Nothing short of stunning . . . something very powerful and unusual indeed

The making and demolishing of heroic myths is just one strand in this wonderful Antarctic adventure . . . Hunt is a talented writer. On my watch this novel would win the Booker

Part-thriller, part adventure story, part social drama and utterly absorbing

Hunt delivers a story that manages to be both surreally absurd and grimly captivating

Thought-provoking and affecting . . . a gripping story

Hunt is an accomplished writer . . . rather captivating

Hunt's Antarctica is beautifully done, and she expresses the enthralment and the hatred for it that the explorers feel

A wickedly funny parable of today's beauty industry... Descriptive brilliance and breathtaking cleverness.

No account of [Van Dyck] has perhaps been so convincing as that in Viper Wine… As art history it’s deeply unorthodox – but as a postmodern portrait of a trend-setting painter in the midst of a comeback, it seems both thrillingly and entertainingly right.

Almost 400 years after Venetia Stanley's death, little has changed. As an allegory of our ageing-obsessed generation, [Viper Wine] is hard to argue with.

Eyre has written a sumptuous, sensual tale of beauty and vanity; it's crying out for a TV adaptation.

Magical realism meets a seventeenth-century Portrait of a Marriage. To say it is dazzling would be a puritan understatement.

Persistently bizarre, fecund, technically inventive, funny – and oddly touching.

Viper Wine richly evokes Elizabethan and Jacobean language and is alert to the plight of Catholics under Elizabeth I and King James, while at the same time putting a post-modernist spin on the tight and enthralling plot. I used to be dubious about alchemy and antiquarianism, but the wit and excitement of this first novel breathes new life into them.

[A] cornucopia of a novel.

As funny as it is surreal.

This funny and exciting novel takes a fresh look at life during the excitement and danger of the 17th century.

The language is beautiful, creating fantastic images with her descriptions.

Eyre’s prose is sensuous and rich… Her recreation of the period is persuasive and alluring.

A pacy, cleverly postmodern historical novel... Viper Wine is a high-flying, high-concept mix that stylishly transmutes its wildly disparate elements into an assured, flamboyant gem.

A mad, psychedelic romp through some of history’s most fertile ground... The author’s voracious enthusiasm for eclectic, highly-researched detail is persistently entertaining, breathing new life into the genre of the historical novel. A real tonic.

Clever, lively and playful... [An] impressive first novel.

A dazzling debut… Wickedly funny.

This dazzling firework of a debut novel is a reminder of how inventive and original historical fiction can be.

Eyre pulls off a notable trick in Viper Wine, not just by reconstructing her chosen period but rendering it permeable to intrusions from other ages… Playful moments…are made all the more striking by being woven unannounced into a meticulously luscious fantasia on a theme of English high life in the 1630s.

The horrors of the beauty industry are taken apart with feline wit and the book will make you purr with pleasure.

The most richly fruited post-modern novel since Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherrys

A bold, impressive debut

As a debut novel, it is truly dazzling and Hermione Eyre has proved herself an author well worth watching out for

Profoundly moving