Sequels often disappoint, but here is one that's every bit as sharp, as surprising and as satisfying as the original.

Doyle's performance is, again, extraordinary for the richness of allusion, the facility with which history is dovetailed with invention, the energy of the prose.

Brilliantly imagined... Utterly magnificent, the finest work he has done.

Kicks off at a furious lick and just gets faster, hotter, louder. Hugely, unremittingly entertaining.

Here is a noble revelation of the curel vulnerability of the body we live in without choice

Consistently enthralling...full of tart humour and dancing intelligence

Nobody who has followed him - one of the great writers of our time - thus far, should miss it

A great book, a necessary book

There is something magnificent about Philip Roth's undimmed rage and life-lust... As a body of work, these novels may have changed the way that readers think about their own mortality and may also have enlarged their sense of what it means to be a man; and one hopes that even E.I. Lonoff might consider that a fair tribute to the power of art

This is a book about the importance of literature that lasts