No this is not one of those mashups, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is an original story, but with the setting, story-line and style heavily inspired by the works of Jane Austen. Except it's set in an alternate Regency period where magic is an art generally practiced by educated women.

It's gift-giving season again. The time of year when you want to buy really good things to people you love, and you realize again that you don't really understand their taste in books.

To summarise: I think you might like this book if you

• like Ken MacLeods earlier work
• are interested in history, or big political questions
• want realistic female protagonists (not superwomen)
• enjoy reality leakage and sense of wonder in your fiction

Through most of The Restoration Game you can safely allow yourself to believe that you are reading a kind of contemporary spy thriller, although kind of light on the action and violence and heavy on the personal history of the geek girl protagonist Lucy.

This is so brilliant. Beautiful. At the moment I think this is the novel I'm going to recommend everyone to read for a long time to come.

As I have probably said before, it's a little bit risky to review a book before I have really digested it. I never know when I turn the last page what I will think of it in a week or a month. Still, I have now waited way too long to read this book, considering that I wanted to review it before the coming weekend.

Perhaps I'm just dazzled at the moment, but one thing that is safe to say is that I'm going to