Dan

Robert Jackson Bennett is among my favourite fantasy writers, and has been since I took a copy of The Troupe out of the library and flipped for it. He's put out something like eight or nine books now, and they've all been highly readable, and what's more, highly imaginative. The core fantasy ideas here are plant magic and huge leviathans rising out of the seas (which I think we will learning a lot more about in coming books), but the form of the book is more like a crime novel, as it foregrounds a bizarre murder investigation in this world. The world building and characterisation are top notch. Ana Dolabra and Dinias Kol are two highly engaging characters, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more of their cases

This opens like a parody of the North London literary set as a group of people with (largely) over inflated opinions of their own worth gather for a dinner party where a new poem will be read aloud for the fiords and only time. Knowing that the framing narrative is set a hundred years in the future, on the other side of a rupture in society, this scene being set in 2019 and the poem being in the form of a corona (GEDDIT?) feels a bit like McEwan nudging us and shouting “Do you see what I did there? Do you?”. Allied with the general smugness of the dinner party, I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of this. But the book flips several times throughout its length, and it becomes something much better than these unpromising beginnings. Ultimately, it is about history, memory and truth - it’s hard not to see this as the 77 year-old McEwan grappling with the idea of his own legacy and how accurately posterity might treat him. In the end, it’s a compulsive and thought provoking book that keeps you turning the pages even as you pause to think about what you’ve just read.

Very happy to have Jack Parlabane back, and more so that this is a return to the exuberant and over the top style of books like Be My Enemy and …Rubber Ducks after the more understated recent entries in the series. There are strong Succession vibes as the Maskyn family (and boy is there a lot of masking going on in this book) struggle with the future direction of their family business, on a sea cruise that becomes a microcosm of the ongoing culture war. Set in our world of divisive politics and online opinions. It’s no surprise where Brookmyre’s and Parlabane’s allegiances lie, but he is a smart enough writer to avoid the easy right wing = bad, left wing = good trap, and you will find your take on characters on each side of the divide changing as the story progresses.

Basically, I loved this. It’s twisty, turny, funny, dramatic, compassionate and exciting, as good as any previous Parlabane adventure. I did worry that the title, referencing as it did the very first Jack Parlabane novel, was an indication that this could be the end of the series, a capstone to the whole lot. It may yet be, of course, but there’s no air of finality, and the ending leaves a whole new direction Jack could go in, should the author choose. I’ll keep reading them as long as he keeps writing them!

This is a big collection, thirty plus stories. It works well as an overview of Powell’s career so far. His Embers of war and Ack Ack Macaque series are both represented, one in a story which was the germ of things to come and the other by a pair of stories written after (during?) the main series and illuminating it in a different way. His familiar themes and obsessions are here, made more obvious by having them reflected thirty two different ways. In many ways it feels like a summing up of the first phase of his career, and it’d be nice to think that it’s both a capstone to that and a foundation for what is to come

What a versatile writer Benjamin Myers is, from The Golden Perfect Circle to Cuddy to Rare Singles to this. These could be the works of four different writers, so perhaps it is appropriate that this latest work brings this literary ventriloquism to the surface, Myers inhabits Kinski, in an astonishing feat of impersonation. It’s superbly written and convincing from start to finish. The other half of this novella is the author presenting himself as a character, and it’s a pleasant enough read, but it’s hard to shake off the vibe of Mike Yarwood (there’s a reference for the kids) doing his “and this is me” bit at the end of the show. Overall, I think this is a curio in a great career. It’s technically excellent, but ultimately rather slight.

This is a big collection, thirty plus stories. It works well as an overview of Powell’s career so far. His Embers of war and Ack Ack Macaque series are both represented, one in a story which was the germ of things to come and the other by a pair of stories written after (during?) the main series and illuminating it in a different way. His familiar themes and obsessions are here, made more obvious by having them reflected thirty two different ways. In many ways it feels like a summing up of the first phase of his career, and it’d be nice to think that it’s both a capstone to that and a foundation for what is to come