Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 4

“Otherlands” by Thomas Halliday (2022)

“Dawn is breaking in the Alaskan night, where a small herd of horses, four adults and three foals, huddle against the frigid north-easterly wind.”

Thanks to film and television, we think we have a very clear picture of what the planet used to look like. However, what we know is but a fraction of what happened back then. Fossilisation is a very rare process, despite how it appears, so there are likely billions of species we don’t know about. Even the ones we have, we can’t guarantee we’re picturi...

“The Truants” by Kate Weinberg (2019)

“It’s hard to say who I fell in love with first.”‘

When Donna Tartt wrote The Secret History, I’m not sure she knew what she was unleashing on the world. It was the start of a raft of novels about “wealthy, unpleasant people in an exclusive clique at university”. Fortunately, it’s a concept that still seems to work. If We Were Villains gave us Shakespeare students; The Things We Do To Our Friends gives us art history students, and now The Truants goes right up my alley with an Agatha Christie ba...

“Rental Person Who Does Nothing” by Shoji Morimoto (2023)

“I’m starting a service called Rental Person Who Does Nothing and I’m available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there.”

Memoir can be a funny old thing. We want them to be full of excitement, thrills, drama and, let’s be honest, gossip. It’s great when an old actor throws their life story onto the shelves, and, to my mind anyway, always just a waste of time when it’s a twenty-something reality TV star who hasn’t had time to live a life. Ironic, then, that I chose to rea...

“Taking Flight” by Lev Parikian (2023)

“Take yourself, if you can, to a stretch of clean, fresh, flowing water.”

One of the most requested superpowers of all is flight. Humans look to the skies with jealousy, and have turned to technology to conquer them. But other species didn’t need that. They worked it out themselves. In this book, Lev Parikian explores the animals that took flight, how they did it and why they’re such biological geniuses.

Flight, we learn, has appeared four times in evolution. First it was the insects, then the p...

“The Last Smile In Sunder City” by Luke Arnold (2020)

“‘Do some good,’ she’d said.”

Tolkien has a lot to answer for when it comes to how people see magical races in fiction, so it’s always refreshing when someone comes along with a new twist.

Once upon a time, the world was full of magic. Elves, dwarves, vampires, goblins, gremlins, angels and more all lived side by side in relative peace, with their magic coming from an ancient river in the mountains. It seemed that nothing could go wrong, until the humans got jealous. A human army, mortal with no...

“Opening Night” by Ngaio Marsh (1951)

“As she turned into Carpet Street the girl wondered at her own obstinacy.”

It’s a return at last to Ngaio Marsh, who takes the action from her native New Zealand to the West End stage.

Martyn Tarne left New Zealand with dreams of making it big on the stage in London, but so far it’s all been rather soul-destroying and depressing. Trying to find work at every theatre and getting turned away, she alights at last on the Vulcan Theatre, where there’s an opening to work as the dresser for the leading...

“The Transgender Issue” by Shon Faye (2021)

“The liberation of trans people would improve the lives of everyone in our society.”

It seems you can hardly glance at a news outlet these days without someone – invariably a heterosexual, cisgender someone – having something to say about the transgender community. Nine times out of ten, it’s something negative. The way they talk, you’d like some sort of demon species was stalking the landscape and every third person you pass had changed gender and that was, apparently, a Wrong Thing. While I do...

“Cold People” by Tom Rob Smith (2023)

“Looking up at the night sky Ui saw only unfamiliar stars.”

For a while, as the world crumbled around us, I thought I had to give up this sort of nonsense. As it is, there’s something quite comforting about reading apocalyptic fiction and thinking, “So I guess it could be worse.”

In 2023, aliens appear in the skies of Earth and give humanity their instructions: they have thirty days to get to Antarctica. There’s no debate, no negotiation, no suggestion of what will happen if they don’t. Much of ...

“The Family Upstairs” by Lisa Jewell (2019)

“Libby picks the letter up off the doormat.”

Can I be honest with you? I really adored Lisa Jewell’s romantic comedy style novels. They were the perfect balance of fun, frothy and realistically dark. That’s not to say I’ve entirely gone off her since she switched to thrillers, because she can write them just as well. So if I want more Jewell in my life, I’ve got to take the plunge again, not that it’s really a struggle.

Henry grew up in a strange house in Chelsea, where he had to come to terms w...

“Impossible” by Sarah Lotz (2022)

“Listen you tight-fisted, pea-brained grouse-shooting, tweedy twat, you may own half the fucking countryside but you don’t own me.”

God, I’m a sucker for an alternate history. This is one with a whole other twist though. Hold on tight.

When Nick accidentally sends an angry e-mail to Bee instead of his intended recipient (a posh bloke he’s been ghost-writing a novel for), it begins a relationship that quickly becomes flirtatious. As the two realise they have a lot in common and similar attitudes ...