I'm sitting at my desk and all I can hear is the drip-drip-drip of rain on the roof - good job I'm not going out today! I'm actually staying to work on some reviews, though I got completely sidetracked yesterday and instead of reading the pink / sparkly / fairy books that I should have been, I read Catherine Fisher's Incarceron instead...

OK, so it's not pink or sparkly, and *definitely* not for the under sevens, but I loved it - and in fact read it in pretty much one long, self-indulgent sitting. Set in a future dystopia (a favourite theme in her books) it's about a boy, Finn, who lives in a terrifyingly appalling prison, and Claudia, the daughter of the prison's warden, who has never seen even the doors to the prison. Her own life is controlled by 'the protocol', which means that though there is advanced technology, the whole world is designed to look and be like some Hollywood art-director's vision of ye olde worlde England.

There's a plot involving a tattoo on Finn's arm, and the whole world-creation is detailed and totally believable. There's also a brilliant twist - and at least one sequel in the offing.

I love Catherine's writing. She gives sci-fi a fantasy twist, and yet never lets you forget that the people in her books are real; they suffer and agonise and don't always get things right.

So - back to the fairy books!