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• Like all of the 'Bold as Love' sequence

  Like all of the 'Bold as Love' sequence: an impressively well written novel which encompasses and synthesises our underlying current societial issues in the UK should society as we know it fall apart while also acknowledging the implications of globalisation, clmate change and post peak oil transition, cultural power shifts and possible technological developments. All of which might be boring except there are characters you can care about, the return of magic and the attempt to protect the populaton from it, a compelling narrative and a gritty realism you can cut your teeth on. This is a believable world and possibly the best description of how an alternative society in Britain may come about, complete with a clear eyed vison of the down side and what it may involve for the excluded of the new order.

• Rocking sci-fi English style.

  Book was old school rock sci-fi, a neglected subgenre but a fast read and a satisfying one. Overall worth the time.

• "Jesus, Lenin and Trotsky," he muttered, "Is this England?"

  This is England, but not as we know it. The Counter-Cultural forces are at work and have de-stabalised the political system to the point where the government have formed a coalition with these rock stars and guitar heroes who have converged in all the usual places (Glastonbury, Reading, etc.) in order to have a good time, smoke a lot of weed and generally engage the suits in mind-enhancing dialogues. In this parallel world what solves people's dissatisfactions appears to be lots of free concerts by big name rock stars. The middle-classes are, presumably, just getting on with things in their own knitted cardigan sort of way, busy eradicating aphids in the garden and running their small businesses, because, after all, the people running the country are their children. So that's all right then. This is so nearly wonderful that you read it hoping it can do the magic and make you believe in a world with a rock group called Pigsty and the Organs living in Buckingham Palace. But no, sadly, it doesn't quite come off. There is a lot of talking, a lot of action, not to mention the defeat of the Islamist Republic of Yorkshire, in a North Yorks Moors battle. One wishes to believe that the people of England would, for just a short period of time anyway, get off their backsides and believe in something enough to fight for it. It's hard to believe - even squeezing one's feet into Dorothy's red shoes wouldn't do it. There are only three characters of any note in this - Ax Preston, "soft-spoken guitar man", Sage Pender, "techno-wizard king of the lads," and Firoinda, "talented rock and roll princess by birth, searching for her father, the legendary Rufus O'Niall." There is no attempt to characterise the grey suits of the government, and any opposition to the Counter-Culture is null and void as a result. But it very soon turns into a kind of soap opera, with Pigsty convicted of paedophilia and the power of rock music reigning supreme. Fiorinda has a prolonged psychotic episode caused by a bouquet of roses that has been dusted with psychotropic powders; then she gets to choose which of the two available men she wants to be with - and she chooses both. Dream on.

• Excellent near future novel

  Bold as Love is a sort of SF/Fantasy vision of a near future England. It's set in a time where the counter-cultural movement has gained a lot of ground (this is mostly alluded to) whilst the United Kingdom is dissolved. As the title "Bold As Love" implies, this novel is indebted to rock music. The government of the new England decides that it needs to cosy up to the more powerful counter-cultural movement; there seem to be a number of reasons for this. Again, these are quite often, rather than explicitly told alluded to. The novel has a large number of themes and ideas in it; it is also a good literary piece of SF. It is clearly set in a time where there has been a breakdown (but in absolutely no way complete; people still live their lives in a way that we'd recognise) due to environmental crisis - predominantly energy crisis, I think. Like I say, though, this is never, explicitly, told. This leads to the growing importance of the environmental and counter-cultural movements, which leads to rock stars being invited to government. These make up most of the main characters in the novel. There are many things that I liked about Jones' novel. Firstly, it's character driven, and these characters are well drawn. Though there are some people that are worse than others, even the "good" characters are far from perfect, they have problems and make choices that they don't agree with because they are politically the correct thing to do. The mainstreaming of the environmental movement in the novel is handled well, too. It's portrayed as being multi-layed with people who are interested in treating the surroundings better, through to some people who hold questionable views on science or unfortunate views on Englishness. The referencing of made up rock stars could be lame...but actually, I think it works well. Mostly the dynamics of the rock world are actually handled in a believable way. It also covers some difficult issues around physical, mental and sexual abuse in an unflinching way. These bits are pretty grim reading, but worthy enough. There are a couple of things that let the novel down. These, though, are actually more to do with when the novel was originally published. The first is the depiction of the web. Some of it really feels like a depiction of what the web was like in 2001, and an extrapolation of that. Sometimes this feels intrusive, but I don't think, in all fairness, that's the author's fault. The other is that, though it covers the idea of there being a separatist movement amongst radicalised muslims in the north of England, it does seem to have been written pre-Sep 11th (which it must've been, given it was published in 2001). These faults are minor, though. If you're looking for good, character-driven, literary SF which portrays an interesting fantastical view of near-future England, this is a good place to go.

• Avoid

  Just, awful. Michael moorcocks worst excesses filtered through a late middle aged melody maker journalist with depression

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