Ambitious, provocative, challenging science fiction political thriller, complete with unreliable narrator who favours 18th century styles and philosophical digressions and a weird habit of going out of his way to justify misgendering other characters in a society where gendered langage is almost taboo. Mycroft Canner is a servitor, a criminal on lifelong parole as a sort of public slave. For such a lowly person he moves in circles with the most powerful people on the planet who treat him with trust and familiarity. He also spends time at the household of the family unit that controls and oversees the vital global transport network, the speeding flying cars that have made nation states redundant. It's a household full of secrets, but the the most terrible secret is the little boy who can perform miracles, and his potential impact in a society that has banished all religion and religious talk, instead providing sensayers to give sessions of spiritual and philosophical therapy.

You couldn't call it a perfect utopia, but it's got a lot going for it, and is worth protecting when a theft and a break-in threaten to be the pebbles that start a catastrophic avalanche

It took me longer than I liked to get into this, the archaic language and Mycroft's sometimes dense narration proving tough for my lazy brain, but when I did finally break through, a revelation here, a twist there, I couldn't put it down. Next volume, please.