Here's what Team Gollancz are reading this weekend!

Happy Friday, Gollancz Blog Readers! Here’s what we’ll be reading over the weekend. Let us know in the comments which books you’ll be tucking into this the weekend.

Sophie: I missed my tube stop. I was reading at 4am. BARRICADE is an action-packed, unrelenting page turner. The novel follows two engineered artificial life forms– a pragmatic driver and a porn-star turned journalist – and a kidnapped ‘Real’ guide on road trip from Edinburgh to London. Jon Wallace’s BARRICADE is an unpredictable, jaw-dropping, roller coaster ride of a novel; it should NOT be missed!

Jen: I’ve just finished re-reading the epic Shadow and Bone for some super secret activity that you’ll all find out about a bit later this year. Until then, you can read the prologue and watch the trailer here!

Simon: Dining on Stones. A nightmarish and often very funny journey back and forth between Hackney and Hastings. Sinclair is clearly a serious genre fan and there are way more fantastical references in this than you might imagine. The vampire on the train was a particular surprise. Beautifully written too.

Marcus: I’ve just finished the first of my Pratchett rereads. I don’t need to read the early Pratchett’s again – like many people, I read them again and again as a teenager – but the sheer beauty of our new hardback reissues (and the fact that they were landing on my desk) meant I had no choice, really. I picked one at random – there’s no real need to read in order, especially if you’ve read them before – and went for REAPER MAN. One of the Discworld novels that focuses on DEATH, it’s a lovely tale about what happens when an immortal emotionless entity becomes human. And it is great fun. I didn’t laugh out loud much – that tends to be quite hard to do when you’ve read something before and know the punchlines – but the warmth, wit and sheer intelligence on display reminded me just how good a writer Pratchett is. I think, with the unutterably sad news of his illness, I’d lost sight of that. I’m very much looking forward to working my way through the rest of the series…

Gillian: The Echo, James Smythe

Darren: At the risk of offending the Zeitgeist, I have a confession to make: I don’t like zombies. Zombie books, zombie movies, zombie comics. Hate ‘em. Won’t watch ‘em, won’t read ‘em. Except . . . there’s always an exception, isn’t there? And mine is Mike Carey. His Nicky Heath character from the utterly brilliant Felix Castor novels is a work of genius. And he has now, under the Iain M. Banks-ishly impenetrable pseudonym, M. R. Carey, outdone himself. The internets have been buzzing about The Girl With All the Gifts for a while now, and having just finished it I can confirm that on this occasion the hype is justified. This is a taut, tense, action-packed, erudite, moving, human thriller that I raced through in a couple of days. Highly recommended to Undeadheads and my fellow zombiephobes alike.