Emily: the girl of your dreams

EMILY ETERNAL by M.G. Wheaton (Hodder £14.99, 304 pp) EMILY doesn’t really exist. Dreamed up by artificial intelligence software contained in the world’s largest array of servers, she views the world through CCTV and is perceived only by those equipped with a special chip. And she has issues. Not only does she have the hots for a cute guy, but she wonders whether she really has the right to clone the genome of every person on the planet.

Add into the mix the urgent need to save humanity from solar apocalypse and you have all the ingredients for a top-class, high-tech thriller.

Emily is a true heroine: warm, funny, brilliant and more human than a lot of humans.

You’ll be cheering for her to the end when you come to see that AI actually stands for Awesome Imagination. OTHER WORDS FOR SMOKE by Sarah Maria Griffin (Titan £8.99, 336 pp)

THIS is a rare, rich treat of witchery and whimsy, the magical and the mundane.

Rossa and Mae, brother and sister, are farmed out to an elderly great aunt for the summer while their parents detoxify their marriage.

However, the house in the quiet cul de sac is anything but normal.

Their great aunt is a witch, her sexy domestic an acolyte and the talking cat, her familiar. Then things turn really strange.

While Bobby the cat is mostly benign, behind the bedroom wallpaper lurks Sweet James, a giant sadistic bird with horrid appetites — The Owl And The Pussycat this most definitely ain’t. Instead, an extraordinary story of seduction and resistance unfurls into uniquely imagined mysteries.

The writing finds a perfect balance between cool lyricism and fevered excitement.

HOLY SISTER by Mark Lawrence (Harper Voyager £16.99, 352 pp)

NONA GREY is one superior mother. The gifted novice with a nose for trouble and an unquenchable appetite for self-improvement has battled her way up the nunnery hierarchy through two earlier books. Now she comes face to face with her greatest challenges: figuring out how to save the world and also become fully accepted within her unyielding order of fighting nuns.

With sources of ancient power, horrendous weaponry, chained libraries, personal feuds and massive fights, there’s simply no let up in the tautly plotted, dazzlingly textured action — which is all set against the backdrop of an icy world facing freezing annihilation.

But ultimately, the resolution Nona achieves involves brain as well as brawn, while mercy tempers gruesomely bloody revenge.