The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
I became a fan of Mitchell after I read his wildly inventive Cloud
Atlas, so I was expecting literary pyrotechnics from his latest.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, the sweeping story of the Dutch
East Indies Company in Japan at the turn of the 19th century, reads like a
combination of Patrick O'Brien's nautical historical fiction, the
exoticism and passion of Shogun, and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom" because of a creepy part of the plot. Wow!... read the rest of Tegan's review
The City & the City by China Mieville
I think good Science Fiction uses an altered reality to reveal something
about the real world that couldn’t be revealed without that altered
setting. Great Science Fiction does this and entertains as well. China
Mieville’s The City and the City is really great Sci-fi. It
begins feeling like a dark, well-written, noir-style mystery – a body
has been found in the city of Beszel, detective Borlu has been assigned
to investigate – but the story quickly takes a sci-fi turn... read the rest of Lillian's review.