The Dreaming Void by Peter Hamilton

Reading postponed until 2010.
The Dreaming Void (2007), ISBN 9781405088800
The Temporal Void (forthcoming, 2009)
Evolution's Dream (forthcoming, 2010)

At the centre of the Intersolar Commonwealth universe is a massive black hole. This Void is not a natural artefact. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core - one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy. It's AD 3589, and a human has started to dream of the wonderful existence of the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now wish to Pilgrimage to the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other starfaring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop the Pilgrimage fleet no matter what the cost. The Pilgrimage begins...

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

7/10

The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It's a world without art, reading and children, a world where people would rather burn themselves alive than endure. Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have - to cease to be. But there is hope for the future in the passion and joy that a man and woman discover in love and in books, hope even for Spofforth. A haunting novel, reverberating with anguish but also celebrating love and the magic of a dream.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

8/10

In “The Road” a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

7/10

Use of Weapons is the third Culture novel. The narrative takes the form of a fractured biography of a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe, who was born outside of the Culture but was recruited into it by Special Circumstances agent Diziet Sma to work as an operative intervening in more primitive civilizations. The novel recounts several of these interventions and Zakalwe's attempts to come to terms with his own past.

The Pilo Family Circus by William Elliot

4/10

Jamie is plunged into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between hell and earth from which humankind's greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place peopled by the gruesome, grotesque and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself-for when he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead...

Hilldiggers by Neal Asher

3/10

Asher has an axe to grind, but what a shiny, well-honed and beautifully weighted axe it is... He's on top of his game with this one and his confidence entwines a fibrous thread throughout the plot. Multiple narratives occurring in different timeframes, shifts between first-and third-person perspectives, a detailed and convincing description of planetary ecosystems...In lesser hands, a rambling wayward text could well result. What we have instead is a wonderfully rich and complex tale that happily flips between giving the mind something weighty to mull over and pleasing its baser, thrill-seeking desires... Asher's skill is making it all seem wild, wonderful, politically provoking and fresh.