Read courtesy of NetGalley.

Well that was a completely bonkers read.

When I first asked to review this, I didn’t realise it was a reprinting; I’m not enough of a Ford fan to know that he’s passed on. Then I read Charles Stross’ introduction, in which he talks about this being published in 1988 and setting out the political context for the younger audience, and I wondered what this was going to be like.

Completely bonkers, is the answer.

It’s a spy novel,
It has a possibly-undiscovered Christopher Marlowe play.
It has scholars and spies and disaffected patriots and mercenaries and… just a most remarkable cast, and a complicated narrative that eventually makes sense, and PhDs playing Diplomacy and people making Marlowe jokes and war game simulations and BONKERS.

It’s awesome. The only downside is that some bits (eg who knew who was who) got a bit complicated so reading it over a few days, I wasn’t always sure of exactly what was known to various people. But it all came good in the end. Basically.

Huge fun.