None of these stories ever acheive quite the effect of sheer cosmic horror that seems to be Lovecraft's truly unique gift, but they sure give the impression of someone having an absolute whale of a time messing about in the sandbox, and they have lots of nice touches here and there, such as female characters with dialogue and agency and who, y'know, have actual sex with the protagonist rather than engaging in unholy breeding programmes. It all serves to highlight Lovecraft's own unique preoccupations, somewhat, given that they were written contemporaneously. Even the racism is only occasional and rather bog-standard or perhaps even just there because it's a Lovecraftian feature like Dunwich and calling frogs 'brachians.' I'd quite like to read more of these if I can find them.

Obviously loads of this doesn't hold up, so if you think the success of science fiction is measured in how well it predicts the future, you won't like this. Howerver there's loads to enjoy in this gnarly sci-fi novel about a young political operative in a moribund, environmentally wrecked future US sent in to sort out a massive research dome filled with extinct animals and scientists, earning himself the enmity of the local Governor, but allying himself with a driven genius neuro-scientist researcher, and together they launch a kind of revolution that may or may not save science and America. 

It takes actual skill and genre knowledge to write such riotously and hilarously awful horror, and more to read it in-character. If, like me, your favourite bits of his Darkspace were the introductions and readings by Marenghi himself, then this is perfect for you.

It's taken a criminally long time to get back to Janet Evanovich - we used to listen to her on long car journeys back when books-on-tape were, well, on tape. Going back to the start again to be reminded how smart, funny and likeable the books are, managing to maintain tonal consistency even when they take dark turns. Really well-written, and great narrator. Stephanie begins her bounty-hunting career based on desperation and a long-standing realtionship of sorts with her target, bad-boy vice-cop Moretti, on the run for murder. She keeps finding him, but catching is a whole other thing, and a creepy rapey boxer has got her in his sights.

Sam goes to a remote spot to kick the opium habit, but on his way sees someone from his past he believed to be dead. Cue flashbacks to his early days as a London street copper in the stews of Whitechapel, while back in India a body turns up that indicates that the person he spotted also spotted him

Cass Neary is spiralling into self destruction, fueled by booze and drugs, her beloved camera gone, thieving opportunistically, on the run and desperately searching for long-lost recently-found Quinn. A chance encounter introduces her to an incredbly rare book about to be sold for a fabulous amount, but the sale goes wrong when the buyer is murdered and the book is stolen. Seeing a chance to change her fortunes, she hunts the book, but there's a tech millionaire who wants it for an app that's supposed to cure traumatic memories but instead seems to trigger them and London is filled with neo-Nazis and whote supremacists - as tensions rise and danger threatens she becomes increasingly strung-out and desperate as much a danger to herself as the mysterious killer. 

I love these books, Hand manages to make Cass both an anti-heroine whose underlying vulnerability keeps the reader enthralled and invested in her finding some kind of life or redemption.

After accidentally touching a Vestal Virgin in Yellow Rome, Vergil prudently and discreetly flees, launching himself on an epic journey around the Tideless Sea, having many strange sojourns and encounters. Though there are many threads woven through it, this is mainly a book about A Journey as Vergil - and I cribbed this from the afterword, but it is helpful - is alchemically tempered by his adventures. I could listen to this all day - in fact, I did - but you do have to listen, the attention wanders for a few lines and suddenly the the narrator is talking about someone or other doing something strange, arcane or are themselves discoursing on some other subject and it's impossible to tell if it's the next bit of the story, a digression, or a memory. But it's wonderfully written in gracile flowing prose that often interrupts itself or repeats itself or diagress with itself, giving the whole thing a rich rhythmic feel that the narrator embodies with verve and relaxed naturalness that is, yes, deceptive because you have to pay attention or you'll be skipping back to work out how or why he's suddenly talking about camel dung or the serving order at a royal feast or the properties of the lotus.

Easy to forget one of the appeals of heroic fantasy was always the story of the olw-born orphan or apprentice or outcast who rises through many adventures and hardships and acquiring stalwart companions to defeat evil and save the day - it's the folkloric fairy-tale roots that are as intrinsic to the genre as the historical epic. Heroic deeds sone selflessly and at great cost seems to be out of fashion - and no wonder, it became perniciously riddled with lazy cliches - but the appeal is still there. Hence, this enjoyable first volume wherein a fostered boy and an orphaned and enslaved girl seperately begin their climb to dizzy heights and heroic deeds as a kingdom is beset from the outside by vicious raiders and the inside by a treacherous rebellion, both suspiciusly assisted with strange sorceries. Great worldbuilding - writers often overlook the importance of religion in people's lives in the medieval settings they're mirroring or adapting - and lots of intrigue and action and magic. the girl's enslavement is harrowing, both physically and psychologically traumatising, but it doesn't feel gratuitous or there purely for shock or wallowing in grimdark. There's lots of volumes of this ahead, I hope the quality holds.

After the fall of the city in the previous volume, various events occur. I'm tired. This review will suck. I liked this a lot, though, it's comfort-listening fantasy that gets the balance between tough terrible things and likeable characters making their way in the world more or less right.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the hapless Vadassy, roped into a plot, forced to hunt for a spy, a task for which he is woefully unprepared and which he goes about with a bumbling desperation. This is the anthisesis of one of those books where a clever slueth probes the doings and stories of a series of characters all confined to a single location, eventually, putting the clues together and seeing through the deceptions to finally reveal the culprit. Poor Vadassy acts in a way that probably more closely resembles how the rest of us would act in that situation, completely out of our depth. In the end, the hidden world of espionage and intrigue are larger and nastier than he could ever have imagined.