It’s Snakewood launch day :)

This book has no right to be a debut.  It’s exhilarating, a tour de force. The Quantum Thief is a heist thriller the threads of which are woven into a sinuous and densely realised future.  It’s a challenging read, I’ll admit hard to follow in places, as Hannu Rajaniemi displaces the awesome intelligence and agency…

Hopefully all China Miéville’s novels are as original and engaging as this one.  The City & The City is on one level a standard ‘detective investigating death of girl uncovers big conspiracy’ story, but Miéville has decided to weave the tale into a quite unique milieu.  

1930’s rural England seen through the eyes of a troubled young girl coming of age and a high-octane rollercoaster fantasy set in a bleak, violent and ancient city were my January reads. Melissa Harrison’s All Among The Barley is meticulously researched. Early in the book it felt heavy-handed, almost over the top. Edie Mather, the…

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, is a masterpiece.  It is one of the best books I will ever read. I know this because I’ve lost count of the times I’ve paused over a page, muttered ‘Fuck off’ at the sheer and dazzling quality and control of the form and the narrative, and then carried on reading,…

These two books were so intimidatingly good it’s taken me a while to work up the courage to outline why I recommend them.

James C. Scott’s fascinating book argues that we have enslaved ourselves to grain production and the ‘civilisation’ that followed. The inevitable outcome of grain cultivation and sedentism’s propensity to increase birth rates has led to both a patriarchal system that reduces women to breeders and promotes warfare to enslave yet more people to sustain the…