Entertaining and readable cyberpunk thriller that is transitioning to another subgenre for the next volume. It's got a creaky ex-military cyborg whose metal arm is sending her to a early grave living n a bad part of town, friends with gangsters and cops, it's got ronin bounty hunters and evil corporations and AIs and hacking and VR, and it all hangs together divertingly well.

I haven't read this in a long, long time, but it was very much a favourite of mine, and I think I'm beginning to really appreciate why. Actually, it's almost shocking: I was not prepared for how Tolkeiny it is. You have dwarves, you have elves (unseen), you have orcish monsters and trolls, a piece of jewelry as plot-token and a wise old wizard in a beard and robes; there are woods and mines and lakes and aid from a mysterious lady of great beauty and power. In other words, tons of Northern European legends and folklore driving an adventure narrative; but instead of Lord Of The Ring's epic sprawl - or even The Hobbits long wayward quest, we get an astonishingly tight, short, fast paced tale that seems to deliver it all in a concentrated dose.

Garner has expressed a certain dislike for the books, particularly the main characters and, sadly, it's easy to see why. Colin and Susan are standard English children's book children. Most of the time they fail to differ appreciably from anyone from, say, the Famous Five or Secret Seven, only rarely showing flashes of personality, usually in brief bits of dialogue. They certainly pale in comparison to the dwarves and even Cadellin (though Cadellin proves that Ian McKellan has firmly set his stamp on the cultural image of the bearded wise wizard with both his appearance and voice), who are at least built upon sturdy heroic archetypes and through their dialogues, voices, language and cadences, Garner brings them to mythic life. Difficult enough for virtual blank slates like Colin and Susan to flourish in such company, but they also have to contend with the incomparable Gowther Mossock, in whom Garner's gift for voice and dialect show themselves in all their glory, but also his concerns with people in landscapes and embedded in the history of that landscape. Colin and Susan didn't have a chance.

The book is also notable for what may well be one of the most terrifying sequences in children's literature: the Earldelving. Nothing magical or supernatural, either; just our, ahem, fellowship squirming their way through a system of pitch-black tunnels that makes the reader squirm with horror.

This is another one that upset the balance. I tried to start it last year, but I found the opening scenes of child labour genuinely upsetting and had to put it aside. When I picked it up again they were still upsetting, and furthermore things didn’t necessarily get much better as it went along. Anyway, this is the book that tore fantasy out by the roots and shook off the dirt long before China Mieville or George RR Martin did their thing, and it makes them look like fluffy bunnys in comparison. However tough the action or radical the politics or cynical the power-struggles, they are still fundamentally entertainments. Swanwick’s book doesn’t subvert genre conventions; it looks them full in the face sees them for what they are and tells them to sod off. Not an easy read, but profoundly worthwhile.

The tumultuous, bloody and almost heedless trek of the Berrybenders continues, albeit much of it spent stalled in a trapper's fort waiting for the spring. Tasmin and Sin Killer's married bliss is interrupted by a bout of domestic abuse. Lord Berrybender deteriorates mentally but remains utterly appalling. Babies are on the way: no less than three are born in the course of the novel. Pity the poor babies. Barely crawling and they are subjected to long treks across deserted wilderness, buffalo stampedes, Indian attacks and encounters with the odd cactus.

Readers of the first volume will not be surprised that some of those alive at the end of Sin Killer will no longer enjoy that happy state by the end of The Wandering Hill. Means of death are varied, but death by buffalo - and no, not the stampede - gets in early for most horribly memorable. The story itself remains fresh and unpredictable, and Tamsin develops nicely as a memorable, scrappy, bad-tempered heroine, maturing in her attitudes as life and death teach her harsh lessons abut themselves. One suspects, with two volumes to go, there are a surfeit of both on the way.

This is a Gibson novel that doesn't seem to register much, and I know I read it the year it came out, 1999 - the year I got married, yay! - and I don't remember much about it. Perhaps because it doesn't really add anything new to the world of Virtual Light or Idoru, but synthesizes the ideas in those books into an impending millenarian global paradigm shift. Anyway, it's this nodal point in the flow of digital information that haunts poor Laney, living in a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway station and monitoring the networks while dosing himself with cough syrup. he doesn't know what this nodal point represents, but he knows it is huge and potentially world-ending. He reaches out to Rydell, working as a security guard in a convenience shop, and sends him back to the bridge. It's not just lines of data that are converging on the bridge, however. Rydell's ex, Chevette, is heading there to escape an abusive partner. A smooth, grey killer, a strange young boy, a dealer in antique watches and the idoru herself are all caught up in the unfolding drama.

It's really good. More narrative points of view than the other books, which perhaps makes if feel more diffuse than the other two, but there's some great writing and great thematic development and an exciting plot all building to a strange, subtle moment of transformation.

I'm returning to this series after a very long break, and I'm glad that I did. It's possible, after all, to read books wrong, which can end up spoiling the book for reasons that are nothing to do with the book itself. In the case of the Aubrey/Maturin series, the uniformity of their excellence in terms of writing, their largely character-driven, relatively shapeless novelistic plotting compared poorly, I thought, to the more intricate, complex and subtle mechanisms of Dorothy Dunnett. Of course, that's the wrong approach. They don't suffer in comparison at all. They are completely different animals. To read them for the thrill of clever plot twists that have been deviously woven into eight massive volumes is both pointless and a bit stupid, and I'm glad now that I've achieved this perspective, because the pleasures of O'Brian's novels are in some ways richer than Dunnett's, for all that Dunnett will always edge out O'Brian as one of my favourite writers.

Jack Aubrey is in a sorry state at the start of The Letter Of Marque, struck off the naval lists after a trumped-up charge, he is morose, short-tempered and depressed. Stephen Maturin has purchased The Surprise, however, and with the titular letter and a crew half of old naval hands and half of doughty pirates, they set out to restore Jack's fortunes.

The aforementioned uniformity of excellence of these novels tends to render each succeeding novel susceptible to accusations of sameness. Certainly there is progression. Each book is a chapter in the ongoing history of our heroes' friendship and careers. They age and change in circumstances and temperament. There are voyages, there are battles, there are some exchanges of intelligence, observations of flora and fauna, and occasional visits to hearth and home and family, where Jack can blunder cheerfully and Stephen can mope for his estranged wife. The story develops, the characters grow, the world opens up around them, a world so fully and perfectly realised that we come to understand that what we mistook for sameness is, in fact, recognition and comfort and familiarity. Each book gives exactly what it sets out to give, and so long as we don't mistake it for something it's not, we can fully enjoy them in all their warmth and generosity. For all love.

I got a blister on my thumb, thanks for asking. Wrong music, though, wrong era. It only occurred to me to cue up some ragtime tunes on Youtube while writing this, a bit of an oversight given that this was very much composed as an ode to that music, going hand in hand with jittery, speeded-up black and white stock footage. An old era is ending and a new one beginning. Mass consumption, mass production, mass entertainment and mass destruction are all a-borning, and Ragtime is an almost jolly ode to the death/birth pangs of the new American Century. It reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but also Catch-22. Magical realism in high-density storytelling that swoops through time and place and social strata, skipping from person to person, tell-don't-show with more than a touch of satire as the horrific social injustices are set beside awesome wealth and power. Ragtime should be played slow, according to the epigraph, but Ragtime was read fast.

This follows on from Hill's Woman In Black, another ghost story in a similar mode. James Monmouth, inveterate traveler, returns to England after a lifetime abroad, intent on researching the life of one Conrad Vane, whose travels inspired his own. Almost immediately upon his arrival in London the spookiness commences, with a mysterious ragged boy popping up in odd corners. As he begins his investigations, he receives warnings and dark hints and strong suggestions not to bother. Unfortunately all those warnings are a bit short on details, and when Monmouth discovers a connection to his own forgotten childhood, he finds himself almost compelled to seek out the truth.

Well, yes, it's great in many ways. Highly readable, richly textured with details of Victorian life, strong on atmosphere and character. Bits of it ooze menace and unease, and the whole thing, with its hints of childhood innocence corrupted, is rather strongly suggestive of The Turn Of The Screw. It operates almost as an anti-detective story, where nobody will tell the poor narrator what the hell is going on, every bit as frustrating to the reader as it is to poor James Monmouth. No less than two possibly senile, or maybe just ancient and befuddled characters notably fail to tell him anything informative, but at least they have that excuse. Those of sound mind who drop dark hints and vague suggestions are just downright irresponsible, not letting the poor chap have any idea what he's in for. By the time he gets to North Yorkshire, it's in danger if slipping into self-parody, as people go pale or get upset or mutter darkly every time he so much as looks at them.

An explanation, satisfying but perfunctory, comes at the end, but one wonders if Hill was reluctant to disturb the shape and tone of her elegantly crafted, highly atmospheric, beautifully structured Victorian ghost story with the potentially vastly more gothic melodrama hinted at in the past. This isn't a horror story. This is a ghost story. Which is almost a pity.