Cracking yarn about space pirates and an epic quest for vengeance, set in a far future where the solar system has been shattered and reshaped, civilisations have risen and fallen, and the latest is merely a new iteration. Scavengers search out Baubles, planetoids protected by shields that switch on and off periodically, looking for treasures left behind by previous civilisations. Adrana and Fura Ness, two sisters with a talent for reading the alien skulls used to communicate between ships run away from their father in search of a fortune. On their first trip out Adrana is taken by pirates and most of their crewmates murdered, sending Fura on the trail of revenge and rescue.

Marvelous space opera.

Loved this. Didn't understand a word of it. Still not sure what a sobornost or a gogol or a zoku is, and they all seemed to play a big role in the plot. Was i supposed to pick them up from context? Remember them from book one? Hah! Good luck with that! I mean, great it had an immersive cyberpunk quality and it ripped along and had all sorts of great big ideas, some of which I caught the tiniest glimmer of vague sort-of understanding, but I had to sort of paper over a lot of conceptual blank spots which, being a scientific illiterate sci-fi fan, I've had plenty of practice at, but it's been a while since I've read anything this full-on and allergic to all but the most pressing info-dumps. An Encyclopedia Galactica or 'As you know Bob' scene would have cleared things up a bit, is all I'm saying.

General Mulaghesh goes to Voortyashtan. Those names sound totally made up. Because they are! Fantasy! Epic fantasy! Secondary world epic fantasy! So, y'know, made up. In this world all the gods are dead, killed by an upstart race enslaved by the god-botherers with actual gods to bother anyone who won't be slaves. Now the ex-slaves rule the world, sort of, and whole nations of ex-god-botherers are traumatised by their ex-gods joining the choirs invisiblue and being ruled by the ex-slave god-murderers. This is, in fact, an awesome set-up for a made-up secondary world epic fantasy.

General Mulagesh is prodded out of retirement and sent to a resentful; and troublesome part of the world to have a look for a missing agent who was looking into a mysterious and rather odd discovery. Mysteries abound, all of them seem to have the whiff of the Divine about them, but this is definitely one god who has ceased to be, so what's that all about then? Murder and intrigue and old friends and new enemies, lost afterlives and nasty memories of the past crowd around, making life challenging for the good general. It's a riveting fantasy thriller, full of twists and turns and sometimes rather nasty surprises and reversals. Looking forward to getting the third in the trilogy.

A dashing young gentleman with a piece of paper denoting a vast sum of money turns up in New York in 1746. He may be genuine, he may be a fraud, but he is clearly playing a game of his own. New York, however, is not a placid pond where a cunning rogue and/or hero can send ripples where he will, but a small town full of games and passions of its own which pose all sorts of risks to a gentleman so sure of the secret rules of his own game, he forgets to account for the rules of others.

Mystery, romance, adventure, tragedy all crowd around this sharp, delightful tale. An old fashioned tale told full of old-fashioned concerns and sensibilities, but with a modern eye to the dramatic possibilities.

In a post as-yet-unspecified-apocalypse, a bunch of young psychic men and women - who, it is implied, were heavily involved in the as-yet-unspecified - establish a sort of purple-tinted raggedy goth-engineer suicide-girl aesthetic safety zone in Whitechapel and protect it with brains and violence from predators and scavengers. When a girl arrives intent on their murder with a big gun, they realise their errant brother Mark, ejected years before, is still alive and causing mischief.

A set-up volume, introducing the world and the characters and, of course, the usual sarcastic-but-sensible tone. It ends with a fairly one-sided battle, demonstrating, presumably, why the Freakangels are a force to be reckoned with.

I read this when it was originally serialised online, and I'm interested to see how it flows in book form. Goes down easy, anyway, Ellis knowing how to structure and pace a narrative like nobody's business. Great art and the usual collection of lovable/repellant characters full of damage and drama.

For the big finale Hill and Rodriguez bring the horror and the feels in about equal abundance. Well, maybe the ratio of feels is higher, but the horror drives most of the feels it being that kind of comic. Demon-possessed Dodge has possessed Bode and wants to bring some friends over and make keys and rule the world, and the Senior Prom party in the caves is the perfect oppotunity to wreak havoc and woe. Just as the family and friends seem to be getting their stuff together, Dodge-Bode brings the wrecking ball. There is crying. So much crying. (Brave wee Rufus steals the show though. The feels for Rufus are weapons grade.)

A nasty sci-fi dystopian patriarchy ruled by Fathers sends Non Compliant women to a prison planet for regular beatings and indoctrination. In an effort to boost engagement with the circus part of the old bread and circuses gag, they decide a sports team of Non Compliant prisoner women to play the regular professional team would be just dandy, thanks. Though this decision was reached after a player's on-fiel death boosted engagement, so maybe not so good for our players.

Our feisty team includes an athlete, a baker, an engineer and a few others still being sketched in. Character-wise this is a bit of a slow burn and we only truly get to properly know one of the characters, though presumably the rest have secrets and mysteries and plot-relevant back-stories to be unfolded in further volumes.

Still, it's a good set-up, riffing on the kind of exploitation movie I was always only ever familiar with through posters and video covers. It's nasty and violent and defiant and totally woke in a way that dares you to pass a remark.

Batman Incorporated is the best batman. Batman goes multinational, sprading his cape across the world, recruiting other crime-fighting superheroes to be part of his franchise as the prepare for war with the mysterious Leviathan, an evil organisation up to evil things everywhere. Japanese Batman, African Batman, South American Batman, British Batman, native American Batman, and crazy super-spy plots and traps and mazes. Mad, Ted, mad.

Dense, intense, tense, present tense milsf space opera. A weird quasi-religious empire built on some sort of powerful calendar system that exerts mathematical powers which affects weapons and technology ruthlessly crushes heretics with variant calenders - look I dunno, it has its own logic on the page, awesome logic, I should add, because it's fairly mindbending. The Kel are a fanatically military caste with preprogrammed formations that allow them to withstand attacks and launch assaults of their own. Captain Kel Cheris has a knack for mathematics and a talent for adapting Kel formations to heretical standards when calendrical rot reduces the effectiveness of hexarchate approved tactics. That sentence actually makes sense when you read the book.

Cheris is sent to retake a crucial fortress that has fallen to heresy, and her chosen weapon is a revived general who never lost a battle but who went mad and completely wiped out two armies, one of them his own. With the general resident in her own mind and herself elevated to the unwelcome rank of general, Cheris must take the fortress back and watch out for the other general in her head.

Reminiscent of Hannu Rajaniemi, this isn't quite as full on and disorienting - you do find your feet relatively quickly. There's lots of action and intrigue and high-level politics and low-level skullduggery packed into this volume.

Scott Burroughs survives a plane crash, and rescues a little boy. Everybody else in the plane dies. One of the passengers was CEO of a TV news channel, and in the aftermath of the crash, a news anchor goes all out to spin the story into an hysterical and squalid epic. As the survivors struggle with their shattered lives, the lives of the victims are described, and the crash is investigated. What was the cause? Was it an accident or and act of terrorism or something else?

A brilliant, meaty, chunky, intellectual, heart-filled, character-driven novel, as much about the differences between the people who grow and mature and people whose development seems stunted and the damage they inflict in their heedless narcissism as it is about who done it and why. It's also about lots of other things, including art and entertainment, money and morality, class and family. It's a incredibly satisfying read.