LIGHT by M. John Harrison

Last year, I wrote this about the U.K. edition of Light by M. John Harrison in a SF Site review:

Some books make you want to run for a thousand miles, to dive off of buildings just for the burn of the fall. Some books are like drugs, adrenalin rushes, fireworks. M. John Harrison's Light is not just among the best SF novels of the year -- it's without question the best read of the year. Harrison has jettisoned all banality, dead spots, padding, and come up with a novel that moves without sacrificing depth. Not since Stepan Chapman's The Troika and Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons has a novel managed to so single-handedly revitalize and re-energize the SF field.

Now the novel has been released in the United States for the first time (August 31) by Bantam Books in a handsome trade paperback.



I recently re-read some of my favorite passages from the novel and found Harrison's sentences just as powerful, playful, and deadly as the first time around. This is a must-buy for North American readers who love intricate, passionate, challenging fiction of any kind. As the cliche goes, I can't recommend this novel highly enough. Buy it. And then buy it for a friend. That way you can help ensure that fiction this distinctive and unclassifiable (and fun!) continues to be published in the U.S.