Once Bitten, Twice Shy – Jennifer Rardin
Hachette Livre Orbit, 2008
312 pages
RRP: AU$19.99
ISBN: 978-1-84149-637-5

Another One Bites the Dust – Jennifer Rardin
Hachette Livre Orbit, 2008
318 pages
RRP: AU$19.99
ISBN: 978-184-149639-9

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

Once Bitten, Twice Shy is the first in a series by Jennifer Rardin, about a CIA operative Jaz Parks, whose partner/boss Vayl, happens to be a vampire. It’s paranormal action chick-lit, with butt-kicking left, right and centre. Imagine Buffy crossed with Alias and you’d be pretty close.

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The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr Punch – Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
Allen & Unwin Bloomsbury, 2006
96 pages
RRP: AU$22.95
ISBN: 9780747588443

Reviewed by Nicolee Baxter

The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr Punch is a moody, mental walk through a man’s memories of himself as a seven year old boy. Recalling visits to his grandparents, the boy regards the conversations and behaviour of the adults around him with simple acceptance. However, recalling those conversations and behaviour with his adult perspective, he begins to question them. The memories insinuate disturbing family secrets.

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Lilith – Paul Kidd
Kitsune Press, 2007
312 pages
RRP: US$22.50
ISBN: 978-1-84753-166-7

Reviewed by Nicolee Baxter

The first couple of chapters of this novel hint at a deliciously, dark little plot. There is attempted murder, drug overdose, and suicide. The reader can only helplessly observe as the characters slip towards destruction. Disappointingly, by the third chapter the story starts to lose its gritty blackness and becomes more of a melodrama.

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Ophelia – Lisa Klein
Allen & Unwin Bloomsbury, 2007
325 pages
RRP: AU$15.95
ISBN: 9780747587330

Reviewed by Kate Williams

If you have ever studied, read or seen Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and, let’s face it, few of us have escaped unscathed then Lisa Klein’s Ophelia will provide at least an entertaining read littered with familiar characters and quotations. For those of us who always thought that Ophelia was given short shrift compared to the male characters in the play then this book is even more satisfying.

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Flight of the Night Hawks (Darkwar #1) – Raymond E Feist
HarperCollins Voyager, 2005
420 pages
RRP: AU$45 (hbk), AU$32.95 (tpbk), AU$21.95 (pbk)
ISBN: 0-00-713374-x

Reviewed by Sarah Parker

Originally, I was drawn into this novel by the two characters in the opening chapter. It’s been a while since I visited the Kelewan/Midkemia books. I still think Magician is one of the best fantasy novels ever written, a quintessential read which has all the best elements of fantasy put together in a way that kept me entranced for all 800 plus pages. Flight of the Night Hawks, however is not Magician. I found that this novel told me more about my own expectations and experiences than it did about engaging me into a story.

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Full Moon Rising – Keri Arthur
Hachette Livre Piatkus, 2007
357 pages
RRP: AU$19.95
ISBN: 978-074-993813-0

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

Full Moon Rising almost sits in the paranormal romance genre, but leans a little too far into erotica for my taste. Keri Arthur categorises this series as “dark urban fantasy”, which almost fits, but really, it runs closer to “vampire porn”.

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Empress of Mijak (Godspeaker vol. 1) – Karen Miller
HarperCollins Voyager, 2007
565 pages
RRP: AU$20.99
ISBN: 978-0-7322-8451-1

Reviewed by Cat Sparks

Empress of Mijak is the story of a girl: a nameless she-brat, purchased by traders in the Savage North, favoured as a rich man might favour a pet, told she is beautiful and precious, yet imprisoned as a slave. Hekat, as she names herself, takes the words “beautiful” and “precious” to heart and sees how she might make something of herself in the brutal city of Et-Raklion. When she learns of the fate traders Abajai and Yagji have in mind for her, she mutilates her own face and cuts herself an alternate destiny, one in which she catches both the god’s and the warlord Raklion’s eye.

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Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
Hachette Livre Gollancz, 2007 (reprint)
247 pages
RRP: AU$22.95
ISBN: 978-0-575-07995-3

Reviewed by Lev Lafayette

It is pleasing to see that Gollancz has released yet another reprint of Philip K. Dick’s Flow, My Tears, the Policeman Said, one of his more famous and accessible short novels, receiving the Campbell Award in 1975, and being nominated for a Hugo and Nebula in the same year. One wonders given the adaptation of Dick’s novels to film (A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Minority Report etc), whether this will also be the case – there is little doubt that it could make an excellent film, although the theatre adaptation in Boston apparently received mixed reviews.

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Dragon Ball Volume 16 – Akira Toriyama
Hachette Livre Gollancz Manga, 2007
208 pages
RRP: AU$12.95
ISBN: 13-9-780-57508-008-9

Review by Nicolee Baxter

It is the final of the 23rd strongest-under-the-heavens martial arts tournament. Goku prepares to face his last opponent – the great demon king, Piccolo. But it is not just the title of the tournament that is in contention. If Goku loses, his life and the freedom of the world are also at stake. Goku will need all his extraordinary fighting abilities just to survive.

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The Atrocity Archives – Charles Stross
Hachette Livre Orbit, 2007
319 pages
RRP: AU$19.95
ISBN: 978-1-84149-569-9

Reviewed by Jacinta Rosielle.

Zombies, gorgons, and lamias. Hi-tech spy gadgetry and blood-daubed pentacles. Charles Stross has created a world in which the occult, the supernatural, history and science fiction weave together to form a bizarre re-working of our current reality.

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