Month: October 2021

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Moths by Jane Hennigan

An interesting speculation on the kind of world that might emerge if most men died, and patriarchy was just a memory.

February 2023

Jane Hennigan recently secured a publishing deal with Angry Robot Books so the covers for MOTHS and its sequel TOXXIC have been changed. I understand the reasons, and why the Kindle versions of the books have dropped off Amazon, probably in the short term, but I really liked the cover design for MOTHS, it’s striking and one of the reasons the book caught my attention.

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Reiver: The Sword’s Edge by David Pilling

The second outing for Richie o’the Bow, this time on the run in Scotland, escaping the Armstrongs of Liddesdale for killing their chief Nebless Will. Captured by the English he is forced to work as a double-agent, carrying messages to and from the treacherous Earl of Westmoreland. Treads similar moss to the first book, breathing life into brutal time of blood-feuds and betrayal, political intrigue and rebellion. The whole thing has a filmic energy about it.

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Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman

Really exciting insight into how a brain, isolated in a dark box, functions and understands the world. “The brain is a dynamic, electric, living forest.” It’ll make you reassess what you think you know.

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Reiver by David Pilling

England in 1569 and there’s rebellion in the air. The Catholic earls of the north are plotting to depose the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Against this backdrop, Richie o’the Bow is caught in a blood-feud with one of the most dangerous riding families on the border, the notorious Armstrongs. Outlawed for killing two of their number, during their raid on his village, Richie and his Bairns do what they must to survive, including killing as many Armstrongs as possible. Tight prose churn through events on the turbulent border of sixteenth-century England and Scotland. A place where theft, murder, revenge, and vendetta are a brutal way of life.

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The Guilty (2021)

Tightly written. Beautifully paced. Gyllenhaal’s performance is stellar as the pent up ball of frustration call handler trying to save an abducted woman. But nothing is as it seems when it’s all at the other end of a phone.

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Survivors by Terry Nation

A reimagining of episodes from Terry Nation’s TV series, with a radically different ending for his characters. One thing I’ve always found interesting about Survivors is Nation’s heroes. They’re all middle-class individualists, with “natural” authority. While his bad guys are all working-class “thugs” with guns, forcing their collectivism on everyone. The book and TV series were written in the mid-seventies, before Thatcher came to power, and plays to that idea, often pushed by working-class Tories, that the unions had too much power. Not an idea I ascribe to, but perhaps that understanding is one of the many reasons that generation chose Thatcher in seventy-nine.