by Amelia Slocombe is chick lit, which is not usually my genre of choice - but it caught my eye because one of the characters is a lawyer in a London law firm, which happens to be what I do for a living too.  I have also made a bit of a thing of trying to be a bit more open-minded when it comes to books which I have a tendency to dismiss as "not my thing", especially when it comes to free fiction by self-published authors (as in this case).

Having said that...
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To Kill the President: a (non) review

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, January 14, 2018, In : Book reviews 



Just finished "To Kill the President" by Sam Bourne.  It wasn't bad - and although we never meet the President, I'm fairly sure I know who the author had in mind.  But who cares what I thought about it?  Here's what the Leader of the Free World made of it (allegedly), when it was drawn to his attention:

@realDonaldTrump tweeted:

Sam Bourne is a total loser and hater who made up a story to write this really boring and untruthful novel. More FAKE NEWS!

@realDonaldTrump tweeted:

Great reporting from...

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Jon Evans and the techno-travelogue thriller

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, December 4, 2017, In : Book reviews 




UPDATE 5.2019 - irritatingly, all the links to Jon Evans' novels below were to copies available free of charge on Feedbooks, which has now shut down its self-publishing platform - so the links no longer work.  Happily though (as at the time of updating), you could still find all the novels listed below on Wattpad free of charge - the main disadvantage is that you can only read them through Wattpad's interface on a web-enabled device (unlike Feedbooks, there's no option to dow...


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All Out War

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, August 12, 2017, In : Book reviews 


All Out War” by Tim Shipman seeks to answer the question “why did the UK vote to leave the EU?”  As you might expect, there were many reasons – but what the book conveys quite well is that there was no inevitability about the outcome (there were, after all, only about 700,000 votes in it, on a turnout of 33.5 million).  If even a relatively small number of things had played out differently, Brexit might not be happening.  Here are just a few examples:
  • 16 year olds:  Had 16 year olds...

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Single to Morden by Spike Evans

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, February 27, 2017, In : Book reviews 



As regular readers of this blog would know (if only there were any), I like to maintain the pretence of being a reasonably conscientious reviewer of free fiction by self-published authors.  This normally entails doing a review that consists of several paragraphs (at least).   And more often than not, it affords another unmissable opportunity to give commercial publishers a bit of a kicking for not doing a better job of finding (and publishing) new fiction (happily allowing me to extend the re...

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Stumps of mystery

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, October 31, 2016, In : Book reviews 



“Stumps of mystery: stories from the end of an era” by Susan Wickstrom describes itself as “a novel in stories” – and it’s certainly true that it occupies a space somewhere in between a full-blown novel and a book of short stories.  Structurally, it’s similar to some of David Mitchell’s fiction, where you get a series of separate but linked stories - I am thinking in particular of “Ghostwritten” and “Cloud Atlas”.  

But whereas Mitchell tends to leap around a lot in ter...

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The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, February 26, 2016, In : Book reviews 



This is an excellent “big picture” sci-fi novel, which is available for free online – but it’s not one for the faint hearted (owing to a certain amount of disturbingly graphic content – of which more later).

Caroline – along with the rest of human race – “lives” in a virtual environment where she can do almost anything.  But being something of a contrary sort, Caroline most wants what she can’t have.  She is a so-called “death jockey”, who spends much of her time arrang...

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Taking Candy from the Devil

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, October 10, 2015, In : Book reviews 



UPDATE 2017:  Sadly, this novel is no longer available via Smashwords or anywhere else as far as I can see.  After my review below, the book got at least one more 5 star review, which may have enough for the author to get an agent or publisher interested in his work - or he may just have decided that he wanted to revise it.  Who knows.  Anyway, let's hope it re-emerges in some form in the future.

For me, this somewhat quirky novel by Robert P Kaye falls into the category of what Graham Greene ...

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Ted Chiang: sci-fi or something else?

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, July 12, 2015, In : Book reviews 



As previously noted, this blog does not have its finger on the literary pulse of our times.  And so it is with Ted Chiang, a multiple award-winning author who I stumbled across only recently from The Economist blog.  In fact, he has been publishing stories since 1990, when I gather his first one appeared in the now sadly defunct Omni magazine.  This biographical detail made me feel a little nostalgic, because as a teenager during the eighties I was an avid consumer of Omni (pocket money permi...

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Day Gazing by Carla Herrera

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, May 27, 2015, In : Book reviews 



I first read this collection of short stories a while ago and had been meaning to do a review of it for some time.  But in a way, I’m glad I waited because it’s meant that I ended up re-reading the collection in full – and there were a number of stories that I got more out of on the second (or even third) reading.

Anyway, the first thing to say about this collection is that, although it’s subtitled “Weird Shorts”, all the stories are written in a very accessible way – so don’t ...

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The Fifth Lectern

Posted by Paul Samael on Tuesday, March 31, 2015, In : Book reviews 



With the UK general election campaign underway, now seemed a good time to review "The Fifth Lectern", a self-published novel by Andy Cooke about what might have happened if the 2010 UK general election had turned out slightly differently.  The key change that the author has made is to have the surge in support for the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) occurring not in 2014-15 (as it has in real life) but back in 2010.   The background to this is recounted in a novella-length prequel to "Th...
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The Inelegant Universe

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, January 31, 2015, In : Book reviews 


Scroll down for reviews of "Retirement Projects" and "A Burned Over District"

This collection of short stories by Charles Hibbard is thought-provoking, varied and beautifully written.  And if short stories aren’t really your thing – although in this case I would urge you to make an exception - the author has a number of other longer-form fictions available on Smashwords (discussed briefly below). 

But getting back to “The Inelegant Universe,” what can you expect from t...


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Pedalling Backwards

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, September 28, 2014, In : Book reviews 



“Pedalling Backwards” by Julia Russell is a very well written literary novel which has attracted an impressive haul of positive reviews on Amazon, and two five star reviews (including mine) on Smashwords. 

Lizzie, her husband and her parents have rented a holiday cottage on a bleak, muddy island in the Blackwater Estuary.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, for starters, Lizzie has recently lost a baby.  Her husband thought it would be a good idea for them both to get away from things fo...

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HHhH by Laurent Binet

Posted by Paul Samael on Thursday, July 31, 2014, In : Book reviews 



This book by the French author Laurent Binet is described in its blurb as a “novel” but I think it would be more accurate to categorise it as “faction.”  What I mean by that is that the book is based quite closely around actual historical events but it also has certain features in common with other genres, like memoir or, at times, fiction.  I have blogged about faction before – in particular a book called “Red Plenty” by Francis Spufford, who started off writing a factual accou...

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Abraham the Anchor Baby Terrorist

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, March 8, 2014, In : Book reviews 



This is a very interesting and well written novel by Sean Boling, whose collection of short stories (“Pigs and Other Living Things”) I have already reviewed on this blog.  It’s about an attempt by Islamic terrorists to insert a long term “sleeper” agent into the US.  This is to be done by smuggling a pregnant Algerian woman into the country and passing her off as a South American immigrant;  her son, the Abraham of the title, is to be raised to carry out as yet unspecified tasks on ...


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The Hole in the Wall

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, In : Book reviews 


"The Hole in the Wall" by Clare Fisher is another mid-length piece (longer than a short story, shorter than a novel) of the type which I have been trying to promote on this blog because it is so under-represented in modern fiction (but I recognise that I may now be in severe danger of boring people to death with this point).  Luckily, we live in the age of the e-reader, which seems to be (slowly) helping to create more of a market for mid-length fiction - so maybe, eventually...


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The Future Manifestations of Saint Christina the Astonishing

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, In : Book reviews 





UPDATE 3.2022 - although this book no longer seems to be available for free and seemed to have disappeared from view for a while, I was pleased to see that it has now popped up on Amazon at £0.99.

This short book describes eight appearances of the medieval “Saint” Christina the Astonishing (the unofficial patron saint of people affected by mental illness) in the near and distant future.  The “real” Saint Christina is said to have risen from the dead during the course ...


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3 by Moxie Mezcal

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, November 3, 2013, In : Book reviews 



3 is a collection of three long-ish, meaty short stories by Moxie Mezcal.  By “meaty” I mean that they could almost qualify for the novella tag – because there is so much going on in terms of plot and interesting ideas that by the time you’ve finished, you are left with the kind of feeling more commonly associated with longer fiction.
 

The first story, “Home Movie,” is about a porn store DVD which has been replaced with what appears to be a snuff movie – is it ...


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The Prodigals by Frank Burton

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, October 9, 2013, In : Book reviews 



“The Prodigals” is an ambitious contemporary novel by Frank Burton, who runs Philistine Press (click here for an interview with him on that subject).  It follows the lives of four troubled young men in Manchester.  Well, that bit of the review was easy, because I have just copied it straight off the book description on Smashwords.  And it is a perfectly accurate description – but I can see why the author pretty much stopped there, except for adding that the book is also...


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Corpus Callosum

Posted by Paul Samael on Thursday, August 1, 2013, In : Book reviews 



This is an excellent literary novel with a sci-fi element (but if you are not a big fan of sci-fi, don’t let that put you off, because the focus is much more on the characters than the science).  The basic premise is that technology has been developed which allows the contents of your brain to be uploaded into a “BrightBox” – but in most other respects, the world of the story is very similar to our own.  Joey and Jeannette are twin sisters.  When Joey is fatally injured in a fire, Jea...

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Theories of International Politics....and Zombies

Posted by Paul Samael on Thursday, July 18, 2013, In : Book reviews 



I’m not usually much of an impulse buyer, but when it comes to ebooks I sometimes find it harder to resist – you get the book right away, often at a price lower than the hard copy and there’s no storage issue (so to the nagging voice in my head saying “Are really you going to like this book enough to want to have it taking up space on your already creaking shelves?” I can say “Get stuffed”).  Anyway, “Theories of International Politics…and Zombies” by Professor Daniel Drez...

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Shen by Heather Douglass

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, In : Book reviews 



So far in my reviews of free fiction, I’ve tended to focus more on the rather nebulous category of “literary fiction” (whatever that may be) rather than more well-defined genres like science fiction.  Heather Douglass, however, is an author with a foot in both camps.  I am indebted to Bernard Fancher for pointing me in her direction, as she had published several shorter pieces in the “literary” category of Smashwords, one of which he had reviewed.  These are well worth a read – I ...

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Trade by Lochlan Bloom

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, May 26, 2013, In : Book reviews 



“Trade” by Lochlan Bloom is narrated from a point in the not too distant future when an internet platform (a sort of cross between Facebook and Ebay) has radically changed the way that people approach sex.  Sometimes you have a feeling from the first page that something is going to be worth reading - and for me, “Trade” delivered on that initial promise.  The premise was sufficiently intriguing and enough happened in terms of plot to justify the label “novelette,”...


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The Third Person

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, May 20, 2013, In : Book reviews 




It’s the 1980s.  Lizzie, our narrator, is 14.  Her father has left home and her mother doesn’t seem to be coping too well in his absence.  Lizzie spends an unhealthy amount of time holed up in her bedroom, practising her calligraphy, tending her Victorian bottle collection and making devious and elaborate plans.  These generally involve eloping with Mr Phillips, the shopkeeper (if only he would stop being so obtuse and realise that he and Lizzie are destined to be togethe...


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Faction or fiction

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, In : Book reviews 

[NOTE:  Scroll down for review of Red Plenty by Francis Spufford]



While on holiday last week, I thought I would put the accuracy of my Goodreads recommendations to the test, so I chose some of the books they had suggested to me based on my own ratings of books I’d enjoyed (or not – but mostly the former).  So far, the recommendations have been somewhat wide of the mark.  Take “Ascent” by Jed Mercurio.  It’s about a Russian, Yefgenii Yeremin, who (after an appalling childhood in Stali...

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Unpredictable

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, In : Book reviews 



“Unpredictable” is a collection of 3 short stories by Bryan R Dennis available as an ebook free of charge on feedbooks.comUPDATE 5.2019 - well, not any more, as Feedbooks has closed down its self-publishing platform - but happily, as at the time of updating, you could still get your hands on a copy from the good folks at getfreeebooks.

Oh no, I hear you sigh, not another collection of short stories (e.g. see here and here for previous reviews of short story collections).  But let me ...


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The Ant Farm

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, February 2, 2013, In : Book reviews 

 
 
If someone had told me that I would enjoy a novel about statistics in the poultry industry and knitting (yes, knitting), I would probably have responded that I was more likely to develop a keen interest in the drying times of different brands of matt emulsion.  But one of the things I have come to enjoy about reviewing free fiction by self-published authors is the potential to be surprised – both by the quality of some of the writing and by my own enjoyment of books about subjects which, ...

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Pigs and Other Living Things

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Book reviews 


 
Rather like Stories for Airports, "Pigs and Other Living Things" by Sean Boling appears to be another collection of well-written short stories that’s in danger of getting buried under the ever-expanding mass of self-published books on Smashwords.  I wish I could say that the many thousands of loyal readers of this blog (ah, if only...) can be relied upon to rescue it from that fate.  But since my daily total of “eyeballs” rarely climbs above the low single figures (even allowing for th...

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The Judas Tree

Posted by Paul Samael on Tuesday, October 16, 2012, In : Book reviews 



Patricia Le Roy is an established novelist – she has at least 8 books to her name and I gather that one of them (“Angels of Russia”) was the first ebook ever to be put forward for the Booker Prize. “The Judas Tree”, currently available for free on obooko, is the only one that I have read so far – but on the strength of that, I will definitely be reading some of the others.  

Its starting point is the death of a French woman, Anne, who was (seemingly) happily married to Matthias, an...

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In Durleston Wood

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, In : Book reviews 



Michael Graeme is something of a phenomenon on feedbooks, where he has published 20 books and had well over 200,000 downloads in total (which is pretty impressive by any standards - and certainly by comparison with my own relatively feeble download stats) [UPDATE 5.2019:  sadly, Feedbooks has closed its self-publishing platform, but you can get all of Michael Graeme's work from his website here].  He’s also a firm advocate of self-publishing (see this post) - as opposed to banging your head...

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Ledman Pickup

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, September 21, 2012, In : Book reviews 



This story/novella from the extremely profilic Tom Lichtenberg is well written, entertaining and thought-provoking – and well worth a read, even if sci-fi is not usually your thing:

Zoey Bridges makes her living testing gadgets – but on this occasion, the portable device she’s been sent doesn’t seem to do anything.  She sends it back, only to discover (to her horror) that it’s got lost in transit.   She and the gizmo’s obsessively secretive designers then try to track it down - but...

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Falling and The End of the Circus

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, August 25, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 
 
Two thoughtful short stories from Bernard Fancher available on Smashwords: 

"Falling" is about the murder of a child, but with a rather different slant from most mystery/crime fiction and a more thoughtful, literary approach.  Instead of the conventional “who dunnit”, the focus is on the emotions of the detective who dealt with the case as she goes to return some of the child’s belongings, once the murderer has been convicted.  The facts of the case are conveyed briefly and fairly disp...

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Besserwisser

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, July 29, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 

UPDATE 1.2017:  Sadly, this book is no longer available on Smashwords or elsewhere so far as I can see - which is a pity.

This novel by Steve Anderson has already received a number of positive reviews on Smashwords and elsewhere, but I was also drawn to it for personal reasons – of which, more later.

The starting point of the novel is simple: after one beer too many at the Munich Oktoberfest, our rather hapless hero, Gordy, is unable to resist passing himself off as a Fulbright scholar, ...


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Stories for Airports

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, July 15, 2012, In : Book reviews 


 
I’m puzzled as to why this excellent short story collection on Smashwords hasn’t been reviewed before, because it appears to have been on the site for some time (since 2009?).  But maybe that’s the problem – unless you’re fortunate enough to get a review at a reasonably early stage, your stuff tends to get buried under increasing amounts of everyone else’s stuff.  Anyway, I hope that what follows will encourage more people to give it a try.

As the blurb says, these stories are not...

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Coming Home

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, June 29, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 


“Coming Home” by Chris Gallagher is a full length novel about Aidan Pennock’s return to the Yorkshire village where he grew up, following many years in the army, including tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Put like that, it sounds like it could be a rather dour affair, focussing on the well trodden fictional path of a soldier having difficulty adapting to civilian life.  But refreshingly, Aidan is not the kind of personality to just sit around wallowing in self-pity.  There is an...

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Afrika Reich

Posted by Paul Samael on Thursday, May 10, 2012, In : Book reviews 


 

I seem to be on a bit of thriller binge at the moment – just finished “The Afrika Reich” by Guy Savile, a rather more conventional action/adventure-focussed thriller than “Endgame” (which I reviewed last month).  I was interested in it for two reasons. 

Firstly, I gather that its author initially tried it out on the peer review site yourwriteon.com, which is something I’ve done with my own writing – so I was interested to see the final product, once he’d been signed up by...


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Endgame

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, April 16, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 

 
Just finished “Endgame” by Matthew Glass, a highly intelligent political thriller which – despite its somewhat dry-sounding subject matter – had me completely hooked. It’s about how a run on a bank could morph from a major financial problem into something akin to the Cuban missile crisis (but with the Chinese taking the place of the Russians).  It’s worth reading purely for how convincingly this very frightening scenario is laid out.  

Other recent books have tried to make connec...

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IQ84

Posted by Paul Samael on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 

Avid readers of this blog (are there any?  I wonder…) may have concluded that I do not exactly appear to have my finger on the literary pulse (see this post, for example) – but how wrong they are, because not only have I read Books 1, 2 and 3 of the thumping great tome that is Haruki Murakami’s "IQ84", which has only been out since October last year but Lo!  here is my review of it:

First of all, I should probably make it clear that I’m a fan of quite a lot of Murakami’s earlier...


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Sonny's Guerrillas by Matthew Asprey

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, February 3, 2012, In : Book reviews 

 


Scroll down for review of "Red Hills of Africa"

I've just started a new section of my website devoted to reviews of free fiction by self-published authors, my aim being to demonstrate that "free" and "self-published" do not always deserve the stigma that is sometimes attached to them.  This first review is of "Sonny's Guerrillas" by Matthew Asprey.  


UPDATE 11.2013:  Sadly, this book is no longer free - one of the perils of setting out to review free fiction is that authors who get a positive ...
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Holiday reading (2)

Posted by Paul Samael on Thursday, September 8, 2011, In : Book reviews 

 

I also read “One Day” by David Nicholls – yes, that one with the orange cover that you’ve probably seen people reading on the train etc.  Many, many people have read this book, so I can hardly claim to be at the cutting edge of new fiction by reviewing it now.  I can, however, claim to have a unique perspective, being possibly the only person in the world to have tackled it after reading a moderately obscure work of Polish science fiction (see previous blog entry).  

Anyway, for ...


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Holiday reading (1)

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, September 4, 2011, In : Book reviews 

 


Just back from holiday, during which (among other things) I read Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel “
Return from the Stars”. It’s about an astronaut, Hal, who returns to Earth following a near-light speed mission.  This means that time passed much faster on Earth than it did for him, so everyone he knew at the time of his departure is long dead.  The world he returns to is considerably more technologically advanced than the one he left and human civilisation has lost all interest in spacef...


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About Me


Paul Samael Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
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