REISSUES
Our pick of the paperbacks this time: Aliya Whiteley’s SKYWARD INN ( , 20 January, Solaris). Set in a future where humanity has conquered an alien planet, it centres on the titular pub in what was formerly Devon, run by veterans from either side of the conflict. We said: “Ursula Le Guin fans will find much to appreciate here, but there are also hints of Wyndham in its gradual slide towards cataclysm. A melancholy and compellingly weird tale of identity in crisis.” A Manchester-based newspaper dedicated to the weird and wonderful is the focus of comedian CK McDonnell’s THE STRANGER TIMES ( stars, 6 January, Penguin). As newbie assistant editor Hannah discovers, some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are actually terrifyingly real… We said: “Not the most original of concepts, but it’s written in a fresh and genuinely funny way.” A second book in the series, This Charming Man, is due out on 17 February (Morrissey’s lawyers allowing...). Finally, in Benjamin Percy’s THE NINTH METAL ( January, Hodder), a comet collision spreads an alien metal , 13 over the Earth, providing a new power source and giving a young boy powers the military is eager to exploit. An “omnimetal” rush in a rural Minnesota town is the focus of this series-opener. We said: “Has flashes of pulpy, if derivative fun… often buried in an insane amount of inelegantly inserted, backstory-filling flashbacks.”