MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Fantasy and sci-fi round-up
Reviews of The Coven by Lizzie Fry, Witherward by Hannah Mathewson, Escape Pod anthology and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
THE COVEN by Lizzie Fry (Sphere, £14.99) is set in a world similar to our own except that there, witchcraft exists as part of normal life. Or it did, until a right-wing religious movement in the US saw a misogynist campaign against witches as its route to state power and ultimately to world domination.
As suppression and oppression of witches specifically, and women in general, grows, a small band of escapees and their allies are on the run in the British countryside.
So what we are presented with is essentially a chase thriller with magical elements and good fun it is too. Star readers will cheer as the characters discover that the division between men and women is intended primarily as a means to strengthen the division between rich and poor.
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