An old bit of advice from the days when I was still working seriously on trying to get short fiction published went along the lines of: submit your work to the venues you read most regularly. (I got some fairly prestigious rejections, obvs.)

I’ve broadly kept to that dictum with my writings, fictional or otherwise, which is why I’m distinctly chuffed to have placed a book review at The Quietus—a site I read very regularly, even when they’re reviewing things that I’ve never heard of and/or don’t think I’ll actually like. I like their editorial positionality, and I like that they have a big roster of writers, some of them quite random, who are broadly left to their own devices in terms of style and attitude.

The review is of Carl Neville’s latest novel Eminent Domain, which… well, you should click through and give tQ the benefit of your eyeballs in exchange for the thrilling verbiage of my prolix hot-takery, because that’s how the business works these days. Suffice to say I found it a brilliant and sui generis science fiction story that’s frustratingly hobbled by some of its narrative strategies, at the levels of both sentences and structure; strongly recommended, but with strong caveats.

Maybe I should have gone easier on it? After all, it appears that Neville and I share a fondness for Screaming Trees… though that seems to surprise Neville himself even more than it surprises me.