Having been gifted fifteen worlds and the limited means of getting there by the enigmatic alien Jackaroo, as of the end of the previous book, humanity had stumbled across a fleet of ships left behind by a long-vanished race. In fact, the remains of long-vanished races are everywhere, that's pretty much the main theme of the book. The ruins of ancient civilsations and their technologies are scattered across space and a network of wormholes that allow humans to travel and dig up trouble and make other trouble of their own. A lot of the technologies aren't dead, but they are alien and incomprehensible and unpredictable and can literally get into people's heads with all sorts of interesting consequences.

In the past Lisa and her husband were infected by an alien eidolon which has lain dormant ever since, until one day it returns, bringing unwelcome attention from the Geek Police, who control outbreaks of alien technology, and sending her off on a dangerous and life-altering journey in search for answers and her missing husband.

In the future, a young freebooter, son of a powerful and wealthy, but slightly disgraced family, is chased from a planet with potentially lucrative findings by claim-jumpers, only to find himself enmeshed in betrayals and intrigues from within his family and without.

The stories move along at a fast pace, between the dusty archaeological sites of a frontier world to the more baroque settings across multiple wormhole worlds as plans and vendettas and deeply ancient hidden secrets all come to fruition.

A prequel to the original Anno Dracula novel Seven Days In Mayhem sees freethinking newborn vampire embroiled in a conspiracy of anarchists to foment revolution and overthrow Dracula, now Royal Consort and effectively ruling the British Empire, having grandiosely defeated a fleet sent by outraged European powers with US support. To celebrate this momentous occasion, there is to be a silver jubilee, and the task of overseeing the celebrations fall to Kate's best frenemy, Penelope Churchward, also a newborn vampire, albeit a more of a social climber than a socialist. With Limehouse villains taking an interest and a traitor in the ranks, Kate would rather not see scores of innocents blown to smithereens, so she is pinned in on all sides, doughtily committed to doing the right thing, if only she can work out what that is, precisely, before her head ends up adorning a spike in the Tower Of London.

The visual nature of the comic somehow brings the breezy pulp wit and satire of the Anno Dracula series to the fore. Paul McCaffey's art is less adept at being horrific than at bringing Newman's world to life in a way that's reminiscent of Bryan Talbot's Grandville series, with its anthropomorphic steampunk alt-universe, and it does look fantastic.

Sometimes there are odd and pleasing correspondences between books read concurrently, like last year I read The Magus and then read Amongst Others, wherein the protagonist reads and describes her reaction to The Magus. The correspondences between The Alexander Trilogy and The Deptford Trilogy aren't quite as direct, but they're still striking, unexpected and enjoyable. The Deptford Trilogy is largely concerned with Jungian archetypes, with the middle book essentially one long portrait of Jungian therapy. Fire From Heaven, the first of the Alexander Trilogy begins with an episode so drenched in Freudian imagery one expects to see an Austrian gentlemen from circa early 20th century with a neat grey beard sitting with one leg crossed over another in an attitude of polite attention, waving a smoking cigar in an invitation to the protagonists to please continue their tableau.

The book opens with child Alexander waking in the middle of the night to find himself in the coils of a snake. (Alexander's father's family claims descent from Herakles, played by Dwayne Johnson.) Taking a moment to coolly assess his situation, he concludes that the snake is not poisonous and reckons it's one of his mother's, and resolves to return it to her. Slipping with strategic cunning past no less than two guards, he enters his mother's bed-chamber and wakes her up, whereupon she informs him that it's not her snake, but a snake that must be specially his. he gets into bed with her, demands that she tell him she lives him best and promises to marry her when he's six. Then father arrives, drunk and determined to avail of his conjugal rites, stripping off. Olympias hides Alexander under the sheets and tells Philip to leave. Philip is furious and berates her. Alexander springs to Olympias' defence. Philip is astonished and horrified and throws him out the door, where the guard picks him up and comforts him.

Now, in the hands of a lesser writer, this might come across as a bit lurid and melodramatic. In the hands of Renault, it is lurid and melodramatic and astonishing, setting the template for Alexander's young life, his devotion to his indomitable mother, his antagonism with his powerful father, his turning for comfort to his father's soldiers. But he also finds he and his father are more compatible and sympathetic than either will grudgingly admit, and that his mother's ruthless efforts to control him and spite his father is more of a threat than his father. Through this frightful familial warfare he threads his own way, acquiring an education and a following and a gathering legend. Devoted to the story of Achilles, he acquires his own Patrokles in Hephaistion. Though he himself is close to celibate and the book is never sexually explicit, the passages dealing with their physical and emotional relationship are awash with a beautiful eroticism.

The Persian Boy has its correspondence with The Deptford Trilogy, too: The eponymous narrator is taken and abused just as Paul Dempster was in World Of Wonders. Bagoas, after his family is betrayed and murdered in a Persian power struggle is castrated and sold as a eunuch. Harrowing and horrible though this is, his ultimate position as bed mate to the Persian king, Darius, could be a lot worse. Alexander invades, defeats Darius, and Bagoas finds himself presented to Alexander as a servant. Adjusting to the coarse, easy more informal manners and ways of the Macedonians after the elegant mannered splendour of the Persian court is difficult, but Alexander, unlike most of his soldiers and generals, does not view Persian ways as barbaric or contemptible, and intends to treat his conquered peoples as equal with his fellow countrymen. Begoas falls deeply in love with Alexander, to which Alexander responds, and as Alexander drives east into Asia their relationship grows deeper and Begoas becomes a permanent fixture in Alexander's tent.

So this is a monumental, awe-inspiring novel told in a singular voice, filled with the colour and richness and terrors of the ancient world, evoking the inimitable figure of one of the most amazing people to ever walk the earth, who conquered most of the known world simply by making his army love him. It's a novel that moves from degradation and horror to glory and joy to grievous tragedy, an epic of human experience. This is the middle novel of a trilogy as triumphant center-piece.

Funeral Games is the book that George RR Martin fans might cuddle up to, a riveting narrative of Alexander's successors, all of whom try to be Alexander, none of whom succeed. Riot and mutiny, confusion and acrimony, murder most incredibly foul ensue as the generals try to control the willful Macedonian army without a clear, acceptable heir. Only Ptolemy is smart enough to recognise the limits of his ambition, heading straight for Egypt while others squabble over the regency. Everyone ends badly, and it's hard to feel sorry for most of them, except Alexander's poor brain-damaged brother declared king and married to a fiercely ambitious young woman, becoming a puppet and a target. Beautifully written, full of incredible incidents straight out of recorded history, with even the most monstrous characters drawn with a kind of sympathetic humanity that nonetheless concedes nothing to their terrible deeds and ultimate fates, Funeral Games is a elegaic winding-down of the Alexander Trilogy, sad and desperate and catastrophic.

A huge dragon lying slap-bang in the middle of a valley, overgrown and embedded and part of the landscape but very much alive, if unmoving, his malevolent will working on the creatures that come to live around him and within him. An artist tries to kill him with paint, a young woman is taken deep inside his for some strange purpose, a murderer in a far-off city blames the dragon for his actions, a woman appears in a tavern and claims that she, too is a dragon, a group of people are transported to a version of the valley to witness something terrible, and in a South America we can readily recognise as our own, the dragon's will is still at work. And then there are the notes which contain things more hair-raising than in any of the already fairly hair-rasing stories and novellas. Fantastic writing, strong psychological inner lives of his characters, astonishing descriptions of places and things fantastical and real, and at the end of it all it's a powerful and profound political allegory.

More bad things happen.

Bad things continue to occur.

When I was only small the very first thing I wrote was a story about two chickens who rob a bank. Since our village was also only small, we had a mobile bank that came every fortnight, so the two chickens basically drove off with the bank. So this story speaks to me in a very deep, personal and intimate way, except none of the characters are chickens, so Donald E Westlake really missed a trick there.

Busted through sheer bad luck - does he have any other kind? - Dortmunder's going back to jail for sure, and it's only his third book into the series. Suddenly, an expensive and clever lawyer appears and gets him off, through sheer entertainment value, if noting else. Naturally, his deliverance comes with a catch - a heist organised by the victim as part of an insurance scam. Still, a pulling off a burglary where the inside man is the person you're burgling should be easy enough. But nothing is ever easy, and one riotous encounter with a theatre full of boisterous Scotsmen later, Dortmunder is faced with a missing painting, looking deadline and a contract killer hired to make sure he delivers. Fake paintings, fake robberies and a trip to Scotland follow as things, naturally, get more complicated and difficult. I think this was the very first Dortmunder I ever read (sleeping by myself in the open next to the wrong lake - long story) and it's clear to see why it hooked me from the get-go with its twists and turns, it's brilliant characters and general comic genius. The last lines are still amongst the funniest I've ever read.

Wit it's twitchy, flying, immortal, drug addicted narrator, its voyage of discovery to uncharted lands, its Empire threatened by dissent and rebellion and the occasional sideways jump to the nightmarish dream-logic world of the Shift, the second volume in the Fourlands series has a LOT going on, but the pacing is calm and the plotting assured. Opening with a duel, ending with a bloody mess of a battle or a riot or both, it's also action-packed. What a weird and brilliant mix.

To push back against the invading Insects, the Immortals of the Circle build a dam and form a lake, and it finally looks as if some progress will be made in the endless war. Comet Jant, who is the Messenger, who can fly, is distracted at the last minute when he heads off to the city of his miss-spent youth in search of the daughter of Lightning, a fellow Immortal who has been a mentor and father-figure to him. The search rather unexpectedly takes him to the world of the Shift, but more unexpectedly when he gets back catastrophe has struck, potentially world-ending and it's all hands on deck to fight back against a horrifying new threat.

A climactic-feeling third volume with an epic sweep and unexpected ending that leaves the Fourlands and the Circle shaking and changed.