Reviews and Comments

Meet Bob. Bob is going to attend Sci-Fi conventions across the UK. At the conventions Bob briefly interacts with other attendees, drinks a lot, participates in convention events and gets autographs from and photos with the guests of honour. Bob explains the origins of his fandom and enumerates the embarrassing events his fandom may have caused. Rinse. Spin. Repeat. Bob comes across well. He's funny and self-deprecating and the growing up in he 70s/early 80s parts are really good (especially if you're of that vintage). The ending is a little poignant too. However, it's really really really shallow. The first paragraph above sums up the book. There's little to explain why Bob and other fans actually like the TV show (and it's nearly always a TV show they do) - for Bob they're Proustian Madeleines and so the opportunity to provide some insight into why fans are fans is missed. Given all but one of the conventions is a TV show an the only books mentioned are Discworld and the Narnia series and the blurb mentions his Last of the Summer Wine obsession, it's obvious he's more of a Cult-TV than a science fiction fan. Bob's an outsider and this is all a jolly jape. He never manages to convey any deep enthusiasm for the shows. Meh. A far better paean to science fiction fandom and a cracking coming of age story too is Jo Walton's Among Others which you should go all read instead.

Brooklyn Wainwright is a book restorer who is first to find the body of her murdered mentor. Can she solve the murder before she's arrested? Of course she can! This was awful. There's so much wrong with it, it's difficult to know where to begin. Book repair is library adjacent so I was curious to read this. Alas! I wager the author has a degree in book preservation from the University of Google where the course teaches that you can eat and drink around rare materials. Before the book starts, the heroine has obviously been on the head many times by a hammer, the only way I can explain her stupidity. Nominally a mystery, providing you define a mystery as a novel in which there's a murder after which the heroine runs around aimlessly, faints a lot and eventually confronts the murderer. Clues? Deduction? Logic? Look elsewhere, dear reader. The kind of book where characters don't drink wine, they drink "the 2004 Concannon Petite Syrah" Also, don't get me started on the "the humorless--and annoyingly attractive--British security officer" replete with "British accent". Ok, this is a first novel, and obviously as the first of a series (Jesus Suffering Christ: there's 17 of them) there's a lot of front-loading going on, but no. Probably took longer to read than to write. The epilogue suggests the next novel is set in Edinburgh. For the sake of my sanity, I'll avoid that and anything else by this author.

A spaceship crew responded to a distress signal with dire results. Now, although her corporate masters don't really believe her story, they need the sole survivor to go back to where it all happened.

Alternatively: a spaceship disappears on its maiden voyage. Many years later it's found, but the investigating team find that it's haunted!

The two paragraphs above more than adequately (IMHO!) describe the plot of the book. Unfortunately, they also describe the plots of the films Aliens and Event Horizon, both of which are far superior to this novel.

Clunky, not greatly written and with a bunch of unsympathetic & underdeveloped characters, it at least has a nice, though not particularly unexpected little twist which does explain some things and provides a second star to the review.

There's also a romantic sub-plot, which does nothing for the story.

Go and watch Aliens and Event Horizon instead - a more enjoysble use of your time than reading Dead Silence.