Writer Matthew S. Dent reviews Silversands on his blog:

“I really did enjoy this novel. It was fun, but not silly. The characters were strong, the plot engaging, and the writing well beyond competent. But the real triumph, I feel, is the world that Powell has created. A universe with humanity scattered across the stars by unreliable FTL travel is one that has a lot of potential, particularly with the developments at the end of the story. I hope that Powell returns to this universe at some point, and it would be a real shame if some of the characters from Silversands didn’t get a second appearance.”

Read the full review here.

Colin Harvey reviews Silversands for Suite 101:

Silversands is a worthy addition to any devoted SF reader’s library.

Read the full review here

“The Church of the Accelerated Redemption” gives those concerned with their effect on the environment the chance to earn back some karma via the use of ‘Artificial Intercessors’ — sub-singularity AIs that pray on behalf of the Church’s sponsors. Both Gareth L Powell and Aliette de Bodard who wrote the story, have earned considerable reputations in their own right; in collaboration de Bodard brings scientific weight to the story, while Powell’s innate romanticism makes it soar. An outstanding early contender for Year’s Best lists.

On his website, reviewer Mark Chitty writes:

Gareth L Powell has delivered a great novel in a very interesting setting.

To read the full review, click here.

Some time ago, Colin Harvey wrote a review of my short story collection The Last Reef for the Internet Review of Science Fiction. Now that the IROSF has ceased publication, Colin has posted the review on his own website.

This is my favourite part:

Powell shares with Clarke and Stapleton a sense of humanity’s insignificance in the universe … but Powell is as reminiscent of J.G. Ballard as of Clarke — from the moment when the narrator embraces his infected wife in ‘A Necklace of Ivy,’ to the rising waters and fleets of refugee container ships of ‘Flotsam,’ echoing Ballard’s The Drowned World and his visions of drained swimming pools and abandoned Cape Canaveral … But unlike Ballard, whose protagonists were cold, damaged men, Powell’s heroes turn and face their catastrophes prompted by love or a sense of what’s right — duty, to use an unfashionable word. At their best Powell’s stories fuse the traditional ideas driven British-fiction with detailed characterization, and action.

To read the full review, click here.

Silversands, by Gareth L Powell (Pendragon Press, £12)

Avril Bradley is a communications officer aboard the starship Pathfinder on its mission to locate lost and far-flung colony worlds. She’s also on a personal quest to find Cale Christie, the man she believes to be her father, who passed through an alien wormhole years earlier. But wormhole technology is highly unreliable, and when she does manage to discover the planet where Christie lives, she finds herself caught up in a complex intrigue between competing corporations, corrupt politicians and a scheming artificial intelligence – which may just hold the answer to the stabilisation of the wormhole. Powell’s first novel is a fine hi-tech romp, marred slightly by a rushed and melodramatic dénouement.

-Eric Brown

Read the full article here: click for link

Damien G Walter reviews Shine on The Guardian‘s website:

In recent decades even science fiction, once abundantly optimistic about the future, has been overwhelmed with pessimism. The Shine anthology of optimistic science fiction aims to reverse that trend by bringing together some of the most optimistic visions of our future in one volume. Shine is new writing in the most literal sense, with stories from emerging talents of SF including Alliette de Boddard, Lavie Tidhar and Gareth L Powell.

Liz de Jager reviews the Shine anthology on SFRevu:

I looked first at The Church of Accelerated Redemption a collaboration between Gareth L Powell and Aliette de Bodard and found myself immediately sucked into their wonderfully intimate story of a computer engineer’s struggle with loneliness and discontent. I like Aliette’s writing having read parts of her novel Servant of the Underworld, yet in this story I found something altogether different – a main character whose search for meaning in a dead end job unexpectedly takes a turn she could not have predicted. Wonderful and full of promise, I liked her attitude and the fact that although she was pretty scared, she wasn’t too scared to grab a new future for herself.

Read the full review here.

Moxyland is set in South Africa, only a stone’s throw into the future, in a society where the difference between employment and unemployment can also be the difference between life and death; where the greatest punishment is to have your mobile phone disconnected.

Starting slowly, the novel introduces us to its four narrators: Kendra the retro photographer; Toby the vlogcaster; Tendeka the would-be revolutionary; and Lerato the corporate programmer. Telling their intertwined stories over the course of alternating chapters, they show us their world, and we get to watch with horrified fascination as they become slowly embroiled in a deadly conspiracy that none of them fully understands.

With her stripped prose and lack of superfluous description, Lauren Beukes gives us what we need to see the world through the characters’ eyes. They never feel the need to over-explain themselves, and each has a distinctive and recognizable voice. The pages whip by quickly, as the tension grows, and as readers, we’re only half a step ahead of the characters in piecing together the seriousness of what’s going on.

Lean, sharp, and tightly written, Moxyland keeps raising the stakes, from the opening chapter to the uncompromising finale. And with its electronic panopticon, it gives us a dystopia to rival 1984 or Stand On Zanzibar – a future horrifying for its very plausibility.

Moxyland is published by Angry Robot.

On the Innsmouth Free Press website, Paula R Stiles reviews the Future Bristol anthology:

“If you’re familiar with the style of Hub Magazine or Irish ‘zine Albedo One, you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect. Lots of snark, off-the-wall weirdness you won’t normally see in North American specfic (the publisher is from Texas), and considerable attention to world-building… The stories themselves are lovely (being an editor of a ‘zine, I am one picky bitch, so that’s saying a lot); the editing is nice and clean; I love the cover (okay, I really love the cover); the whole thing is as professionally-done as any big publisher puts out; and it’s great to see so many female writers and protags. When Silvia and I say that we wish we could see X type of specfic more often, we mean this type of stuff.”

While in the latest issue of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, Ben Jeapes writes:

“Future Bristol is a collection of love stories for the city of Bristol… The whole collection is a good read by a good set of authors.