Hello St Marks

K J Parker wrote 'The Fencer Trilogy' containing, at the end of the second volume, one of the most startlingly unexpected and horribly upsetting plot developments I've read (I won't tell), so it's hard to explain why I read the third volume, let alone this new book. K J writes fantasy, sort of, but with no magic, no elves and dwarves and talking trees, no quests or golden orbs, and almost no women. I picked up The Company' because it said on the blurb that it was 'a stand-alone book' and I can't bring myself to embark on another bulky series. I've just given up on Kevin Anderson's mega series (Saga of the Gods/War of the Endless Saga, something like that) at half way through book 5 because I happened to see book 7 arrive in the bookstore. Book 7, each with the heft of a housebrick, and it's not done yet. Barely forgivable if it was worth it, but Anderson doesn't appear to have an editor and these wretched books are pockmarked with rep...

I've been caught in a bog with this book, stuck fast and exhausted by it. 'The Daughters of Moab' by Kim Westwood, has excellent credentials: Australian science fiction, post-apocalyptic near-future, set in the outback, female protagonists... you'd think it had been written for me. Starts well. Nine years after Tribulation with the climate in turmoil, toxins rising from fissures in the earth and a murderous sun, the nutty Followers of Nathaniel have imprisoned the suspiciously healthy Daughers of Moab to drain them of their remarkable blood. They're not mad, just daft and isolated to distraction in an island of desert. The Daughters are all genetically modified transfects, part human, part dingo, eel, kangaroo, at the beginning of a bizarre evolution. A bold Daughter escapes, a rogue Nathaniel with farmer's blood aids her, and from there on in the story was all but incomprehensible. The language was beautiful, fluid and obscure: "Oliver, endowed with roach-...

Kate Jennings is an Australian living in New York, making a living by writing. I read her second novel, 'Moral Hazard', back in 2003 and loved it. It's about business writing and slow grief, transparently fictionalised from her experience of losing her husband to Alzheimers and sinking into the moral vacuum of business writing for a big NY bank to fund his medical care. It was a slim book, and reminded me of Helen Garner, which is high praise. So this new book, 'Stanley and Sophie', was an unexpected treat, a memoir about recovery and dogs. Kate finds herself the owner of a border terrier, which is a very particular kind of dog, and she falls in love with this sparky pup and sinks into dogworld. Life in NY post 9/11 is filtered through her love for Stanley and the domestic details of a writer's life, with dog. Her story of Stanley is adorable and I loved reading it; then she gets another terrier, Sophie, and life gets doggier and complicated. Kate's life dis...