More Reviews

I thought I'd mentioned these already, but clearly it slipped my mind during the whole hectic Christmas maelstrom.

Sci-Fi Online, who have previously reviewed A Life Worth Living and Peculiar Lives, now have a review up for Short Trips: The History of Christmas. I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that the reviewer makes no mention of "The Long Midwinter", given how much of the review he devotes to savaging Marcus Flavin's story. He rightly singles out Simon Bucher-Jones's and Peter Anghelides' stories for praise, though.

More excitingly (for me at least) the surprisingly mainstream SF webzine The Zone has a review of Peculiar Lives alongside those for various genre books including Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel.

The reviewer's ambivalent about the book, but most of what he says seems fair. I might argue that what he perceives as a weakness of the novella (the independence of Peculiar Lives from the rest of the Time Hunter series) is actually a strength of the range: the format is flexible enough that it can accommodate a non-standard book like Peculiar Lives or The Clockwork Woman without breaking its stride.

Still: "incredibly brave", "a challenging but ultimately rewarding read"... and, best of all, "The central idea is extremely well handled and the descriptions of Honore's travels in time in particular are fascinating to read." That's the kind of criticism I can live with, I think.