Well, it's not the best Iain Banks novel, but it's not the worst either. My attitude may have been affected by having the deep dark family secret spoiled for me by, I think, the Guardian's Digested Read, so I embarked on this with a certain sense dour dutifulness, as it was the one Iain Banks novel I hadn't yet read and I felt almost obliged to read the damn thing.

Thing is, most of it is perfectly fine. It's a family novel, very much in line with Crow Road, Stonemouth and even Wit, I suppose. Our young hero is the member of a fabulously wealthy family who produce a world famous game. He got annoyed with either the family or the business and buggered off to cut down trees for a few years, but now he's lured back for a special party and EGM which revolves around selling the company to the Yanks. As an adolescent he had a brief but torrid affair with his cousin Sophie, and he still isn't quite over it. Or her.

So, tangled familial issues, lost love, big business, young protagonist with liberal notions - at one point he lectures an American executive at length about the evils of the Iraq War, in what is probably the worst bit of the book - and a long-buried secret. All familiar elements, and Banks handles them all with the usual skill and aplomb. It's no Crow Road, but it's Song Of Stone either.

And the brilliant conclusion. What Vance succeeds in doing in this series is the melding of myth, folk-tales and legend into a rich, vibrant setting and a broad, epic narrative. One could easily imagine cycles of fire-side and bed-time tales about the adventures of good king Aillas and clever magician Shimrod and the wild and fey Madouc and evil King Casmir. Lots of sharp little stories where the good outsmarted the bad and won through as much with brains and boldness as well as brawn, and sometimes a dark, nasty edge would creep in, a hint of loss and tragedy to make the happy ever after that much more bitter sweet. Poor Sir Pom-Pom.

Anyway, the whole trilogy is never less than a wild and wonderful joy, even of there are inconsistencies between this and the epilogue of the first novel. Whatever happened to the faceless knight? These should be taken all in all as part of the mystery and whimsy and unexpected dangers of Lyonesse.

Absolutely lovely fantasy novel, set in Renaissance Italy, featuring an endearingly good-hearted, sweet-natured hero who is by heritage a witch and by preference an alchemst, plays the lute - literally taught by an angel - and cooks up medicine for townsfolk who don't all appreciate or even like him. It's not a nice world, however. The town is invaded by mercenaries and the townsfolk flee, leaving him behind. He sets out after them, accompanied only by his talking dog, and determines to keep them and the town safe from war and conflict, little realising what a daunting task he sets himself: selling his soul to the devil being only one of his varied efforts. It all has the feel of some sly medieval tale, Dante by way of Eco, with an innocent everyman beset by worldly and otherworldly problems alike, with his willingness to make almost absurd personal and spiritual sacrifices for people who barely know him and generally don't appreciate him and a town that he only loves because it happens to be where he lives, propels him headlong to a kind of saintliness that would be ridiculous and even cruel if Damiano wasn't intelligent enough to be aware of it. Damiano is fun, clever, touching and unusual, about the cost of being nice for the sake of it in a world with lots of bad in it.

I did not take to this book at all but it wasn't actively bad, so I slogged right through it, and while I can now honestly and completely review it, my opinion is more negative than it might have been had I just bailed when I realised I wasn't getting much out of it. It's your classic catch-22 situation. Incompletely negative incomplete review or completely negative complete review? It's a difficult question because when you get down to it nobody flipping cares.

So there's this guy and he goes off looking for this other guy and there's bad guys and they're after this girl and they killed her parents and she's sad and distraught and suddenly she's captured and going to be tortured, oh noes! But the first guy saves her! Yays! But the bad guys are after them both now! Oh noes! And how does it tie in to the second guy and these other guys we haven't even mentioned yet but who are in the book doing stuff? What, you want the whole plot served up on a platter? Slog through the damn thing yourself.

in fairness, it's not even that bad. It's quite well written for the most part, and the writer knows the South and knows his music and it comes across. He also knows how to put together a lead character who is sort of down-at-heels but intellectual but physical but doggedly honest but smart-alecy but likes blues music but is friends with black people but likes his women but is kinda lazy except when it comes to rescuing damsels and protecting those he loves which includes lots of black people but who has a particular black friend who is bigger and smarter and more of a pro than he is, and it all ends up looking like some bizarre inhuman indentikit portrait of a type of PI hero rather than an actual human being, veering dangerously near self-parody, particularly when he chooses to be rude for no good reason and we're supposed to find it charmingly cocky. The heroine isn't a whole lot better, being less a character and more a collection of emotional responses to various, usually traumatic, stimuli.

Supporting characters have it better. The surrogate black parents are types, but boldly drawn. The big tough black friend is the same, but every time he turns up the book starts to remind me, unfavourably, of Hap and Leonard, Joe R Lansdale's pair of good-guy ne'er do wells. The psychotic hitman who thinks he's a conduit for Elvis and the narcissistic con-woman branching out into murder are interesting, but not THAT interesting, and though the writing is, as I said, usually pretty good, action scenes aren't executed terribly well and the big climactic shoot-out is lamentably devoid of suspense.

I just realised I went and automatically gave this five stars. What the heck, I don't really like the star rating system anyway.

(Annoyingly, not the edition I own, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to add it.)

The last book by Thomas before his death, and he's better than ever with betrayed soldiers and spies and Generals and political fund-raisers and murders and missing millions all wound up in a complex, intricate plot told with the usual energised cyncism.

Here's an absolutely terrific round-up of Thomas' writing career: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/ah-treachery.html

Clever, entertaining historical murder mystery featuring dramatist Aphra Behn as a likeable, put-upon heroine. With a new play in the offing and drastically low on funds, she has also been saddled with an appalling actress as the result of a bet between two Lords. A chance encounter with a beggar dredges up painful memories of the past, and two brothers who showed her a kindness. Shortly after, the two brothers are dead and she is in the unenviable position of paying for their funerals. Spies, lords, and street thieves all show a dangerous interest in the brothers' doings, and Aphra finds herself caught up in a conspiracy that could shake the throne and plunge the country into civil war.