We are already in the future. In a future. A high-tech environment, in many ways different from every other earlier part of history. Of course, there were many possible futures, and we inhabit only one of them. Where are the moon bases, for example?

In Jo Walton's My Real Children Patricia Cowan lives in two futures, with two different pasts. The year is 2015, and she is old and confused. It's dementia, but it's also the weirdness and vertigo of two sets of memories of two very different lives. She has three children. Or she has four. There was a bomb over Europe. Or there wasn't.

Adoara, a marine biologist, Anthony, a famous rapper, and Agu, a soldier who's gotten into trouble for not condoning a superior sexually assaulting a civilian, all met on Lagos' Bar Beach when the aliens arrive on earth.

The Ace of Skulls concludes the saga of the Ketty Jay. In the previous three books we have followed captain Darian Frey through a series of disastrous adventures which he has sometimes just barely managed to survive.

This book was exactly what I expected it to be. Plus a bit more. In fact I was a little surprised when I put it down, surprised that this turned out to be a story that lingers in my head. I keep thinking about it.

The structure of this novel is a bit unusual, and could have failed completely. But I think it works.