Jacey Bedford's Journal

Narrated by Shaun Grindell.

Handry is severed from his village and his twin sister by an unfortunate incident and forced to wander from village to village as a starving outcast, suddenly unable to stomach most of his world’s regular food. Eventually he stumbles across a village willing to offer food in return for work, and there he meets another outcast, but one who seems to know what’s going on. The world is not what it seems. Their origins are far stranger, almost unbelievable, except there is proof. Things come to head when Hendry’s sister follows him. The story is interesting, though it’s a bit of a slow starter, revelations not coming until well into the book. When they do come, it all makes sense. However, what makes it difficult to like is the narrator, Shaun Grindell. Sorry to say I found his reading lifeless to the extent that, had it not been a short book, I might have given up, or at least found a written version instead of an audio one.

Narrated by Ben Allen
Adrian Tchaikovsky is such a good writer, his humans and aliens are brilliantly interwoven. Xeno-biologist and freedom fighter, Arton Daghdev, is exiled for his crimes to an alien planet where he’s imprisoned under an oppressive regime. At first he’s given some status because of his scientific work, but he’s soon busted to a basic work detail in the toxic atmosphere of this very alien planet. He  is tasked with discovering the origin of alien ruins, and the mystery of who the builders were, and where are they now. And he does indeed make that discovery, but not in the way the camp commandant expects him to.

Novella. Nyr is an anthropologist, sitting (or long-term sleeping) in his tower, after the rest of his team have shipped back to base. He's somewhat depressive (alone and abandoned) and has given up on the idea that someone will come back for him, so he's still studying the human colonists he's forbidden to help or interfere with. But he's broken the rules before, and when fate comes knocking on his door in the shape of Lyn he might have to break the rules again. Lyn reminds him so much of her now long-dead great grandmother, with whom he fell in love three hundred years earlier. That time has passed in an eyeblink for Nyr because he's been asleep the whole time. He has memories of what Lyn thinks of as ancient history.

Lynesse, lowly Fourth Daughter of the Queen, knows that the tower is inhabited by a powerful sorcerer, Nyrgoth, who once helped her ancestor. Desperate for a way to defeat a global threat, she trudges to the tower without the permission of her mother. Together Nyr and Lyn set out to defeat the entity that Lyn knows is a demon and Nyr knows it can't possibly be. Nyr is not a sorcerer, of course, but he does have some tech that might look like magic. This is told from the dynamically opposing perspectives of Nyr and Lyn, with the somewhat quirky difference between what Nyr thinks he's said in Lyn's language, and how she hears it.

 This is an entertaining culture clash novella. Highly recommended

I had this as both a review copy and an audiobook from Netgalley. I usually listen to audiobooks on my phone. I'm not sure what the difference is between a Netgalley audio and an Audible audio, but while listening my phone got so hot that I had to switch it off. So I listened to the first half and read the second half. The audio was well read by Sophie Aldred, but I think I got more out of the text.

Two girls (lovers) went tramping over Dartmoor to hunt cryptoids, and only one came home. Despite investigations and search parties, Lee survived but Mal was never seen again… until four years later. Julian Sabreur, MI5 agent, is investigating an attack on top scientist Kay Amal Kahn – an attack dramatically and violently thwarted by strange-looking people who might be agents of an unknown power. And there in the grainy CCTV footage is an image of a girl, missing, presumed dead on Bodmin Moor.

Cracks between worlds are opening up and might be about to end all life in the universe. This book goes from a small-scale mystery to a major crisis involving parallel worlds. Sciency but still portraying interesting characters this is a book that delivers on many levels.

Due to be published by Solaris, 28^th May 2019.
This advance review copy from Netgalley.

A science fiction/horror novella. When a strange artefact, looking like a giant frog-face, appears on the farthest edge of our solar system a combined expedition is sent to investigate. Inside, there's an atmosphere and a maze of tunnels. What is its purpose? Does it link to other stars, or maybe even to other galaxies or even universes? One lone astronaut, Gary Rendell, survives and this is his story. It's told in the present, alternating with chapters of the past and how he got to be wandering around the maze of weirdness and a somewhat altered post-human state.

"I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw. Now I’m lost, and alone, and scared, and there’s something horrible in here."