Sibilant Fricative

Adam Roberts makes everything wonderful. If he wrote non-fiction about drying paint, I would still be the first in line to read it.

An award winning author in his own right, Adam Roberts makes no concessions when appraising the work of others. His reviews are honest, forthright, and never timid.

In Sibilant Fricative Adam considers a broad spectrum of speculative fiction, from fantasy to science fiction, from literature to films. The book opens with insightful consideration of Philip K Dick's oeuvre followed by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and closes with a volume-by-volume analysis of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time opus. Along the way we stop off for a review by text among other amusements – one thing the author never loses sight of is the need to entertain.

Titan is one of the blandest pieces of fiction I have come across in four decades of reading novels. If the Campbell shortlist is a high-class curry restaurant of delicious, spicy and stimulating food, then Titan is a single slice of white bread and margarine on a white plate under the neon light of a truck drivers' café.

Let me see if I can boil down Crossroads of Twilight's 700-pages for you. Drivel. There you go.