I usually read reviews with one eye closed and the other squinting. Why you ask? It's a kind of defence against what might be said. And believe me there've been times when I've shut that squinting eye tight! Erk!

This is kinda stupid, I know.

However, when I read the Strange Horizon's review today my eyes got wider and wider and I actually got goose pimples.

From this section especially:

"As is often the case, the real threat to the survivors comes from other survivors and nowhere is this more apparent than in the above segment. This is gritty fiction at its best; a snapshot of how things might really be at ground zero during a crisis that comes completely out of left-field. Scenes of rape, and brutal hardship, ride roughshod over the stilted high-brow ethics of the society set up in the first part of the book, highlighting the characters' descent to near-barbarianism all the more clearly. It is a welcome return to the very best aspects of de Pierres's earlier work."

The reviewer (R.J. Burgess) talks about how the first section of the book is a gentle feminist political wrangling in which the characters seem a little shallow and self indulged. Boring almost. She actually nails the paragraph where this completely changes and their whole world goes to shit.

That's exactly what I set out to do. Build a society and characters who are self involved and impotent and then throw them off the cliff. I wanted to explore what happens when their world is precipitated into sudden anarchy. Decay of societies can be gradual and insidious. But what happens when it is catastrophic and immediate? (Anyone who has been to my Supanova seminars might recognise some of the things I've talked about here).

Like Paul Raven, who reviewed Dark Space for TTA (Interzone), I feel I owe this reviewer  a debt. Thank you for making the effort to understand what I was trying to achieve. I hope you will find reward in Chaos Space which expands the horizons of the story, while narrowing the gaps between characters significantly. In other words...stay tuned!

Here's a further snippet from the review: 

"This is a world with history, it says—an ingrained Italian culture subtly woven through everything from the words that are used to the formation of the upper echelons of society. It feels like a world that's been truly lived in, which means when de Pierres decides to crush it all to pieces, the loss is all the more palpable."

And yes, this is a long post from me!