Fantasy books

The Night Sessions
by Ken MacLeod (Orbit $25.99)

The near future. Decades of religious war have left organised religion hugely unpopular but in Britain the years of official repression are over and people of faith are tolerated. Then a Catholic priest is murdered, and police investigators uncover a conspiracy which gets bigger and more frightening the more they look. Which makes it especially strange that it should centre on a young New Zealander who preaches to robots. Ken MacLeod is one of the most intelligent and provocative science fiction writers around. Not a cheery book but I found it entirely engrossing.

The Ask and the Answer
by Patrick Ness (Walker $34.99)

The sequel to the astonishing The Knife of Never Letting Go is a darker and less immediately compelling book, but actually a better one. On a planet where men (but not women) broadcast their thoughts involuntarily, the young fugitives Todd and Viola have been captured by the fearsome Mayor Prentiss: whom Ness manages to transform from a bogeyman lurking in the shadows into a complex, subtle, formidable enemy. Dystopian fiction of a very dark stripe, but also of high order.

Once Dead, Twice Shy
by Kim Harrison (HarperCollins $26.99)

Sigh ... yet another teenage girl kisses the wrong boy and topples into a world of sinister magic, dark powers, and forbidden love. Instant trash, but I'll read a few pages ... and perhaps a few more ... oh, look, I finished it in one sitting. Kim Harrison is no Shakespeare; more to the point, she's no Stephenie Meyer. But this girl meets angel, girl gets killed, girl hunts demons story is strangely readable.

Wireless
by Charles Stross (Orbit $27.99)

A dazzling short story collection from one of science fiction's most reliably outrageous imaginations. Story one: humanity wakes up one day and finds itself living among alien races on something that looks like Earth, but is actually a billion times larger. Story two: British country lifestylers find themselves invaded by a sentient farm gone rogue. Story three: an alternate universe Oliver North meddles with powers best left alone and things quickly go to hell. (Literally). You get the idea: every time a fresh departure, every time something quite unexpected.

The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels
ed. Gardner Dozois (Robinson $34.99)

A "best of the best" anthology, bringing together 13 of the most impressive of 20 years' worth of annual Best SF volumes. Novellas are one of the ideal sci-fi forms, offering a lot of scope for complex storytelling, but still forcing a degree of compression. No pointless verbosity or meandering subplots. Authors include Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, Alastair Reynolds, Greg Egan, and Michael Swanwick; Le Guin's "Forgiveness Day" and Swanwick's "Griffin's Egg" alone are worth the cover price.