BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY

Note to self

- Jonathan Wright

RELEASED OUT NOW!

368 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook

Author Ken MacLeod

Publisher Orbit

Is it an adequate description to call Ken MacLeod a science fiction writer? Sure, Beyond The Hallowed Sky has been trailed as the first volume in “a new space opera trilogy” and he’s not averse (to quote Margaret Atwood’s rather sniffy assessment of SF) to “rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space”. Yet the description seems inadequate.

Which isn’t to say he’s anything as straightforward as a slipstream novelist. Rather, MacLeod’s fiction, as it has developed over recent years, has become distinctive enough to be almost worthy of its own genre, which we might call mordant, technologically-enhanced magical realism firmly rooted in Scotland. Even when his fiction doesn’t specifically feature a dreich day in Gourock, it’s there in spirit.