New Review of Winter Song

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 29, 2009

This month's SFX magazine carries a nice review of Winter Song, with Andrew Osmond praising 'a believably harsh tale of survival in bleak and unforgiving elements' and 'two characters who upend the old cliches.' He's less enthusiastic about other aspects of the book, but Winter Song still scored 3.5 out of 5, which is better than a kick in the head. And I'm on the page facing the new Stephen King, which is probably about as close as I'm ever likely to get to The Man.

Something struck me about this and the Eric Brown review in the Guardian. SFX has ten times the readership of genre hard-core magazines like Interzone, but how many of those extra ninety per cent are actual book readers, or are they all solely interested in TV programmes like Doctor Who or Heroes?

And in turn The Guardian has ten times as many readers again, but how many of them are remotely interested in SF? The Guardian does at least take SF semi-seriously, unlike stodgier broadsheets such --say-- The Daily Telegraph, but I'm unlikely to learn what kind of halo effect that bigger readership has.

But whatever the numbers of the readership, I'll take those nice reviews wherever they come from.