It’s a wonderful example of how an irreverent approach to much loved genres can lead to a truly great story. The very nature of the tales, which are more preoccupied with what happens next rather than with the emotional background of said characters. As you might expect from a man as opinionated as Harkaway (go on, check his Twitter feed, you’ll see what I mean), his jokes are timely and extremely cutting. Pullman’s new book is a collection of straightforward renderings (and not embellished retellings) of 50 Grimm tales and as Mr Pullman discussed the book one of the things he said struck me as quite interesting: the fact that in these tales the characters are not real people. It even feels a bit Gothic in places reinforced by the appearance and atmosphere of the half burnt house.

She has an estranged relationship with her brother Chris after reporting his theft to the authorities, causing her to lose contact with him for nearly two years. The Angel maker is an atmospheric story about unrivaled sibling loyalty, a serial killer who can predict the future and a detective determined to put the pieces together.Every so often, I run across a book that catches me completely by surprise; a book that I picked up on a whim, having never heard of it before, that strikes a chord and immediately becomes a firm favourite.

At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. That events had been set in motion and were now continuing along inevitable paths that had been there all along and that however much he tried to reassure them both, he had no real control at all over what would happen next.Angelmaker is more in the mold of Neil Gaiman, China Mieville or Christopher Fowler: the novel is set firmly in a modern day London, but there’s also a city beneath; the literal underworld, where the city’s shady characters and forgotten souls spend most of their time. Joe, one shoulder still sore from a near miss two weeks ago, says they are Satanic messengers of discord and pruritus. Second, the story cleverly incorporates the philosophical theory of determinism (the idea that everything is predetermined because of the laws of physical matter, and that what appears to be chance is just a function of the observer’s incomplete information).

I am admittedly the unluckiest person alive, so to say I was SHOCKED when I won an arc of this is an understatement!

ugggghhhh i JUST got this in the mail, and it comes out tomorrow, so i won't learn what is in these TEENY TINY ENVELOPES before pubday but i am DESPERATE to know! Honestly, if you’re still reading at this point you may just want to get one of my books, because they are in many ways a more truthful self-description than any biog. Alan Hobbes used to be a philosophy professor who wanted his students to decide if things were all predetermined or not. It takes a similar form: the two time streams, one present day (or as near as damn it), the other Edie’s story of her time as a much younger woman working for Science 2. It clearly led away into some deeper chamber of the house, but the blackness there was impenetrable.