Dev Argawal - Vector, July 2025
“Kincaid speaks with authority and, crucially, enthusiasm, about his subject. His passion is both infectious and well-informed, and carries through to the reader. He considers Pavane, and by extension, Roberts, as extraordinary. This is likely to win Roberts posthumous attention and new readers. Kincaid sets out his argument for why Roberts is entitled to them, and he brings an old writer together with a new readership. His Critical Companion is a triumph and worth the time readers will invest in it.”
Val Nolan - Interzone 302, June 2025
“This is a keenly observed volume at pains to balance context and analysis. Its short, readable chapters evoke the feeling of chatting over lunch with your favourite professor about a book they are fascinated by. It does what the best critical writing ought to always do: it makes you want to return to the fiction it is discussing with your eyes open to a range of new interpretations. … Crucially, it is all written in Kincaid’s usual accessible style. Which is to say there is no impenetrable academese in this book, just a palpable fascination with its subject matter and a love of the critical process. The result deserves a place not just on the shelves of university libraries but, dare it be said, beside Pavane itself in the catalogues of local libraries all across England.”
Adam Roberts - Strange Horizons, 7 April 2025
Kincaid “foregrounds the importance and merit of Roberts’s novel in the teeth of its neglect. … [A] fine example of contemporary SF criticism.”
Gary K. Wolfe - Locus, 25 March 2025
”Paul Kincaid, [is] one of the most consistently illuminating and clear-headed of SF critics. … Kincaid makes a persuasive case for Pavane not only as Roberts’s masterwork, but as an essential text in SF history–particularly British SF … for those who have long known about the reputation of Pavane without fully grasping what makes it a classic, this is as persuasive an answer as you’re likely to get.”