(WARNING: I’ve just finished writing two essays, so if my writing style is seems long-winded, pretentious, pompous, and rather wordy, then I’ve finally become what I feared most!) What makes a good book for me, (but not necessarily according to the official cannon) centres on the general pretence of the book’s idea – which should [...]

Released as a film this week by ‘America’s greatest living director’ Martin Scorsese with Leonardo Dicaprio in the lead role, Shutter Island is a complex and intriguing mystery thriller which is dark, unpredictable and steadfastly unconventional. The novel takes place in 1954, as federal marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule search for escaped murderess Rachel [...]

Set in Roman London, the story’s protagonist is Zuleika, the rebellious only-daughter of immigrants from the Sudan. At a young age, she is married off to a wealthy merchant old enough to be her father, and then left to her own devices in her ‘gilded cage’ when he goes away on business. Life seems hollow [...]

Genre: Science Fiction (3rd in a series) Basic Plot: It’s been quite a while since the first drop landed on the planet of Bontany. The humans, Deski, Rugarians and the sole Catteni alike were managing to live in relative peace, especially with the protective ‘bubble’ around the planet, placed there by the mysterious ‘farmers’. Then [...]

I don’t usually make a point of reviewing ‘academic’ books for a set of very good reasons. I guess the main of which is the fact that I doubt any of my readers would particularly want to read about some obscure critical theory that was written up decades ago. But upon reading a critical theory [...]

When I first began reading this novel, I was reminded of a book I was forced to read at college, namely Enduring love by Ian McEwan. After groaning inwardly at the similarities (needless to say, I didn’t get on with the latter book at all) I continued reading, and I was extremely glad that I [...]

As far as the Daughters of Decadence and the Fien de Siecle go, I’m really not sold on most of their writing. But encountering The Yellow Wallpaper is encountering much more than the other stories; stories about women being pains in the asses, or rebelling against common norms of Victorian gender roles; all fairly straightforward. [...]

The plot of this novel follows a gang war in the dark underworld of Brighton, being led by the ruthless Pinkie who has killed Hale, a journalist. The killing of this character is the catalyst for Ida Arnold, a friend of Hale, to investigate and begin the chain of events leading to the book’s climax. [...]

Since Phillip K. Dick’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’, writers have often wondered ‘what if’ big historical events hadn’t turned out the way they did, and where would that leave us? This is the subject my latest review, Robert Harris’ ‘Fatherland’, a book that looks at the decisive moment in recent history- the end [...]

If you thought genetic engineering was a recent thing, then you’re dead wrong. When most people consider the roots of science fiction to lie with Jules Verne, whose legacy includes stories of submarines and journeying to thetars s a long time befor technology and B movies could get that far, I compare him to a [...]