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Here a link to Nicholas Royle’s January review in The Independent of Sue Hubbard‘s début short story collection, Rothko’s Red, published by Salt Publishing last September.

“[Sue Hubbard] fashions an arresting opening in which Adam and Maggie gaze at a large magenta Rothko that prompts him to utter a paean to her genitals. But Adam is just the first in a long line of disappointing men blundering naively or selfishly through Hubbard’s stories. Inability to commit, unreliability, unfaithfulness – just some of the character faults her protagonists encounter in male partners.

Other recurring motifs are mildewed books and broken frames, silvery stretch marks, women washing under their breasts and their armpits, doing up ruins in Italy….” Read more of this review here.

The February 09 issue of Apex Magazine leads with a brand new Lavie Tidhar story entitled Dark Planet. Follow this link to read it free online. Also in this issue is the latest of Lavie’s entertaining essays in his Confessions of a Book Junkie series – be sure to check out the back issues for more of these if you missed them first time around.

There’s a review of Mike Cobley‘s forthcoming novel, Seeds of Earth just gone up on the Concept Sci-fi Ezine site. The book is due out in March 2009 from Orbit Books.

‘…incredibly well thought out, with a comprehensive social and political system that is totally believable and incredibly detailed. [Cobley]‘s clearly paid a lot of attention to backstory and really should be congratulated for the amount of effort he’s put in to this...’

There’s a really nice review in the latest edition of Publisher’s Weekly of John Meaney‘s new novel Black Blood due for released in the US in late February from Bantam Spectra (and already published in the UK by Gollancz under the title Dark Blood)…

‘Meaney’s ambitious sequel to 2008’s Bone Song makes a successful and welcome shift from ambience and world-building to character and plot development. The gloomy city of Tristopolis is powered by necrofusion, energy produced from incinerating the physical and spiritual remains of the dead. Donal Riordan, a recently murdered Tristopolis police lieutenant now a zombie, is tasked with exposing a powerful cabal of conspirators known as the Black Circle while also trying to track down those responsible for the death of his lover, Laura. As a movement to strip the undead of human rights gains in popularity, the heroic Riordan suddenly finds himself a prime target for a fearful public. The politics and police procedure mix well with a virtual deluge of macabre imagery and symbolism to create a fast-moving and satisfying noir gothic fantasy.’

Israeli-born writer Lavie Tidhar has been called an “emerging master” by LOCUS, and has quickly established a name for himself as a short fiction writer of note. He has travelled widely, living variously in South Africa, the UK, Asia and the remote island-nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, and his work exhibits a strong sense of place and an engagement with the literary ‘Other’ in all its forms.

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