Review
The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup
The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan; The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison; Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman; Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
Lisa Tuttle
Friday 13 March 2026
The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus, £20)
Better known as a film-maker, Jordan has never stopped writing novels. His latest opens in 2084 in rural Ireland, where Christian Cartwright works for the Huxley Institute in the titular library, secretly misusing its memory storage technology to talk with his dead lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian’s experiences and similar events two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for the Huxley Mansion and local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to have been the famous scrying glass of John Dee. Lyrically written, brimming with ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it’s an enchanting read.