Book reviews


Review: Sell Us The Rope, by Stephen May

A new novel about the congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of 1907? Starring Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Rosa Luxemburg? What’s not to like? And the book’s premise — that Stalin was a…


Review: Pines, by Blake Crouch

I’ve been reading a lot of books by Blake Crouch, some I liked more than others. Pines is the first of the “Wayward Pines” trilogy, a series of books inspired by the television series “Twin…




Review: Upgrade, by Blake Crouch

I loved Dark Matter, I liked Recursion, and I had high hopes for this book too. But I was disappointed. While the other books by Blake Crouch were about theoretical physics (in a sense), with…


Review: Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch seems to make a habit of taking great ideas for science fiction novels, going as far as he can with the idea — and then going further. Much further. So this book, which…



Review: Recursion by Blake Crouch

“False Memory Syndrome” sounds like a real thing, and it is. It is also the starting point for this outstanding thriller which is part time travel, part love story. It is a book, above all,…


Review: World Bolshevism, by Iulii Martov

Paul Kellogg and Mariya Melentyeva have performed an important service by bringing this long-forgotten work by the most famous of the Mensheviks back into print. Their new translation and Kellogg’s introduction are excellent; the book…