SCI-FI/FANTASY
JAMIE BUXTON THE ABSOLUTE BOOK by Elizabeth Knox (Michael Joseph £14.99, 640 pp)
At the heart of this story is the original — and unoriginal — sin of vengeance. It’s an act that leads taryn Cornick, an academic writer with a bestseller about lost libraries, into an astonishing journey of loss, peril, guilt and redemption.
except there’s more — a family mystery involving a strange, incendiary scroll; hell-spawned demons; an MI5 conspiracy; Odin’s corvine familiars; not to mention chilling revelations about how fairies live for ever and the price we pay for it.
Gripping and hugely ambitious, the broad narrative flood sweeps us on to an extraordinary conclusion. If we are occasionally left stranded on the shore, we can still admire the book’s sheer scope and grandeur.
PURGATORY MOUNT by Adam Roberts (Gollancz £16.99, 336 pp)
A sPACeshIP crewed by superior gods and insignificant humans discovers a mysterious tower on an unexplored planet. Who built it — and why?
the answer lies in their distant past and our near future, and a chance discovery made by a gang of teenage scavengers.
With their world collapsing into a stew of violence, the future of civilisation hangs on the gang’s secret — but the way events play out defies guesswork or easy interpretation.
this is a unique, astonishing blend of hard sci-fi, thriller and metaphysics. It’s savage, thrilling and, in a genre that uses intergalactic vastness as a stock in trade, it adds another twist — a huge spiritual element that launches the book into another dimension altogether.
SISTERSONG by Lucy Holland (Macmillan 16.99, 416 pp)
the Romans have gone, the saxons are marauding and Christianity is making inroads into the Old Religion. All this is keenly felt in King Cador’s Dumnonia, where earth magic is draining from the sacred groves and three princesses are threatening to come of age at just the wrong time: pretty and witchy sinne, Riva the healer, and Keyne, who yearns to be mistaken, and taken, for a boy.
But the saxons are pressing, the local priest and shaman are at odds and a handsome stranger is setting sister against sister. No cream teas in this West Country fable: feast instead on a gory, gripping and magically mythic tale of love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal.
THE American country singer-songwriter Luke Combs (pictured) looks like a lumberjack — but has the sweetest voice. Luke has been singing on stage since he was a child in North Carolina, worked as a bouncer while at university, then took himself off to Nashville to pursue a career in music. It all worked out just fine, as you’ll hear when one of the world’s biggest country stars joins KEN
BRUCE (RADIO 2, 9.30AM)
from his Nashville home to treat us to a live session.
JOHN SUCHET wraps up his week-long celebration of great British orchestras in THE CLASSIC FM CONCERT (8PM). He includes a daring recording by the Aurora Orchestra, who made the bold decision some years ago to do away with scores and play entirely from memory. Tonight, we hear them
displaying total recall for Gerald Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto, bringing a sense of immediacy to the work.
THE vagus nerve is a highway that connects our bodies to our brains by taking information from all our major organs and then delivering it to the brain stem. Breathing techniques seem to improve our vagus nerve’s performance, and, as Marnie Chesterton reports for CROWDSCIENCE (BBC WORLD SERVICE, 8.30PM), there is hope that innovations in implanted devices could put an end to the misery of conditions such as arthritis.