Anyone who trawls through my musings on this blog will know that I rarely recommend a book to read (other than my own! Buy it! Buy it now!) and Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument Of Kings (however, LAOKs has only just arrived and I am about to read it, but going by his previous two and from what I've already heard about LAOKs I don't expect to be disappointed).
Anyway, I have another book which I think is worth talking about and that is Bone Song by John Meaney. I just happened upon it and saw that it dealt with thaumaturgy, hexs, spells and the like and wondered how he would handle those things compared to what I'd done in 'Flames' and it was a bloody good read!
Bone Song is a weird cross genre book spanning fantasy/horror/sf/detective and kept me reading until late into the night. The main protagonist is a tough cop who gets dragged into body guarding a Diva (opera-singer) who has had her life threatened. You might think this is a normal detective story but when you enter John Meaney's world where the energy which powers your home, your transport, everything, is not provided by your run-of-the-mill fossil fuel or nuclear power station but from the corpses of the dead then the word 'normal' can quickly be kicked into touch. Normal isn't a word that can be used anywhere in Bone Song, it is wildly different and hugely enjoyable. I'm looking forward to reading his next one which is called Dark Blood.