SCI-FI/FANTASY
THE TROUBLE WITH PEACE by Joe Abercrombie
(Gollancz £20, 512 pp) With the rebellious Breakers broken, peace is reigning in the Union, but nothing lasts for ever and now it’s the aristocrats’ turn to threaten the rule of the foppish, reluctant King Orso.
Conspiring all around him is a packed gallery of the wicked and the noble, all being wicked and noble but never, ever in the way you expect it. So when the doltishly heroic Leo of Angland and the beautiful and ruthless
Savine form a rebel dream-team, along with Rikke the seer and Stour Nightfall the psycho, you just know they can’t fail. Er …
Nimble, brutal and hilarious, it’s Abercrombie leading us into bloody war, so all bets are off!
THE DOORS OF EDEN by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(Tor £18.99, 640 pp) it’S all here — a tchaikovsky symphony of high-octane action, proper characters and brainticklingly clever stuff.
two girls, hunting cryptids on Bodmin Moor, encounter a rift in time that one falls through. She finds herself prey to human/ magpie hybrids from an alternative universe. Obvs.
What happens next is a dizzying chase through the multiverse, each dimension with its own unique evolutionary history. So alongside the birdy things, there are civilisations built by ratty things, neanderthal things, and good and bad human things, all trying to cope with imminent apocalypse.
it’s a love story, a meditation on difference and survival and, above all, a vast and gripping multi-world epic.
A GIRL MADE OF AIR by Nydia Hetherington
(Quercus £14.99, 400 pp) hERE’S a high-wire act of the airy-fairy and the down and dirty, with lyricism and whimsy balanced by bawdy humour.
Neglected by her aquabatic mother and animal trainer father, the nameless heroine is destined to live as an overlooked circus brat until Serendipity Wilson, funambulist and mother figure, breezes into her life.
What follows is a rich tale of circus folk, love and neglect, nicely seasoned with magical real ism. there are tricks, deceptions and difficult questions without easy answers as the finest tight rope walker in the world travels from England to Coney island to find balance in her life.