The Throne of Madness is the second book in Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquestor series. Two comments before we get going – firstly, despite the title of book & series (and the hideous covers, IMHO) – this is SF. Large, sweeping Space Opera. And it's a grand tale, and, within the boundaries of what I've read so far in my life, my preferred series. So, be warned, possible gushing ahead.
The story picks up shortly after the point where the first book in the series, The Light on the Sound, left off. Kelver (or Ton Keverell n'Davaren Toth, as he is now known with honorific, full name and clan) is now on Uran s'Varek, the heart of the dispersal of man and inquestral homeworld, to be trained as an Inquestor, and face the long pilgrimage and aloneness that precedes attainment of the rank. Uran s'Varek sits at the centre of man's dispersal - both figuratively as the Inquest's homeworld, but also literally at the heart of the galaxy that man has spread across. It's a construct, pre-dating humanity (never mind the Inquest), 446 million km wide, with a black hole at its centre, and 1.8 million stars in its cubic parsec. It has an atmosphere thousands of km thick to scatter the light of all those stars. And once every century or so one of those stars falls, guided by the Thinkhives, through one of the open poles of Uran s'Varek and into the black hole at its heart. The power of the inquest stems from these 'Lightfalls' – and the simile of the black hole at the heart of the Inquest is heavily played upon.
This is Charles Stross' first published novel – and to start, let's just make clear that it's a cracker. 'The Atrocity Archives' is a Secret Service/Spy story, with a heavily occult slant (it's all science, of course. But you knew that.), populated by math & IT geeks (as in the ones that will inherit the earth). One of those geeks is Robert 'Bob' Howard, who works for the 'Laundry'. Now, the Laundry is a secret organization, which is why you haven't heard of it. It's secret under the Official Secrets Act (of which you might have heard), Section 3 (which is secret under the previous two sections, which is why you've never heard of it). The Laundry specializes in Bureaucracy like any good Civil Service, and in Black Ops style field work, with a focus on the Occult dangers to our world, and especially the United Kingdom (most of these dangers have to do with applied advanced mathematics. No, really). Bob qualified himself for the Laundry (he was, like most members,forcibly recruited), as he worked out 'the geometry curve iteration method for invoking Nyarlathotep' – or, in the words of his boss, a way of 'landscaping Birmingham without planning permit'. Owing to the blessings of Matrix-management he has two lines of responsibility – firstly to the mysterious Angleton, who seems to know and be able to affect more than is his share, and to Harriet (and thus her boss Bridget) who are the classic bean-counter-play-it-by-the-rules careerists (and thus a pain in some posterior body parts) that every civil service needs, and attracts in droves. This provides as much plot as it provides comical relief, especially at not being the person caught up in this matrix.
Nation is a stand-alone novel byTerry Pratchett, written, I presume, for Young Adults market, but just as enjoyable for any adult young at heart.
Mau is on his way back from the Island of Boys. He will receive his tattoos, his soul, and be a man when he returns to the Nation on the main island. But on the way back a huge wall of water overtakes his canoe (can you spell Tsunami?) and when he reaches the island he finds everybody dead, the village destroyed – he is all that remains of the proud Nation. And don't get me wrong – the Nation is old, very old. With its own creation myth and pantheon of gods; and with old myths, including the story of the sailors who sailed so far that they came home again.
Daphne (real name: Ermintrude. But don't tell anyone, she hates it) is on her way to join her father, who is Governor of the Crown in Port Mercia. And, as his domineering mothers likes to point out, only 139th in line to the throne. But her ship, the Sweet Judy, is caught up in the same wave, and is shipwrecked on the Nation. Everybody on board is dead – Daphne survives by having wrapped herself in her mattress, which was not really an option for the sailors.
The Sky Road is the forth and final instalment in Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution Series – a fitting end to the series (although there's always scope to write more into the gaps in the history) if not the best book in it in my opinion. The book starts with what comes across as pseudo-fantasy and a sex scene (no, come back, it's of survivable quality as such things go), set in a culture/community set on the Scottish West coast which is, on behalf the world at large, bootstrapping its way back into space (see Cosmonaut Keep for a re-visit of that idea). There is quite some history to that world – "The Americans fell, but their Empire lived on as the Possession, until the Deliverer roles in the East and struck it down", to give a key quote. Key protagonist are Clovis colha Gree, a student of History (a slightly suspect occupation) and Merrial, a Tinker/Engineer, both working on the 'ship' which his being built to re-start humanity's path into space after centuries of being Earth-bound,again.
Here's a book I received for review which didn't wholly convince me... The Affinity Trap is, as far as I can establish, Martin Sketchely's first published novel. It's also the first in a trilogy; usually referred to as the 'Delgado' trilogy, although other names are in use, too; apparently the (soon to be released) next book in the series is 'The Destiny Mask'.
The story plays in the mid-near future, where humanity, or at least the part that counts, lives in 'Myson Towers (named after their inventor), which are essentially sealed off environments, sealed against their surrounding constituent riff-raff, not against each other. So the upper class, military, secret service etc have luxury, virtual vacations, space travel, contact with alien cultures etc. The rest of humanity has been left behind, and lives in crumbling dystopian towns, regularly harassed by 'Purifiers' who kill everyone on sight (from the air, or course), or eke out a living in the remaining countryside, and are victimized by army training exercises. So far so classic. Inhabiting this set-up is Commander Alexander Delgado, long term officer in the 'Structure' section of the secret service. He's been there for a while, and is a left-over from the old days of benevolent General Smythe, who was ousted in some kind of coup by General William Myson (exceedingly wealthy son of the inventor of the Myson Towers), who turned Earth, its politics, science, and military into a wealth-generating behemoth. And now Delgado is tasked to fly to the Affinity Group (some strange religious conglomerate – we don't learn too much about them) and retrieve a Seriatt 'female' known as Vourniass Lycern Conosq dis fer'n'at (apostrophy alert!), with whom Myson intents to father a child, purely for political (and thus profit) reasons. Cue James-Bond style secret service shenanigans. And sex. Lots of sex, at least for the first half of the book (yes, it gets better, at least on that front, after a while). Which sets of all kinds of emotions and developments in Delgado, most of which are not desirable from his and/or his employer's perspective. Or from mine.