The cyber-punk label slapped on his pre-trilogy work has gone unmentioned here because while the technology in 'Pashazade' is clever, convincing and essential to the story, it's simply slipped in with the same cunning hand that reveals just enough of the pasts of his cast to flesh them out without treading on the reader's imagination.
Hani, the kid, couldn't do without Ali-Din, an unusually gifted puppy who keeps her informed as well as sane, though Aunt Nafisa is much irritated by this pet and the puddles it leaves in the nursery...
As to the reader, you get snatches of what existed in the last century and what didn't. Music by Gorecki, the composer who became super-trendy in the 1990s, does passing service as tasteful wallpaper, but the Holocaust that was the seed for his best-selling Third Symphony is not one of the crimes evoked to haunt this parallel future.

Grimwood teases and surprises you, stimulating the neurons like a rich dark cup of Arabica with the scent and flavour of the setting steaming off the pages. Satirical? Yes, he can be when he wants to. Sexy too. Isk wouldn't be what it is without plenty of that and the mess it can make for people.

[Next off the review shelf: not the sequel this time, though I'll undoubtedly get to 'Effendi' and 'Felaheen'.
The extract to come — this seems to have become a habit, but I like to let writers speak for themselves — and the comments will be a matter of another near future, but with the focus on hard science again. Like the late Carl Sagan in 'Contact', Gregory Benford takes on astrophysics and what could be "out there". The latter is intelligent and seems rather alarming. I've begun chewing on 'Eater' (HarperCollins/Eos, first published in 2000). So far, so good.]