Light – M. John Harrison

This book was recommended to me by some great spec fic lovers and has been widely touted as the best thing to hit spec fic in years. I hate to disagree but in my opinion Harrison hasn’t outdone Iain M Banks, who is still my favourite author in terms of mind blowing science fiction. However, Light was a riveting and challenging read. My favourite character was the seriously derranged Michael Kearney, an astrophysisct and serial killer obsessed by numbers and a fractal/alien/figment of his imagination that stalks him. Jump forward a few thousand years and the story follows a K-ship captain, the captain-ship relationhsip takes on new meaning here when you’re part of the ship, and down on the planets a crazy ‘twinker’ who is addicted to living his life in a holographic story (sounds pretty fun to me). It is all set under the wacthful eye of the Kerfulci Tract – a bizarre galaxy with no event horizon.

I loved the threads of the story, the merchant-corp world that Harrison creates in the future and – having moved to London recently myself – Harrison’s modern London.

Definitely worth a read. Check out these much more articulate and imaginative reviews – SF Site which delves into the Harrisons style and another at Bookslut – I do have to agree here the first few chapters were a bit hard going but its well worth it in the end.

I was v dissapointed to find that I missed out on this fabulous cover (Thanks VanderWorld).