Reviews for Black Sheep and 26 Lies

Black Sheep.

• “Society has fractured into three supposedly pure race factions and multiculturalism is a crime in this bleak Orwellian debut, set in the far future. After the Culture War more than a century earlier, the United Nations divided the races to prevent violence and bigotry. Sydney, Australia, has become Asian-Sydney, Caucasian-Sydney and African-Sydney, and crossing the borders is strictly forbidden. Isao Dazai, a recent immigrant from Asian-Tokyo, dares to wonder what the other cities are like, despite fearful warnings from his wife, Kumiko. When she turns him in for speaking multicultural heresy, Isao is sent away for Assimilation, a dehumanizing procedure that strips him of his individuality. Thirteen years later, Isao manages to overcome his programming and becomes desperate to confront Kumiko, who has built a political career on her patriotic betrayal. Although the characters rarely rise above the roles of philosophical mouthpieces, Peek sketches chilling images of a future where individuality is deadly and only sameness provides safety.”
  Publishers Weekly.
• “With the gravitas of a Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguro, Peek, in his debut novel, Black Sheep, crafts a quietly horrifying world displaced from ours by a century of time and an implosion of globalist attitudes.”
  Paul DiFilippo, Barnes and Noble Review.
• “There’s a clear critique operating here of contemporary Australian society, with its expectation that newcomers leave their cultural background at the door on entry… Black Sheep is one of the more interesting novels I’ve read in recent times.”
  Ben Payne, ASif.
• “This is an angry young book… it blazes across the page with absolute intensity. It’s also one of the most interesting and politically challenging science fiction novels to come out of Australia in a very long time. It’s a novel that has something to say.”
  Tansy Rayner Robers, ASif.




26Lies.



• “Ben Peek is a writer I fully expect to blunder out into the scene like a run-away brontosaurus one of these days. He has titanic talent generally leashed to micro-detail projects when his true canvas is probably something much wider and deeper. Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth is a gently experimental text that uses a glossary of terms from A to Z to create vignettes, one-liners, and other supports for loosely connected narratives. Some are funny, some are most definitely not funny. All are lively and deserve your attention.”
  –Jeff VanderMeer, LocusOnline.
• “I emerged from the book feeling somewhat dazed and exhausted (having read it from beginning to end within a 24 hour period), and I’m not entirely sure what I feel about it. Impressed, certainly. Curious, definitely. A little pissed off… well, maybe.”
  –Tansy Rayner Roberts, ASif.
• “What I got from it is this: that truth matters when it matters, and doesn’t when it doesn’t. And that each of us must find our own path as to where that distinction lies. 26 Lies, 1 Truth is an intelligent, playful, funny, challenging, thoughtful and deeply moving work. It is a book filled with outrageous lies. And it is a book filled with truth.”
  –Ben Payne, ASif.
• “It ought to fail miserably. But, curse his eyes, Mr Peek has written a fantastic book. And despite its structure, Twenty-Six Lies has a powerful narrative drive. Mr Peek as deftly woven a story into his encyclopedia, complete with character development, unfolding themes, and a hard shock of an ending.”
  –Chris Lawson, the Talking Squid Blog.
• “Quite extraordinary.”
  –Clare Dudman, author of One Day the Ice Will Reveal its Dead and 98 Reasons for Being.
• “Ben Peek’s Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth is a memoir in the form of alphabetical entries, ten or so entries for each letter. The book is also semiotic, social commentary, a meditation on the truth-telling responsibilities of a writer, a part-time comic book, funny as hell, profane, and melancholy. Like the best memoirs it’s deeply personal yet engaging and universal. Peek lays out the truths and lies and is smart enough to trust the reader to fit everything together. Powerful stuff. Highly recommended.”
  –Paul G. Tremblay, author of Compositions for the Young and Old, City Pier: Up and Below.
• “This is a clever, moving, funny and insightful book. I laughed, and I would have cried, but I’m too fucking hard for that sort of shit. See, I understand, relate and empathise with a lot of the truth in this book, the truths I know are true.”
  –Paul Haines, author of Doorways for the Dispossessed.
• “This book is an autobiography. At least some of it is true, for whatever value you like for ‘true.’ It tells me (or you, or whoever the reader) over and over again not to trust writers. Writers lie. Words, by their very nature, lie.I know better than to trust this book. I know not to let it seep into my mind, not to take too much too heart what I think it tells me about Ben Peek.The only trouble is, I don’t know how.”
  Hannah Wolf Bowen, author of ‘For the Sky is Made of Glass’, ‘Rosemary, for Remembrance’, and ‘Everything is Better with Zombies’, amongst others.
• “I find myself unable to call it a brilliant book, although there are certainly brilliant bits, and I am instead left to describe it as an interesting book, which is certainly is - through and through.”
  Grant Watson, creator of The Angriest Video Store Clerk in the World and writer of the plays Degree Absolute, Serpentine, R3 and Mapping Lear.
• “Recently I read Ben Peek’s Twenty Six Lies/ One Truth. Yes it’s full of bluff and bluster, Peek coming across as a hard-ass, and yes, it’s very fucking good. There are moments, in fact, of brilliance.”
  Rjurik Davidson, author of ‘Domine’, ‘The Passing of the Minotaurs’ and others.
• “Throughout, he discusses authors like Helen Darville and James Frey who traded on their authenticity before being outed as fakes–in the end, though, it doesn’t matter whether Peek’s book is any truer than theirs. By painting vivid pictures of a life that’s as fascinatingly mundane as our own, he’s written something far better–no matter how many actual facts it contains. In the end, the truth has little to do with the facts.”
  Jody Macgregor, Rave Magazine
• “A bit too clever.”
  Dan Hartland, Strange Horizons.
• “Ben Peek’s Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth is inebriating, an absinthe of self-deception, a smoke-filled room of conflicted emotion, a hall of mirrors, each of them distorting both perception and reality. Ben Peek dances on the stepping stones of Ben Peek’s supposed life, leaping from philosophy to pop culture, from insight to angst. As one reads this remarkable work, the question arises, “what is the line between the art and the artist”? Peek knows. I know. But you cannot know, for certain, until you pick out the lies. Do you trust your judgement that much? Do you trust Ben Peek? What makes you so certain that you can crack the code of Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth? I’d be careful if I were you. Deception awaits.”
  –Forrest Aguirre, World Fantasy Award Winning editor of Leviathan 3 and 4 and author of Fugue XXIX and the upcoming Swans Over the Moon.