After the joy and fun of Demontage, Revolution Man comes and hits like a brick in the face. Heavy, dark, full of drugs and splattery deaths, Leonard presents us with another book which is full of social commentary and gore. This may be my favourite of the Leonard-penned EDAs so far, though I am still trying to decipher how I felt about it.

For one thing, it wasn't boring. We have a small set of minor characters, and though they're all destined for the grave eventually (what else is a minor character in the EDAs for, after all?), they are relatively compelling, if all a little caricaturish. Maddie, naive and sweet, gets swept up in the drug-fuelled schemes of her pop star boyfriend, Ed. Ed has stumbled upon a mystical flower that grants users magical psychic abilies when ingested. And he decides to use these to overthrow the entire world.

I must say that the finer details of why he was motivated to do this were lost on me, and certainly the narrative doesn't paint his Revolution Man ideas in a particularly flattering light. It is hard to tell exactly what this book thinks about world governments and about revolutionaries because it seems to want to condemn them all as violent and a little useless.

However, a political plot is one Sam thrives in. For the first time in a while, she feels like she has a presence again which is nice. Trapped in the late 60s, she draws parallels between activism then and from her time, and makes some nice acknowledgments of the progress that has been made. Her conflict with Fitz is also compelling, especially when it comes to how they view the Doctor. Her worship of him and insistence that he can do no wrong has previously made her a bit passive, but in contrast with Fitz's doubt, she flourishes here. Fitz, meanwhile, spends a lot of time freezing to death in Tibet. I didn't like him very much in this one - he was lacking some of what made him endearing in previous novels.

The Doctor too felt a little out of character and distant, and I'm certainly not sure how I feel about him pulling the trigger at the end. Of course, Ed isn't the first person the Doctor has got killed, but the viscera of Ed's gory insides splattering on the Doctor's coat was a strong choice. I am not sure I agree with it though.

Overall, definitely a better read than some of the other tedious and terrible books of the range, though its subject matter means enjoying it was not easy. A decent enough book, but not one I'd rush to reread.