WINTERSMITH By Terry Pratchett

Published : 2006
Pages : 400
Overall Mark : 8.5/10

Tiffany Aching finds her world turned upside down once again when she decides to dance at the Wintersmith celebrations. This simple action attracts the attention of the Wintersmith himself, who mistakes Tiffany for the spirit of Summer, and due to Tiffany’s interference, it appears that winter may now never come end! Eventually, realising what a danger this new, more human version of the Wintersmith might be, Granny Weatherwax decides to get the Nac Mac Feegles to find Roland, Tiffany’s sort-of love interest, and send him into the underworld to find the real spirit of Summer so that Tiffany can again swap places with her and then the world can be saved.

In many ways this novel is a significant improvement on the previous instalment. The plot flows smoothly and keeps the reader thoroughly interested in what will happen next. I’m happy to her that another Tiffany Aching novel is in the offing, as I can only imagine the characters and situations will continue to go from strength to strength.

FOREVER ODD By Dean Koontz

Published : 2005
Pages : 420
Overall Mark : 7/10

When Odd Thomas’s childhood friend is kidnapped, Odd finds himself having to deal with a crazy woman who thinks Odd can show her the dead. As he ventures to an abandoned hotel to meet with the woman and try to save his friend, he discovers that many of the people who died in the hotel’s infamous fire have remained as spirits

I didn’t like this as much as the original book, but it was still pretty good. Odd has grown since the first novel, but he feels like more of a loner as he doesn’t have anyone to share his life with. The ending also gives the perfect in for the third novel, which I’m sure I’ll get around to reading one day…

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? By Philip K Dick

Published : 1968
Pages : 210
Overall Mark : 9/10

Bounty hunter Rick Deckard can’t believe his luck when Dave Holden, one of his fellow bounty hunters, is injured in the line of duty by an android called a Nexus-6, one of the most advanced androids built to date, and he is handed his current list of rogue androids to hunt down and collect the rewards. As he begins his search for the dangerous automatons, he realises that perhaps they’re not so different from humans when he meets a woman named Rachael Rosen, who turns out to be an android herself, and he finds himself falling for her.

This is possibly one of the most well known science fiction pieces ever written, and definitely Dick’s most widely read work. Famously made into Blade Runner by Ridley Scott in 1982, this is actually in many ways superior to the movie, concentrating more on the story as a sort of parable on race relations than an out and out action piece.