“Sentence by sentence [Harrison] is almost certainly one of the most skilled SF writers alive . . . an unusually strong and even, for all its brutality, touching example of how character and physics can illuminate each other in the best hard SF. Light is likely to be one of the most rewarding and challenging novels of the year, and goes a long way toward explaining just what it is that Harrison can do that other writers find so astonishing.”

—Locus

“Here we have ‘space opera’ that brilliantly transcends its humble pulp origins while simultaneously glorying in them. The result is a gripping, thrilling, meditative novel which can be read and enjoyed on multiple levels. . . . In direct line from Cordwainer Smith and Keith Laumer, Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad, Harrison has adapted the conceits of space opera until the form is big enough to hold all the marvels he jams within.”

—Sci Fi Weekly (Editor’s A+ Pick)

“M. John Harrison’s Light is not just among the best SF novels of the year—it’s without a question the best read of the year. . . . Not since Stepan Chapman’s The Troika and Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons has a novel managed to so single-handedly revitalize and re-energize the SF field. . . . Harrison has combined his astute, ruthless characterization with the SF form, to create a work that bristles and seethes with energy and intelligence, a work both playful and sublimely serious . . . Imagine the best pure adrenaline SF novel twinned to a stunning mainstream novel to get an idea of the overall effect. . . . The pleasures of this book are wide and numerous. I cannot recommend Light highly enough.”

—SFSite

“A wonderful, playful and solidly genre-based masterpiece . . . Don’t hesitate. Buy this book and read it. You will thank me.”

—Interzone

“The ride is uproarious, breathtaking, exhilarating. . . . Gem-like images blink into existence, perfect in their place, both wise and sly. . . . This is a novel of full spectrum literary dominance, making the transition from the grainily commonplace now to a wild far future seem not just easy but natural, and connecting the minimal and the spectacular with grace and elegance. It is a work of—and about—the highest order.”

—Guardian

“An increasingly complex and dazzling narrative . . . Light depicts its author as a wit, an awesomely fluent and versatile prose stylist, and an SF thinker as dedicated to probing beneath surfaces as William Gibson is to describing how the world looks when reflected in them. . . . SF fans and skeptics alike are advised to head towards this Light.”

—Independent

“Who writes better than M. John Harrison? Of the, let’s say, four hundred writers of English prose alive today worthy of serious and sustained critical attention, the answer is: very few. . . . Passage after passage in this novel astonishes the reader; beautiful, striking, imaginative by turns . . . M. John Harrison’s novel, always challenging, often ugly, usually brilliant, rarely comfortable, is a serious work. Light, we might say, is heavy.”

—Infinity Plus