Novik deliciously undoes expectations about magic schools, destined heroes, and family legacies. A gorgeous book about monsters and monstrousness, chockablock with action, cleverness, and wit.

Truly one of the best fantasy series out there right now, and it's not close.

The Scholomance is the dark school of magic I've been waiting for, and its wise, witty, and monstrous heroine is one I'd happily follow anywhere - even into a school full of monsters.

A dark, smart, delicious tale, set to redefine everything you think you know about schools for magic. A Deadly Education is dangerously addictive.

Naomi Novik skilfully combines sharp humour with layers of imagination to build a fantasy that delights on every level. I adored this brilliant book.

A nightmare from which I never wished to wake: savage, inventive, and soulful.

Constant peril, a fresh magic system, and a deeper discussion of how educational inequality currently functions than I ever expected to see in fantasy.

Novik dazzles in her brilliant and compulsively readable final Scholomance fantasy.

A rich, fully satisfying conclusion that makes the whole trilogy stronger and more meaningful.

If it's true escapism you're after, William Boyd can always be relied upon to transport the reader from reality and his next offering, The Romantic, another epic that follows Cashel Greville Ross from 19th-century Country Cork to Zanzibar via Oxford and Sri Lanka, offers a wonderful literary getaway as the nights draw in

Packed with passion, adventure, suspense, comic interludes and a range of colourful characters . . . the rollicking work of a masterful storyteller, The Romantic is both a vivid portrait of a life and a sweeping panorama of an age

The Romantic is certainly a crowd-pleaser . . . Boyd knows how to time the hights and lows, how to blend triumphs and tragedies, personal and historical . . . genuinely poignant and wise

A satisfyingly meaty novel in the rich vein of his earlier classics The New Confessions and Any Human Heart. As we have come to expect, here is exceptional storytelling - pristine, immersive, and intoxicating. The elegant prose is characteristically detailed and precise . . . It has the expansiveness of many classic 19th century novels. There's a Dickensian warmth and verve, an epic scale, a spirited sense of chance and adventure. Boyd as ever stresses period detail, and the novel is as informative as it is entertaining . . . It is bravura, high octane stuff, eventful and sometimes on the edge of chaos

A panoramic and deeply satisfying narrative from an author on top form

It's tremendously entertaining and, as always with Boyd, virtually impossible to stop reading

A globe-trotting adventure through the 19th century

Boyd's pile-up of set piece escapades offers a huge amount of fun

Boyd's books are so enjoyable that it's hard for us to resent the tricks being played on us, even as we find ourselves constantly reaching for Google, wanting to know what is and isn't real

There's a cornucopia of fine things here . . . The Romantic, always enjoyable, ranks with two of his best: The New Confessions and Any Human Heart. Both were intelligent and engrossing, novels you lived with. Both told a fine story very well. The Romantic does just that

A ripping yarn. And as such, it is pretty much faultless: as moreish as good chocolate, terrifically entertaining, and deeply humane

A huge amount of fun

One of our best contemporary storytellers

A narrative that Charles Dickens or Jane Austen would surely have been happy to claim as their own . . . there's a joy to Boyd's storytelling throughout and his hero is one to cheer for

A wonderful tale that spans a life of adventure, this is storytelling at its very best

Crammed with incident, the novel has the wonderfully freewheeling quality that one associates with the great 19th-century novelists. As with most of Boyd's works, it manages to be warm-hearted and deliciously sardonic at the same time

William Boyd taps into the classic novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man's century-spanning life

There is no doubt that Boyd is a masterful storyteller . . . this is a book to get totally, utterly and delightfully lost in

A new novel by William Boyd is always a treat and in his picaresque latest, The Romantic, his hero is Cashel Greville Ross, born in 1799, a soldier, lover, friend of poets, bankrupt and adventurer who is swept into many of the most important episodes of the 19th century

This highly entertaining, engrossing page-turner is the fictionalised biography of Cashel Greville Ross, who was born in 1799 in Scotland and brought up in Cork. Such is William Boyd's mastery as a storyteller, one begins to believe that all of the events are entirely real

The Romantic is a rollicking read that will delight his many fans

A wild ride across the 19th century on the back of a narrative that never pauses for breath . . . this breakneck pace seems to be a function of Boyd's exceptional imaginative facility, which sees him just as irresistibly drawn to new ideas as his hero is

What could be more reassuring in troubling times than a new William Boyd novel? Trio is immensely readable, its descriptions full of light and colour, its humour spot on, its mood a perfect mix of frolicsome and melancholy

Reading William Boyd's Trio is like shrugging on a worn leather jacket on the first brisk morning of autumn: cosy but cool . . . He has enormous fun with the worlds - and egos - of page and screen

Breakneck pace seems to be a function of Boyd's exceptional imaginative facility, which sees him just as irresistibly drawn to new ideas as his hero is . . . there's something irresistible about that energy . . . if a whole-life novel is intended to represent the span of a unique existence, then The Romantic gets it right

The Romantic is a whole-life novel, a form in which Boyd excels . . . a terrific read

On The Overstory: The best book I've read in ten years. A remarkable piece of literature

On The Overstory: An extraordinary novel . . . an astonishing performance . . . he is incredibly good at turning science into poetry

The success of the story - and a success it is - comes not from the ingenious scientific speculations, nor the shrewd literary connections (on the "emotional telepathy" of a work of art, or Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon), but the human story between father and son, as Theo finds out 'how my brain learns to resemble what it loves

Richard Powers's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is both brutal and heartwarming, intimate and profound. A masterfully curated story of love, grief and loneliness, quietly building to an inevitable and devastating close

He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. I'm in awe of his talent

In Bewilderment, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist has crafted a story of great beauty and power