I’m a big fan of Lavie Tidhar; this, the second of the Bookman Histories, moves to France, where we find Milady de Winter, a tall Amazon of a woman with a chequered past who carries a big gun in her duties for the Quiet Council, the mysterious coalition of human and machine that run the country, resisting the David Icke inspired Les Lezards who rule the British Empire. Tidhar brings dead men back as machines, goes steampunk cyberpunk, and asks what it means to be human in the age of empires. The writing is spare, imperfect, but shows real ambition.