I am an absolutely massive David Mitchell fan, and for some reason that put me off reading The Bone Clocks for literal years, not because I didn’t want to, but because for some reason the time never felt ‘right’. It took me a moment of realisation to get over that and just grab it to read om my commute.

And of course, it was amazing!

Like we have come to expect from David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks is a genre-hopping (mostly) urban fantasy book with several layers of mystery.

Part of what makes this book so great is that it starts slowly, with the supernatural merely a suggestion. As the story develops and the characters and point of view shift, that weird scene at the end of the previous story slowly fades into the background – and both the reader and the character themselves start questioning the main character’s sanity.

But as Mitchell dips in and out of the supernatural and the fantasy elements become more real, the reader realises this is not just a literary story with some magical elements but a full-blown urban fantasy.

I can’t add much more detail without risking spoiling the story, but it soon devolves into an occult war with a butter soft magic system but really cool jargon.

Remember though, this is still David Mitchell. So despite all the genre-fiction going on in the background, most of the story is more about the characters than the plot, which only takes centre stage in a couple of chapters.

And, again, as we expect from Mitchell, the characters are diverse and their stories varied, from a rebellious teenage girl to a war correspondent, from a posh student to a has-been writer. And, of course, as we expect from Mitchell, their stories are expertly interlinked.

And that isn’t even all yet.

To top it all off, the final section of the book presents an (almost) stand-alone post-apocalyptic story that is so good that I almost wonder whether it could not have been material for a book on its own – the world-building is superb, especially for how short the section actually is.

Overall, I am absolutely kicking myself for not reading The Bone Clocks when it was originally released. It is one of the best books I have read in years, and if it is not on your list you are definitely missing out.

Listened to the audiobook with Kat Cleave – fine narrator.

I really liked The Paper Menagerie, so I was keen to try out some of Liu’s longer work. When The Grace of Kings disappointed, I chalked that up to the fact that it felt a little like an overreach – an attempt to squeeze an incredibly complex period in Chinese history into a fantasy setting. It read like Liu was trying just a little too hard to write a magnum opus. I figured that was a fluke and I was glad to find that Liu returned to sci fi for All that we See or Seem.

Only to find that his latest novel fell flat for me too.

The pitch is good, if a little generic – a loner with a skillset that wants to be forgotten by the world is pulled into One Last Case. The ‘twist’ here is that our loner is not a jaded, white, male, detective, but rather a young woman hacker.

Unfortunately, the story that spins from the prompt failed to excite me.

Part of the reason must be that the characters didn’t come alive. Perhaps the characters felt so flat because it appeared to me Liu was more excited about showing off his research into near future tech ideas than fleshing out his characters. Admittedly, there are a number of thought-provoking nuggets in his descriptions of technology. However, his dystopian vision of our near future – while not at all improbable – feels like it lacks imagination. And even though it hogs the limelight, frustratingly, it never feels like it is central to what is going on.

Liu’s focus on explaining the details of AI hacking or phone data tracking comes at the cost of developing, for example, his villain. Cartoonishly evil and without any form of motivation or background, his largest contribution to the novel are his phone calls to his equally generic goons.

The villain is not alone in this. My suspense of disbelief was thoroughly tested by a number of other moments that felt straight out of a cartoon. From improbable puzzles to listening in on the bad guys’ poorly scripted video game dialogue, from analysing company policy for determining what car to steal to analysing in what pot of food to hide one’s drone, All What We See or Seem is plagued by regular sections of underdeveloped prose that an editor should have taken an axe to.

Overall, All That We See or Seem is just the umpteenth cyberpunk noir that focusses on exploring a drab near-future dystopia over its own characters or message. My conclusion is that I should probably stick to Ken Liu’s short form fiction.

Listened to the audiobook with George Griffin – well read.

The Island of Dr Moreau is some of the very earliest works of science fiction ever, and honestly, it didn’t quite click for me.

The story is really simple: a cast away washes ashore on an island that is home to a race of strange human-animal hybrids, that turn out to be sutured together by a mad scientist that is trying to prove a point. When his influence over them wanes, they revert – some more slowly than others – to their animal nature, and the protagonist has to flee the island and get back to the world of men.

If I were brutally honest, I would say that that is a plot on the level of a children’s comic book.

Now, of course, the we should not forget that this novel was published in 1896. The mad scientist might have found his origin in The Island of Dr Moreau (to those of you who would accuse Victor Frankenstein of starting this trope instead, I challenge you to read the book!). So we need to cut Wells some slack.

But even with a lot of slack, I feel The Island of Dr Moreau doesn’t really rise much above the level of a simple adventure story.

Perhaps the idea of vivisecting and rebuilding animals the way Moreau does in this novel was an interesting or even vaguely plausible science fiction concept in 1896, but 130 years later it strikes the reader as rather fanciful.

The science fiction and the plot might be a little simple, but Wells wouldn’t be famous over a century down the line if he weren’t a good writer. There are certainly parts of The Island of Dr Moreau that prove that.

The best element of the story is probably the struggle of the beast-men to retain their human side. Made to be more than beasts, they are proud of their humanity and want to remain rational. But the moment their strict regime breaks down, they start reverting to their animal habits despite themselves.

I found that idea – that you may reshape an animal but that it will always revert to its nature – a sad but nevertheless thought-provoking message. It underlines Moreau’s hubris and his cruelty in making these animals something they are not.

In the end, I am happy to have crossed a classic like The Island of Dr Moreau off my list, but I am not sure this is a book that I would recommend to 21st century readers. A cornerstone of the genre, perhaps, but one best appreciated in its foundational role not examined individually.

Listened to the full-cast audiobook with Kirsten Pitter, Arthur Morey, John Lee, and Dylan Moore. Well read, though perhaps this was not the book that was improved most by the full cast performance.

Borderline 2,5-3 stars. The bottom line of this review is that I did not not enjoy my time reading Sea of Tranquility but I also read it a couple of weeks ago and I already forgot that I did – I only remembered when I saw I noted it on my to review-list.

Sea of Tranquility is the kind of novel that I could have really loved. It has a time travel plot that is neatly slotted together (if not particularly sophisticated or unexpected), with interlinked and intertwined stories – that is the kind of book that tickles my fancy.

And there are other positives too – the book is character and emotion focussed and even though the separate stories mean that you don’t spend as much time with each of the characters as you might in another novel, I connected with them well. The prose is atmospheric, good at establishing a vibe in all the scenes.

On the other hand, it all remains pretty vague.

For example, the book takes place over different timelines and geographic locations, but I feel the effort to differentiate them fell a little flat. The one person we properly meet in 1912 happens to be the one who opposes colonialism, so we St John Mandel never really needs to portray a true denizen of the antebellum and get into their mindset. When we get to the 2200’s, the characters are still discussing sexism and the division of task in raising children between husband and wife.

I am not saying that those might not have been or might not be topics of discussion in those far away times, but it is obvious that these are discussions from today that are projected on distant characters with no apparent effort to place them in their (imagined) context.

The same goes for the small details of worldbuilding. Are people going to be doing a physical book tour selling physical books in the 2200s? Is it ever really going to be feasible to commute from the earth to the moon? Why are people traveling in time to begin with again?

All in all, the strongest sections of Sea of Tranquility are those taking place in the here and now, where the relatively mediocre sci-fi elements don’t get in the way of enjoying a good emotion-driven scene.

In conclusion, I am on the fence. At its best, Sea of Tranquility is a nice atmospheric and emotional drama, with a properly designed if a little cliché time-travel puzzle on top. At its worst, Sea of Tranquility is a poorly executed Cloud Atlas-clone that doesn’t get what makes that book so impressive. Make of that what you will.

I don’t read a lot of (read: any) Dutch Fantasy. I picked up Web van Angst (Web of Fear) because it was written by Arlette Krijgsman, a member of Het Papieren Zwaard. HPZ strives to encourage and promote Dutch Fantasy. I’ve read some of their story bundles, and they feature really good Dutch Fantasy stories. So when I heard Arlette had her book traditionally published after winning a writing competition, I obviously had to pick it up.

Web van Angst is a Young Adult novel, which is clear in some ways, but I would say it exceeds the age bracket in others. The cover features stunning art by Tara Spruit, in a style that does seem more geared towards younger readers, featuring the three main characters facing the front (though there’s plenty of downright cartoonish covers hiding extremely smutty adult books these days – so I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover). The writing style is very accessible as well, and while the book deals with heavy topics, they are handled in a very respectful way.

The story itself is an exploration of such a heavy topic. In a world where fear turns into literal monsters, there’s lots of space to explore how we (should) handle fear and anxiety. The Daimons are hardly a subtle metaphor, but as a concept, they work really well, and I’m interested to see where Krijgsman takes the metaphor in the sequel(s).

The worldbuilding of Web van Angst is solid. There’s a lot going on, but it never becomes confusing. The characters are easy to relate to and feel very real. There’s definitely a lot still unsaid with regard to their backstories, but then the story isn’t over yet.

I’d definitely recommend Web van Angst if you speak Dutch and want to check out some Dutch Fantasy!

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Philip K. Dick, where I really want to like what he writes but I often struggle to just a little actually enjoy reading his work.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep fits that picture very well.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Dick creates an interesting world, with a history, religion, a crumbling society – all with a few throwaway lines. I have praised a sci-fi writers’ ability to do this at length and it was one of the reasons I enjoyed Neuromancer so much.

Moreover, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep has a surprising amount of depth. It revolves around the real versus the fake, around human empathy, and around the distance created between people by artificial distinctions.

A good example of this depth is the fact that all humans are supposed to demonstrate their empathy by caring for an animal. But since these are so expensive, some have a ‘fake’ electric animal instead (a source of great shame, and thus kept secret). Nevertheless, the humans love these electric animals with all their heart as their society and religion requires of them. But when it comes to ‘fake’ humans – the androids – humans are supposed not to have a shred of feeling for them. It is this paradox that the protagonist Deckard is struggling with.

And that is a great theme! Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep just feels a little like Dick went into it without too much of a plan. As a result, there are poignant moments, but not a particularly strong overarching structure. There are great ideas and little vignettes, but some of these are discarded after use in a single paragraph.

Most importantly, however, is Dick’s prose, which is best described as very blunt. I don’t need flowery prose to enjoy a story, but in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I found Dick’s presentation rather jarring at times.

In a book that revolves around empathy, Dick leaves basically all of the feelings to the reader. That has advantages – the reader is free to project their own thoughts and feelings onto Deckard and his wife and to judge their relationship by those standards.

That also means, however, that Dick has written a novel without much of an actual message, since the reader can basically make of it what they wish. The rather disjointed ending adds to this feeling.

So. I like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It is full of interesting ideas and has great theme. But I don’t think Dick knocked it out of the park with these ingredients. It makes me wonder what we could have gotten if some other, more empathetic writer had taken Dick’s outline and built a story with it.

Philip K. Dick is one of the grandfathers of science fiction, and this short story is one of his classics. It’s a bit difficult to review without giving too much away, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Like many of Dick’s short stories, this one is heavily carried by the central concept. In this case, the central concept is the idea that in place of actually experiencing a particular experience, a person could undergo a simple procedure to have a memory of that experience implanted. Note only does this raise questions of whether all of their other memories are real, but additionally, the story asks:  if memories can be implanted, can they also be erased?

The concept is a strong basis for the story and interesting food for thought, though as is often the case in these classic stories, the central ideas crowd out character development or world building. I think the story is well-structured, and its double twist works well. I have to say though that I think that Dick has written better prose, and there is some unnecessary casual misogyny that would look very much out of place today.

Overall, it is not a bad story, but not as good as some of Dick’s other works. The central concept of a virtual experience is not near as novel now, though we’ve mostly drifted away from the memory angle in modern fiction. Nowadays, it is probably mostly of interest to people who are curious about the origin of Total Recall, and not the public at large.