Rayessa and the Space Pirates by Donna Maree Hanson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A romp though space with a pair of adventurous teenagers. Ideal light romance for the 12+ age group. A version of the following review first appeared in the now defunct webzine, The Specusphere, in February 2013.

With this charming novella for young adults, Canberran author Donna Maree Hanson takes her first step into longer-length publishing. She already has a good handful or two of short stories under her belt, and she won respect and acclaim from fandom with her Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview.

Escape Publishing is a new imprint (should we call it an imprint when its product is entirely digital?) from Harlequin, purveyors of fine romances for many years. They are obviously keen to move with the times and to suss out exactly what readers want. Whether you’re after romantic suspense, historical romance, GLB romance, erotica, fantasy or sci-fi romance, you will be sure to find something to your taste at the Escape shop. What’s more, they are not frightened to publish e-books of any length from short stories to fat fantasies – and for all ages from 12 upwards! Search their website and you’re sure to find something to suit your taste.

Rayessa and the Space Pirates is light and frothy fare: an easy read and very suitable for the younger end of the target age group. Girls 12-15 will love this one, and older readers will find it entertaining, too, although they will question the credibility of some of the situations. It would be unfair to reveal these because they will inevitably result in spoilers, but I must say that I, as an adult reader, kept thinking, ‘Hey, wait a minute – that can’t be right!’ I don’t think the little solecisms will bother the younger readers, though.

This is one of the earliest books released by Escape, and it was done in something of a hurry. Unfortunately for Rayessa and the Space Pirates this shows up in an apparent dearth of copy-editing. I noticed several typos and even one or two misused words. This is a shame, and I hope Escape will lift their game now the rush of getting the imprint up and running is over.

Congratulations to Donna Maree Hanson. May Rayessa be the first of many romantic heroines to spring from Donna’s keyboard into publication!

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The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This lovely book (alternative title Sea Hearts if you live outside the USA) captures snapshots of well-drawn characters in typical Lanagan style. If you love selkies, mermaids and tales of the sea, this could well be a book for your shelves!

I did not love it quite as much as Tender Morsels (if we could give half stars on Goodreads this one would be three-and-a-half) as I felt the construction precluded any real denouement - the story follows several different protagonists through three generations, and their stories aren't really drawn together in a truly meaningful way. The plot is a slight one - sea people come, sea people stay awhile, sea people go. I am not a fan of several generations being crammed into one book, since no character is there throughout. I find that creates a feeling of something being out-of-joint. However, other readers may not mind that at all.

Nit-picks apart, Sea Hearts is an enjoyable read that arouses sympathy for the characters and the difficult situations they find themselves in due to the deliberate scheming of Misskaella, an unhappy woman with witchy powers. We can never quite like her, but we can see what misery made her into the person she became - and we can see the kind of ongoing disruption that can be caused in a small community by one bitter soul such as Misskaella.

This would make a great book-club read as it seems to arouse strong feelings in its readers. As many people are averse to it as are its devotees, so some interesting, if not heated, discussions are likely!

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Easter in Perth means Swancon, Western Australia's state Science Fiction convention, has rolled around again. This year marked the 38th convention. The oldest SF convention in Australia, it was founded by Grant Stone, who has since become one of this country's top pop-culture gurus.

It is ten years since I first attended a Swancon, and in that time I've been to some seven or eight of them, and I've never failed to enjoy myself immensely. However, they do vary greatly in focus, and therefore, to some extent, in content.


There is almost always at least one Guest of Honour from overseas. This year it was author Charles Stross from the UK. His books are numerous and varied, and only yesterday he revealed on his blog that he is expanding into film-making.

Stross is a man of unlimited imagination. His series The Laundry Files, for example, consists of science fiction spy thrillers about a field agent working for British government agency 'the Laundry', which deals with occult threats, while The Merchant Princes is an alternate history series in which some humans have an ability to travel between parallel Earths. However, his works can all be categorised as either hard SF or Space Opera that sometimes borders on Fantasy.

Australian author John Birmingham was also a Guest of Honour.  Birmingham is best known, of course, for his first book, He Died with a Felafel in his Hand, which has since been turned into a play, film and a graphic novel. A sequel, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco was turned into a play that went on to become the longest running stage play in Australian history.

For SF fans, however, Birmingham is best known for his Axis of Time Trilogy, an alternative history of WWII. More recently, he has produced another series, starting with Without Warning, set in an alternative world in which most of the population of America has disappeared on the eve of international war.  There have been two follow-up books - After America and Angels of Vengeance. Further books in the series will be released electronically by Momentum.

Other works by John Birmingham include a crime novel The Search for Savage Henry, and How To Be A Man, a semi-humorous guide to contemporary Australian masculinity. Nothing if not versatile, Birmingham spent four years researching the history of Sydney for Leviathan: the unauthorised biography of Sydney which won Australia's National Prize for Non-Fiction in 2002.

Birmingham gave one of the most entertaining GOH speeches I have ever heard. In the persona of a street-wise journalist blended with an old hippie put out to grass (and I use that word deliberately) he had us in stitches for a good half hour, then in more stitches as he fielded questions from the floor. One thing's certain - if Birmingham tires of writing he has a future in stand-up comedy. I suspect the hippie journo is just one facet of a complex and fascinating personality, which explains the enormous variety of his oeuvre.

Other guests included comics writer Gail Simone (I missed her panels, unfortunately) and Melbourne based author, editor and critic Lucy Sussex, whom I heard in a most enjoyable panel on Urban Fantasy with Charles Stross, Helen Duffill and Katherine Mc Farlane. Fan GOH's were my friends John and Sarah Parker, who have been active in fandom for almost as long as anyone can remember!

I must admit that as one whose interests lie in reading, writing, editing and reviewing, I was a tad disappointed  that there were no literary or academic streams in this Swancon. It was quite deliberately aimed at fandom, and while I and some other writerly types might have missed out, the convention brought in a younger crowd, some of whom, I suspect, might have come to fandom via the extremely popular commercial conventions run by Supernova. This can only be a good thing, since one of the big discussion points in SF circles in recent years has been the ageing of fandom generally. While there were few panels or talks of interest to writers, one that did impress me consisted of a group of young people discussing Young Adult spec-fic literature. They revealed themselves to be knowledgeable and discriminating (no Twilight fans here!) in the way they described how SF had helped them learn about the world and their places in it. I left the panel wondering if I had just heard the voices of tomorrow's writers.

I missed out on a Tin Duck, but was delighted that several of my friends were recipients. The winners included Adrian Bedford, Juliet Marillier, Sarah Lee Parker, Liz Grzyb, Talie Helene and Elaine Kemp. I was delighted, too, that my friend and fellow writer Sue Isle, who received a Tin Duck last year for her lovely YA book Nightsiders, gained her 33 years award for attendance at Swancon.

Congratulations to ringleaders Tom Eitelhuber, Andrew Sharp and their team for another fun-filled convention! Despite my aforementioned disappointment, I enjoyed the con a lot. As usual, it was a great opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues. What's more, I left mollified by assurances from the convenors for 2014 and 2015 that the literary and academic streams would be reinstated at least for the next two Swancons!

PS. I should point out that the weekend did not entirely lack opportunities for professional development - time spent in the bar chatting with colleagues carries Brownie points, too! :-)

PPS. You can see the Tin Duck winners and shortlistees at
 http://wiki.sf.org.au/Tin_Duck_Award#2013

I feel really chuffed to see my name up there alongside those of so many gifted and hard-working people!

Picture credit: By Donell w (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Fearless by Rowan Hagen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a beautifully written book. It speaks of hankering after the past and of moving forward into the future. It points to the connection between love and service, and it examines the conflict that so often exists between between what we feel and how we act.

The worldbuilding (it's set on the central coast of eastern Australia) is wonderfully executed. Hagen has a way with words that often borders on the poetic, bringing to life both the boredom and the comfort to be found in a country town.

Told in the first person by Joss, Fearless is really two narratives in one. In her search for an old friend, Karmi, Joss reminisces to her new friend, Fletch, about her earlier life. This is cleverly done. The flashbacks are so neatly worked in that they add to the narrative flow rather than interrupting it. I did find that I knew the ending long before I got to it, but I never once wanted to stop reading. It was a case of the journey being more fascinating than the arrival! And that journey introduces us to some wonderfully well-drawn characters who play out events both terrible and sublime.

Fearless is a keeper. I shall no doubt read it again.



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