Luna Press, 2025, 187 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

At the start of this novella Elif is the sole inhabitant of the apparently desert planet Maoira-I. At twelve years old she has hitherto known only the companionship of the AI, VAS-H, her Vital Auxiliary Support: H-unit, and her knowledge of other humans is derived solely from the films and shows available to her on screen.

Contact from Commander Isabel Aremu of the Interplanetary Mission, based on Polaris, who addresses Elif as Warden, comes to her out of the blue, as does the task she is assigned of growing, or attempting to grow, plants to see if Maoira-I might be a suitable future home for humanity. The Mission is on an indefinite space flight fleeing something unspecified back on Earth. VAS-H retrieves the seeds Elif will need, seeds she had not known were there, from the base’s storage freezer.

Part One centres on Elif via both a third person narrative tightly focused on her unfolding experiences and the log entries VAS-H asks her to compile. While these are not the reflections of an unreliable narrator they are those of one without knowledge of the full picture. Helping to fill in those gaps for the reader there are also two italicised sections dealing mainly with the consequences for Commander Aremu on Polaris of the Mission having to admit that Elif exists and its failures regarding her. This leads to Aremu’s replacement as contact by the much less sympathetic Lieutenant, later Commander, Julian Bishop.

In the meantime Elif uncovers a buried Transporter vehicle on the surface and learns to drive it while Maoira-I’s long-term climatic variations begin to manifest themselves.

Part Two makes a step change. Mission operative Rokeya Khan, whose grandfather Latif was on the original team to land on Maoira-I, has set off on her own to get to the planet and find out what happened. Her arrival shocks Elif but they learn to work together.

Rokeya’s presence is the catalyst for the discovery of what became of the original crew, one of whom, naturally, but against all protocol, must have been pregnant.

It also crystallises Elif’s feelings towards the rest of humanity and towards the only home she has ever known.

There are some caveats to this. The premise does stretch credibility a bit. Could an infant human really thrive under only the influence of an AI and old videos? Could she retain sanity even? Could the original expedition genuinely have been forgotten by the Mission for twelve years?

But Reza has written this well. She captures Elif’s initial ingenuousness and growing confidence. The claustrophobic atmosphere of an isolated environment comes across, as does the slightly sinister sway of an AI companion.

This is an impressive long form debut.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  shrunk (x3, shrank,) CO2 (several times. It’s CO₂,) “wherever the fleet of ships were” (wherever the fleet … was,) fit (fitted,) “than several millions” (than several million,) “about to reach a crescendo” (you don’t reach a crescendo, you reach its end,) sunk (sank.) “Rokeya’s opened her mouth in shock” (Rokeya opened her mouth.)

I recently sent off to Parsec magazine my review of Solstice by Ruth Aylett and Greg Michaelson, a book which I picked up* at the first Pictcon in Perth a month or so ago. A very successful first con it has to be said. Pictcon focuses on the Scottish SF and fantasy scene.

Editor Ian Whates has chosen to run it so that review will not appear here for a while.

Meanwhile he has sent me Reality Rift by Fred Gambino, a follow-up to that author’s first novel Dark Shepherd.

*By picked up I mean “blagged with the promise of a review on the blog and the chance of ParSec running it.”

Pyr, 2008, 453 p.

A catastrophe in a spaceship traversing a Kardashev tunnel, a kind of wormhole, leads to the discovery of a wrong kind of neutrino – wrong angular momentum, wrong spin state, “‘Reversed actually,’” – evidence of another dimension, a parallel universe.

Minerva Company, which operates the tunnels, now realises that its ostracised former employee, Titus Quinn, who had turned up a few weeks later and light years away from the disaster which destroyed his ship – but with memories of being in a parallel universe – might have been telling the truth.

Eager to preserve the Company’s business (failures in transit not being good for that) they persuade him to return to negotiate on their behalf to secure ways to make interstellar travel easier; shortcuts, basically.

Quinn has his own reasons to return; both his wife, Johanna, and daughter, Sydney, had been transported with him but they became separated and remained stranded. His Jacobson’s organ is altered to enhance his sense of smell before he undergoes the procedure. This is a curious detail of the story but not much is actually made of this enhancement latterly.

The narrative then takes a step change as he ventures once more into the Entire, a vast universe lacking stars, with many different habitats but all seemingly in the one plane, lit by the sky-bright, a churning river of light, constantly changing, yet always the same, ruled by enigmatic creatures known as Tarig, one of whom he had assaulted in his previous sojourn. For the Entire’s power sources we are told plasma cells harvest photons from the bright. “The Tarig had remade photosynthesis in inorganic form. It made Earth’s fusion technologies seem crass by comparison.”

Kenyon seems to have modelled the Entire – at least the parts where Quinn journeys – on China. The clothes, names, and some of the inhabitants’ customs at any rate, fit that template.

Several chapters are preceded by extracts from Entire doctrine, The Radiant Way. Its first tenet is that knowledge of the Entire must be kept from the non-Entire. Quinn faces an uphill struggle on that count, then, as do those who knowingly help him. Much of the book is taken up with Quinn’s travels, face altered and using the name Dai Shen, to the power centre. Within the Entire, Quinn’s – our – universe is known as the Rose. It is peopled by various different sentient beings, some of them supposedly modelled by the Tarig on creatures from the Rose. The Chalin seem to be all but indistinguishable from humans.

Several chapters deal with Sydney’s continued existence in the Entire. She has been dispatched to a region inhabited by horse-like sentients called the Inyx, telepathic animals who need riders but insist they be blinded, a fate Sydney has suffered. She is able to ‘see’ though, through the mind link with her mount. Her personality is beginning to alter the Inyx’s relationships with their riders and potentially that with the Tarig.

There are hints that Johanna, too, may have survived.

Though it is not really like it at all the whole thing reminded me of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow. Maybe it was just that First Contact via a sole human thing.

Nothing is resolved at the end, of course. How could it be? There are three instalments of Kenyon’s saga to go.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian, “orthopositroniums’ missing energy” (orthopositronium’s?) “intended accomplish” (intended to accomplish,) aerie (USianism for eyrie,) garroted, garrote, garroting (several times, garotted, garotte, garotting) a capital letter on the word following a colon (several times,) “in deeply accent English” (deeply accented.) “A ochre-colored bird” (An ochre-colored [but preferably ochre-coloured,]) “sent simulacra, automatons” (automata. And why use the Latin plural of simulacrum but not the Greek one of automaton?)  “murmured at Yulin side” (at Yulin’s side,) a capital letter following a comma when a question was embedded in a piece of direct speech; it needs internal quotation marks instead,) “they saw what one of the cameras had captured Quinn from a low angle” (they saw that one of the cameras … ,) “like an aurora borealis made of knives” (there’s no need for the borealis here; ‘like an aurora made of knives’ would be fine,) “a contingent of Tarig were swarming” (a contingent of Tarig was swarming,) “‘tell us the rest it’” (tell us the rest of it.)

Luna Press, 2025, 198 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

Well. They do say you should start with a bang – and this novel does begin with a sentence reminiscent of the first in Iain Banks’s The Crow Road, though what unfolds is neither a bildungsroman nor (quite) a murder mystery but a decent enough piece of Science Fiction.

Viewpoint character Jocelyn Carsten (Joss,) is a hostage negotiator on the way home from managing a crisis on the planet Haitch when her passenger ship Tiktaalik suffers an explosion. She is still alive, just, but is injured, and is the sole survivor. All contact with the ship’s Central Hub – and the outside world – is lost. Only Harbour, the controlling intelligence of passenger mod Petal 4, is available to aid her.

After a trip to the med bay and an EVA to survey the damage to the ship, Harbour advises her to rest. When she wakes up there is another presence in the mod, a gemel; a holographic copy of Joss’s personality, but this has the physical appearance of her ex-wife, Alice Dray.

“A gemel” (the plural is also gemel) “is a sentient being generated from an individual’s psyche,” usually, but not always, taking on the appearance of their sires, “fuzzy copies of their progenitors, interpolated from memories and neurocircuitry, and can resemble their users to a disturbing degree,” but can be “warped by narcissists with fat wallets and the desire for more intimate personal assistants,” as had been the case with Gabrielle Vecher, on-site CEO for Haxen Mining Corps, and his gemel Malachi. Narcissus and Echo in the same package, thinks Joss. Gemel were not allowed physical bodies but, with safeguards, could patch into systems and control them from the inside. They “drew force from external sources, running off the excess electricity in the machines around them.”

This Not-Alice becomes a psychological prop for Joss and a device for the author to run Joss’s backstory past the reader, in instalments. Indeed, at times our access to Joss’s thoughts shifts between the present and her past memories with little or no signalling.

Joss’s rescue from isolation – when it comes (rather abruptly it must be said) – is by a military force co-commanded by none other than Alice Dray: the real one. Its mission is to investigate both why Tiktaalik and the tunnels on Haitch were blown up and to try to obtain the release of the humans still there held by gemel, an endeavour where Joss’s negotiating skills come to the fore. But Alice Dray’s co-commander – something of a loose cannon of the gung-ho military type – threatens to undermine Joss’s steps towards a solution of the situation.

It turns out Vecher had constructed a highly dangerous device deriving from mysterious markings on the tunnels on Haitch. And time is running out. “‘That thing Vecher made tore a hole in the fabric of the universe or whatever the hell you want to call it, and it’s growing, becoming less stable by the hour,’” says Joss during the negotiations.

Given her initial circumstances, Joss is unsurprisingly prone to periods of introspection and questioning both of herself and others.

Despite some problems with structure and pacing this is an engaging read and will push enough familiar buttons for SF readers to emerge satisfied.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian but with some British spellings. The planet Ross128 H’s nickname of Haitch is an egregious mispronunciation of that letter of the alphabet, “on a round-a-bout route” (roundabout – which was used elsewhere in the text for a meander -) once there was a single quotation mark where double ones are employed elsewhere, shlock (schlock,) back-peddling (back-pedalling,) hostage takers “174 million miles away” morphs to “140 million mile silences” during the communications gap, “sliding the stack of credits Joss had won back from her back across the table” (Joss was playing her opponent for the first time, so just ‘had won from her’.) “This is ….. based on …..?” (wasn’t a question so full stop, not question mark,) C02 (It’s not C zero two as was printed in the text, and the 2 ought to be a subscript,) “wracking your brain” (racking,) “sending some part of her ex’s upper-class snobbery would revolt” (sensing some part.) “‘Tell and I send you outside to repaint the serial number.’” (No clue. Who is Tell?) “what she can offer them are options” (I read ‘what she can offer them’ as a singular subject to the following verb; so ‘what she can offer them is options’,) “is different thing” (is a different thing.) “‘Ph damage right here’” (‘pH damage’ was meant and pH always has an upper case H and a lower case p – even at the start of a sentence,) “drowns out nothing but Callen’s voice” (everything but Callen’s voice,) “‘I pretty sure’” (I was pretty sure,) “for having sunken so low” (for having sunk so low.) “She doubts its convincing” (doubts it’s convincing,) “amid glow of the launch” (amid the glow of the launch,) a missing extraneous end quotation mark, a missing comma before the quotation mark at the end of a piece of dialogue. “‘How is that that they’ve got people down there?’”  (How is it that they’ve got…,) “‘if we so much get within the distance’” (if we so much as get within…,) “it takes her moment” (it takes her a moment.) “Alice takes her seat again and switching back to their private comm.” (and switches back to,) “the metal partition the separated them” (partition that separated them.) “A name that inferred family, and what she’d always been taught to mean trust, love and guidance” (and that she’d always been taught…,) “but do they do afford” (but they do afford,) “of the Florenz’ cargo bay” (the Florenz’s,) “breathing apparatuses” (the plural of apparatus is apparatus,) “nothing but the judder of the engine and the clatter of equipment as rattles against the bulkheads” (could be rewritten more clearly,) “‘I can’t let you can’t do this’” (either, ‘I can’t let you do this’ or, ‘You can’t do this.)

The latest book I have received to review for ParSec is Exiles by Mason Coile.

This was one of only two SF books in the most recent list of upcoming publications up for review.

I have not previously read anything by the author.

However, the accompanying blurb tells me Mason Coile is a pseudonym of Andrew Pyper, award winning author of William and ten other novels. These seem to be works in the thriller or horror genres. William was published as by Mason Coile, though.

Sadly, the blurb also says Pyper died in January 2025.

Andrew Pyper: 29/3/1968 – 3/2/2025. So it goes.

MacMillan, 2025, 347 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

Twenty years ago the Soundfield appeared overhead. Ever since, temperatures have continued to soar, UV radiation makes going out in daylight all but deadly, food is short, parts of the world up to and including Italy are devoid of humans, and refugees are countless. People in Britain now sleep during the day and carry out whatever business they can at night.

Hannah Williams lectures on genetics at a college but her life is complicated by her son, Isaac, who cannot speak, only sign, must be kept occupied and also looked after by someone else if she is busy.

They are living in a dystopia. The Government is essentially authoritarian, dissenters can be shot, (refugees have been in the past when trying to come ashore,) agents of the Atavism Programme are ever vigilant, looking for children who connect with the Soundfield’s constant hum and its occasional musical calls. Isaac’s tendency to sing at these moments is why Hannah is so protective of him. She does not wish to lose him to the Programme. (How Isaac can sing when he can’t speak is unexplained.) The ongoing story of their lives in this harsh world has its menace heightened by the author’s use of the present tense. The passages where Hannah remembers her past life, before the Soundfield and when she was part of the first investigations into it, are in the past tense. Hannah’s part in that investigation was carried out in collaboration with a team led by Elias, a physicist, with whom she had a relationship.

Examination of the field showed it to contain the components of air, in the normal proportions, but also small dust particles, inert minerals and silica, some bacteria and fungi, “as if a microscopic layer of the ground had been scooped up and held in suspension thirty kilometres up, creating a dome that sealed the Earth.” Video footage revealed it to be moving, like waves. “A thin taut membrane that vibrates thousands of times a second.”

Hannah’s lectures centre on the FOXP2 gene. This is usually invariant and has been for millions of years – except for the (relatively) recent two changes which coincided with the development of language in humans.

Her breakthrough in trying to understand the Soundfield came with studying the EK family, who all had developmental verbal dyspraxia. In them, one of the bases on the FOXP2 gene had reverted to its previous state.

This is an unusual piece of SF as writers in the genre do not usually consider the evolution of language nor its connection to music.  Through Hannah, Martin tells us language and music are combinatorial, made up of individual units that stack together to give new structures, but are also recursive and innate. But as Hannah says to Elias, “We are biologically programmed to speak, but also to listen to and produce music.” She suggests speech and music co-evolved from a musical protolanguage and wonders if that might be what the Soundfield is producing. The publishing of her results, though, is the trigger for the Atavism Programme and Hannah’s present predicament.

The dystopian aspects of the novel are reasonably similar to other works in that vein (autocracies do tend to be similar in their repressions, as are people’s reactions to them) but Martin combines them with a concern for family and relationships. As in all human interactions, though, betrayal and jeopardy are never far away.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “on his hoody” (usually spelled hoodie, as it is later in the book,) “of the front frow” (front row,) “much more hands-on that it used to be” (than it used to be,) “a man with a short beard wearing a bullet-proof vest” (why would a beard wear a vest? Try ‘a short-bearded man wearing a bullet-proof vest,) “the old stationary store” (stationery store,) “‘what do you parents do?’” (do your parents,) “outside of” (x 2, just ‘outside’ no ‘of’,) “‘there was only once choice’” (only one choice,) “in Elias’ team” (Elias’s – which appears later,) phenomes (the passage was about phonemes,) sat (several times; ‘sitting’,) span (spun,) focussed (focused,) “in the middle of wide, open room” (of a wide, open room,) “‘to make sure your safe’” (you’re safe.)

Another book to review for ParSec.

This time it’s the latest by Alastair Reynolds, titled Halcyon Years.

Judging by the front cover blurb it’s a Space Opera.

Why not? Reynolds is rather good at them.

Tor, 2024, 396 p. £10.99. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

Arton Daghdev was once a professor of ecology. (No-one can pronounce his surname. Don’t worry about it: he doesn’t.) We first meet him when he’s emerging from suspended animation and plunging from a disintegrating spaceship to the surface of Imno 27g, one of the eleven exoplanets humans have so far set foot on. It is known as Kiln and is thirty years from Earth. That’s how long the voyage took and how long it would take to get back. Arton is not going back. That ship was a fragmentation barge: deliberately designed to break up on arrival. He is a convict at the end of a one-way voyage and hopes to avoid being Acceptable Wastage either during the drop or once (if) he survives it.

Back on Earth he had taken part in a plot against the Mandate which rules there, an autocracy which brooks no opposition and wants black and white answers to complex questions, everything sorted into predetermined boxes. He had managed to escape capture for a year before being betrayed.

On arrival on Kiln he can’t help noticing the strange ruins, obviously built artefacts, which dominate the landing site’s surroundings. Brought to Commandant Terolan, his first question is, ‘Who built them?’ Prisoners with scientific expertise are prime candidates for trying to find its answer. But this is still a prison camp. That interview plus his year’s delay in arrival compared to his fellow conspirators means he will be subject to extreme suspicion by his fellow inmates. They can’t know if he betrayed them; or he if they betrayed him. Transportation to Kiln is above all a punishment. (It can’t be hell without fellow sinners to suffer amongst.)

Only Staff on Kiln have the best of what is on offer. The prisoners are divided up into Dig Support, General Labour, Excursions and Maintenance and supplied with only the products of shoddy printers, and recyclers processing just about everything, to sustain and protect them.

Excursions have the short straw, three-day sojourns into Kiln’s interior to investigate other ruins sites before being extensively and painfully decontaminated on return. Kiln’s biology is invasive and possibly deadly, a riot of parasitism and symbiosis run rampant, evolution on show in real time, adept at picking the locks of human biology and prising a way in. The howls of Ylse Rasmussen, infected by Kiln and kept in a cage like the mad woman in the attic, are warning enough to take care. Though with superficial resemblances to Earthly counterparts, organisms on Kiln are scarcely taxonomisable, latching on to each other as and when needed to perform any required function. “Kiln tissues spread throughout the body, with less reliance on discrete organs.”

Arton’s voice, self-deprecating, knowledgeable, humane, is a crucial part of this novel’s success. His tale is interspersed with ruminations on his situation and the Mandate’s justifications. “Human history is full of social conventions designed to salve the consciences of the mighty and curb the ambitions of the small. So we invent philosophies to tell us we were right to do what we did and we’re allowed to do what we want. Science, the science they” (the Mandate) “choose gives them their legitimacy.”

Arton will have none of that. He believes “Science, as a creed, should care about truth. It shouldn’t be bent for political aims. No group of people is naturally inferior, none has an innate ability to lead. We share the vast majority of our genetic inheritance with mushrooms.”

Arton’s fall from grace with the Commandant sees him deployed on Excursions and disaster strikes – as we knew it must sooner or later. His group is forced to trek back to the camp for days subject to whatever Kiln can throw at them. In the aliennesses here there are faint echoes of David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus and Ian McDonald’s Chaga but Alien Clay is – unlike the creatures on Kiln – a thing only unto itself.

The infiltrations of Kiln biology into his group, the changes those bring about, cause Arton to reassess what he thought of evolution before he got there. It isn’t a boxing match, with the bigger and stronger prevailing: because you need everything else in order to survive. That’s how biology works. On Kiln evolution has demonstrated that.

Alien Clay is Science Fiction doing what it does best. It necessarily has overlaps with other tales set in a penal colony – or any colony – but its resolution absolutely depends on its Science Fictional element.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- intermittent sprinklings of USian among British usages; eg ‘handed my ass’ but then ‘the maths’. Otherwise; “the welcoming committee are keen,” (strictly, ‘is keen’,) “the main body of my admissions class are being shown the ropes” (strictly, ‘is being shown the ropes’,) “the hoi polloi” (x 2. Strictly, since ‘hoi’ means ‘the’, it’s just ‘hoi polloi’,) “A knot of people shove” (a knot shoves,) Parrides’ (Parrides’s,) “had showed me” (had shown me,) “regular spiders” (they did not occur at intervals, they were conventional; similarly with ‘a regular fire, cave man style’, the fire did not go on and off on its own.) “There are a handful of” (OK it’s idiom, but strictly, ‘There is a handful’,) “there are a range” (there is a range,) “the tech team are working” (is working,) “None of us are” (None of us is.) “Everyone in the camp holds their breath” (breaths.) “None of us have any solid way” (None of us has any.) “When pause to eat” (When I pause to eat.) “None of them particularly want to go” (None … wants to go.)

Gollancz, 2016, 506 p.

Briddey Flannigan is a woman under pressure, in her work at Commspan, a phone app company apparently a rival to Apple, with her Irish-descended family, with her boyfriend Trent Worth. She is deluged by work and family emails and seemingly rushed off her feet. All this makes for a breathless introductory chapter showcasing the author’s signature style of scenes or dialogue interrupted by events, constantly breaking off to deal with something else.

Not that the pace slows much thereafter. In a Willis novel things do seem to cascade, with incident piling on incident, misunderstandings and crossed wires, things forever on the point of being resolved only to be diverted onto other paths.

Briddey’s sister Mary Clare is an overbearing, overprotective parent to her daughter Maeve. Her other sister Kathleen, as Briddey once was, is constantly being urged to marry a “foine Irish lad” by their Great Aunt Oona who, despite not being a first or even second generation immigrant, speaks using Irish syntax and rhythms.

Boyfriend Trent meanwhile while wants her to undergo with him a procedure to fit an EED, a device which will enhance ability to sense a partner’s feelings and thus bring them closer together. The EED “creates a neural pathway that made partners more receptive to each other.” Notwithstanding their relationship, Trent from the outset is a somewhat aloof, absent figure, whose speech does not carry any conviction of affection.

Briddey is at pains to keep any hint of getting an EED away from Commspan gossip Suki, while in the works basement C B Schwartz, nicknamed the Hunchback of Notre Dame, toils away perfecting the latest app.

An unexpected gap in the EED surgeon’s schedule bumps Briddey and Trent up the queue for operation. It is then disaster strikes. In the aftermath, Briddey finds herself telepathic. Worse, it is C B, not Trent, whom Briddey can hear in her head.

Still worse, Briddey is soon to be overwhelmed by a tsunami of unexpurgated thoughts pouring into her head from people round about. Only C B’s aid and tuition in protection from the racket, building in her head perimeters and safe rooms, helps her survive. This involves a kind of technique C B compares to Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr’s invention of a frequency-hopping device to frustrate radio jamming by the Germans of Allied torpedoes. (See here; paragraph 2.)

In one of their conversations about the desire to communicate (or lack of it) C B tells her, “If people really wanted to communicate, they’d tell the truth, but they don’t,” and the phrase “‘Of course’, is a dead giveaway that you’re lying.”

He has been able to receive and broadcast for a long time and has done a lot of research. Hearing voices in your head is not a survival trait, he tells her. It didn’t do much for Joan of Arc after all. He has been worried about her for a while since he knew that telepathy is to do with the haploidgroupgene R1b-L21, the Irish carry. He himself was adopted hence the non-Irish name.

It is clear very early on where all this is going in terms of a “normal” plot. The SF and scientific aspects are merely window dressing. This is actually a romcom.

Diverting enough, though.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma  before a piece of direct speech, “and rounded the corner and breathing in the sweet smells of grass and wet earth” (doesn’t need the second ‘and’,) “about Joan of Arc being captured by the British” (it was the English she was captured by. It long predated the formalisation of the UK,) octopi (the plural is octopuses; or octopodes if you’re Greek.)

Arcadia, 2024, 380 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

It is a usually unspoken assumption that it is the duty of a reviewer not to imbue a review with spoilers. Yet what to do if to give some flavour of the contents (something necessary to any review,) makes that all but impossible? Not that in this case any comments would really be much of a spoiler. The manner in which the story is told along with the structure of the book manage to do that without requiring any assistance. The main narrative is told in four Parts but its title (The Queen) is a hefty pointer to the contents, and the title page itself, plus those introducing the Prologue, each Part, the three separate sections of Part IV, plus the Epilogue, are blazoned with pale drawings of wasps. The Queen? Wasps? Some sort of vespine nightmare, pheromone driven, is surely being not merely hinted at, but promised. Moreover, the Prologue pretty much embodies the climactic scene, so anyone reading that already knows what the spoilers are. The rest of the text describes how the scenario got to that point.

The main action unfolds over a period of around twenty-four hours in June 2018 in the town of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Margaret June Carpenter (Cherry) has closeted herself at home since the disappearance of four students from her school, Northfield, several weeks before: three boys, Chad Dearborn, Will Stinson, Allan Teller, who are remembered fondly and worriedly, and Margaret’s best friend Charity Atwater (Plum,) who isn’t.

Margaret’s isolation is ended when a surprise package arrives containing a mobile phone. The texts on it appear to be from Charity as they mention things that only she would know. They insist Margaret follow the instructions she is given. These lead her to the school where in Margaret’s absence a mysterious girl called Serena – about whom the only thing anyone can remember is that she is ‘hot’ – has been instigating confusion. So far so High School story but there follows a very well written scene where a teacher, Mr Foster, is clearly under mental coercion while revealing to a shocked class avidly filming his confession on their phones an act of inappropriate conduct towards Serena. Here, too, Margaret is joined by Harry Cook, her boyfriend of sorts, and there is talk of a gathering remembered as Burning Van from the burnt-out vehicle where its events, the trigger for the plot, centred.

Another strand relates the back story of an Elon Musk-like billionaire called Rudyard Crate, who as a child witnessed his elder sister eaten alive by a swarm of dorylus, or siafu, ants while barely escaping himself, which has naturally haunted him ever since but given him an unhealthy fixation. He has instigated Project Athena, designed to introduce insect phenotypes (mostly of wasps, but also of other genera) into human DNA to produce a hybrid creature. The most successful of these is Subject Six, indistinguishable from a human child until triggered by a “time of dynamic bodily or neurological change like human teenage-hood.” Subject Six: a wasp in the nest of Northfield.

When she meets Crate, Margaret notes his Businessman’s laugh, a phenomenon her father warned her of. “‘It’s as fake as a three-dollar bill, Margaret. Never trust a man who’s perfected his Businessman’s laugh.’”

The June 2018 setting is, perhaps, an authorial mis-step given that in the book the climactic events are well publicised and discussed but of course readers in 2024 have never heard of them. In all, though, The Queen is a well written but curiously unconvincing tale from the area where Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror overlap – at least unconvincing to those like me who normally don’t read horror stories – until we reach Part IV, Ever After, and a section where in an article reprinted from a magazine, Chris Packer, a journalist born and brought up in St Catharines, compares and contrasts the post-happening world-wide reactions to Margaret and Charity and so the novel begins to comment on itself and take on wider concerns.

Packer remembers from a case of abduction and killing years earlier that not all missing girls were treated equally. The one from the better-off families was spoken of with adoration: the one from the wrong side of town dismissed. It was ever thus.

Two more shorter bits of Part IV provide further perspective and reflections on the story’s events – even a touch of hope.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian. Otherwise; “He had no other companions other than” (has one ‘other’ too many,) sunk (x 5, sank, which did appear once,) “hung myself” (hanged myself.)  “Plum and me had been” (Plum and I had been,) “left raw wheals on its ankles and wrists” (raw weals.) “Queens force-feed it to her drones and attendants” (force-feed it to their drones and attendants.) “The larvae hatches” (The larvae hatch – larva was used correctly as the singular a few lines later,) “Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’” (usually translated as ‘Night on the Bare Mountain’,) sprung (sprang,) “their DNA helixes” (helices?) sanitarium (sanatorium,) staunch (stanch,) “she shrunk in the swing” (shrank.) “The song rose to its glittering crescendo” (the crescendo is the rise, not the end of the rise.) “Outside of” (no ‘of’ please, just ‘outside’.)