Really didn't click for me at all, though there were lots of bits I liked. If I was feeling better I'd dig into the whys of it, but I don't so you'll never know. Ever.

Carey's in Oxford and the Queen's on her way on a royal Progress to get out of plague season in London. Dodd's following along behind, but runs into trouble, while Carey is given the job of solving a thirty year old murder. Poisonings and stabbings and beatings follow amidst some solid detecting and tricky politics. Terrifically entertaining.

A malignant artificial intelligence is roaming free on the internet, learning and building and messing around in terrifying ways and th e people who created it are trying to do something about it they're not sure what. In New York a very rich man is having sex with the ghost of his dead mistress who manifests throug a picture and now the pcture is gone oh and yes his son is also dead and when he goes to consult with Genius Detective a bit o his dead son turns up in a sandwich which prompts a trip to the deli. Soon detective guy has brought in Spy Guy and Hacker Girl to deal with the situation. There is shootings and beatings and and stuff.

Dystopian science fiction action thriller, set in a near future where 1%er families own and control everyone and everything. Forever Carlyle is a Lazarus, a specially bred, near-indestructible warrior, enforcer and bodyguard for the Carlyle family. Betrayal and intrigue are pushing the family towards a war, and Forever, loyal to the head of the family, is in the way.

Written as dark, hard-boiled science fiction by Rucka, drawn in gorgeous muted shades by Lark, a terrific comic.

Rucka and Lark's all-too-timely dystopian visions of a 1% world ruled by a tiny elite of all-powerful families, with the rest of the world's population divided into serfs and waste, continues. Forever Carlyle is her family's Lazarus, a genetically engineered and trained since childhood to be enforcer, bodyguard, soldier, spy and assassin. Her loyalty to her family is unswerving, but someone is trying to undermine it. The Barret family are waste, surviving as hardscrabble farmers under swingeing debt until their home is destroyed by flood, leaving them with a grueling journey in the slim hopes of getting selected for service with the Carlyles. Meanwhile a terrorist groups is planning to strike at the heart of the family.

Bleak, dark sci fi of a future feudal world order, Rucka knows how to tighten the suspense and wrench the heart and channel the fear and outrage while Lark's art is just amazing, dark muted noirish colours and scenes of personal drama as riveting as the balletic actions scenes.

I've been jaded for a while now about super-soldiers and super-spies and super-assassins and super-bodyguards kicking ass, usually the asses of people considerably less super than themselves, rendering the achievement of ass-kicking a rather questionable one. They are a staple of comics, however, and when Rucka and Lark do a series with a female lead bred to fight, spy, assassinate, body-guard and generally kick ass in a super fashion, I'm not going to let a certain jaded weariness of the whole trope stop me from picking it up. Because of course it will be good.

Volume 3 sees the series really begin to hit its stride, we've seen Forever Carlyle act as her family's enforcer and tough-guy in a number of ways that are not particularly admirable, we've seen her wrestle with her conscience and the child-like neediness fostered in her to keep her loyal. We've had internal family strife, we've seen life in the mud with the people classed as waste, so we have some sense of the world. But with the Conclave, it all opens up. The world-building solidifies. The stakes and the rivalries and antagonisms become more apparent. We've entered the very highest pinnacle of power, the new feudal fascist aristocracy ruling the world, jockeying for power and influence. We meet the lazari of the various families, curiously neutral and collegial together, yet ready to brutally murder each other at the whim of their families.

So, yes, this is where a series, already highly readable and compelling, becomes genuinely exciting. Perhaps some savvy producer will spot it for the potentially sharper, leaner, smoother sci- fi Game of Thrones, and, if we're lucky, maybe they won't just make it about a kick-ass superwoman kicking ass, because while that's hook, it's also the least interesting part of it.

After the courtly intrigue of the Conclave in volume three, climaxing with the stately, and naturally bloody and brutal, formal duel, it's all-out war in volume four, opening with desperate espionage and the specter of an engineered plague, then moving on to the fight for the strategically vital city of Duluth and the equally desperate fight for the life of Malcolm Carlyle, poisoned by the vile Doctor Hock. Casey Solomon is now a Corporal with the Carlyle forces, despatched with Carlyle Lazarus, Forever, on a desperate mission. Forever is an engineered super-soldier who has died and been revived many times, but in a battlefield a single bullet can take out even her.

Micheal Lark shines as always, but the scenes of snow-bound grunt-level near-future combat are extraordinary, tough and gritty, but smooth and conveyed with amazing clarity and precision, the desperate grind of ordinary troops contrasted with the amazing fluidity of the Lazari. The series and the world continues to grow and the massive power-struggled of the super-elite grinds everyone else into the ground.

War rages on, Forever Carlyle is recovering from shattering physical injuries and shattering discoveries about who she is. Everything teeters on a knife edge as her utility to the family is balanced against her loyalty, but a way out comes from an unexpected source. Sonja Bittner earns her spurs, but there's a monster about to be unleashed into the European warzone.

This is your go-to for action, intrigue, 1%er sci-fi dystopia. Michael Lark's art in particular brings a beautiful moody menace to every page.

A young girl with an AI in her head is sequestered underground with a split team of dedicated scientists and reality-show wannabe astronauts to work on an experiment that may make faster than light travel. Except it won't even if successful - though it could make it possible in the far future. Their world doesn't have a future, though, as runaway climate change and expanding dead zones hems people into more crowded city enclaves. So what's the point of this whole effort? And why are so many of the senior scientists dying? And what is the machine in her head trying to tell her?

A sharp, cool, dense little story about the costs and realities of doing science too little too late.

We're more of the fire, blood, and ice school. Well, we can do you blood and fire without the ice, and we can do you blood and ice without the fire, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you fire and ice without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.