To The Last Page

Boris Akunin’s second Pelagia novel is even better than the first. Having spent a lot of time providing background on the characters, the period and their location in The White Bulldog with some long diversions into mild philosophising (entertaining and highly readable though it was), Pelagia and the Black Monk , as promised at the end of the last, goes straight into the mystery with little beating around the bush. That said, it’s a while before Sister Pelagia leaps into action, and only after Bishop Mitrofanii’s other trusted emissaries have failed – quite shockingly – in their attempts to uncover who or what is behind the fearsome apparition of a ghostly Black Monk at a popular place of religious retreat. Akunin handles all aspects of the thriller masterfully, with marvellous characterisation, borrowing from classic Russian literature, but putting a modern murder-mystery twist on proceedings, with plenty of cliff-hanging thrills and a genuinely unexpected outcome. Another intelligen...

Halting State has an interesting and topical subject for a science fiction novel - an interactive web-game has been hacked by an unknown organisation who have stolen all of virtual weapons and spells from their holding bank. Although the "bank robbery" is virtual, it nevertheless has serious repercussions for the product and the company who have developed it, since it is evidently going to affect sales of the game. It's a brilliant idea and the story flies along with plenty of incident and invention, Stross having a great deal of fun with gaming culture and those wrapped up in its worlds, while realising at the same time that it is a serious business.  The writing is quite dazzling, sparkling with sarcasm and humour (although bafflingly and for no good reason it is rather annoyingly all written in second-person - "you go here, and you do this" etc.), but it does become a bit heavy with tech-speak and eventually start playing out like a virtual game itself.  It...