What is the key word today? Disposable. The more you can throw it away the more it’s beautiful. The car, the furniture, the wife, the children—everything has to be disposable. I read The Price beca…

The thing about graphic novels is that they can tell sharp stories, relevant stories, pure story—stripped of the artifice of meandering prose. Don’t get me wrong, I love good prose, and belie…

Whether learning martial arts is eventually a blessing or a curse to a person, I simply cannot figure out. 中文書評 Beyond his legendary multi-volume epics, Jin Yong (金庸) penned three novellas and shor…

練了武功到底對人是禍是福，我可實在想不明白。 English review 金庸數部長篇小說之外，另有三篇中短篇小說，分別為《雪山飛狐》、《鴛鴦刀》以及《白馬嘯西風》，這三篇小說皆收錄於同一本書之內。金庸的武俠小說向來以情節豐富、人物繁多著稱，足以將讀者沉浸於他所精雕細琢的歷史時代裡；相對之下，本書的故事則較為短促，故事情節不但必須聚焦於核心人物與主題，亦要兼顧讀者期待的武鬥情節與愛情故事。…

You are all the colours in one, at full brightness. I have mixed feelings about Niven’s All the Bright Places. It is clearly a tragic love story in the same mode as The Fault in Our Stars, ul…

The world isn’t fair—but you can want it to be. That’s a kind of hunger, too. Far Sector is my first foray into the world of DC Comics and the classic kind of comic world. It is a limit…

Gabriel Dax’s adventures in spycraft and entanglements with Faith Green continue in The Predicament, which follows up the more introspective Gabriel’s Moon with a psychologically powerf…

Listen sweet Dove unto my song,And spread thy golden wings in me;Hatching my tender heart so long,Till it get wing, and fly away with thee. George Herbert, Whitsunday Hidden from sight of the villa…

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. My relationship with Oscar Wilde’s plays goes all the way back to my earliest teens, when my drama teacher got us to read an…

Memory is a dog that wants to please its master. John le Carré was the author who made spy fiction into a respectable literary genre, as well as exciting and tense popular fiction—a tradition that …

The road to space is paved with a secret dark enough to bring the empire to its knees It is a rare privilege to get to step into an entirely new genre, and especially rare to do so with such an obs…

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw of…

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite. It feels faintly ludicrous to offer a review of Romeo and Juliet—not just of a …

We all float through space on a rock, hurtling toward forever. We Burned So Bright is a novella by T. J. Klune, recognizably in his style. It is earnest, cozy, and full of unrestrained emotion—the …

《呼喊與細雨》，又稱《在細雨中呼喊》，是余華的首部長篇小說。故事講述主人公孫光林在六十年代成長的記憶與經歷，從他六歲在南門第一次聽見細雨中的呼喊聲起，直至他離開南門入讀大學為止。小說注重描寫孫光林的家庭背景與祖父的人生故事，包括父兄對他的鄙夷，以及他成長過程中的友誼、性啟蒙與對社會的理解。全書以主人公的主觀印象與當代農村生活的現實為核心，賦予讀者一個既動人深切，又具層次與幽默感的閱讀體驗。 …

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the sw…

Inferno is a masterful conclusion to an entertaining and fascinating trilogy chronicling the life of Nero from childhood to death. Nero is the most infamous example of the mad emperor, an example w…

“Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” The Chroni…

“The elite exist on the shoulders of the unremarkable.” This review contains spoilers for The Mercy of Gods. James S. A. Corey follows up The Mercy of Gods with a riveting second instal…

“Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!” Many readers encounter The Magician’s Nephew as the first book of The Chronicles of Narni…

A Hole in the Sky is a coming-of-age science fiction story set aboard an arkship—a massive vessel containing a habitat designed to transport humans from Earth to a new world. The name, of course, r…

“I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.” The Horse and His Boy is a tale quite different in structure from its predecessors in The Chronicles of …

“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” The Silver Cha…

雖然余華主要以長篇小說聞名，他的中短篇小說也足以衝擊與感染讀者。《世事如煙》這部選集收錄了兩篇中篇小說與六篇短篇小說，篇篇都滲透著作者早期的血腥寫作風格。余華最出名的長篇小說以簡潔的語言，書寫生活即充滿意義又時常荒謬的本質，同時能以幽默包裹殘忍、暴力且悲慘的故事情節。此集作品皆挑選自作者早期創作，反映了當時作者透過寫作表達自己對社會冷酷的情感與思想，帶給讀者極致而沈重的閱讀體驗。 《世事如煙…

“But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder.” The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is…

Brandon Sanderson’s latest collection of short stories and novellas makes a welcome change from his usual Cosmere material. Every story here but one is science fiction, and Sanderson displays…

“‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of …

“There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are.” You Are Here is David Nicholls latest novel, and another dive into the messy, funny nature of life and love, this tim…

“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.” There are few stories that are familiar even to those who have never directly experienced them, but The Lion, the Wit…

Made Things is a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky about Coppelia, puppeteer and thief, and her friends — a group of “made things” known as homunculi. It is set in a dark and murky Italian-…

A Schooling in Murder has a really fun, gothic premise, narrated in first person from the point of view of the murder victim, Annabel, a teacher at a third rate boarding school in England just afte…

劉慈欣的創作不限於《三體》之類的著名長篇小說。至今，作者的中短篇小說已經集結成三本小說選集，分別為以代表作命名的《流浪地球》、《天使時代》與《時間移民》。選集大多收錄了劉慈欣1990與2000年代的早期作品，主題涵蓋科技發展、未來社會變革、外星文明抵達地球等經典科幻話題。三本選集中的故事，都以硬科幻為載體去探討劉慈欣熱愛的主題：即人類相對於宇宙的渺小、人生相對於永恆的短暫、物理和科技的無限可…

“The greatest lie that age tells about youth is that it’s somehow free of care, worry or fear.” Nicholls tells a nostalgic 90s story of teenage love and Shakespeare. It is told from the…

This review contains spoilers for all of Stranger Things, including the season under review. Stranger Things is one of those era-defining television events that merits a final review for its final …

“In sixteen years she’d shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.” The sad thing about books is that far more books are popular and pa…

“There is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction.” I have read many books by C. S. Lewis on Christianity, both his non-fiction writing like The Problem of P…

「情深意真，豈在醜俊，千山萬水，苦隨君行。」 English review 武俠小說《書劍恩仇錄》是金庸的首部作品，於1955年在香港《新晚報》開始連載發表，後經作者兩次的全面修訂。小說敘述乾隆年間，反清幫會「紅花會」的故事，尤其是幫會內外眾英雄豪傑，以及少年總舵主陳家洛。為了防止朝廷機密洩漏，朝廷派遣武功高手追捕四當家文泰來。紅花會為此奔走江湖，從塞外平原跑到浙江山湖，竭力拯救文泰來，以便…

中文書評 The Book and the Sword (書劍恩仇錄) is a wuxia (martial arts) novel, the debut novel of Jin Yong (金庸), the most famous author of wuxia novels in Chinese literature. The novel was serialized in 1955…

This is one of those few books that actually gets people’s attention when you take it out of your bag to read. The plot has an interesting frame. Monique Grant, a journalist going through a d…

The Understudy is a sweet little romantic comedy that truly goes against the grain. The protagonist is Stephen C. McQueen, an aspiring actor stuck doing dead bodies in TV shows, children’s te…

“I am telling her how these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping: the child left in us.” Nightcrawling is the passionate, shining debut from Leila Mottley, ab…

“The fact was I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.” A good novel often comes from a good idea, and it seems to me that Us, like its predece…

“They were going to leave him here, in place, to race between traps. Nobody could keep that up indefinitely. A matter of time and then caught. One side or the other.” Rereading Leaving …

English review 此書評含有《三體》及《黑暗森林》的劇透。 劉慈欣的鴻篇巨製《三體》系列，在《死神永生》中畫下句點。這部小說的規模與格局隨著情節的推展不斷宏大開闊。故事始於地球與三體世界達成一項脆弱的停戰協議，這項停戰僅僅依靠相互保證毀滅的威懾力維持，但也因此助長了地球人巨大的驕傲與鬆懈。小說聚焦於新登場的新角色展開程心，她被賦予了維護地球和平的重責。此後一系列變故，驅使她與一位…

中文書評 This review contains spoilers for The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest. Liu Cixin (劉慈欣) brings his magnum opus of a trilogy to an end in Death’s End (死神永生), with a novel that grows…

English review 此書評含有《三體》的劇透。 《黑暗森林》稱得上是《三體》名副其實的科幻續作。在確立了四百年後地球將面臨一個遠勝自身的文明入侵威脅後，劉慈欣轉而講述了地球嘗試應對這場危機的故事。然而，人類對理論物理學的探索與進展，卻被以光速推進、無法偵測的質子級超級電腦所掣肘。本書結構極其出色，只是有時會因敘事節奏不穩和人物塑造不夠有力而略顯失色。 劉慈欣再一次展現了他對人類在廣…

中文書評 This review contains spoilers for The Three-Body Problem. The Dark Forest (黑暗森林) provides a true science fiction continuation to The Three-Body Problem. Having established the invasion in 400 …

English review 劉慈欣的硬科幻三部曲《地球往事》，以《三體》為首，憑藉一己之力將中國科幻小說推上世界舞台。小說以全球頂尖理論物理學家一連串的神祕自殺為開端，同時描寫汪淼這名奈米科學家涉足一個陰森詭譎、目標不明的虛擬遊戲。在劉慈欣標誌性的敘事手法之下，故事線巧妙地融為一體，凸顯出在先進科學的磅礴威力和宇宙的浩瀚尺度面前，人類究竟有多麼渺無助。 作為故事主角的汪淼，從開頭就被捲入了…

中文書評 The Three-Body Problem (三體) is the first book of the hard science fiction trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past (地球往事) by Liu Cixin (劉慈欣). More than any other, this is the novel that has p…