Angela Bowne

Oh, I'm a former President but I'm a life member of it.

It works

right around the world to protect writers and to lobby for imprisoned writers and protect writers' rights generally.

So it does a lot of work in countries where writers are repressed.

It doesn't do so much here because we don't have so much of it, but it works to help release writers who are in asylum, asylum seekers here.

So it's a wonderful organisation.

Well, I've been trying to read some...

fantasy fiction which I've never read before.

One of the books I've read is Gideon the Ninth, a debut novel by the New Zealand writer Tamsin Muir and wow what a debut.

It was named as one of the best books of 2019 by a vast number of publications and it's wild and wacky and original.

It's set in a galactic empire which has nine planets and each ruled by a house and

which has a necromancer and a cavalier, and Gideon is the cavalier for the ninth house.

She's, well, it's hard to explain her.

She wields a mighty sword, even though there's advanced technology.

She wields this big sword, much bigger than itself, amidst the infighting violence and lesbian escapades in this galactic empire.

There's lots of different genres in it, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, horror, murder mystery, action.

It's full of excesses.

And one of the reasons I liked it was it's not only crazy and wacky and audacious, it's also full of anguish and suffering by characters who have difficult and complex feelings.

And I loved Gideon herself.

I felt sad as I got towards the end of the book that I wouldn't be there with her character again.