Vivid and rich in its imagination, this was a novel that I devoured in one sitting, borne along by Morgenstern’s beautifully crafted writing style and incredibly visual, lush and evocative descriptions of the book’s world.

The novel, as the title would suggest, revolves around a circus – one which performs a specific role. For it is the location in which a rivalry that has played out over countless generations is being fought. The two rivals are magicians of undefined but certainly magically enhanced lifespans – one is a public performer, Hector Bowen, who goes by the stage name of Prospero the Enchanter; the second remains unnamed throughout the book. And their profound rivalry has been played out over countless generations by appointed pupils.

In The Night Circus, set in the late 19th century, Bowen elects his six-year-old daughter Celia, while his adversary chooses a nameless nine-year-old orphan who he names Marco Alisdair. From that moment forth the two children will  be bound into a lifelong duel, unwitting pawns in a game, the parameters of which are never fully explained to them; and for years, as they grow up and are taught by their ‘masters’, they do not know their adversaries.

The circus which will be the scene of their lifelong battle, is known both as the Night Circus and Le Cirque des Rêves, and is the brainchild of a theatrical producer named M Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre. But it is also the creation of Marco and Celia, both of who, over the years, become passionately involved in its performances, acts, and participants, as well as – inevitably – with each other.

Watching Celia and Marco grow into their roles – and watching them grow as characters and lovers – was a joy, but what sets this book apart is the panoply of characters that inhabit the world of the circus and the way in which the sights and sounds of the setting springs to life from the page. You can see the acrobats and illusionists, you smell and taste the popcorn and caramel, you will walk through the cloud maze, see the dancing kittens, spend time in the ice garden and possibly even make a wish at the wishing tree. As a reader you find yourself transported and immersed into Morgenstern’s fantastical world – one whose beauty and vibrancy is only enhanced when you resurface from it back into mundane and unmagical reality!

Many people are not fans of magical realism, but I – brought up on a diet of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood – am certainly not one of them. That being said, I can see that The Night Circus, which is very definitely magical realism, and with its meandering narrative and present tense prose might not be to the tastes of everyone. Indeed I, who am certainly not the biggest fan of the present tense in novels, found that – after the opening pages – I was so consumed by the story and the world that it ceased to bother me.

Ultimately, and much like Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus [which not only almost shares the same title, but is also an undoubted influence of Morgenstern], The Night Circus poses questions about the essential connection between fantasy and reality, and the human need for the former in order to deal with the latter. Darkly glittering and endlessly fascinating, with a heart-rending denouement, this was one of the best books that I have read in a very, very long time and one that I would thoroughly recommend.

Raised part in our world and part in Elsewhere, Karou is plagued by questions. Why does Brimstone need the teeth? And what does he do with them? And how did Karou come into his keeping? And why is she plagued by the feeling that she is not whole?

So when the doors to Elsewhere mysteriously start  to close Karou must choose between her human life and the demon family who brought her up.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a book of rare beauty, and one filled with invention and richly textured landscapes and characters. In it, angels and devils do battle, there’s star-crossed lovers and mystery and humour and pathos and gothically macabre moments. It is a wildly imaginative novel, one that resist cliches and has, at its heart, in the form of Karou, a strong, funny and wilful heroine who keeps the reader caring – but is also vulnerable and, at times, quite a lonely and isolated figure. From the first glitter of her thoughts I found myself drawn to her, and she does dominate the book with her unique brilliance.

Part Pan’s Labyrinth, part Angela Carter, part Hieronymus Bosch painting, and with a dose of Romeo & Juliet to keep the bittersweet romance simmering along, this is the sort of novel that I am naturally drawn to. Gritty and fantastical in equal measures, I have always loved the magical and supernatural, which Daughter of Smoke and Bone delivers in spades. With clever twists and elegant, vivid prose, this novel is a veritable treasure-chest of delights, that elegantly and seamlessly delivers its revelations. Taylor’s prose is exquisite. It is whimsical and delightful, playful and wistful by turn and kept me enthralled from first page to last. I just can’t emphasise enough how beautiful it made this book to read and quite how much it added to the experience.

And it is also, when it needs to be, dark and tragic – especially in terms of the romance between Karou and warrior Seraphim Akiva, which in a lesser novelwould be one of sugarcoated perfection. But this is not a lesser novel. And when conflict does arise between Karou and Akiva, it is not sugarcoated; it is not sanitized. It’s tragic, and it’s real and it breaks your heart.

Indeed, the full extent of this conflict only reveals itself at the very climax of the novel, in a twist that will knock the breath out of you and recast all the book’s previous events in a new light. The most crucial event in the story actually occurs pretty early in the page count, but it’s only later that you learn what actually happened and what it means.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a beautifully written, brilliantly imaginative novel, that is unique and funny and tragic all at the same time. It is a book not just about about love and self-discovery, but also about the tragedy of war, of hope when life is tragic, and the strength to fight for what you believe in. The only problem with the book is that I devoured it and it had to end! A fabulous read that shows that paranormal YA can be dark and adult and brilliant if the author has the imagination for it. And Laini Taylor certainly does.

So Karin Slaughter’s decision to split her new novel, Criminal, into two story arcs – each forty years apart – is certainly a risk, but one that, by-and-large, works incredibly well and once again delivers a compelling and suspenseful crime thriller.

When a woman is found savagely murdered [well, it is a Karin Slaughter novel, so if there wasn't a savage murder then you would feel short-changed!] in a run-down Atlanta apartment, the circumstances of her death bear a startling similarity to the murder of a woman almost forty years before and forces many of her characters to confront their secret pasts and histories.

Central to it all is Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent and his supervisor, Amanda Wagner, and over the course of the novel their complex and strange relationship and history is explored in the greatest depth to date in the series and the major revelation at the book’s conclusion was certainly one of the highlights of the novel for me.

For years Slaughter has been dangling tantalising readers with bits and pieces from Will Trent’s past. Trent, dyslexic, and scarred physically and psychologically from years spent growing up in orphanages and on the streets, is one of the most fascinating characters in the contemporary crime fiction firmament. His destructive marriage to fellow orphan Angie Polaski has stopped Will from finding a meaningful relationship in the series, but, in Criminal, he has finally managed to find a semblance of happiness with another major series character, the beautiful and brilliant medical examiner, Sara Linton. But even as their relationship is beginning, it is threatened, both by Angie Polaski’s refusal to ‘lose’ Will and by Will’s own secrets – both his own and his family’s.

It’s difficult – and a task that I am not going to attempt – to try and go into too much depth on the plot and twists of Criminal, certainly without giving away any of the red herrings or twists that make up the novel. But one of the reasons that all of Criminal‘s revelations and twists work so well is because Slaughter is such a master at creating and maintaining a raft of brilliantly realised characters. She has become known – one could probably say infamous – for the brutality and gore of her books. However, in recent novels, it has become apparent that Slaughter’s books are far more than just gorily macabre killers. Yes, the killer’s methods and MO in Criminal is pretty unpleasant, but the novel is actually far more about the interplay of the characters and almost all of the suspense comes from the affects that they – and their actions – have upon one another.

If I had one minor criticism with Criminal it would be that – at least in the early stages of the novel – the balance between the ‘historical’ and contemporary story arcs didn’t completely work for me. I found that far more attention, certainly in the first half of the novel, seemed to be on the historical arc. And, as a fan of Will Trent and Sara Linton, and having waited a year to see their story evolving, I think that a part of me felt slightly grumpy that they were not the main focus of the first half of the book! But, I certainly couldn’t level that charge at the second half of the book, which was brilliantly engrossing and filled with twists and where the interplay between the two story arcs is wonderfully done.

Suspenseful, fast-paced and well-plotted, Criminal continues to develop and evolve Will Trent and Sara Linton as two of the most interesting characters in crime fiction.

And, as the battle ebbs and flows over those three days, you begin to realise that there are no heroes in this book. For this conflict is one of total and utter pointlessness, one in which lives are lost and destroyed for no discernible reason. There is no reason to fight this battle. No land or gold to be had. Only some crops and a scattering of farms. Worse than this, it is a battle being fought merely in order that a more important battle can be fought somewhere else and at another time.

In many ways this novel is an indictment of war and the haplessness of officers and commanders who sacrifice the lives of their soldiers through their pure incompetence. And yet, at the same time [and I don't feel in the slightest bit guilty for saying this], The Heroes is fast-paced and bloody and a hugely entertaining read that I went through in only a couple of days.

The cast of characters is massive, but once again Abercrombie shows himself to be a dab hand at showing readers new sides to characters that have previously served as minor figures in the previous novels set in the world of The First Law. So, in The Heroes one of the major Point-of-View figures is ‘Prince’ Calder, who was last seen in Last Argument of Kings, lurking in the shadows with a flatbow as The Bloody-Nine fought for his life. And yet in The Heroes, despite being fairly unlikeable to start with, Calder evolves. In many ways he can be seen as very similar to Jezal dan Luthar from The First Law trilogy, in the manner that he starts out as a self-centred fool and evolves [well, a bit!].

Then there is Bremer dan Gorst, who has appeared briefly in all of Abercrombie’s novels to date – but always as an adjunct to far more important characters and events. Here, after events in Best Served Cold, he finds himself in disgrace and sent away from his place beside the King of the Union to be with the army. Burning with guilt and resentment, Gorst is desperate to prove his mettle and gain himself redemption, and thus flings himself recklessly into battle [and trying to be a 'hero'].

They are fantastically well done, and it was great to see them being fleshed-out in this novel. Being completely honest though, what I loved most about this book was the way in which the reader gets to see other old characters through the eyes of these new Point-of-View characters – so The Dogman, Black Dow, Yoru Sulfur and Bayaz, all make appearances and it is interesting to see how others perceive them and to look at them in a new light.

And this most applied to my favourite character from the earlier books, Caul Shivers. Shivers started off life in The First Law universe as a fairly laid-back figure [literally. In his first appearance in Before They Are Hanged he was lazing in a tree when he met the Dogman!]. And over the course of Best Served Cold he tried to become a better man. But now, horribly scarred and with a metal eye and a croaky whisper for a voice, he could well be the cruelest character in all of Abercrombie’s books – which is really saying something.

Having seen him as a main Point-of-View character before, it is fascinating to see the fear that he inspires in other people in The Heroes. And, so brutal is he at points in this novel, that I started to wonder whether my previous attachment to him as a character was clouding my judgement of him in this book!

And this is where I do wonder at the idea of calling this a standalone novel. Yes, it is undoubtedly a self-contained novel that can be read, and enjoyed immensely, without having read the previous books. But, just like with his previous novel, Best Served Cold, I really do think that you miss a lot of the nuances, in-jokes [there is still a refusal to name the King of the Union and there were a couple of tantalizing mentions of a major character from Best Served Cold who I hope will be returning soon - well, three to be exact] and the brilliance of the world that Abercrombie has created if you haven’t read the books that came before this one .

However, that isn’t to say that this doesn’t work on its own – because it really does. Looking at it on its own, I can assure you that this is a dazzling and captivating fantasy novel that really puts you at the heart of the violence and action. You can really see Abercrombie growing as a writer and trying out really exciting and innovative new techniques which made this novel feel really fresh to read, especially for someone like me who has read a lot in the genre over the years.

One example of this originality of approach comes in the first major battle sequence, where Abercrombie selects a character and shows the battle through their eyes. Right up until the point that they are killed. Then he moves to the view-point of the person who killed them, and follows them until their death. And so on. It is really clever as an idea, but it is made to work by the way in which Abercrombie is able to make us relate to these characters, even though they are very minor, and also makes us able to feel their fear in the swirling, chaotic mass of the battlefield.

And this, once again, is what makes Abercrombie so good. The characterisation is detailed and believable, with some of the characters learning and evolving from their experiences, whilst others appear to learn precisely nothing from the violence and slaughter. And the battle scenes are a delight [although probably not for the legion of, fictional, figures who meet the Great Leveller in this novel]. It’s definitely a hefty book, but I couldn’t put it down and am now hankering for my next fix of the world of The First Law.

The central character around whom this carnage tends to coalesce, is mercenary general Monzcarro Murcatto – Monza to her friends [well, it would be, if she had any]; The Snake of Talins and The Butcher of Caprile to those who aren’t quite so enamoured of her and her military ‘methods’.

When her beloved brother is murdered and she is betrayed and abandoned for dead by her employer, Monza is left with only a burning desire to exact vengeance on the seven people she holds responsible. It’s like a very bloody, very brutal version of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Revenge is a well-established trope in the fantasy genre [just look at David Gemmell’s Waylander novels] and pretty much every character in Best Served Cold is seeking some kind of vengeance. But, what sets this novel apart from the other revenge narratives is the manner in which Abercrombie fills his pages with a complex and evolving set of characters in an intriguing, well-developed world. And, crucially, and at odds with many fantasy revenge narratives, there is very little in the way of redemption in this novel [the final chapter is called ‘Happy Endings’ but after the morally ambiguous six hundred and fifty odd pages that have gone before, you know that this title is humour of the blackest kind!].

To exact this revenge, Monza recruits herself a very motley crew. Among them Caul Shivers, a warrior Northman failing at becoming a better man [and previously seen in Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings]; Friendly, a numbers-obsessed serial murderer; an arrogant poisoner and his gluttonous assistant; a female ex-torturer; and the alcoholic old mercenary captain that Monza usurped prior to her own betrayal.

Personally I found myself inexorably drawn to Monza and Shivers as characters, despite their many flaws. In fact, so flawed is Monza that the only reason that she isn’t a Villain Protagonist at the outset of the novel is because there is no-one else ‘better’ than her. And yet, despite other characters repeatedly referring to her as an ‘evil bitch’, there was something about her that I found myself liking and ultimately rooting for, which I can’t seem to explain. And both her and Shivers – in completely contrasting manners – evolve over the course of the book, often in ways that you don’t expect as a reader.

And it wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way through the novel that I realised that both Shivers and Monza seemed incredibly similar to a couple of characters from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Monza, a renowned duellist, loses the use of one hand and has to learn to fight with her other hand. And she has an ‘unorthodox’ relationship with a family member, and then subsequently becomes a better person when separated from that family member. And Shivers, a violent but incredibly loyal bodyguard and mercenary, who loathes his brother and ends up horribly disfigured. I leave it up to you, dear reader, to make the relevant connections, but there was definitely a light-bulb moment when I realised who Shivers and Monza were parallels of in Martin’s books.

With his brilliant use of narrative voice, grammar and vocabulary to distinguish his POV characters, and his adept and complex world building, Abercrombie continues to be at the vanguard of Low Fantasy. But Best Served Cold is so morally ambiguous that Abercrombie almost manages to out-Abercrombie himself. It is his meanest, most violent book to date, and even the shades of grey are dripping with gore.

If I had one slight criticism then it would be that the numerous references to Abercrombie’s first three books and to characters and events in The First Law world could be quite confusing to someone coming to Best Served Cold as their first Abercrombie novel. It does work as a standalone, but I could imagine that if I hadn’t read the previous three books then there would have been a lot of things that would have gone over my head.

Filled with – amongst numerous other things – foul language, incest, murder [lots of it], deceit and betrayal, squirmingly embarrassing sex scenes, a cannibal assassin, a lot of scars [you apparently can’t be a character in Abercrombie’s world unless you have a physical peculiarity or visible injury],  and a lot of violence Best Served Cold is, like all of Abercrombie’s novels, not for the faint of heart. And, I have to admit that I saw the ending coming from a long way off [which made the eternal romantic in my heart hope that it wasn’t going to end that way. It did!]. Nevertheless, Best Served Cold is a relentless and brilliant read and certainly my favourite of Abercrombie’s novels to date – even if it did leave me a little depressed when I finished. But in a good way…!

Set against the harsh and uncompromising backdrop of 1920s Alaska, the plot revolves around its two principle protagonists, Jack and Mabel – an aging and childless couple feeling the strain as the Alaskan winter descends. Mabel, still grieving from a stillbirth ten years previous, feels isolated and alone. Jack, desperately trying to eke out a living for the couple, never smiles and rarely talks.

One night, as the snow falls around their cabin, and in a rare moment of playfulness and togetherness they decide to build a small child from snow – giving the child a scarf and mittens, and sculpting her face into that of a little girl. But the next morning they discover that the snow child has disappeared, and in its place they find only a small pile of snow and a set of footprints leading away from their cabin. And, as they soon discover, the snow child seems to have been replaced by a small, blonde-haired girl. One who will shape their lives in very different ways in the time to come.

The story itself is based on, and inspired by, Arthur Ransome’s translation of an old Russian folk tale [which is included at the back of the hardback edition of the novel]. And the reason why it works so well in The Snow Child is down to the manner in which Ivey carefully, and cleverly, ensures that she manages to maintain a balance between the magical and the real. As a reader we are never entirely sure whether the little girl is a flesh and blood being or not. And this puts us in exactly the same position that Jack and Mabel find themselves.

And this dissonance between the solid and the imagined is further added to by the stark, sparse, alien Alaskan landscape that Ivey brings to life in the novel, and by the claustrophobic isolation that Jack and Mabel experience in their remote cabin. Mabel begins to question her sanity. And who wouldn’t? Locked in the small confines of their log cabin, it isn’t a surprise that you begin to wonder whether cabin fever may be setting in.

Ivey, who lives in Alaska, brings the landscape to life with prose that never tries to be ostentatious, and thus always fits in with the environment and people that it is bringing to life on the page. And the plot itself had an almost glacial quality. This is not to say that it was slow, but rather that there is an almost inexorable quality about reading the novel. I found myself reading at what I thought was a far slower pace than my normal [extremely fast] pace, and then realizing that I had gone through a huge swathe of the book without really noticing myself do that.

A book that is by turns uplifting and tragic, The Snow Child, like the fairy tales that were its precursors, avoids any sort of happily ever after ending. And in our saccharine Hollywood-ised society that is certainly something to be grateful for.

Yes, in Pronto and Riding the Rap he was somewhat of a hick, but in ‘Fire in the Hole’ and Raylan he has matured into a character that holds the reader’s attention. Maybe it is his attire – cowboy boots and hat – and his Southern good manners. Or the fact that he is a throwback to a bygone age – a quick-draw lawman. Or just that he gets to say some wonderfully laconic lines – at one point in Raylan he describes Ava Crowder as looking like “a double-dip ice-cream cone in that yella dress.”

The new novel involves three loosely connected stories involving our eponymous protagonist, lots of guns and a disparate collection of villainous men and femme fatales in Harlan County, Kentucky, where feuding backwoods families, pot farmers and a heavy-handed mining company vie for supremacy. In the first arc, Raylan tracks a hospital transplant nurse who runs her own criminal enterprise – seducing, drugging and removing men’s kidneys, before selling them for ten thousand dollars apiece. Then there’s the female Vice President of a Kentucky mining company, intent on getting control of the land held by the local people – either by honeyed words and the lure of money, or with a Glock. And, in the third and final story, Raylan gets involved with Jackie Nevada – a college girl and high-stakes poker player who is also a minor fugitive. And this leads him to pursue a trio of stoned strippers who rob banks…

If you are a fan of the television series – as I am – then you will no doubt have quickly realised that elements of the novel have appeared in the television show. This is especially true of the second, mining plotline – which was a major theme in the second season of Justified [and the first arc, involving organ-trafficking is supposed to be a theme in the forthcoming third season].

Inevitably, this leads to a slightly schizophrenic reading experience if you are, like me, familiar with both Leonard’s oeuvre and Justified. Because a number of elements of Raylan are both completely the same as the television show, but also radically different. The reason, I discovered, that this almost meta-quality exists between the novel and the television show, where the two intertwine and diverge, is down to the vagaries of scheduling in the book publishing world [Leonard sent an early draft of Raylan to the show’s producer before the second season and said that he could mine – pun completely intended – the manuscript for plot ideas for the show!].

If I had one negative about the novel, then it would be that the three plot arcs are very loosely connected – at times almost feeling like they were three different episodes from the television show – and might have worked better as three separate novellas, with Raylan as the glue binding them together.

But, in a way, the disparate nature of the plot becomes just another quirky way in which Leonard avoids being too caught up in the rules and constraints of crime fiction. The focus is, instead, upon Leonard’s trademark prose – which often lets go of ‘proper usage and grammar’ – snappy dialogue, rat-a-tat narrative and the phalanx of fascinating characters that always frequent his works.

Filled with brilliant scenes – the one in which Raylan wakes up, groggy, drugged and naked in a bathtub but for his cowboy boots, as his attackers prepare to remove his kidneys,was a particular favourite of mine – Raylan is a fast-paced, absorbing read, from one of the doyens of the genre.

Clammy, claustrophobic and filled with suspense, Neville has produced a taut novel that never lets up. It is a thriller of the highest order.

From the grisly opening scene in a small Belfast bedroom, where a young Ukrainian sex slave, Galya Petrova, murders the Lithuanian trafficker who is about to rape her, Stolen Souls grips like a vice and refuses to let go until the final page has turned.  And at the centre of it all is Galya. Tricked into leaving her homeland in search of work, she has been trafficked into prostitution. And, when she manages to escape from her captors but finds herself alone and on the run from the brutal henchmen of a ruthless criminal, Arturas Strazdas – who wants to extract his revenge upon the ‘property’ that killed his little brother.

The only person that she can call on is the man who gave her a silver cross and a phone number. The man who claims he can help her escape. But as Galya is about to discover, appearances can be deceptive…

Searching for her, as the clock ticks inexorably, is DI Jack Lennon [not to be confused with Jack Lemmon!!], who returns for his third novel in the series. Plagued by guilt after the death of his young daughter’s mother in Collusion, Jack is – like Galya – an increasingly isolated figure, in a world mired in corruption and danger.

But, whilst Lennon remains a fascinating and deeply flawed character, and an integral cog in the plot, it is Galya who is the novel’s beating heart and soul [title pun not intended – promise!!]. She’s a victim of circumstance and of bad luck, but you know that she will never give up – her inner strength will not allow it, and she is certainly a far cry from the stereotypical ‘damsel-in-distress’ found in crime fiction. From the moment that the reader meets her on the first page, with blood on her hands and two thugs beating on the room’s locked door, you find yourself rooting for her – desperate for her to escape and survive. And Neville puts us inside her head brilliantly, revealing her past, her hopes and her fears, and her atavistic drive to survive.

And, when she finds herself locked in a fortified old house in an industrial wasteland, hemmed in by locked doors and tempered glass windows, with no way of calling for help, you find yourself sharing her fears as Neville remorselessly ratchets up the tension and the already relentless pace.

At a little over three hundred pages in length, Stolen Souls is a seriously stripped, fast-paced thriller. Lean beyond belief, with all extraneous matter carved away, its rattling pace is further amplified by Neville’s brilliant use of short, punchy chapters and tightly controlled prose. Dark and bloody, Stolen Souls is certainly not for the faint-of-heart and you can certainly imagine Belfast’s Tourism Board being rather put out by Neville’s depiction of the city’s seedy and vicious underworld! An engrossing and pulse-pounding thriller from an author who just gets better and better with each book.