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“Powell’s first novel [Silversands] is a fine hi-tech romp” - The Guardian

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“In total the book [The Last Reef] contains fifteen of his short stories and there is not a dud amongst them. Buy this book and do your brain a favour; you know it will love you for it.” - Sci-Fi Online

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“Silversands is a worthy addition to any devoted SF reader’s library.” - Suite 101

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“There is an almost Ballardian sense of fragmentation and despair in this well-written tale, which artfully utilizes technological imagery to build tension in the setting and refract the character’s inner selves. An impressive feat given the space, this riveting piece transcends “flash” and approaches a less formalized version of the Ballardian “compressed novel,” in the best possible manner.” – The Fix

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“Brilliant idea, amazing story.”- Dylan Fox

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“Gareth L. Powell and Aliette de Bodard have been consistently impressive Interzone contributors in recent years so it is no surprise their collaboration on ‘The Church of Accelerated Redemption’ yields rich and original insights into the lonely and disaffected life of a computer engineer. The tension arises when unexpected events offer the chance of change. A neatly crafted story of AI and human possibility.” - Interzone

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“There’s more imagination crammed into these pages than you’ll find in an average sci-fi novel from a mainstream publisher. And it’s not just his imagination either. Powell is a bloody good writer. His prose is lyrical and drips with vivid description, slipped into the text so it never feels like the rhythm of the writing is bogged down. It does mean that prose is economical but evokes more in one sentence of description than I’ve seen in a paragraph from more seasoned writers.” – Muskets and Monsters

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“[Silversands] gripped me by the collar and wouldn’t let go… 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.” - Matthew S. Dent

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“Sunsets and Hamburgers by Gareth Lyn Powell is an excellent far-future apocalypse with an immediately grabbing opening and a grandly successful denouement. Told episodically in numbered diary entries, the story combines a hatful of familiar SF-nal conceits such as: suspended animation, galactic “drift,” the end of the universe, the extinction of the human race, genetic engineering, forced breeding. That all of this and more is accomplished in a short-short – without sacrificing character depth or world-building – is just amazing. Powell’s narrative voice is precise, giving needed details, sparing superfluous digressions, lengthy exposition, or wooden dialogue. In fact, “Sunsets and Hamburgers” moves so quickly and so effectively toward its profound and unforgettable climax that it is easy to forget that this little gem of a science-fiction story has more concepts invested in it than many door-stopper sci-fi novels. Simply a magnificent short-short, one which I wholeheartedly give my highest recommendation.” – SFReader.com

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“Without question, what all the stories definitely do have in common is a memorable quality – you’ll be thinking about them for a long time afterwards. These are stories that engage both the heart and the brain… Elastic Press has performed a public service in collecting them together.” – Interzone

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“Gareth L Powell has delivered a great novel in a very interesting setting.” – Walker of Worlds

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“Neatly collected for the first time, Gareth L Powell’s short stories quickly invoke a different kind of science fiction, one that is far removed from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke or other “hard sci-fi” contemporaries. Replacing the cold vacuum of space with dusty vistas, seedy bars, and realities closely resembling our own, Powell instead rallies around his skill at succinctly developing detailed and believable characters. In this respect the anthology is equally a treatise on both characterization and its exploration of the bizarre. Certainly, The Last Reef is a triumph of identifiable, realistic protagonists. There is of course the typical tech-noir genre fare: weather-beaten archaeologists, cyber-upgraded hackers, homicidal ex-cops et al but each remains accessible and believable. Structurally centred around several sign-posted stories (concerning the titular Last Reef) involving the odd reoccurring character, Powell’s stories run the gamut from far-flung space adventures (Six Lights off Green Scar) to near-future takes on internet viral-culture (Ack Ack Macaque). The writing is imbued with a faint longing melancholy yet varied in narrative style and arrangement, supporting each new world as it comes whilst keeping things fresh, tangible and fascinating. Reasonably priced at just over a fiver, I can’t recommend it enough.” - Prism

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“In The Last Reef, Powell holds a cross-section of science, nature, and technology in his quintessential human hand and gives it a roll across the universal table. What turns up is an eclectic mix of possibility, tragedy, and hope—a gamble worth betting on… Powell’s depth and breadth of characterization work, and his settings are truly impressive. His work displays a willingness to show truths and flaws for what they are, rather than gratuitously exaggerating only strengths. With his instinct for subtlety, Powell is an author to watch. His work is the spyglass of science fiction, the ship just over the horizon.” – The Fix

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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. - Colin Harvey, author of Winter Song

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“When expanding to the short story length GLP displays the same ability to deliver a taut tale with all the elements. You have cyberpunk, hardboiled action, and tales of weird alien incursions in the near future with people on the run in a lot of cases… Powell is definitely my sort of writer, it would seem.” – Not Free SF Reader

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“The story with the most original and intriguing name is one of the biggest highlights of the collection.  “What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done?” by Gareth L Powell ends the entire world through a freak accident with nanotech computer builders and random chance saves one man from Bristol to decide who will repopulate the earth with him. The tie in to Nicolas Cage’s movie, It Could Happen to You, was both unexpected and brilliantly played out.” – Suite101

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“Author Gareth Lyn Powell gives us The Last Reef, and manages, via a powerful torrent of invention, to imbue a myriad of ideas more in tune with a novel than a short story… with clever flashbacks throughout that dovetail inexorably toward the ending. Accompanied by a brilliant illustration, The Last Reef is a fabulous read indeed.” – Horrorscope

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“Next up is the delightfully-named ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ by Gareth Lyn Powell. The author plays with the idea of what happens when the Fourth Wall between the protagonists of the tale and their fictional creation collapses. The mechanism chosen for this catastrophe is clever enough to be plausible without too much technobabble being required and Powell manages to pull the thing off remarkably well in what is basically a humorous, lightweight tale. There’s also a very British (ie gloomy) love story going on in the background, as well as some decent satirical swipes at what happens to characters in comic novels when Hollywood decides to turn them into cash-cows. All in all, a fun story and one of the best in this particular issue of Interzone.” – SF Crowsnest

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““Ack-Ack Macaque” is a weird, sad story about a man’s relationship with a woman who writes a web-based anime series about a monkey airship pilot, named, of course, Ack-Ack Macaque. She leaves him for a guy who wants to promote the comic – and he tries to commit suicide. And Ack-Ack Macaque begins to change too – or perhaps come to life. The tone is best here – the protagonist’s flaky despair is beautifully caught.” - Locus

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“The commercialisation of a web animation into some diseased Max Headroom as metaphor for the wreckage of a fucked-up relationship. It’s about two things: the people, and the idea. Just the way sf should work.” – Warren Ellis

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“The minor stylistic flourish of making the story feel upbeat is what ultimately makes it feel so intensely rewarding… Surprisingly thoughtful and emotionally intense, “Ack-Ack Macaque” is a lovely piece of work that is vaguely reminiscent of Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s End of The World Blues. This was easily the issue’s stand-out story as far as I’m concerned. Yes, it is that good.” – SF Diplomat

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“While there’s more than a hint of gritty post-apocalyptic cyberpunk scenery, Powell’s characters are drawn with the believable motives and real human flaws that stories of this ilk often lack… While I feel there’s still plenty of room for the more playful material that Stross and Doctrow have made their trademark, stories like “The Last Reef” bring a welcome breeze of empathy to the proceedings by humanising the technological experience instead of technologising the human experience.” – Vector

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