Paul Kearney's high fantasy series The Monarchies of God reaches its fourth volume with The Second Empire. These tales of war, discovery and religious turmoil in a world that is not quite our own late Middle Ages or early Renaissance, but has strong resemblance to both, have been characterised by strong characters and biting emotional dilemmas. Here a general is forced to take a throne by marriage, uncertain whether his captured wife is living or dead; a captain sails for home, aware that he is bringing back secrets which might be best left on another continent; a magician parleys with ultimate evil knowing what the cost might be and a Pope tries to persuade men of good will that, for once, all religions really are the same. This is powerful stuff, intelligently written and with a real sense of the dark corridors and windy battlements of the palaces in which so much of it is set. Kearney does not only write good battles--he remembers the causes that battles are fought for. - Roz Kaveney