Isidore takes a deep breath. ‘An interplanetary thief is building a picotech machine out of the city itself while the cryptarchs take over people’s minds to try to destroy the zoku colony in order to stop the tzaddikim from breaking their power,’ he says. ‘I want to stop them both.’ He pauses. ‘Also, I think the thief is my real father.’

I had fairly high expectations for this after a run of recent sf books which didn’t really excite me. Unfortunately I didn’t like it quite as much as I had hoped; I thought there was basically some neat ideas and world-building in there, but actually I think Charlie Stross does this sort of thing rather better. Too many made-up words, and present tense throughout didn’t really focus my attention. Maybe I was just in a bad mood.