Review by Jean Gordon

Rise Of The Fallen, by Teagan Chilcott, Magabala Books, April 2013

Rise Of The Fallen is a new work by a young writer. Teagan Chilcott can be very proud of the fact that at an age where many young women are still feeling their way into the adult world, she is a published author. It's an achievement that I don't want to downplay.

But the fact is that there is perhaps a reason there aren't many authors in their teens. There's a certain maturity that comes with time, and it tends to be reflected in writing style.

Rise Of The Fallen is an urban fantasy novel, set ostensibly in Brisbane. I say ostensibly, because there is actually no sense of place evident in the novel. It could just as well have been London, New York or the moon.

Review by Nuke

In The Mouth Of The Whale, by Paul McAuley, Gollancz (Orion), 2012

While I was reading Paul Mcauley's latest novel I was under the notion that I'd not read anything by this novelist in the past. Strange. Hard SF. How had he slipped my SF acquisitive net? Well, turns out he hadn't. In fact, I do now recall reading his 1995 Sidewise Award winning novel Pasquale's Angel. Good book. And my problem turns out to be a memory issue, nothing more or less. Hardware or software? Will it turn out that I'm an AI with no real notion of what I really am? That I live a reality other than where I think I live?

Turns out Mr. McAuley likes to pose these kinds of questions. Good questions. But posed in story form, and the questions are never articulated, merely implied, tangentially approached.

Review by Todd Vercoe

The Return Man, V.M. Zito, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013

‘The Return Man’ is V.M. Zito’s first foray into a full length novel. As a self-confessed, lifelong-fan of the zombies he does a first rate job of instilling the main elements of the genre in this post-apocalyptic work. Furthermore, Zito  incorporates the contemporary elements of a sinister China seizing on the misfortune of a decimated USA — including  the autocratic tendencies of a ‘New Republic’ government, and the unseen hand of a CIA-type organisation pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Is Zito a member of the NRA? I doubt it, but he sure is good at incorporating lashings of literary blood and gore. He will become the Quentin Tarantino of the literary world if this novel is indicative of any future work he turns out.