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So, nearly a 5 star! This was delightful. The only reason I am not going with a five star is because the basic set up is nearly identical to the first book (young tearaway forced into a relationship with someone by their powerful aunt/mother) so it may lack a little originality.
That being said, what a book. This author has some serious chops and the journey through this book was as strong as the first. I was hooked from the out and as you can see the book was finished in the same day. TBF, I am currently ill so there was not much else to do (there were also two re-reads between the book I last reviewed and this one that I am not going to count on here) but this fair took my mind off that.
This is a strong recommend and this author is now on my must read list.

Wow, a long time between reviews for me. This book did take me a while to get through but there were also other distractions keeping me away from reading in the last month or so.
A strong 4 here as I pick up another history book to try and clear away some gaps in my knowledge. All I had for this period in Japanese history was references to it from 'Lone Wolf and Cub', not really a comprehensive understanding. This book fair delivered on that ambition.
I particularly enjoyed how clear eyed this book was about the people it was chronicling. These were vicious, thuggish warlords whose motivations were as much about their own aggrandizement as any lofty goals of national unity. The book never shied away from that or tried to 'redeem' them in any way. It also pointed out how adept these guys were at adopting new technology and taking from other cultures (particularly the Europeans) what would serve their ends while keeping away from assimilation.
It was a long book though with a few minor structural flaws. A tighter edit was definitely required as there is the odd wrong word used and sometimes labyrinthine sentence structures. There were also long screeds of dry data (retainer x received y fief of z koku) that I felt could have been summarised or stuck in an appendix.
Apart from this, an important 100 odd years of Japanese history was covered well and I feel the read was time well spent. Recommended.

Ok, confession time. I have given all the books in this series 5 stars without entirely being sure what is going on. I see this as a selling point, not a detraction.
Things become a little clearer in this book. A little.
At first it just seems a simple coming of age tale set in a dystopian city. However, the child concerned is a revenant of someone of great importance from the previous books (it's honestly not who you would think) and despite being adolescent has only actually been around for 6 months.
There is a fair bit of backstory reveal. It all started on Earth, slowly dying in the climate apocalypse and that sets the tone for all that comes after.
The prose is delivered in a style that always (to me) brings to mind REM lyrics, where the intent sometimes is to make meaning appear from random, unconnected snippets. This pulls you in hard as you try to figure out what is going on and the effort feels entirely worth it.
Apparently there is to be a fourth installment to wrap things up. The author is clear this is a case of the story running away from her. No complaints from me as I look forward to seeing the resolution of this.
Highly recommended if you are either invested in the series or prepared to start at the beginning. You can't just pick this one up and dive in.

This was a bit left field for me. I had been following Sotheran's Twitter account for a while. Not because of an interest in rare, antique books but because it is pretty funny and random. When it popped up that the guy who does Twitter for them had also written a memoir I pre-ordered it on a whim. I am very glad I did, this was a delight.
This is a collection of funny vignette's that roughly follow the arc of the author's development from a scruffy apprentice to a, well, scruffy rare bookseller. It is funny, droll and told with a very light touch. It kind of jumps about in time but that works because of the somewhat timeless nature of a bookshop itself (this one has been going since the 1700's).
It is a very British book, a lot of of the humour comes from that Britishness. This is not to be seen as a detraction but more a description of the feel of the book.
Sometimes very good things come from unexpected places. This was one of them.
Can definitely recommend.

So, so good.
Not quite 5 stars, like the previous installment in the series. A book I said was 'the purest distillation of 'tough guy urban fantasy' I have ever seen'. This installment, while excellent and entertaining, just didn't hit me with the same impact. It's definitely a me thing though.
Blackmoore is for me like Harry Connolly, authors at the top of their game. Pushing out book after book of very high quality urban fantasy and just not seeing the audience they deserve.
This book was the 'Vegas' book and like any visit to Vegas it ends up not working out like you would expect and tinged with all kinds of regret. Lots of backstory reveal and entertaining characters to roll along with Eric Carter's 'tough guy with a heart' vibe. In fact it strikes me that the intent of these books now is to reign things in slightly. Book 5 and 6 in the series had serious 'go big or go home' chops with their denouments but Blackmoore seems to have realised that continually trying to go bigger is a zero sum game. He's leaning into the setting and backstory he has created and whilst there are plenty of impressive set pieces in this book there isn't a sense of 'have to top what I did before' that I appreciate.
Things have definitely been set up for another installment and I will be mashing that pre-order button as soon as I can. Which is the most concrete praise I can offer. Definite recommend for this and the whole series.

I have waxed lyrical about this series before. To see that, unexpectedly, Connolly was about to drop another 2 installments this year before finishing it up with a final novel next year-ish was very welcome news.
Connolly epitomises the struggle of small to mid-list authors these days. They just can't get any traction, sales wise. This series (not so much the fantasy he turned to in a fit of almost pique after the sales of the first three novels just weren't there) should have been a shoo in for decent sales. Critically acclaimed, universally rated highly by those of us who have read the books, it's sales should grow. That they don't is a great shame.
I punched this out in 2 days as a palate cleanser after some hefty re-reads. My previous views of this series stand. The set-up is nicely skewed from the urban fantasy norm, the characters different if a touch bleak and the actual menace is usually brought by stupid and venal people. As opposed to magical beings fulfilling their one-dimensional nature.
For this book he goes all closed house mystery with a perspective from both inside and outside using his 2 main protagonists. This allows for a really good level of development of said protagonists that maybe had been a little lacking in the series to date.
A firm recommend from me.

I had forgotten how brutal this one was. Not just in the body damage, body horror sense but in the emotional sense as well.
This one is jam packed with ideas. Hell as virtual afterlife. Hell as a commodity to be outsourced. Hell is nothing but a choice. The exploration of these ideas makes this book skip along very enjoyably. If brutally.
It rates 5 stars from me on this re-read due to the ideas. It has a slight issue with a whole character arc being absolutely redundant. Something the author himself cheerily alludes to in the epilogues. To be fair this did make me giggle (I had forgotten about this in the 15 or so years since I read this last) but is still an odd thing not to just cut from the book.
There is a call back to Use of Weapons at the end (again, I had forgotten) which makes me think Banks intended this to be the last Culture book but then The Hydrogen Sonata exists. I remember nothing of The Hydrogen Sonata but I am going to lay off re-reads for a while as I have a huge stack of new stuff waiting to be explored.
Of course, this is recommended and I will say still it is still absolutely relevant and thought provoking.

This had been on the list for a re-read for a while. However, the news that a TV adaptation was about to land in October moved it to the top of the list.
I read this on release and my recollection of my impressions of this book were not positive. Yet again more evidence that past me was very different from now me. Maybe I was distracted or just not in a place to get this but it definitely resonated now.
Gibson is using the device of a future, parallel timeline that can interact with his primary timeline (in a very limited fashion) as a lens to explore the upcoming androgenic climate apocalypse. He calls it the 'jackpot' and posits that only the very rich, 'the klept' will survive.
As is usual with Gibson there is a lot going on here, too much to summarise in a small review. There is also that sense he always conveys of being about 5 minutes ahead of the zeitgeist.
A total banger of a book that set me up quite nicely for the upcoming TV show.

Let's be clear here, this is only not a 5 star review because its a steampunk setting. That's just grumpy old me knocking a half mark off because I have 'issues' with that type of setting. Otherwise this was glorious.
I had a couple of the smaller graphic novels of this back in the day that went in the great 'skip dump' of 2015. I had a vague recollection of not being too impressed by them when I read them but as that was probably over a decade ago it was a different me. Today me was much more impressed.
I bought this on paper and it is a weighty tome indeed. Too heavy to actually hold comfortably. It had to be thumped on a table like a grimoire, most satisfyingly as well. As I still have limited room for paper books these days, this was a worthy use of some of that room.
This is pretty much a mash up of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in an alternate history world where France won the Napoleonic wars. Oh, and the world is populated and ruled by anthromorphic animals. Humans exist, but only as a despised minority. It leans fully into the premise and is pretty much just a straight up action adventure. This is in contrast to Talbot's other work which tends to have more depth. Not a criticism at all. Sometimes a good old potboiler is just the ticket.
Highly recommended.

I wanted to get back into some non-fiction reading and this was a recommend. It was a worthy one. It's been quite a while since I read some history and this has always been a period I wanted to learn just a little more about.
Firstly, this is not a hefty tome. Sometimes, I feel, historical books try to overwhelm you with the quantity and not so much, the quality. This was focussed on the leadership of Germany from unification to the end of the First World War. That allowed a strong narrative flow that was easy to follow. Yes, this will by it's nature not cover everything but the frame has to be set somewhere.
Inevitably this is then a tale about Bismarck and Wilhelm. I had a sense of the period before I read this book but my desire to underpin that with some actual knowledge was well served by this book.
Thoroughly enjoyed and a recommend from me.

The Culture re-read continues. It must have been a spell since I read this as I did not have a strong recollection of it.
Whilst it is a 4 star book and I am giving it a recommend I must say that the first two thirds dragged for me. Again, it was the psuedo-fantasy bits as opposed to the 'Culture' parts that I found a struggle. When you read a book, your impressions are built from how you are feeling and processing the world at this point in your life. I used to be able to wade through a hefty fantasy tome and enjoy it but over the last decade or so, my interest in fantasy settings has waned significantly. Thus, the liberal application of fantasy elements in some Culture novels are pushing against that factor for me.
There is also a lot of time spent on s POV character that is just (spoiler) killed with no real value in the plot with that. Felt like a bit of a waste.
That all being said I really enjoyed the perspective of the 'primitives' being aware of the technologically superior races and not treating them as gods. Favors to be obtained where possible yes, but no entreaties and no worship. This is still a strong, entertaining blast of speculative fiction with a lot to say. Don't let grumpy old me put you off.

Oddly enough this is listed as 'The Cliff House' on my Kindle but I think this is a better title to be honest.
So, the new Brookmyre. Very good. Very, very good. I have asked this before but how does he keep knocking out this quality every year? The man is a machine.
If I was measuring this against most every other books it would be a 5 star but I am measuring it against other Brookmyre and it is maybe not in his absolute top tier. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly loved it. Devoured it in one sitting. It wasn't getting put down and I wasn't going to sleep until it was finished. I am maybe being a little unfair some might think but this is just how I am feeling.
For those uninitiated in the ways of Brookmyre this a punchy thriller, with tons of twists, snarky humour and a few well observed points about society. He is writing 100pc in a female voice here and as far as I can tell (being male) he carries it off very well.
Thoroughly recommended.