The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
Today I shall direct you to another review I wrote for Shiny New Books:- The Adjacent by Christopher Priest, now out in paperback.
Priest is one of those authors who defies genre, yet routinely gets categorised as a science fiction author. True his books often have some SF elements in, and The Adjacent was short-listed for the Arthur C Clarke Award this year (losing out to Ann Leckie). However, to me, he’s more a spec fiction writer – riding the slipstream rather than pure SF.
Those of you who have seen the film The Prestige will have encountered the mind of Priest, (although the film did remove one whole contemporary plot-strand which would have complicated things to much for the big screen), so you’ll realise that a level of the fantastic is a part of that story.
Priest is a great ideas man. This novel with its central echoing romance, goes from a bleak future back to WWI and through WWII before coming full circle. I really enjoyed it.
* * * * *
Source: Own copy. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (pub 2013, Gollancz, paperback 432 pages).
Now I’ll have to buy The Prestige! I thought the film was excellent. The Adjacent’s sitting in my TBR. I agree with you about the categorisation and I suspect this is why Priest doesn’t get the attention he deserves.
This sounds really good! I’m not familiar with the author, although I did see the movie The Prestige.
I really liked the review on SNB and the book sounds intriguing. I tend to steer clear of sci-fi usually and even though like sound of this I think I will take your advice and dip my toe in shallower waters for Christopher Priest!