Yeah, I'm really keeping those numbers down, amn't I?

Eugenedes' thieving career comes to an unexpected end, or rather after a wee bit of a setback he decides to pick himself up and raise his game a little, as his tiny mountain kingdom is beset by warring neightbours, one of whom, the titular Queen, is as capable of playing long subtle games as he is, but with a streak of ruthlessness that he has every good reason to fear.

Anyway, I'm off to see if there's an Audiobooks Anonymous group handy

I think I might be bending space and time. Or else my days are spent in a permanent dissociative state of some kind, plugged into a succession of audio books being played at fairly high speed. In my defense the weather's soooo baaaad and I have the long covid brain fog so I'm literally useless for anything else.

The Loop are coming for Hoon and all he holds dear which, to be fair, isn't much, but it's his and nobody's destroying it except Hoon. He decides to tell everyone to feck off and then let the bad guys come to him and go out in a blaze of glory, taking as many of them with him as he can. Other people have other ideas, however, even if some of his friends might be more of a danger to him than the Loop.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. READ FEWER BOOKS IS NOT A SIGNAL TO READ MORE.

Soldiers and mercenaries from a previous war are digitally resurrected in a distant star system to quash an outbreak of machine sentience. Naturally, there's a lot more going on than that, the previous war perhaps not being as previous as assumed, or hoped, or lied about, but it'll do for starters. While the soldiers come to terms with their new reality, the robots come to terms with their new-found freedom. Smart well-rendered space-opera.

Gone beyond a joke now. I'm irredeemable. 

The redoubtable Stephanie Pum, is in her groove, hunting bounties, or rather, persuading bail skippers to turn up at court when they're supposed to. She becomes involved in a complicated mess involving a murder, dangerous cop-killer ammo on the street, a bunch of stolen coffins and a few stolen body parts. Helped, though more often hindrered, by a lovable if unashamedly unreconstructed supporting cast, this is fast, funny, thrilling stuff.

The Thief becomes King and lives happily ever after with his Queen. Well, hardly. Third volume in, and this series feels like it's really hitting its stride, as the new King negotiates his way through the hostile and resentful Attolian court, with little apparent success, though of course readers familiar with the first two volumes will know better than to trust appearances. With a young guardsman who came close to a hanging after an unprovoked attack on the King serving as the major viewpoint character, Eugenides' game of power and deception unfolds.

Constable Peter Grant investigates the odd deaths of jazz musicians and soon comes to realize there's only one possible explanation: jazz vampires. Other men are experiencing more violent and gruesome ends thanks to the old veejay dentaytay. Adventures ensue.

Kind of an interesting one, this. A ragged peasant turns up at the refuge of an exiled master swordsman asking to be taught the skill that will allow her to take revenge. Most of the book is taken up with the point of view of the master, and how he reacts to the young woman he takes under his wing, for reasons that are not entirely altruistic or selfless. This very much demystifies the 'wise old master' trope, portraying him as honourable, concerned for her welfare, but also lonely and horny and frustrated - as much by her dogged stubborness to pursue vengenace as her refusal to share his bed - and very much the product of a patriarchal misogynistic society, but this portrayal is not without sympathy, since Cherryh is incapable of writing a character that isn't three dimensional. Ultimately their relationship leads them to depart the refuge together, inadvertantly sparking an uprising against the cruel regent responsible for the death of her family. 

A gang of heavily armed Santas take over and Inverness shopping centre just before Christmas. Unfortunately for them, Bob Hoon is locked in one of the disabled toilets trying to clear a blockage while it happens. Things get a bit Die Hard. Honestly, just go with it.

Life under the New Management, an eldritch metaphor for Brexit and evrything that follows with it if ever there was one, ain't easy, even if you've got what the public mistakenly identify as 'superpowers.' A rag-tag bunch of shoplifters, an executive assistant to an evil mega-rich cultist and an ex-cop gone private, all get caught up in complicated scheme to get hold of a magical book that kills everyone eho touches it. With the usual Laundry Files eye for the mundanities of life, whether it be tangling with HR, social welfare or double entry book-keeping, plus every character having a superpower, plus powerful people being very evil, plus a family history tied up with the rise and fall and rise of magic, there's loads going on, it moves fast and gets all tied up nicely, notwithstanding that it's the first in a... trilogy? I think?

A fake nanny kidnaps the superpowered children of a pair of superpowered cops, which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea. This ties in with the fallout from the previous book, where the dead guy turns out to have laid a series of cunning traps for his murderer/succesor, while also pushing through the purchase of a high street Tesco-like mob in order to inflict gruesome fates on hapless low-level employees for the purposes of making sacrifices to his evil god. It's funny and fast moving, though some of the jokes get a flagged a bit too repeatedly in case anyone missed them, with lots of endearing characters and clever twists and nasty satirical ideas.