Mr Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll (Melville House, £20)
Carroll, an American long resident in Vienna, has been winning awards for his elegantly spooky magical-realist fantasies since his 1980 debut, The Land of Laughs. His first novel since 2014 plays with ideas about fate, choice, art and love through the story of Graham Patterson, failed standup comedian and – despite his many appealing attributes – also a failure at lasting relationships. Following an impulsive decision to get a tattoo, he gains the magical ability to observe two other lives he could have had, with the option to trade his present situation for one of them. It seems he can have love or fame but not both, and as he puts off his decision, his story, and the world around him, get ever stranger. Every bit as inventive and engaging as the best of his earlier novels, and still with a sinister edge, this is more dream than nightmare, and a pure delight to read.
Cold People by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster, £16.99)
The author of Child 44 and other crime novels takes a shot at science fiction. An alien armada fills the skies in the summer of 2023 to announce that any humans who don’t want to be vaporised need to get to Antarctica pronto. The exodus begins, as people are flown or shipped out by governments, or make their way south on private yachts or packed like sardines into converted oil tankers. The story then leaps ahead 20 years, after three “survivor cities” have been established. Life is tough for the few million remaining people, though we are told everyone is happier and healthier than before, and most enjoy better mental health because they are valued and live in egalitarian communes. But what’s going on in that heavily guarded research lab beneath the ice? The story trundles from one absurdity to another, the characters are paper thin, and although the flat narrative is resolutely humourless, it’s hard to see it as anything but a lengthy pitch for a very silly movie.
Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (Gollancz, £20)
The sequel to the 2019 bestseller Ninth House finds magical student Alex Stern determined to descend into hell to rescue her mentor Darlington – although after all the time he’s spent there, he might now be more demon than man. She has inherited his position overseeing the rituals that take place in Yale University’s secret societies, as well as being on call to the police whenever occult influences are suspected behind a death on campus. Confusing at first to anyone unfamiliar with the first book, this novel is fascinating for the way the author has reimagined Yale as a place where dangerous, down-and-dirty magic is as important as money and connections for conferring power on the elite. Bardugo’s many fans will be eager to follow her tough, longsuffering heroine even through the gates of hell.
The House at the End of the World by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer, £19.99)
Katie lives alone on a small island on a large American lake, in retreat from the world for reasons that are gradually revealed. A neighbouring island is home to a top-secret research facility, and when a couple of armed agents turn up to search her island, she understands that someone – or some thing – has escaped, and that she is now in danger. The danger turns out to be greater than she could have imagined, posing a threat to the whole world, unless she (with the unexpected aid of an amazingly smart and able young girl) can find a way to neutralise it. The bad guys are entirely evil, just as Katie and her young friend are without sin: this is black and white territory with no allowance for shades of grey. But more than a morality play, it is a perfectly paced thriller, with a plot that gradually unfolds to reveal a terrifying science fictional premise.
Collision: Stories From the Science of Cern, edited by Rob Appleby and Connie Potter (Comma, £9.99)
Comma Press has published other “bridge-building” anthologies connecting writers with scientists; for this one they invited a group of authors to engage with the work of Cern (already a highly collaborative institution) through idea-sparking conversations with some of its scientists and engineers. Steven Moffat kicks things off with a bang with a story about why we cannot solve the mystery of dark matter; Peter Dong, the scientist he asked to check his physics, says in his afterword he considers the physics “remarkable” and the premise to be “implausible but not impossible”. There are also good stories from Bidisha (although her science-checker says the events of the story are impossible), Lucy Caldwell, Ian Watson and others. I would love to read a whole novel about the characters created by Margaret Drabble in The Ogre, the Monk and the Maiden.
