Review by Jean Gordon

The Legacy of Lord Regret, by Sam Bowring, Hachette Australia, August 2012: Book one of the Strange Threads duology.

Sam Bowring is a name that's new to me. As it turns out, I must have been looking in the wrong direction, because this isn't his first book. It's not even his first series. Clearly there is a deficiency in my library which I will be hurrying to correct.

I approach new fantasy books, or perhaps I should say new fantasy authors, with both excitement and worry. I want to like their work. I want to love it. But there's a lot of fantasy out there, the genre has grown immeasurably over the last two decades or so, and like anything else a good portion of it is garbage.

So, like many a reader, while I'm always on the look-out for new gems, I am also aware that there's a fairly high possibility that I'm in for yet another Lord Of The Rings rip-off, with a storyline I could almost recite before I read a single page. A bastard son at this point is almost an inevitability, and if you add in a prophecy then you've got the start of a good drinking game.

Review by Jean Gordon

The Lord Of Lies, by Sam Bowring, Hachette Australia, August 2012: Book Two of the Strange Threads Duology.

I was very eager to pick up The Lord of Lies. The Legacy of Lord Regret had left me hanging, and I was very much looking forward to what I had every reason to expect would be a conclusion equally as strong as the start. As it turned out, while the book was very good, I don't know that it quite stands up to the first one.

The story picks up directly where The Legacy of Lord Regret left off, with the various players still trying to find (or make) a place for themselves in the world. Some, as one would expect, are doing better than others.

Review by Mark Webb

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis, Orbit, August 2012

Blurbs for books are an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes meaninglessly positive, occasionally decipherable only after you've read the book, and at their best tantalisingly cryptic. What blurbs usually don't do is encapsulate the core of a story in one pithy fragment of a sentence. Imagine then this reviewer's surprise when he received his copy of the debut novel by Ian Tregillis, Bitter Seeds, and read Cory Doctorow's blurb:

'Mad English warlocks battling twisted Nazi psychics'

Review by Sue Clennell

Angela Slatter. The girl with no hands and other tales. WA., Ticonderoga Publications, 2010.

Angela Slatter is a Brisbane-based writer of speculative fiction. Three of her stories have been short-listed for the Aurealis Awards.

Slatter claims to write of primal fears, "Fear of the dark, of things we do not know, of being abandoned, of not being loved, of not being smart/beautiful/brave enough; fear of not knowing the rules."

She sets out to change patriarchal messages planted in traditional fairytales, but also places us in the context of the wicked stepmother/stepfather. Her heroines are actually the ones not following the rules.

Review by Sue Clennell

The Host - 2013

I bet there are some brown-eyed people who look upon blue-eyed people as aliens. Well, now it's official. In Stephenie Meyer's film, The Host, your eyes change to a cold pale blue when you've been taken over by an alien.

Melanie, played by Saoirse Ronan, who also starred in Lovely Bones, is taken over by a host 1,000 years old called Wanderer.