2011/40: Avilion -- Robert Holdstock

Avilion -- Robert Holdstock

"... how can it be that when we come alive we are not just the legend, but we know what we are as well? Is that unusual?"
"No. Not unusual at all. I live in a Roman villa, surrounded by caves, fortresses, other places, and the mythagoes that inhabit them believe they're in the real world." (p. 62)

( slightly spoilery review )

2011/41-48: The House of Niccolo -- Dorothy Dunnett

Niccolo Rising
The Spring of the Ram
Race of Scorpions
Scales of Gold
The Unicorn Hunt
To Lie with Lions
Caprice and Rondo
Gemini

From Venice to Cathay, from Seville to the Gold Coast of Africa, men anchored their ships and opened their ledgers and weighed one thing against another as if nothing would ever change. Or as if there existed no sort of fool, of either sex, who might one day treat trade (trade!) as an amusement. [Niccolo Rising, opening]

( no *explicit* spoilers, but I mention *classes* of spoiler )

From Venice to Caffa, from Antwerp to the Gold Coast of Africa, merchants anchored their ships and unloaded their cannon and flipped open their ledgers as if in twenty years nothing had changed, and nothing was about to change now. As if old men did not die, or younger ones grow up, eventually. There was no fool in Europe, these days, who treated trade as a joke. All that sort were long sobered, or dead. [Gemini, opening]

2011/49: M is for Magic -- Neil Gaiman

M is for Magic -- Neil Gaiman

"There has been a meeting of the Epicureans every month for over a hundred and fifty years [...] there is nothing left that we, or our predecessors in the club, have not eaten."
"I wish I had been here in the Twenties," said Virginia Boote, "when they legally had Man on the menu."
"Only after it had been electrocuted," said Zebediah. "Half-fried already it was [...]"
"Oh, Crusty, why must you pretend you were there? [...] You can't be more than sixty, even allowing for the ravages of time and the gutter."
"Oh, they ravage pretty good," said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. (p. 167-8)

( non-spoilery review )