I bought this after being badly disappointed by the majority of the fantasy genre. I was on a quest for some well-written, original fantasy and was heartened to read in the author’s note at the beginning that McIntosh is a friend of Robin Hobb and that Hobb (whose work I adore) has encouraged her writing.

After a couple of chapters I was about ready to give up – the editing is very sloppy, with blatant typos and poor sentence structure. The quality of the writing, characterisation and world building is mediocre, to say the least, and there were several highly predictable plot points.

The book was redeemed somewhat by a couple of interesting twists that I didn’t see coming (the exact nature of Myrren’s “gift” being one of them), and McIntosh’s brutal and sometimes unexpected treatment of her characters is occasionally reminiscent of George R R Martin. However, on balance I’m not sure I’ll bother reading the rest of the series unless I can find it in the library.

Very interesting but a little too long, and rather depressing!

I really enjoyed the Business, on the whole – I liked the characters, the background on the Business itself and the kingdom of Thulahn. I just didn’t get the ending! I think I must have missed something.

As everyone’s favourite arrogant Tory git and undisputed master of hyperbole, I expected a book by Jeremy Clarkson to be hilarious. I didn’t actually realise it was a collection of his newspaper columns from 2001, which made it seem strangely dated for a book that the big booksellers are pushing like mad at the moment. Still, it was funny (if not quite as hysterical as I expected) and whiled away dull commuting time on the train.

While the general idea behind this book – that supermarkets are evil and bad for nearly everyone – isn’t new to me, I was still shocked by some of the stories and statistics that Blythman presents. She does repeat herself a bit, but she makes some good points. It’s strengthened my resolution to wean myself off my dependence on Tesco…

It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. As usual, Banks merges staples of sci-fi with fantastic, off-the-wall concepts. I found this more comedic than those of his other books that I’ve read, albeit often rather black comedy. And the Dwellers are probably my favourite aliens ever.

This is fairly stock fantasy, with few real suprises for the reader. It’s generally fairly well written, and the characters are likeable, although the author uses a lot of somewhat cliched fantasy plot hooks. Still, it was an enjoyable read with enough original elements to get me to read the next one.

As with The Dragonbone Chair, this was fairly bog standard fantasy. It’s okay if you want something easy and brainless to read, but it doesn’t hold any great surprises. I’m taking a break before I read the rest of the series.

I really enjoyed this book. I couldn’t put it down. It’s exciting, well-written, with good characters. The author’s tactic of alternating between the two main characters keeps you hooked. I’ve heard it criticised for not being historically accurate – all I can say to that is that I don’t know, and it was so enjoyable that I didn’t really care!

I loved this book. The lyrical writing style reminded me somewhat of Salman Rushdie. It’s beautifully written, populated with fascinating characters, with unusual and intriguing subject matter. It addresses many themes (immigration, growing up and unusual chromosomal disorders, to name but a few). When I got to the end I wished there was more of it to read!