Science Fiction Books > P Science Fiction Books

Advantages: Beautfully sculpted world, with wonderfully make characters.
Disadvantages: No Cazaril!, only appeil to fantasy readers.

The follow on the "The Curse of Chalion", it unforunatly has no direct appearance of the main character Cazaril from the first book. Instead it is the story of the mad Royina Ista. It is set in the same beautiful world as the first book,unforunatly it's in a far flung castle on the border of Chalion. This book introduces the new interesting demon created sorcerers. These are interesting and occur very frequently in the book, were as their wasn't ...
...to meet more of the gods in the book, The Father of Winter, and The Bastard for all things out of season. In this book Ista herself actually meets the two. As opposed to the first book where Cazaril only meets the Daughter of Spring. This is still a book worth reading, set in a beautful world. Just don't pick it up expecting to travel with Cazaril for more god granted adventures. Although I do like the dry humor with features between the Royina ... Read review

Advantages: Brilliantly sly humour
Disadvantages: None for me

After a reconnaissance mission to the moon goes wrong, Ijon Tichy returns to Earth severely injured. Whilst taking a leak behind a rock in the Sea of Serenity he suffers a remote callotomy and with the two sides of his brain forever severed he returns to Earth to find his right side at odds with the left. As he records his story his left hand has to be tied down to stop it from ripping the paper out of his typewriter. Tichy lives in a world where ...
...are involved in a perpetual battle to out gun their neighbours. With the cost of weapons rising at an ever increasing rate the nations of Earth decide to move the race to the moon where super intelligent robots will design the weapons of the future and keep them out of reach of the leaders on Earth. Each nation is given a plot on the moon where their super weapons will be developed and the Earth is finally freed from the grip of the arms race. Safe ... Read review

Advantages: Good overall epic story, not too technical, fairly easy to read
Disadvantages: Little variation in characters, some superfluous plot threads, too many characters.

...the somewhat complicated plot synopsis, Pandora's Star is an epic tale of a future human civilisation. Given the science fiction stories I tend to read, this is a rather pleasant, tempting future as opposed to the usual dystopian stuff. The problem with epics is that they have to start somewhere and this is where I feel the main flaw in Hamilton's writing. You're thrown straight in at the deep end and introduced to a vast number of characters, most ...
...the story, I did enjoy Pandora's Star quite a bit. The story, which I always regard as the most important part when reading fiction, sucked me in. I thought that Hamilton built his Commonwealth extremely well concentrating on the overall picture rather than worrying about the little details and the amount of thought put into it is impressive. My dissatisfaction about the ending was offset quite quickly with the knowledge that, having come to the ... Read review

Advantages: Fluent and enjoyable read, characters explored better than in Foundation, clever view of the future
Disadvantages: Characters linguistics are dated as are elements of the science, tricky to attain these days

...all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky.” It's a running theme in a great deal of Asimov's novels – a refreshing view of a galaxy that does not centre around Earth and a writing-style that is not necessarily shackled to the sole portrayal of our own planet's (usually dominant) position in humankind. Though Pebble In The Sky, his first published novel, is set on Earth, it defies convention by portraying the birthplace of humankind as something of a ...
...find a paperback copy of Pebble In The Sky (PITS) on eBay for only £3-4 – though as a consequence of seeing little or no major reprints down the years even in the wake of Foundation series popularity (the last minor reprint coming after his death in 1993), my copy of the book is around fifty years old, and is unlikely to be available to buy new in any great numbers. Pebble In The Sky was the first of three books that would comprise the Galactic ... Read review

Advantages: Erm.......
Disadvantages: Loads

...however this simply isn't a PREDATOR book. I got the feeling John Shirley may have looked a picture of a Predator, but carried out no other research at all which means that many of his ideas go completely against the registered lore of the species. Firstly it seems the Predators are sexually dimorphous and so depending on their 'cycle' they can be male or female. I don't rememeber this even being hinted at before and actively goes against what he ...
...The book is readable but not for Predator fans who will probably hate it. The attempt at bringing something new to the species fails totally and rather than evolve and give back story this book contradicts and will probably be largely ignored when other stories / films come out. ... Read review