Neil is the main organiser of the Glasgow SF Writing Circle, and probably the most interesting thing about this book is that as I was reading it I completely forgot who wrote it. I read it just as I would any book I'd picked up from a bookshop or library.

Queen of Clouds  is a brilliant example of world-building. It's stuffed with good ideas and neat consequences: quite often something happens and you think, 'Oh yes, of course. Why didn't I think of that?' It was unclear until the very end how everything was going to turn out; there were surprises even in the last few pages.

The characters are well drawn and I liked the fact that they didn't keep on having misunderstandings to stretch out the plot. Or fail to tell each other about something. You know the sort of thing... A fails to tell B something important, which furthers the plot for a while, but the readers is just thinking, oh why didn't A just say what they knew?

There was none of that.

I enjoyed the book immensely and I shall tell Neil so. Well worth a read if you like fantasy/sf with a slightly unusual take.