THE STARS MY DESTINATION By Alfred Bester

Published : 1956
Pages : 258
Overall Mark : 8/10

After drifting in space for a number of weeks as the only survivor of his ship, the Nomad, Gully Foyle is rescued by a group of people who set about tattooing his face with stripes similar to that of a tiger. Foyle soon decides to seek revenge on the crew of a spacecraft named the Vorga, which passed him by and ignored his distress call, by using his ability to teleport – a universal ability which most of the population can perform – to find them and kill them, but as his journey brings him ever closer to those responsible, he starts to discover some interesting facts about both them and himself.

This is a great little sci-fi novel, with a lead character which you sympathise with whilst also taking an instant disliking to. Bester manages with expert ease to build a framework around Gully Foyle and the rest of the supporting characters which is both believable and strangely accessible, whilst creating scenarios and settings which are both fantastic and highly imaginative.

A SIMPLE PLAN By Scott Smith

Published : 1993
Pages : 416
Overall Mark : 8/10

Hank and Jacob Mitchell discover a crashed plane on their way to visit their father’s grave site. Along with Jacob’s friend Lou, they find a dead pilot and a large quantity of money on board, and Hank comes up with the idea of holding the money in secret until they can be sure that the police aren’t looking for it, then split it three ways. But as Lou becomes increasingly eager for his share in the money, Hank realises he may have to resort to drastic action to ensure they can keep the money.

This is a very well paced book, which slowly but surely changes Hank Mitchell’s character into something of a mad man. There are a few moments that didn’t really flow very well, such as the chapter where Hank tries to retrieve some of the money from a shop, but other than these small moments where the story seems to be going off on a tangent, this is a very well written first novel.

THE FOREVER WAR By Joe Haldeman

Published : 1974
Pages : 253
Overall Mark : 9/10

William Mandella is a soldier fighting in a war against an alien race known as the Taurans, a war that may not seem to him to go on forever, but does none the less. In order to travel to their rendezvous to fight the aliens, the soldiers are shipped through worm holes which cause time to seem to stand still for them, and consequently many years pass for them back on Earth. Each trip Mandella is faced with the prospect of coming back to a new and vastly transformed world, ranging from an Earth that promotes homosexuality as the norm to stop the population from booming, to a world entirely made up of clones, all the while hoping to meet up again with fellow soldier and love interest Marygay Potter.

This is a great novel, and I’m glad I picked it up. The characters are solid and believable, and the book flows beautifully from start to finish. Some people believe that this novel is based on Haldeman’s tour of duty in Vietnam, and the sense of not belonging that Mandella feels each time he returns to Earth, coupled with the idea of the government not even knowing anything much about their enemy, makes me believe that this could well be the case.

DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER By Jeff Lindsay

Published : 2005
Pages : 296
Overall Mark : 8/10

Dexter finds life increasingly difficult as he is stalked at every turn by Sergeant Doakes, who suspects Dexter of being up to something sinister, maybe even suspecting he’s a killer. Dexter finds himself having to retreat further into his “fake” life with Rita, and even goes as far as to get engaged to her. Things do start to become easier for him though when a criminal from Doakes’s past shows up, a criminal known as Dr Danco who brutally mutilates his victims by chopping off their arms, legs and genitals, and cuts off their eyelids and tongue, but leaves them alive, earning them the slightly evil nickname of the Singing Potatoes. This killer could spell a reprive for Dexter because he’s after all the members of the Black Ops team of which Doakes was a member.

With all of the character’s already introduced in the first novel, this left us with a lot more time to get to know the criminal in this novel, as well as focus on fewer characters. The criminal here, Dr Danco, is a lot more gruesome than the Ice Truck Killer in the first novel, and it would have been interesting to see him transferred to the small screen in the Dexter TV show, but sadly it doesn’t look like this will be happening. I look forward to Jeff Lindsay’s next installemtn, Dexter After Dark, which I’ll hopefully be reading soon.

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.