Mia Ziemann is 93, but looks thirty thanks to advances in medical technology and living life very carefully. The world has survived a prolonged bout of plague and disease, and a significant portion of the global economy is devoted to keeping people alive and healthy for as long as possible, an interval that is growing all the time. After a radical new treatment gives her the appearance of a twenty year old, Mia experiences side effects which appear to give her the mind of a twenty year old, too, and in a sort of fugue state, she ditches the paraphernalia that is carefully monitoring her every move and takes off for Europe. There she encounters a typically Sterlingian cast of drop-outs, thieves, artists, intellectuals, bohemians and radicals. These are the young in a world dominated by the old and the rich. Stifled and coddled by a society made utterly safe but with no way to compete with or replace the dominant gerontocracy, the young foment and plan and strive to make their own stamp on the world.

This is a thoughtful, mature, ultimately moving novel about creating art and rebellion in a society where everything seems wrapped in cotton wool, where the only thing to rebel against is the indifference of those in power and where the people may not be human anymore, and therefore no longer capable of creating art. It's stuffed with big ideas and, unlike a lot of the books that came out of the cyberpunk movement, seems as relevant today as when it was first published.

At the risk of admitting that I am the sort of person who is pleasantly surprised to discover water is wet despite going for a swim once every week or so, it is gratifying to discover, once more, how unromantic a romantic historical novel can be. Great Maria, of all of Cecelia Hollands' novels I've read this far, is certainly the most romantic of her books. Love and the relationship between a man and a woman plays a central role, and it's the first of her books to feature a female protagonist. It is also, incidentally, twice as long as everything else I've read by her.

Being a Holland novel, no-one gets off lightly. Maria's life is charted from her prepubescent innocence to her wily middle age. The daughter of a powerful Norman robber-knight in southern Italy in the early 11th century, she is married off to one of his more ambitious men, Richard (despite her own preference for Richard's younger brother, Roger.) When her father decides that Richard is getting a bit too big for his britches, his plan to kill him fails and Richard takes ownership of his castle and lands. Richard's ambitions are to rise above the role of thief, and he sets out to carve out his own place in the world.

Maria never questions her subservient role in this world. She doesn't long to be a knight or agitate for voting rights or rail against the closed medieval mind. Hers is a medieval mind. When her husband beats her, she doesn't like it or even love him for it, but she has to accept there's nothing she can do about it and her fate is tied to his. Gradually she comes into her own, prescribed, female role, often bringing Richard's violent wrath down on herself, sometimes because she is foolish, sometimes because she is clever, always because she is headstrong. Risking his temper is a thing she is prepared to do to get her way. Nonetheless, he grows to rely on her and her attraction to him is as much physical as it is anything else.

She has babies, not all of whom survive, and they grow, and Richard extends his conquests and his power, and there is danger and intrigues and violence and tempestuous scenes and passionate... stuff and eavesdropping and betrayals, all told in Hollands crisp, plain, practical style that makes no apologies for characters that are compelling and multi-faceted and sympathetic even with their monstrous faults, such as domestic abuse and murder.

An Elizabethan Day Of The Jackal, written with wit and flair and an engaging cast of characters, Firedrake's Eye is the first in a brilliant trilogy of historical espionage thrillers to feature swordsman David Becket and clerk Simon Ames.

Poor Tom O'Bedlam narrates the tale, once a respected courtier, now madman begging on the streets of London. A Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Queen Elizabeth comes via a circuitous route from Spain, heralded by the ballad written by Tom years before and sent to his brother in the Netherlands. The eyes of the Queen's spymaster are fixed on France, however, and as doors are kicked in and priestholes discovered and conspiracies unmasked, it is Becket and Ames who find themselves on the track of the real danger.

It's a terrific read, strongly reminiscent of the likes of Dorothy Dunnet, Neal Stephenson and Mary Gentle, so fans of any or all of those will find much to enjoy here.

It's been a while since I read A Princess Of Roumania, and my memory of what happened in that books is a bit sketchy, but I remember enjoying it enormously, so I'm delighted to have the next three books in the series to dive into. Miranda Popescu grows up in a small town in America, only to discover that she is, in fact, in a hiding place. Our world is merely a conjuring designed to keep her safe from her enemies. She is, in reality, a princess of Greater Roumania, and when our world vanishes, she and her two friends find themselves in a North America that is nothing but sparsely inhabited wilderness, hunted by soldiers sent by the evil Baroness Ceausescu. At the end of the first book, Miranda is transported to Roumania, leaving her friends behind.

Book 2, and we discover that she has not just been transported through space, but through time. For her, it is now five years later. While Peter and Andromeda set out to find her, their recent identities as American teenagers merging with their old identities as imperial soldiers, Miranda is taken by gypsies to her aunt's shrine, hunted by a vampire and used by the German Elector of Ratisbon in his war against the Baroness.

The Tourmaline is a fantasy in the mould of a fairy tale, a princess returned to reclaim her rightful throne. But Park avoids and defies convention and cliche. His protagonist jumps from young adult to adult in the space of a page. Her friends take on new, less attractive personalities. The careful plan laid by her aunt is immediately thrown away when the letter she leaves is destroyed unread. The political complexities of Europe are beyond Miranda's grasp and the woods and shrines and caves of Roumania are filled with magics and conjurings she cannot understand.

Comparisons with Pullman, Wolfe and LeGuin abound, and there is no question that if you like those authors you should give this a shot. There is also Margo Langan, of whose dark fairy-tale style this reminded me quite strongly. It is a subtle, sophisticated, ambitious work, and I'll be diving into the next volume directly.

Superb third volume in this extraordinary series. Miranda and Peter are in the clutches of the increasingly depraved Baroness. Andromeda is free, but poisoned by radiation and drift in her trip;e identity, Political forces are in motion as German power in Roumania wanes, but what will take its place? Miranda, in captivity, but courted by the German ambassador, rejects her role as a Princess and struggles to understand the lessons and plans of her Aunt Aegypta. The Baroness plots murder and celebrates her twisted art which mirrors her profoundly perverse mentality. Peter is imprisoned in appalling conditions and the streets are filled with revolutionary fervour.

This is a dark, strange book, with our heroes sidelined or forced into inactivity as danger grows around them and the Baroness is at her pinnacle of power. Terrible things are loose in the world of Greater Roumania, war is brewing in the East and a suspiciously fascist power is on the rise. The Princess of Roumania notably fails to ascend to her rightful place and set everything to rights in fairy-tale fashion. Straight into the final volume to see how all of this is resolved.

Nicholas Dawson is the secretary to the Florentine ambassador in 16th century Rome. Having lived there for twenty years now, he is far removed from Florence, but continues thanklessly protecting the ambassador from his own indecision. However, this is the Rome of the Borgias, with Alexander VI in power and Cesare Borgia terrorising the Romagne with his army of condotierres. Nicholas is suborned as a spy by Cesare, and though his pride is rankled, he is also enamoured by the proximity of power, and proceeds to make some pertinent pieces of tactical advice. The Borgias, however, are pretty much utter monsters, self-serving, fickle and incredibly dangerous.

Unromantic, unsentimental, polished and sleek, this is a novel about power and corruption. Typical Holland, it is a man's world full of men plotting and killing and maneuvering. There are women in this: Lucrezia Borgia and two of her cousins and a brief, tragic appearance by Catherine Sforza. There isn't even a female love interest as Nicholas is gay, and his disreputable lover may doom him or ultimately redeem him, but neither of them are particularly fond of women at all. There's probably a Phd there for someone to explore how one woman can write so thoroughly and subversively about men in different periods of history but I'll just remark that this may be my favourite Holland yet and move on.

Talk about a book freighted with weird and erroneous expectations. I was nine when it was published, twelve when the momentous occasion of the Irish-made (or half-Irish-made) production locked the nation to their screens every Sunday night. It was a big deal. The book was ubiquitous. It seemed to be in every library, bookshop, house, waiting room and - seeing as my Dad was a mechanic - left under the back window of half the cars in Ireland. All I knew was that I wanted nothing to do with it. Irish history is REALLY DEPRESSING. Also bloody. No matter what happens everyone dies in the end. And not peacefully in their beds surrounded by loved ones. They're hanged. Shot. Bayoneted. Blown apart by cannon balls. Ridden down by big cavalryman waving terrifying sabres. There's also the odd burning at the stake, being flayed with whips and, big favourite, being drawn and quartered to go with the hanging. And that's to say nothing of the wretched thousands in a constant state of starvation just filling in the background.

The same, it seemed to me, was also true of most Irish literature, whether it be books, poems or plays. Anytime I watch The Importance Of Being Earnest I almost expect it to end with the cast dangling wittily from a highly fashionable yet slightly disreputable gallows. Is it any bloody wonder I preferred the cosier, warmer, gentler escapes of Stephen King and Clive flippin' Barker? Irish history made The Books Of Blood look like See Spot Run.

I also knew, because I was taught history in an Irish school, that we have a way of valorising our struggles, complaining about our oppression, sentimentalising all the death and torture, ennobling the suffering of the peasants, and bitterly blaming it all on the Brits. It seemed only safe to assume that Thomas Flanagan did the same. At best it would be a torrid pot-boiler, at worst it would be a trudging rehearsal of every grievance and injustice inflicted on the long-suffering Gaels, a tragic failure of yet another struggle for freedom.

So, yes, I avoided the book and the series.

Given this attitude, I have no idea why I actually picked the damn thing up and read it. I simply saw a copy and made the decision. It seemed removed enough from my school days and Sunday nights in 1982 running through the living room and stealing glances at the television, terrified lest I see a hanging or a keening widda or a barefoot orphan being bullied by a landlord. The time had finally come to see what all the fuss was about.

If there is a better literary historical novel dealing with the subject of Ireland then I desperately want to read it. Heck, if there are any out there only half as good I want to know about them. This is an astonishing, sweeping, vivid, impassioned portrait of a deeply dysfunctional world thrown into an ugly state of chaos and violence that is as pointless and fruitless as it is sudden and appalling. Written with incredible skill, mimicking the disparate Irish and English voices faultlessly, invoking both the beauty and grim drudgery of the landscape, examining the lives lived on all levels of society and justifying them to the reader without ever trying to apologise or to avoid implicating them for their actions, this is a panoramic novel of intellectual weight and cumulative emotional power. It tackles the ugly sectarian, social, political, economic and cultural divisions that renders conflict and hatred inevitable. The various sections of Irish society are utterly alien to each other and there is no bridging the gaps save through small simple acts of humanity that are dwarfed by the sheer weight of history.

Flanagan deftly creates a series of fully realised characters to serve as witnesses to the tragic events. A poet, a parson, a United Irishman, a Catholic landowner. George Moore, the latter, is one of the few not carried away by the forces unleashed when the French land. His brother, however, is swept along by the tide, and not even his cold aloofness can protect him from the consequences.

As expected, it all ends very very badly for an awful lot of people. Flanagan absolves nobody for their actions, but neither does he withhold judgment from the conditions that make them almost inevitable. The two great powers, Britain and France, regard Ireland as little more than a distraction and the bulk of Irish people as little more than savages ruled by a corrupt, incompetent, self-serving gentry. It's a horrible mess, but a mess it must remain for reasons economic, social, religious and, thanks to the charming theories of Rev Malthus, ideological. It's almost unbearable, and this is only ONE incident, relatively insignificant, in centuries of bloody history. Is it any wonder we hate to think about it? Is it any wonder that those who do think about it are driven nearly half-mad by it?

Strumpet City is getting a lot of attention at the moment, and I hope to read it myself in the next few weeks. For now, though, I think I'll set aside this brilliant, shining, monumental work and pick up something less appallingly upsetting. Something with the end of the world and zombies. That should cheer me up and restore my faith in humanity a little.

Truly great Dortmunder caper where he is invited to help an old cellmate who happens to be a terrifying sociopath recover stolen money from the bottom of a reservoir. It's not really Dortmunder's thing, but seeing as if he doesn't the old cell-mate intends to resort to dynamite and flood a valley full of unsuspecting citizens, he feels obliged to make the effort. There follows a series of attempts to get down to the money and to get the money up. None of them go smoothly. Complications accrue and increase, as does the cast of characters involved, with lots of old familiars and a few new faces, such as Wally the round moist computer guy and Doug the diver, and with each disaster Dortmunder becomes more and more reluctant and has to be persuaded back to the job with extreme measures lest Tom the cellmate decide to go ahead with the whole dynamite thing.

Daft as a brush but full of a kind of remorselessly hilarious logic, Drowned Hopes is pure wet brilliance. It's even got that line about no dogs in a reservoir which set at least one friend of mine wondering about a certain film title.