Apocalypse reapocalypses in this horror-postapocalypse trilogy finale, as life returns to a kind of survivable idyll with the destruction of the Twelve and their Virals. But Patient Zero lurks in New York, laying his plans and basically being completely insane. Alicia stays with him as part of an ill-advised deal; Amy hides from him; Peter is in charge of civilisation and Micheal fixes a big boat because he knows what's coming.

There were a few rather dull and long bits in this - Zero's life story is like something out of a University Novel, the ending drags on a bit and there's some dodgy character bits that make quite a few of the cast rather unlikable - accepting that at some point very soon most of surviving humanity will be wiped out and that's a bummer but we won't even try to warn anyone just carry on with our boat project which will save a fraction of them is a hard one to finesse and remain sympathetic. The rest of the characters forgive them way too easily, mostly because the author is invested in them being so awesome.

STILL, otherwise there's a decent build-up and set-up when things kick off Cronin goes all out and the action is fast and brutal and well-orchestrated and nasty. I didn't buy into some of the metaphysical stuff and the romances could get soggy at times (not always, though) and the bad guy's psychodrama - I suppose ultimately we were supposed to find him pathetic, but I felt a lot of the overall structure of the trilogy really rested on his whims. Did that work? Well, I didn't hate it or anything but I raised my eyebrows a few times, for whatever that's worth.

Every now and then it comes round, like the call of the wild blue yonder or the yearning for the unknown - a fancy to take a voyage on the seas of a Patrick O'Brian book. I don't always recognise it and give in to it, more fool me, but thanfully this time I had it by the beam and she filled out the mizzen topmast staysail sweet as kiss your hand, laying us by the lee and poking someone or other in the eye.

The previous Aubrey/Maturin adventure was merely a shaking-out voyage to test the waters for the mission of The Thirteen Gun Salute. Restored to the lists, setting out on a secret mission in Aubrey's favourite ship with a hand-picked crew, the machinations of the intriguing intelligence service oblige them to switch berths. A voyage to Malay ensues, setting out to thwart the French and snatch a treaty from the jaws of defeat. There are comings and goings - an unfamiliar crew, an envoy who may turn out to be troublesome, a pair of familiar traitors and opportunities for observing some of the wonders of the natural world. History may plough on, the oceans may storm and toss or go calm, the vagaries of the service may make unreasonable demands, but O'Brian's novels have the vigour, life, discipline, voice and authority of a naval man o'war in full sail.

The centrepiece of this heartstopping book is some breathtakingly savage and brutal worldbuilding - a land constantly on the edge of catastrophe, constantly in waiting for the next apocalypse as geological instability leads to massive eruptions and quakes with attendant disastrous aftereffects - tsunamis, endless winters, famines etcetera. Civilisations and societies routinely break down and humanity struggles to survive and rebuild while trying to prepare for the next big blow. The Sanzed Empire has survived for several cycles now, largely because it has corralled and controlled the Orogenes, individuals with the ability to control kinetic and seismic energy, who can quell or cause quakes and whose full range of powers and abilities remain mysterious and untapped, largely through systematic demonisation and indoctrination. Imperial Orogenes are policed by a ruthless and powerful group called the Guardians.

The set-up is brutal, the society it creates is functional, thriving, even admirable, filled as it is with practices and norms that seem appalling (and yet not completely unfamiliar) to us. The book opens just as it all comes to an end, and in a terrible act of destruction, a massive rift is opened, triggering the downfall of the Empire and the start of a possibly final Fifth Season. It also starts with a smaller act of horror, as Essun, an Orogene in hiding in a small rural town, mourns the murder of her son by his father, and the taking of her daughter. While ash starts to fall, she pursues her husband and daughter through the slowly building chaos of a society starting to break down.

There is very little about this book that is not compelling, awe-inspiring, epic and jaw-dropping. It is also terrifying, horrifying and filled with pain, tragedy, guilt and injustice, yet it is told in a uniquely readable and engaging voice - people cope, adapt, survive, move on as best they can. It is not so much about the triumph of hope, too early in the trilogy to say that and it seems unlikely to be about anything so facile, but it is about bullishly continuing to exist in the face of a world that is constantly trying to wipe you out, and the cost of that survival.

Like a cross between King's Firestarter and The Stand but amped up for the post-millenial generation, this tale of a world smoking in ruins as a pathogen that results in its victims suffering spontaneous combustion rages across the globe. Harper Grayson catches it - but she's also discovers she is pregnant, and is determined to survive long enough to bring her probably uninfected baby into the world. Social order is breaking down, however, and the authorities are dealing ruthlessly with the infected. Saved by a mysterious infected Fireman with the ability to wield the flames, she joins a hidden community of infecteds who have learned to survive with their disease. However, a society of the infected is as likely to break down as a society of the uninfected in such intolerable circumstances. Nowhere is safe, and her due date is drawing closer.

Hill is a terrific writer, has a bountiful and wicked imagination and isn't afraid to update horror myths of the seventies and eighties for the modern world, remaking them anew and ultimately creating something highly original of his own. This is a fantastic, thrilling, even amazing read, even at its most horrifying, and it gets pretty horrifying.

The city of Ambegris, a strange, vibrant, terrifying place or a metatextual vehicle for literary playfulness that can be as funny as they can be horrifying. And, not or. I should have said and, because this is both. Four novellas and a bunch of stories, one of the novellas a history pamphlet, one a scientific treatise and bibliography and one a glossary - well, that contains a host of hints and glimpses of stories. Ambergris is strange, Weird, in fact, full of terrible secrets and violence and intrigue and fungus. There are also squid and artists and historians and madmen and they all blend together. This collection, or fix-up, is unique, original, erudite, brilliantly written with prose by turns lush and acerbic. It's as addictive and delightful and filled with nightmares and unnameable terrors. i loved it. The only weak note was 'Leaving The Flesh,' one of the first of the stories written, and in some ways a precursor to the rest, it seems to merely be set in our world with a sprinkling of Ambergris set-dressing, deriving no tension from the overlap, unlike 'The Case of X,' which given the rest of the book, comes across as a lack of commitment rather than anything else. Otherwise, the whole thing is brilliant.

In a Grey Cap ruled Ambergris, terror is a way of life, but for John Finch, investigating a mysterious double murder, things are about to reach an unimaginable pitch of awfulness. Plagued by his Grey Cap superiors, spies, gangsters and rebels and with his own past coming back to haunt him and a terrible future in prospect, Finch tries to solve the case even though the answers go beyond reason. Dark noir, surreal fantasy and otherworldly horror combine in an intense and original thriller that seems to close out the Ambergris cycle of stories with an epic finale.

Janice Shriek narrates the story of her brother, Duncan's life, his rise as an eminent historian and his long fall as his theories about the relationship between Ambergris and the city's original inhabitants the Grey Caps prove too strange and terrible and weird. It's also about Janice's life, peaking as the head of the New Art movement before dwindling to her own long ignominy, and, of course, a brief history of Ambergris in the years before during and after a terrible war, and the even more terrible things that seem to be about to happen.

A Proustian exercise in the evocation of memory and emotion through a glittering slice of social, political and cultural upheaval, this is a marvelous approach to fantasy, powerfully and compellingly and beautifully written, informed by a singular vision with deep undercurrents of horror and unease.

There's nothing like the end of the world to focus the mind, so when the date for armageddon is fixed by a catastrophe n the sky, all effort is bent towards saving the human race, or some small part of it anyway. There follows a great deal of technical exposition about surviving in space, and for the most part it's a riveting story, but those technical explanations - and, to be fair, technical explanations tend to be the stuff of hard sf - do go on and on, delaying the action of the story, sometimes suspensefully, sometimes, not so much. Anyhow, it's a grand project against all odds, a titanic effort of will and intellect and expertise and character and vision and all that good stuff ramped up as only the impending extinction of the human race can achieve. It did remind me of some Niven-Pournelle books that I enjoyed back in the day, albeit reminding me that I don't have a huge amount of time for that sort of book any more.

Then, two thirds of the way through, it jumps ahead 5,000 years for a tour of the massive engineering projects that have been completed since the end of the world, not to mention the results of various genetic and social engineering projects. Epic in scale, but again, I just wanted more of the story. An argument could be made that the engineering was part of the story, but c'mon. I did enjoy it, but too much of the time I felt I was tackling it rather than reading it.

Parker and gang pull off a heist and despite one guy dropping out beforehand, everything goes smoothly until they get back to their safe house and find the guy who dropped out with his head caved in. The gang splits up, but someone is after them, taking them out one by one, and while Parker follows their trail hoping to come up on them from behind, his woman, Clare, alone in her new house, has two unexpected visitors.

The Parker books are as meticulous as the heists they depict, or at least as meticulous as Parker prefers his heist to be. The meticulous tone remains even as all descends into murder and bloody mayhem, much as Parker remains cool and flat when the bullets start flying. Jessup and Manny are the antithesis of Parker - insane and unpredictable, sloppy and messy - it's Parker versus the counterculture in this riveting thriller.

With an American father and a Mexican mother, Harrison Shepherd is a child of two worlds, as well as a broken family. After a turbulent childhood, he finds employment as cook and secretary in the house of the artists Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, a tempestuous pair of revolutionaries who give sanctuary in exile to the Bolshevik leader hunted by Stalin, Lev Trotsky. It is an extraordinary time for the self-effacing Shepherd, and when it ends in death and calamity, he flees to the US to forge a new life, but his past will provide fodder for a new wave of fear and repression, and he will find himself thrust unceremoniously into the centre stage, slandered and vilified, his own art turned against him.

An incredible book, in many ways as quiet and unassuming as its hero, but filled with passion and feeling, expressed with delicacy and sensitivity. Stylistically, it is a bravura exercise in self-concealment as the narrator strives to keep himself in the background, even has he imbues the scenes and characters he describes with his magnificently vision, at once delicate and beautiful and full of immense insight. Howler monkeys terrify the child and his mother at the start of the book, other kinds of howler monkeys drive the man to an extreme act at the end - can we rely on Shepherd to deny us a happy ending? Either way, it's hard to deny the surge of emotion at the close of those book, as gorgeous, sad, angry, quiet and sensitive as its hero.