Sprawl – edited by Alisa Krasnostein
Twelfth Planet Press, 2010
340 pages
RRP: AU$29.95
ISBN 978-0-9804841-8-2

Reviewed by Russell B Farr

Sprawl is an anthology of 16 stories, 1 cartoon and 1 poem by a number of notable and critically acclaimed Australian SF writers, put together and published by the team at independent press Twelfth Planet. The anthology seeks to explore urban fantasy in an antipodean setting.

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Barry Rosenberg

It was a few weeks before Christmas, and despite the Queensland heat, people were rushing to and fro with bulging shopping bags. Everyone was busy with buying, buying, buying. The shops on Cobble St were close together and their weathered look suggested that they had been there forever. They were traditional shops, too: the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. It was the type of street, with its suggestion of antiquity, in which a young man could wander and his mind could turn to fantasy.

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Managing Death – Trent Jamieson (Death Works #2)
Hachette Orbit, 2010
368 pages
RRP: AU$19.99
ISBN: 9780733624841

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

Managing Death is the second in Jamieson’s Death Works series (the first, Death Most Definite, came out earlier in the year). Like the first, Managing Death is a fast-paced, thrilling adventure through the trials and tribuations of being responsible for streamlining Australia’s deaths. This story continues to show what happens when Steven de Selby takes over as Australia’s Regional Manager after a schism and the deaths of many of Australia’s Pomps in the first novel. Unfortunately things aren’t always fair in business and war; he barely gets his footing when Mortmax is threatened from another angle.

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Bitten & Smitten – Michelle Rowen (Immortality Bites #1)
Hachette Gollancz, 2010 (reprint)
372 pages
RRP: AU$22.99
ISBN: 9780575094000

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

Bitten & Smitten is the first in the Immortality Bites series by Michelle Rowen. I’d read some of her work before, the young adult novel Reign or Shine, and found it amusing and light-hearted. Bitten & Smitten is no less amusing, but follows the somewhat darker tale of Sarah, who was unwillingly turned into a vampire on a blind date. When her sire is killed by the vampire hunters thronging the city, she flees, and is drawn into a love/hate relationship with Thierry, a sexy, six hundred year old vampire with enough ennui to sink a ship.

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Damnation & Dames edited by Amanda Pillar and Liz Grzyb

We are looking for stories which show the paranormal and noir crime worlds colliding. You might find werewolf femme fatales, vampire hardboiled detectives, alcoholic psychic journalists, zombie bankrobbers, ghostly gendarmes, demonic insurance salesmen, down-on-their-luck djinns, double-crossing mummies, or even fae with a love for red herrings.

The anthology will be published by Ticonderoga Publications in 2012.

Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games #3)
Scholastic, 2010
448 pages
RRP: AU$18.99
ISBN: 9781407109374

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

The Hunger Games has taken the YA world by storm. It is set in a gritty, post-apocalyptic world where Panem is divided into Districts under the control of the Capitol, who takes their produced goods. Plus they must give Tributes, citizens chosen at random to compete in The Hunger Games, a fight to the death to provide entertainment to the Capitol and a reminder to the Districts of their servitude. In the first two novels in the series, the heroine, Katniss Evergreen fought against the odds to win the Hunger Games twice, with the help of her fellow District 13 tribute, Peeta. Now she has a new conflict to deal with, outside the arena.

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