In "The New York Times", William Grimes has a look at In Tasmania by Nicholas Shakespeare, but isn't too impressed by what he finds: "If only Mr. Shakespeare, a limp, reticent tour guide, could drop his English reserve, the book might have done justice to the place. Tasmania screams out for lavish, Technicolor physical description. It begs for a writer willing to sink his teeth into the place as if it were a juicy steak. The anemic Mr. Shakespeare specializes in meaningful pauses and cryptic silences. A pastel watercolorist, a stylistic vegetarian, he is inadequate to the task...Mr. Shakespeare should have spent more time chatting with the locals and feasting his eyes on the world around him. Less time spent in the archives, and carefully polishing each of his lapidary sentences, might have served his purpose better."
Scott Westerfeld is another author we've adopted, this time from the US, and his latest novel, Pretties is enthused over by Amanda Craig in "The Times": "Westerfeld has created a gripping thriller about a dystopia founded on ideas of beauty, with all the gadgets, urban planning, moral dilemmas and medical disasters of superior science fiction."
