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• Twilight of Briareus - Richard Cowper. Deep and meaningful book all about a nova that imbues certain folk with psi powers. Very densely written and not immediately enjoyable.

• Stolen Faces - Michael Bishop. I borrowed this with some trepidation after reading that Bishop has a reputation as a ponderous author. It's definitely no lightweight throwaway, that's for sure. It's about a colony of diseased people who live their lives in accordance with long-dead Aztec traditions, and the people who ostensibly care for them. Odd book.

• Robots of Dawn - Isaac Asimov. I read his Foundation trilogy some time back and enjoyed it, so I borrowed this with hopes it'd be good. It isn't bad but Asimov confronts you with such tight plotting and incontrovertible logic, you want to stand to attention over it. There's not a word or event extraneous to the plot in this book.

• The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov. Prequel to the above. It's a murder mystery like the book above, but it's a superior effort in every way. It's considered one of the classics of science fiction and it's pretty easy to see why. It's set on a world where people are few and live far away from each other and personal contact and affection are regarded with abhorrence.

• The Time Ships - Stephen Baxter. It's a sequel to H. G. Well's The Time Machine, the third I know about. Hell, there'd be few people who've read Wells's original and not wanted to go back and try and save Weena from that fire. Anyhow, this sequel is pretty damned good. Flits back and forward like a good travelogue, as our intrepid Time Traveller gets caught up in some extraordinary alternative histories, with a genteel Morlock as a companion. Very well written; Baxter is no Wells, though he tries to be at times. One of the better "Hard Science Fiction" books I've read.

• The Man Who Loved Morlocks - David J. Lake. Like the above, it's a sequel to The Time Machine. It's nowhere near as ambitious as the Baxter book and not as well written. It's not large; it's barely novella size and the copy I borrowed has great cover art and is quaintly illustrated throughout. The Time Traveller finds causality is his enemy as he attempts to rescue Weena and is thwarted. Instead he goes forward in time nearly 200,000 years and lives with a successor race. The last fifth of the book is taken up with a report on the Traveller's incursions by the Morlocks themselves. Pretty droll.

• Rocannon's World - Ursula Le Guin. Picaresque tale about Rocannon, a space anthropologist, of a sort, on a world peopled by near-human aliens. It's science fiction masquerading as heroic fantasy, as far as I can tell. An adequate read and not particularly great. One of Le Guin's lesser works.

• The Verdant Passage - Troy Denning. Book one of the Prism Pentad series. This is a Dungeons & Dragons book, set in the Dark Sun world TSR created. In other words, it's a novel based upon the gaming world created by a company. The book is entertaining, though slight. Denning is no Salvatore, but it's a fun and enjoyable read. Now, to get hold of the remainder of them.

• Twilight World - Poul Anderson. One of many post-apocalyptic novels out there. This is one of the more middling ones to be honest. It starts out well enough then becomes a drag to read. Average in every sense of the word.

• The High Crusade - Poul Anderson. 13th Century Englishmen thwart an alien invasion and then go travelling in space in the visitor's ship. Written in a strange pseudo-Old English style from the viewpoint of a priest. Great fun in its own way, obviously written for laughs. If it wasn't, then it should've been.

• The Lincoln Hunters - Wilson Tucker. About a time travelling crew gone back to 1856 to record a lost speech given out by Abraham Lincoln. Not everything goes to plan and it deals with causality and paradoxes in a slight, but effective way. Decent book, enjoyable and not what you'd expect.

• Lara - Bertrice Small. About a slave girl's journey of self-discovery through a fantasy world. There you go, that's the nice way to review it. The real way would be to name it a puerile and cheap piece of shit that seriously makes you think if this author can get published, any fool can.

The book is one big sex romp basically. It'd be all right, if the sex romps were described tastefully and with a real sense of eloquence and passion, but they're not. It's all "he stuck his manroot in her waiting sheath and went booyah!". In other words, it's 5th-rate pornography that a 16 year old could write better. The prose style is absurdly basic. I can't describe it any better than that. It is relentlessly plain. Sorry, but there's zero nice to say about this dross.

• Heads - Greg Bear. A short and sharp novella about the controversy surrounding a bunch of cryogenically preserved heads brought to a future Moon colony. There's a very strong anti-religious feeling in this book and it's quite good for hard SF.

• The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke. About the building of a space elevator above a fictional version of Sri Lanka. It's quite good, and upholds Clarke's recurring motif of scientific optimism. Some reviewer once commented that Clarke mixes mysticism with his background in hard science and this book melds the two very well.

• The Dosadi Experiment - Frank Herbert. Sequel to The Whipping Star (which I haven't read). About an investigator sent to a world where a mass of people, both human and alien, live in tremendously overcrowded conditions. A dense and heavily convoluted book that examines alien legal viewpoints and manipulation. Definitely not light reading.

• The Empire of Eternity - Anthony O'Neill. An historical novel, as opposed to the science fiction or fantasy I normally read. Exceptionally-well written book about the endless search for the Chamber of Eternity in Egypt. It's based and written from the viewpoints of real people (Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander Rhind, etc) and is as much an examination of man's thirst for immortality, both biological and historical, as it is anything else.

• The Night Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko. A translated-from-Russian vampire tale set in contemporary Moscow. I'm not sure whether this book was lost in translation or it just wasn't engaging to begin with, but I struggled to read this one. It just doesn't hold your attention. The author has a solid reputation, so I'm willing to bet it was a lost in translation thing.

• The Lamplighter - Anthony O'Neill. A deep book about a strange young woman in late 19th century Edinburgh and how she may be possessed by the Devil. Extremely well crafted, with excellent period setting; the author obviously knows Victorian-era Scotland well. Complicated and knotty work, and by no means light reading.

• The Dark Edge - Richard Harland. One of the better books I've mini-reviewed here. It's a murder-mystery set on a pioneer world. A couple of investigators arrive to solve some puzzling murders and become involved in some very odd goings-on. Written in an easy-to-read slapdash style, but it's entertaining and very engaging. Good stuff.

• Taken by Force - Richard Harland. Quasi-sequel to the above (It would read quite well as a standalone). The two investigators get captured by a gang of degenerate marauders living in an asteroid, and the female of the two has to solve a murder mystery to save herself from being used as a sex/plaything by the selfsame gang. Good, engaging story, but the boy-girl sexual tension stuff in it could've been done a lot better.

• Hidden from View - Richard Harland. About a series of murders taking place in an inhabited garbage dump. The third in this series and easily the least of the three. Contrived sexual tension, unconvincing plotline, absurd characterisations. It was a real letdown after the first two books. Harland's less-than-strong writing style is definitely noticeable here.

• The Summer Witch - Louise Cooper. A decent cautionary tale on magic and its use. Well-written story about a sexually and emotionally frustrated farm wife and her quest for love and respect, and how magic warps it all for her. Engaging work - I liked it.

• Scar Night - Alan Campbell. First in a trilogy. A superbly weird book written from the viewpoint of several different characters. It's about a city suspended by huge chains over some abyss - one guy wants his dead daughter back, another wants retribution against the city for the death of his wife, another waits until the dark of the moon to go and kill and perhaps redeem her soul...the strangest and most rewarding thing I've read in ages. The guy who wrote it is a dev for Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. Arguably the best book on this page.

• Lye Street - Alan Campbell. Novella-sized prequel to the above. Focuses on Carnival, one of the two angels from the above novel and her pursuit of a man whose family/ancestors slighted her centuries ago. A little grittier than the book, but still very good.

• American Gods - Neil Gaiman. About a flatly-drawn and faceless character who is manipulated by various gods of mythology into helping them avert a battle with the new technocratic gods that have arisen in America. Of course, there are twists to it all. Enjoyable book and solidly written, but it leaves you feeling empty, like after eating a wonderful sandwich and then futilely trying to recall the taste. As much as Gaiman tries, he can't help but show an America through the eyes of an Englishman, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

• Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser. Harry Paget Flashman is a dissolute son of a 19th century English politician that wenches, cheats and runs like hell from danger at every chance he gets. This book sees Flashman caught up in the First Anglo-Afghan War and the disastrous retreat from Kabul. Rip-roaring adventure on every page. Also arguably the best book on this page. (I've read nine other Flashman books and for the most part, they are as good as this one.)

• Ysabel - Guy Gavriel Kay. Put it this way: I couldn't even finish this book. I tried - I truly did, but Kay's cringe-worthy "young hip 21th century teenager" dialogue made me wince and the less-than-spectacular story itself is a morass. Give me more Fionavar please! At least they were readable.

• The Integral Trees - Larry Niven. About the adventures of a colony of humans living in a gas torus orbiting a neutron star. One of the so-called classics of science fiction. It is a good book, admittedly, much better than I thought it'd be. The idea is greater than those who live in the idea, but it's still an effective work.