New Reviews: Christopher Priest's The Space Machine and Jeff Noon's Vurt
August 13, 2003 (3:02 AM) ( link )

ADDED reviews of Jeff Noon's Vurt and Christopher Priest's The Space Machine. Ugh, ugh.

I've started reading a new book that is a considerable improvement on the books I've read recently: Patricia Suskind's Perfume, a bizarre novel that is wholly centered on smells. Suskind has done an amazing amount of research for the book; part of the joy of reading it thus far is learning about the unusual trade of perfumers, with all of its little secrets and techniques. And her writing is evocative enough to make you wrinkle your nose in sympathy as she spins her prose. Thanks to the reader of this web page who suggested the book.

With Priest's book and Moorcock's trilogy (recently read), I've now read two straight books in which H.G. Wells was a character, at least one protagonist is from Victorian England, and the female love interest is named Amelia. Things will get stranger since I'm planning to read Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships soon: it is, as far as I can tell, an unofficial sequel to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. I'm maybe a little over-Wells'ed right now; after Suskind's decidedly non-science-fiction novel, I may instead continue in the non-speculative-fiction realm with Salman Rushdie's borderline fantasy novel Midnight's Children.