From mad post-apocalyptic sci-fi with ninjas to gangsters and spies with clockwork death-bees to post-colonial environmental disaster zone with super-hero, Harkaway's books are actually gradually becoming more and more grounded. I mean, they've not quite landed yet and may rocket for the moon with the next one for all I know, but Tigerman's got more plausability going for it than the others while still having wild and mad corners. It takes about half the book for the cogs to all mesh and the elements to combine and the set-up to pay off into an unputdownable narrative. Part of the is the subtle complexity of his prose, which looks like the sort of smooth-as-polished-glass stuff that flies by under the eyes, but actually arrests the brain with slightly demanding constructions and ideas, conveying the trickiness of tricky relationships, whether personal or political or social or global. A literary writer of pulp entertainments. I think he's still developing, and perhaps has a way to go, but it'll be very interesting to follow his journey.

Watts deviously piggy-backs on the ideas of Blindsight all the way to the sun, then leaps off on a bungee cord for a dive back down the gravity well. That doesn't make sense. Daniel Bruks, a biologist studying animals in the desert, is caught up in a battle between a vampire and her zombies and a hive-mind of cognitively-adapted monks who use a tornado to defend themselves. After the fight, a truce, but the common run of humanity are terrified by the glimpses afforded by the battle into how far these creatures have moved beyond them, and Bruks finds himself in space, headed sunward to the Icarus, which powers a significant portion of the Earth, and is also the last link to the Theseus, lost out in the Oort Cloud. Compared to the augmented and advanced minds around him, Daniel is a roach, but that's not an insult, that's a realistic assessment of his chances of survival.

Hard hard sci fi. Big ideas that takes the obsolescence of the idea of free will completely for granted and works on from there. Survival in a universe where consciousness is a side effect is what's at stake. What exactly we might end might end up as if we survive is a whole other thing.

This is the first of Lansdale's Hap and Leonard novels, and a book that was immensely influential on me. In fact, a whole lot of my influences coalesced around Savage Season in a brilliant, liberating moment of insight to do with story and craft and style, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Brilliant to go back and reread and discover that, if anything, it's better than I remember.

Hap and Leonard and their huge personalities and their physical presences and their fierce moral convictions and bone-headed loyalty are like the muscle and blood and swinging fists of this book. Intelligent but profane, romantic but crude, lying in the dirt but pissing at the stars, they are defiantly poor and unswervingly honourable and they do not have time for your bullshit.

Well, Hp might have some tome for your bullshit if you're an attractive ex who keeps his heart on a string. Trudy shows up and asks for help, a little treasure hunt that needs Hap's expertise with a nice payoff at the end. Hap agrees and drags a reluctant Leonard along as wingman, and soon they're diving in icy river waters at the behest of a a small group of radical sixties refugees. Things do not go smoothly. There is much death and violence, nasty, nasty violence before the end.

It's a perfect, tight, darkly comic, frequently brutal, eye-poppingly vulgar read. A brilliant, blood-soaked thriller with a cynical heart of gold.

Lansdale still dips back into the gonzo-pulp-horror-sci-fi genre that he made his own in the eighties, but ever since he left it largely behind to focus on the Hap and Leonard series and stand-alone thrillers, he's grown considerably as a writer, which isn't a comment on genre but an observation about a writer pushing out of his comfort zone and stretching his writerly muscles. But these depression-era historicals seem to come right out of the heart of him: the poverty and ignorance and backwardness, the grind and the crime and the violence and the almost claustrophobic insularity are all bread and butter to him; but so are the values of family and friendship and tough-headed stubborn virtue and plain-talking common sense that refuses to compromise and the simple dogged pragmatism of setting out to do the impossible whatever the cost. So it is with May Lynn and her friends who set out to take the remains of their murdered friend to Hollywood to honour her dreams of becoming a film star. Along the way, they come into possession of a small fortune in stolen cash. Along with the cash come some very bad men who want to take it off them and one particularly bad man who is a near mythical monster who always gets his prey.

An outpost of the British Empire comes under siege during the Great Mutiny of 1857. In the midst of astonishing violence and increasing deprivation and suffering, the men and women of the British Raj find their very ideals and way of life under siege, as rationalism and science wrestle with spirituality and conscience, and the civilised forms of living, including the roles of women and their sense of decorum and honour are gradually abraded. Yet few seem to realise or comprehend the forces at work, their belief and faith in their natural superiority so absolute that they hardly notice or question the source of their physical danger. Conscious of their appearances and roles and responsibilities, the idea of something outside of them seems beyond their comprehension. Staggeringly good, though as in Troubles, it rather pointedly does not presume to attempt to create a native point of view, but the limited perceptions of the ruling British speak volumes.

Epic reprise of Ellroy's favourite time and setting, a return to 1940s Los Angeles and Dudley Smith and Will Parker and Kay Lake and introducing Hideo Ashida, native-born of Japanese descent, brilliant police chemist whose life is made beyond uncomfortable when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour and anti-Japanese sentiment ignites across the country, and in LA, there's talk of round-ups and internment. On the day before the attack, a Japanese family of four is horribly murdered in a gory, ritualistic fashion. The investigation, in the midst of war-time hysteria, racial hatred, crazed eugenics, fascist politics, police corruption and brutality, opportunistic players from every level of society moving in to exploit the coming confusion and officially mandated injustice, proves nightmarish for all involved. Someone will have to take the fall, but will the guilty get away with it?

Written mostly in the terse, hard-boiled tough-cop drawl that Ellroy has perfected, this falls somewhere between LA Confidential and American Tabloid in terms of style, and aspires to be a return to LA Confidential in terms of being a sprawling but tightly-plotted murder mystery. Of course, the most amazing thing about LA Confidential when you first read it, is that there was nothing else like LA Confidential, not even in the LA Quartet. So there's that. Familiarity doesn't exactly breed contempt, but when one of the attractions of Ellroy is his originality, it tends to be missed. On the other hand, Ellroy's been clawing his way back from over-extending his style and his theme in Cold Six Thousand. So: compulsively readable, paced like an express train, twisty and turny and packed with profanity and racism and horrible violence and more depravity than you could believe even a near 800 page crime saga could contain.

An absolute classic of adventure fiction, bounding along with energy and bravura and lashings of sly, ironic wit, following the exploits of Red Orm the Danish Viking who, despite his mother's best efforts to keep him at home, ends up haring off on a lengthy voyage against his will. Despite this apparently unpromising start, Orm fairs well at first and it looks as if all is going to go his way, but alas, luck, an all-important component of Viking life, goes astray and he ends up a galley slave for seven years BUT THAT'S JUST THE START. This tale has barely warmed up before they're sneaking across from Spain to Ireland with the biggest bell in Christendom. Modern readers, like myself, may occasionally find one's attention slipping as it struggles to find purchase on the largely plotless series of events that unfolds on the page, because this is a Life, and Lives tend to be plotless, though not sub-plotless. It's episodic, but those episodes are juicy and amazing and hair-raising.

There are any number of historical novels and series and fantasies epic and grimdark for which, if one was looking for influences beyond the obvious, this must surely be the motherlode. Judgment on the Viking's antics and atrocities are very much left to the reader, but there is no doubt in their own mind that they are fully in accordance with their own rules and standards of behaviour, and the propensity for violence, rape and pillage is belied by a way of living that works and allows for functioning society with a capacity for justice, redress, fairness and progress. The rise of Christianity features heavily on the story, and while the book doesn't suggest it's a civilising influence per se - though there are occasions when it mitigates against a more sensible ruthlessness - it definitely suggests a transition of sorts, a great sea-change of which the cast are blissfully ignorant.

Big, muscular, funny, fast, filled with speeches about theology, women, law, wisdom, gold, the joys of fighting and ale and all sorts of odd digressions with wandering Irish jesters and forlornly randy magisters, this is a gem of a book that completely immerses the reader in its world.

Amy floats, so off she is sent to Drearcliff Grange School in the 1920s, a dour and forbidding place ruled by fear, but also home to an odd selection of girls, some of whom, like Amy, are a bit Unusual. When a cell-mate vanishes Amy forms the Moth Club to find her and bring her home, but that adventure is merely a prelude to a dark and terrible force that begins to control Drearcliff, and which replaces an arbitrary system of rules and punishments with an inhuman conformity designed to summon cosmic horrors. Only Amy and a few remaining outcasts stand against world domination!

Expanding on a previous story, this is boarding school fiction turned up to eleven, crossing Xavier's School For Mutants with pulp heroes and villains from the early 20th century with Enid Blyton meets Lovecraft. It's all fantastic fun, witty pastiche but wonderful characters and cutting points about power and growing up and the limits of responsibility. Jolly good show.

Using the mythos established in Bone Clocks, Mitchell spins out a creepy little chiller as a nightmarish nine-year cycle sees one victim after another pulled into the environs of the mysterious Slade House and the clutches its cruel and hungry inhabitants. Each victim leaves a little of themselves behind. but will it ever be enough to save anyone, let alone destroy the soul vampires? Mitchell's trademark proficiency at evoking places and periods and character ruthlessly draws the reader in to each crushing little chapter until the final almost cathartic showdown. Familiarity with The Bone Clocks will give you and edge with this novella, but isn't necessary to enjoy it.

It's going to be a little while yet before the next ASOIAF book, and longer still before I even consider rereading the series (only after A Song Of Spring is clutched in my cold deathless hands, at the earliest) but I do like to revisit Westeros with Martin's wonderful muscular storytelling and living, breathing worldbuilding, so finally here's the three extant Dink and Egg stories to sate the appetite. Dunk the Lunk, or Duncan the tall, is a hedge knight, lowest of the low, but with high ideals and muscles to spare. On his way to a tourney where he hopes to win some manner of renown and maybe a bit of gold, he finds himself dogged by a young boy who offers to squire for him. Paying forward the favour his old master did for him, Dunk takes him on, and as the tourney unfolds and the royalty of Westeros buzz about, falls afoul of a foul prince.

The first story is a rousing and exciting tale of heroism, honour, glory, and knightly chivalry, albeit with a trademark Martin sting in the tale. The other two stories feature further adventures either in service to a minor lord who becomes ensnared in a poisonous squabble over water, or attending a wedding tournament and stumbling into a deadly plot. Dunk and Egg are a fantastic pair, and their journeys are wonderful and also short and they each have a definite conclusion, so even though Martin promises more, they are satisfying in and of themselves. So hurry up and finish ASOIAF, Mr Martin, ser. I want more Dunk and Egg.