Haven’t done one of these for a while.

The latest M John Harrison is obligatory, and should probably be mandatory. Seeing the man getting the accolades and sales at the end of a long career of defiantly doing what he wanted to do is a wonderful thing. I feel like maybe we’ll speak of him around the middle of the C21st in the same way we’ve spoken of PKD in its early decades: not as a prophet, exactly, but someone whose literary aesthetic uncannily prefigured the contortions of the culture to come.

New Ann Leckie, because how could one not? I actually found the last one, Translation State, somewhat of a damp squib… but the Ancillary trilogy was a genuine belter of a debut, and as such it casts a long shadow over her own follow-ups, as well as her many imitators. But for that same reason I’m still more than willing to take the chance.

As for E J Swift, I have a few of her earlier novels on the shelves, but if I ever got round to reading them, I don’t recall. This one’s apparently in that near-future climate change / rewilding / degrowth space, which is a zone that interests me a great deal, both professionally and as a reader-for-reading’-own-sake. I wonder how it might chime with Simon Ings’s Wolves from a while back?