Iggulden is in a class of his own when it comes to epic, historical fiction

Superbly plotted and paced

Conn breathes new life into the darkest and most dramatic of times, with a flair for both the huge scale and human interest of it all

Exceptionally well-written and gripping

Compelling reading

A page-turning thriller

Pacey and juicy, and packed with action

I read Surrounded by Water last night in one big gulp...It's beautiful and sad, the characters so well-drawn, and the writing is gorgeous. I had to take a deep breath and let out a big sigh when I'd finished.

Daring and mesmerizing. A haunting, irresistible story and an urgent mystery about what it means to pass through this life. Absorbing, luminous and powerfully human

Intricately composed and gripping, ambitious and original

Ambitious, intricate . . . cleverly innovates while tipping a nod to classic Gothic tropes: dynastic rivalries, crumbling country houses, madhouses and vanished girls

A brilliant work of humanity and imagination, artful and breathtakingly beautiful. It will continue to haunt long after you have finished reading

Haunting . . . a compelling exploration of how memory shapes and is shaped by individuals and society

Unforgettable . . . I almost cried because all the feelings it made me feel

The world needs this book, YOU need this book

She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense

Smith's fervent, vital, incantatory prose is entirely her own . . . How to be both reads as if she has summoned words from some region of the unconscious and released them in a trance

Utterly contemporary and vividly historical

Smith has created a stunning work that is as rewarding as it is challenging

One of the things she does so well, and that is particularly evident in 'How to Be Both,' is the way she can create an extremely sophisticated, complex, multileveled novel that reads beautifully

A marvellous exploration of what it means to look, then look again. Spiralling and twisting stories suggest the ways in which we can transcend walls and barriers - not only between people but between emotions, art forms and historical periods. It is a jeu d'esprit about a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her mother's death, a ghosting of a Renaissance fresco painter in a 21st-century frame and an exhortation to do the twist.

A revelation. It blasts the doors open for the novel form and in a Woolf-like way makes all things possible. I imagine it will be one of those rare books that changes the way writers write novels

Ali Smith's novels soar higher every time and How to be both doesn't disappoint

Brilliant. No one combines experimentalism and soulfulness like Ali Smith

One of the most intelligent, inventive, downright impressive writers working anywhere in the world today. In Ali Smith we have a writer whose dazzling sophistication will surely be celebrated, studied and argues over hundreds of years after we're gone

Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate

Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive

Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic

Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible

Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius

Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss

A unique conversation between past and present

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh