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Sound Mind – Tricia Sullivan
Hachette Livre Orbit, 2007
357 pages
RRP: AU$22.95
ISBN: 978-1-84149-405-0

Reviewed by Jacinta Rosielle

As a reader with an adoration of stories which make me question what is real, and as a musician with a hankering for experimentation, this book had swallowed me whole within the first twenty pages. I hadn’t read any books by Tricia Sullivan before and on the few occasions that I’d closed the book I was having to wipe a few spots of drool off the back cover as I eyed the thumbnails of two of her other novels, making plans to order these sometime soon.

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Wicked – Gregory Maquire
Harper Collins, 2008 (reprint)
538 pages
RRP: AU$19.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-135096-2

Reviewed by Kate Smith

The story of the life of the Wicked Witch of the West is a very intesting premise for a number of reasons. The Wizard of Oz is an iconic story in our culture and has been made reference to in many other forms of text, including television, over the years. Whole cartoons have been based around it and single lines have become part of standard communication. Tapping into that interest while adding to the story and at the same time giving readers a chance to think about how people become who they are always stood a good chance of success. The author has not failed in this.

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Ysabel – Guy Gavriel Kay
Simon & Schuster, 2007
421 pages
RRP: AU$29.95
ISBN: 978-0-7432-5251-5

Reviewed by Cat Sparks

Fifteen-year-old Canadian Ned Marriner is spending six weeks in France, accompanying his famous photographer father and entourage, worried about his doctor mother who’s on assignment for Medicines sans Frontiers in war torn Sudan. A chance meeting with history-savy American exchange student Kate in the Saint-Sauver Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence is followed by an encounter with a bald scar-faced man wielding a knife and a mystery: I think the world will end before I ever find him in time.

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Incandescence – Greg Egan
Hachette Livre Orion Gollancz, 2008
300 pages
RRP: AU$35
ISBN: 978-0-575-08163-5

Reviewed by Mark Cooper

The thing you have to remember when you’re dealing with Greg Egan is that this is hard science fiction. Any review of his work has to start from that point. The science and the ideas that spring from the science are the most important things in his books. If you don’t like that, you don’t like Greg Egan. If you want more than that, you won’t find it here.

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The Blood of Elves – Andrzej Sapkowski
Orion Gollancz, 2008
RRP: AU$32.99
ISBN: 978-057-508318-9

Reviewed by Kate Smith

Having read, and thoroughly enjoyed his previous book The Last Wish in so many ways, I was a little disappointed in The Blood of Elves. The story continues its focus on Geralt of Rivia but begins to show the larger scope of events in the world.

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Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife – Sam Savage
Orion, 2008
192 pages
RRP: £10.99
ISBN: 9780297854586

Reviewed by Lev Lafayette

If all books were this good reviewers wouldn’t be needed. The setting, character and plot summary on the back cover would suffice. Usually, I am perhaps a somewhat harsh critic, recognising the empirical truth of Sturgeon’s Law with the bell curve of cultural products indicating that the overwhelming majority of novels simply do not reach the standard of greatness – and I love greatness in the arts. But this novel is different; it is a great novel. I have had it my possession for three days and I’ve read it four times; I’m getting obsessive and that is not at all to my normal temperament by any stretch of the imagination.

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