Big Little Lies is an absolute powerhouse of a book, marrying plot, structure, setting and character into a perfectly riveting read that nails the book to your hands. A new term in a kindergarten in a Sidney suburb us riven with conflict as one child, a newcomer, is accused of bullying another. Battle-lines are drawn between mothers but the conflict encompasses some dark secrets and ugly truths. It's often very funny, but also deeply empathic and brilliantly presents the lives and personalities of its three central characters and their families. As cunning and twisty and occasionally shocking a thriller as any Gillian Flynn book, but a lot less misanthropic.

Isiaiaiaiah - how many ias in Isiaiaiaiaiah? - Coleridge is en ex-hitman turned blood-stained avenging angel, of sorts, or at least bloodstained PI with an intimidating propensity for violence always ready to be unleashed in service of his new profession. Hired by a local mob boss to investigate the murder and mutilation of a small-time debt-collector, he's alarmed to find himself on the trail of a once-feared mob bogeyman whose own porclivities may have heavily overlapped with or been indistinguishable from the activities of a serial killer. Isaiah uncovers a sinister history of murder and depravity that leaves even his tested nerves aquiver with doubt, and between the mob, provate corporate security and twisted human monsters, he reckons he'll be doing well to find his way through this alive.

Excellent alt-historical-epic-fantasy sort of thing, set in a Renaiisance milieu of competing city-states a bit like Florence, Milan, Venive, Rome and the rest of them, where banking families and religious leaders and mercenary captains play dangerous power-games, going to war every summer in an intricate series of maneuvres dictated by cunning strategy, alliances, opportunism and greed. This is the story of two mercenaries, powerful enough to have their own cities, sworn enemies, as told by a young man drawn, as much by chance as by anything else, into their circle of schemes and military campaigns. Character-driven, soaked in rich heady atmosphere of splendour and danger, it's an absolutely riveting and enjoyable read.

Ambitious, provocative, challenging science fiction political thriller, complete with unreliable narrator who favours 18th century styles and philosophical digressions and a weird habit of going out of his way to justify misgendering other characters in a society where gendered langage is almost taboo. Mycroft Canner is a servitor, a criminal on lifelong parole as a sort of public slave. For such a lowly person he moves in circles with the most powerful people on the planet who treat him with trust and familiarity. He also spends time at the household of the family unit that controls and oversees the vital global transport network, the speeding flying cars that have made nation states redundant. It's a household full of secrets, but the the most terrible secret is the little boy who can perform miracles, and his potential impact in a society that has banished all religion and religious talk, instead providing sensayers to give sessions of spiritual and philosophical therapy.

You couldn't call it a perfect utopia, but it's got a lot going for it, and is worth protecting when a theft and a break-in threaten to be the pebbles that start a catastrophic avalanche

It took me longer than I liked to get into this, the archaic language and Mycroft's sometimes dense narration proving tough for my lazy brain, but when I did finally break through, a revelation here, a twist there, I couldn't put it down. Next volume, please.

Silly, surreal and sinister, it's long since past time that I got around to reading it. I was always a big fan of At Swim Two Birds and The Best Of Myles, so it's a mystery why it took me this long. Anyway, a work of genius, published after its' author's death and every bit as influential on modern literature and culture as, say, contemporaries and admirers Joyce and Beckett. The story of a murderer who finds himself confronted with his victim, apparently alive, and who visits a police station and the people and the things he discovers there, by turns inane and extraordinary, amazingly sublime and deeply creepy. Extremely funny, with satirical interpretations of physics and logic and philosophy as well as the celebrated footnotes concerning the celebrated De Selby, but ultimately rather chilling and nightmarish, it ranks as one of the great works of 20th Century literature, let alone perhaps the greatest work of 20th Century fantasy.

This edition comes with some additional material, including a potted biography of Brian Nolan and some pieces on the text itself. Appropriately enough, the short piece on De Selby reads almost exactly like a De Selbian footnote.

*Reread this for a panel at WorldCon, er, tomorrow, as it happens, and the prospect of attending a convention every day for five days does have sinister hellish-going-round overtones, thank you very much for suggesting that thought, brain, taken by surprise once again by just how damn weird it is while at the same time being thoroughly prosaic. Became slightly fixated on the idea that there were footnotes to the footnotes that were too small to be observed by the human eye, and those footnotes had more footnotes all the way down to the subatomic infinity. Also, since I have just read Cronin's biography giving social context to the book, still wondering abut the book's appearance on the TV show and how a book written on a island with a small population concentrated on a coastal spot with an inland full of incomprehensible strangers, opressive, paraniod, haunted by holy secrets, and that eeveryone with any sense is trying to get away from could possibly be relevant to Lost.

Returning from a soul raiding mission, Caitlin, a half-elvish dragon-pilot picks up an unexepected guest in her head, the dying human Helen. In short order she is framed for her brother's murder and on the run with only the woman in her head and an ageless waif she picks up alng the way for company. There's a massive, somewhat top-heavy and incorporated conspiracy at work, and Caitlin travels through a modernosed but perilous Faerie in search of answers and her brother and her lost commission.

Witty, sly, savage, wildly imaginative in places, constantly turning down unexpected but delightful narrative branches, this is Swanwick in absolutely top, and somewhat gleeful, form.

It all starts to fall apart, though as is often the case, the seeds of destruction have been germinating for a while. The internal contradictions of a utopia kept stable through murder and corruption and vulnerable to the non-physical 'weapons' of a past age may have been decomissioned but were not put beyond use. Mycroft Canner, the mass murderer turned religious zealot thinks a boy with the power of a God and a God with the powers of a boy can come together and save the world from impending war, but there is deception and there is self-deception, and a lot of truths are about to be exposed.

This second book reads like the final act of the first, all momentum and plot or character resolutions, so I would definitely suggest the two be read back to back. It has the epic grandiosity of an operatic adaptation of a Greek tragedy staged as science fiction spectacle full of pomp and power brought low by venality, invoking fate at every aria and intermezzo to give their downfall an aggrandising universality. Whether that universality is noble and foreordained or that of pure human folly remains to be seen.

The deranged general takes over a Kel swarm and goes off to fight the hafn! Hilarity ensues! Having to strain fewer of the grey cells to work out the concepts involved meant that I got to apreciate just how good the writing is, as well as gain a better understanding of how the society works. I love space opera but generally don't care too much for milsif, but this is a fantastic read.

Two friends on a long journey down a river in the wilderness of northern Canada are beset by a raging wildfire approaching from a distance upriver. Delayed by an encounter with a man who claims his wife has disappeared, they go back to search for her, only to find themselves with grave doubts about the truth of his story. Caught between danger ahead and behind, they use every ounce of their strength and skill to try to survive.

It's a riverting, fast-moving story, filled with brilliantly written passages of natural beauty, friendship, but also terror, fear and loss. The astonishing moment when the widlfire overtakes them feels like a furious apocalyptic encapsulation of the foremost modern anxiety of environmental destruction overwhelming struggling humanity.

Journeying ever eastward in search of the fabled big score, Darger and Surplus, consummate con-men of the post-utopian world, arrive in China, and it isn't long before China goes to war as the Hidden Emperor sets out on a glorious project of reunification, with Darger and Surplus as his untrustworthy advisors. Battles and schemes and tricks and stratagems follow as our heroes endeavour to achieve the greatest con of all time and conquer a nation with a minimum of bloodshed and as little danger to themselves as possible. For once, however, they have to contend with operators who may be every bit as shrewd and cunning as themselves, if not more so.

Smart, funny, sharp as a tack and almost giddy with the aplomb of its epic scale, this is a piece of grand sci fi entertainment. Swanwick is an essential writer, a master of form and craft and Darger and Surplus are his most endearing creations.