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I've always loved Gibson's writing. His prose is clean, light and immersive. He makes you smell and taste the future. But Agency, like a lot of his later books lacks 'plot oomph'. The real action happens off-stage in the main or when we do see it - like the AI reveal - it fizzles. I miss the real heavy, exciting plots of Count Zero and Neuromancer. But I still enjoy his stuff.

Loved the spaceman Hornblower stuff. Felt the flashback story of the female protag lacked originality, was too long and telegraphed it's denouement too far in advance.

Sick Boy's up tae nae good. Hilarity ensues. Barry.

The Wall is about Kavanagh, filling his national service on the coastal wall that girdles the UK to keep out the Others after the world has gone to pot from the Change, which saw sea levels rise around the world and, we guess, massive environmental damage and human displacement. I say 'we guess' because the world building is short on detail. So short I thought The Wall was going into allegorical territory but if it was it didn't have a lot to say other than 'it's complicated'. And if it wasn't an allegory, the world building was unconvincing. For example it's set a little in the future and they still have TV and mobile phones but the Wall is super low-tech and the guards don't even have night vision goggles or automated defences.

It's also been compared (incorrectly by some) to 1984. Kavanagh is no Winston Smith. He doesn't question or resist. He drifts. Maybe this is Lanchester's comment on late 20th/ early 21st Century humanity. Whatever, it doesn't make for an engaging character or prosecution - through their eyes - of a particular stance.

The events that happen, while believable, alternate between being quite boringly quotidian and described in mind-numbing detail. There's also a LOT of foreshadowing in the 'little did I know I'd never see her again' vein and even though things pick up a bit in the final sequence there's zero resolution and I actually swore out loud when I read the last sentence because it was the opposite of thought-provoking, fulfilling or anything else you could hope for from the end of a really good book.

I gave up. The worldbuilding and characterisation just wasn't convincing.

If Children of Time was about survival, book 2 - The Children of Ruin - is about discovery. And Tchaikovsky shows discovery can be awe-inspiring, strange, bloody difficult, downright terrifying and deadly both on a personal and species-wide level. The book is filled with amazing feats of imagination and scientific extrapolation and - as with book 1 - Tchaikovsky creates a credible, alien mentality (not with spiders this time, but with octopuses and... something else) as well as keeping up the humour, terror and wonder that made Children of Time so enjoyable.

A brilliant read from start to finish. Tarrik Nal-Valim, a demon of the Thirty-Seventh Order, is ripped from his world by a summons from the secretive wizard Ren and plunged into a life and death struggle between powerful sorcerers aiming to free an evil demon to rule over the land. Because the story is told completely through Tarrik's point of view, we're not sure who's on whose side, who's evil and who should be trusted and Hogan builds sympathy beautifully for his beleaguered demon (even if he would rather tear Ren and all sorcerers limb from limb and feast on their flesh!)
I can't wait for book 2!