Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker is the author’s first novel since 2012. A return to the fantasy genre in which he began his career, it’s a dense and multi-layered work that resists easy interpretation. The title does not refer to the sugary syrup, but to an older meaning of the word, referring to a type of healing concoction used since ancient times, and by extension any kind of curative substance. It’s an appropriate title for a book with a deep connection to the past.
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Cyberpunk is enjoying more popularity now than it did in its heyday of the 80s. Perhaps this is because reality has finally caught up with the fantasy. Out of all the subgenres of science fiction, it seems to be the one that has best predicted our current reality; we live in cyberpunk cities now, with flashing neon advertising and towering skyscrapers of glass, and corporations effectively run the world. All of this was prefigured in William Gibson’s pioneering science fiction masterpiece Neuromancer.
Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is a classic of contemporary literature. First published in Italian in 1980 (the English translation came out in 1983), it is a murder mystery that doubles as a philosophical treatise. It is a dense and complex work, notorious for its difficulty, but is nevertheless one of the bestselling books of all time.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is, in my opinion, an underrated Stephen King. It’s one of his shorter books, clocking in at only 216 pages, and I polished it off in a single morning. While it doesn’t rank alongside the all-time classics like The Shining and Pet Sematary, it’s a gripping little tale about a girl lost in the woods.
John M. Ford was an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who wrote novels, short fiction, poetry, and a number of role-playing games. He is less-known today than some of his contemporaries because after he sadly died in 2006, almost all his work was out of print (fortunately, his works are being reissued now by Tor Books). The Dragon Waiting was his third novel, and earned him the 1984 World Fantasy Award.
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Atticus Book ReviewsBook reviews and reading recommendations written by volunteers and friends of the shop! |
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