Erin Morgenstern's first novel, The Night Circus is one of my favourite books, so I was awaiting the infamously difficult second novel with a mix of anticipation and concern. Now I've finished reading it, I think both emotions were appropriate. Although still a fantasy with a partial real-world setting, The Starless Sea is a different kind of book to The Night Circus . As both have something of a period feel (despite The Starless Sea being set in the present day), I would say that the new book is like an Impressionist painting to the first novel's Pre-Raphaelite. In The Night Circus , the attraction of the book was crystal clear - here it's fuzzy and consists more of light than detail. Overall, The Starless Sea is a very clever creation, intertwined in a complex fashion. Most of the narrative has interlaced fairy stories, which initially seem to be little elements on the side but gradually weave their way into the whole. It's a long book - perhaps a tad to...

I was more than a little sceptical of the idea of someone other than Conan Doyle writing a Sherlock Holmes novel, especially one that would prove to be more than a pastiche, but Anthony Horowitz has managed to tread a remarkably fine line and produce an engaging Holmes novel that is very much true to the spirit of Conan Doyle, but has its own distinct nature. While Horowitz makes use of all the dark settings of Victorian London, and language that we expect from the narrator, Dr Watson, he extends the characters of Holmes and Watson to add in significantly more humanity - these are less two-dimensional characters than those that Conan Doyle portrayed. (Don't get me wrong: I love the originals, but these versions have a little more to them.) Even the Baker Street Irregulars become people here, rather than devices to move the plot along. Another advantage Horowitz has is being able to bring in a crime that it is unlikely Conan Doyle could ever have written about - which he ...