Ok, I have binged, this, my new favourite series, an intricate, epic, slow-burn thriller with an over-arching plot that may be Lovecraftian or may be Lovecraftian affect, I expect either outcome will be fantastic, it's just a question of which. In this instalment, Kurtis gets a job working private security at a habitat under construction where spooky stuff is happeneing leading to deaths amongst the construction crew. Kurtis explores the habitat and unravels the plot with the trademark steady build of the series. 

Exhausting and exhilerating, joyous and brutal, thus the final volume of House Of Niccolo, set mostly in Scotland across a span of years as Nicholas steps up to undo the damage he inflicted on the country, and perhaps even commit himself to more than that. This is Nicholas redeemed, almost, but not quite, free of secrets and hidden agendas, embraced and trusted by family and friends, giving freely of himself to help a flawed ruler and his advisors save a country from civil war. But both the known enmities of his family and the hidden one have not yet been resolved, and this delivers a final gut-punch that, initially, seems to shatter the entire eight-volume narrative, until you think about it, and reread, and see the whole thing laid out in all its nasty murderous glory. 

Dunnet's genius for long-term plotting matched only by her ability to meld historical fact with fiction and a writing style deceptively light but actually hard as nails gives us a mixture of headlong adventure, careful negotiation and national midwifery ending in a wrenching mix of tragedy and triumph. I've finished the series and already I'm looking forward to rereading the entire epic again, but I shall be patient, and besides, after all that effort to close the circle, it'd be remiss of me not to visit Lymond. 

Mignola and Golden;s epic tale of vampire-hunting across a grim alternate Europe where the First World War ground to a halt due to an outbreak of mysterious plague and, also, vampires. For a vampire-hunting story it's impressively dour, not a quip in sight, its hero is deeply tragic and somewhat wretched, its monsters are nasty, and an obsessed priest of the new Inquisiton is the most annoying character I've encountered in ages. 

There's something quite old-school about a 2000AD strip that ditches humans completely in favour of an array of alien races blazing away at each other in a massive space-opera. This is a fun romp packed with inventive ideas and aliens as an agent with his own secret discovers the ugly truth about how a recent war was finally brought to an end

This is a rather good, atmospheric sf police procedural set amongst the habitats carrying the survivors of a messed-up Earth. Dangerous cults are on the rise as humanity slips into a collective psychosis, our heroes track a particularly sinister one and discover a lot more than they bargained for. 

It's always been odd to me that I've read so little of LeGuin's science fiction, and regard myself as a fan of hers due to my deep and abiding love for her Earthsea books. I'm not really sorry I didn't, because while I don't want to flatter my current intellect, I really would not have been up to the ideas in this book when I was younger. I think I would have liked it, because I always did find ideas compelling, and the writing is so good, but I suspect my understanding would have been superficial and shallow. 

There really are a lot of ideas, and they're almost all to do with politics - freedom and authority, personal ethics and the behaviours of crowds. The depiction of a meeting of the PDC, the council which does not govern the ambiguous anarchist utopia, except that in a way it does, is eerily reminiscent of online arguments and how they work, and makes a case for them being a not competely bad thing, on balance, despite their messiness. 

As for the rest, the lone brilliant physicist who cannot complete his work in an isolationaist hardscrabble utopia journeys to a lush and bountiful capitalist hell which, ironically, the representatives of a desolated Earth regard as a paradise. The whole story is related in measured, distanced prose which unapologetically lays out the arguments and the ideas, and the toughness of life on Annares and the hidden lines of authortiy in a society that's supposed to have none. A magnificent, challenging, rewarding book. 

I thought I'd reread the House Of Noccolo series several times, and I have - but only as far as To Lie With Lions. The last two books I've only read the once, which I find at once slightly shameful, but also delightful since there was so much I'd forgotten that it was almost, if not quite. like reading it for the first time. 

Nicholas has gone to Poland, outcast and rejected by family and friends and associates for what he did in Scotland, relentlessly punishing himself by cutting himself off from everything he loves, hanging out with the pirate Benecke, who is determined to make him into a version of himself, for a winter of rough and bloody sport, though not without an ulterior motive. The impending piratical life is interrupted, however, by the arrival of familiar faces, including those of Julius and his new wife, and soon Nicholas is prodded and persuaded and bribed and cajoled to journey to the Turk-threatened Crimea, while at home, his family and friends are drawn into the ineptly-prosecuted war of the Duke of Burgundy and look deeper into Nicholas's past which slowly reveals a real current threat to them all. 

Vivid and richly detailed as always, the journey of Nicholas, who had given up on himself and everything, but is roused to act to protect the people he loves and possibly climb back to find some sort of redemption, is epic and steeped in mysteries and secrets and terrible revelations, culminating in a dreadful, disastrous snowbound battle that turns into a continent-shaking rout. Dunnett at the full height of her powers, the energy and the skill and the dexterity of her plotting absolutely unflagging. 

It was the paperback edition crossing the counter when I was working in a bookshop in 1995 that caught my eye and brought my attention to the Niccolo series, prompting me to order the other books in the series and the Lymond books, which were in the process of being reprinted. Through a series of amazing set-pieces - football with royalty on a castle roof, a Nativity play, a volcanic explosion in Iceland and the dazzling excess of a conference between the Duke of Burgundy and the Holy Roman Emperor, Niccolo brings the plans initiated and then delayed in The Unicorn Hunt to their final fruition as part of his contest with his wife and his feud with his family and as part of the exercise of his own brilliance unfettered by morality or ethics. The intricacy of story, the wide-ranging historic settings and incidents, the small army of supporting and antagonising characters, the razor-sharp wit of the writing turns what could be a daunting read into an exhilarating thrill-ride, cumlinating in a showdown that strips all illusions from the main characters, his friends, family and entranced readers alike.

Ward, Nat and John survived their brush with the Straw Men, but they did not survive unscathed. John, the ex-cop who lost his daughter to the Upright Man, is the most seriously spiralling down into something dark, but Ward is adrift, penniless and aimless while Nat is struggling to tolerate the conventions of ordinary Federal investigations. Some very odd deaths and a very odd encounter deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest seem unconnected, but set things in motion again for our damaged protagonists. 

Nicholas is at his coldest and most manipulative in this volume, the charm he deploys to win over the young court of Scotland is so obviously an act of ruthlessness to the reader, but what is he up to in the wake of the double shock and trauma of grief and betrayal the blew his world apart at the end of Scales Of Gold? How can Gelis use her own child in a game of such sadistic cruelty, and why? 

There's an odd sense of dislocation about this novel, or disassociation, perhaps since the geography is much, much clearer than the characters. It's very much a novel of concealment, if it's your first read-through. The motives, means and ends of the two central protagonists in their horrifying feud are kept hidden throughout, sometimes glimpsed and hinted at, but this is the only book, in the series, I think, that does not end with some stunning twist, revelation or reversal. That is delayed by Godscalc's death, the story diverted to other arenas, and becomes a pursuit, of lost gold and a hidden child.