Photon Press

“Within a framework redolent of ancient myth, Light airs some timely spiritual and environmental concerns, typified by the contrast between the destructive, despotic Grey Maker and the ancient race of Guardians who safeguard the planet's evolutionary progress... The importance of continuity, of humankind's role within the cosmic order, is a recurring theme... Fundamentally, though, this is plot-driven high adventure, with clearly defined if sometimes two-dimensional characters, and enough intrigue, suspense and coincidence to keep those pages turning... Though first published in 1981, its vaguely 'hippy' spirit gives it a more 90s resonance…”

"John Light's latest novel The Lords of Hate blends the breakneck galaxy-hopping action of vintage pulps with philosophical musings on mortality, reality, destiny, free will and scientific ethics.

This second volume in Light's Annals of Lavandrel reintroduces Prince Alorn, his bride Annalor. and many other key characters from The Well of Time. Despite plot similarities between the two books - visionary dreams lead to a quest ending in a crucial confrontation - Lords is more complex, thematically more ambitious and darker in atmosphere. This time it's Annalor who is plagued by nightmares, of a cry for help from an icebound world menaced by terrifying sea creatures. Annalor, Alorn and the sage Merian go on a mercy dash to a distant solar system; but Alorn's mission to nullify the Beam of Hate that's causing all the trouble plunges him into an alternative cosmos of pure emotion. Here, things get pretty trippy, with half the story unfolding at various levels of unreality. "Virtual" events directly influence the material world, expanding the theme of spiritual harmony overcoming physical chaos first explored in The Well of Time.

Light's exuberant imagination garnishes this multilayered parable with satisfyingly quirky characters and concepts, including a ship's computer that composes contemplative poetry, and the titanic hollow Shell World, whose docile inhabitants are compelled to wage endlessly pointless wars. Looming over all is the coldly megalomaniacal "Psychologist', a disembodied super-intelligence whose only use for organic life is to experiment on it.

Though the author's style sometimes veers towards the academic, and his sense of pace can be slightly erratic, the interweaving of plot-threads ensures cliffhanger situations aplenty to help keep things lively.

As in Well, nostalgia for an idyllic rural past contrasts with wide-eyed wonder at the possible benefits of advanced technology, and dire warnings about its possible dangers. The role of science and scientists in humankind's affairs is repeatedly reexamined: scientist as Creator, as self-styled god; science as magic; knowledge as power. With the dehumanised Psychologist representing the essence of intellect without conscience, the implied moral seems to be that true wisdom requires a soul as well as a brain.

John Light cheerfully admits to being "old-fashioned', a trait I possibly share with him to some extent; but if an unleavened diet of angst and nihilism has left you feeling jaded lately, read The Lords of Hate and rediscover a bit of enchantment, allied to a refreshingly optimistic ideology.”

"In many ways, Conspiracy of the Dead reminded me of the SF books that I grew up with, a blend of SF and fantasy featuring an interstellar quest to thwart some great evil with a certain easy charm to the writing, and, in doing so, evoked a good deal of nostalgia for me. But John is not rehashing old plots and themes; the story is fresh and original, and full of entertainment. I certainly found it hard to put down - he has crafted a story that is almost dream-like in its intensity and amorphous ability to absorb and utilise so many seemingly disparate strands. One of the best books I have read in quite some time, a real pageturner. I have no hesitancy in recommending it!"

D J Tyrer in Monomyth

"This is an engrossing and free-wheeling science-fantasy. Light captures the sense of wonder aspect of science fiction ... full of star-glitter, exotic colour, strange names, dark menace and cosmic danger... "

If you would like to read the first chapter of this book (without charge of course), please click here:

In the sequel to No Space in Time, The Unfathomable manipulates the awakened Melgor Erdin in an effort to undo the damage done to the omnicontinuum by his previous experiments. Transported from world to world, Melgor Erdin follows the consequences of his actions down the time-lines and loops of disparate worlds towards the end of the universe.

"For the Universe to end, yet the central characters to survive, is perhaps, the ultimate cliff-hanger. It's also a scene, a situation, filled with Sense of Wonder stretched to its effective ultimate, an extreme of wish fulfilment.

Yet, right till we share with the novel's heroes their vigil in the topmost chamber of a monstrously tall tower that somehow stands outside time and space and watch with them that final fade to black outside, this novel is a roller-coaster of Sense of Wonder. Here are places where time plays every trick you can imagine, in one static, in another running backwards, in a third casually leaping the eras, society thrown from ripe maturity to decay far beyond decadence in an instant, yet in another travelling two ways simultaneously at right angles. The reader discovers a world where a monstrous sentient green fog, reached at last by a mega-bridge from the ring planet that surrounds it, turns itself to clones of all who have come to it. On another, the elderly rule forever by manipulating a never ending conspiracy of the young against them. On a third, a mighty wall separates a gentle, civilised society of females from the harshly tyrannical theocracy of a men-only state, these and other extraordinary environments are made vividly real.

Into everywhere, chaotic time disruption erupts, triggered by the figure of Melgor Erdin. He should not exist, but does. Born of a being that split itself into two to bear a child, he has been sealed in sleep for millennia in the Hall of the Transcender by the rulers of all, in an attempt to defuse the catastrophic effects of their mistake in allowing his birth. Yet those effects continue to spread. In their desperation, these masters reawaken him, and send him on mission after mission across time and space. In the perilous journeyings that result he finds again a love lost to him across the ages, and gathers a team of chaos-refugees as unimaginably diverse as the worlds from which he saves them, to aid him in the desperate task of restoring stability and order to all times, dimensions and spaces. The varied band at last find a haven in the Transcender Hall, until that illusory temporary safety also betrays them, and only one refuge remains, the Tower that was Melgor Erdin's prison for so long.

This story, like its predecessor, No Space In Time, is a genuine page-turner, plenty of action making full use of those Sense of Wonder worldscapes; in hindsight, the characters may not have as many dimensions as the universe whose manipulations they strive against, but that doesn't hinder this being a real 'good read'. Although it's not necessary, incidentally, to have read the first in the series to enjoy Tower Beyond Time, I would recommend getting both (No Space In Time is same price, same publisher): the adventures of Melgor Erdin, once reawakened, gain added depth by knowing what led to his aeons of enforced hibernation."

If you would like to read the first chapter of this book (without charge of course) to get a better idea of it, please click here