2 days ago
From bloodsucking vampires to time travelling humanoids; the best Science Fiction out this month: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab, Kill Them with Kindness by Will Carver, Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (Tor £22, 544pp)
Even as they take blood, vampires are the gift that still keep on giving to the genre of dark romance. Now V. E. Schwab's foray into this fertile world has borne ripe and juicy fruit.
Her new book is imbued with love, lust and yearning – mostly of the sapphic variety – and her take on hidden desires, hunger and corruption puts it up there with the classics of the genre.
From 16th-century Spain to 21st-century America via Venice and London, the plotlines are languorously long, yet strong as sinew and soused in buckets of gore.
Three women, three lives and three living deaths – sink your teeth into it and drink deep.
Kill Them with Kindness by Will Carver (Orenda Books £9.99, 300pp)
It starts with a knockabout dystopian premise: suppose the leaders of the western world decided to consolidate their power by releasing a deadly virus? Then suppose that the immunologist behind it all went rogue and found a bug that made people nice.
Overnight, carnivorous chefs would go vegan, tech bros develop a conscience and the world would be transformed by little acts of kindness.
Suffice to say, no one would put up with that, either.
Carver delights in grimly plausible overlaps with our recent history. It's clever, compelling, funny and it really makes you think: could it yet happen? Or did it happen already?
Esperance is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji (Arcadia £10.99, 432pp)
Not many books feature time-travelling humanoids that talk like actor George Raft at his most gangsterish.
There's humour here and also good, solid plotting – key characteristics of this clever, intricate, hugely enjoyable story that still packs a real punch.
People are being drowned with seawater – mysteriously and ruthlessly – in inner-city apartments and grand country mansions alike.
After the murderers are a pair of straight-talking cops, a glamorous Amazonian Nigerian with mysterious tech and a charming Bristolian drifter.
Linking them is the Esperance, a 19th-century British sailing ship, whose historical business is very much the point of it all and will keep you gripped and leave you furious.
