[1] SFRevue respect rather than love the novel: 'An endlessly inventive writer, Adam Roberts can, it seems, turn his hand to any kind of science fiction story ... The result is more admirable than it is enjoyable, but once again it confirms Roberts as one of our most intelligent and versatile authors and I look forward to seeing what he offers up next' says [2] John Berlyne.

[3] SFX like it, expressing their liking with four stars. Mind you, in the selfsame issue they note the appearance of the mass-market paperback of Land of the Headless in much less positive terms. They don't like it. They call it 'oddball.' It was another one of those double-take moments for me, the realisation that for SF criticism 'oddball' is a term of dispraise. (Doesn't that seem wrongheaded to you? Isn't oddball something you go to SF for--to escape the deadening slick professional sheen of airport thrillers and sagas?) Ah well; there's no accounting for tastes. Perhaps what's wanted are the trappings of oddness, not an oddness that goes all the way down to the balls. But of course, I would say that, wouldn't I. I can choose to believe that reviewers just don't know what to make of my fiction, when it's just as likely they do know what to make of it, they just don't like it.

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