Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Atlantic, £18.99; 937pp Buy the book here

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear
Gollancz, £12.99; 470pp Buy the book here

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman
Bantam, £11.99; 430pp Buy the book here

Neal Stephenson's imaginary world of Arbre has many similarities to our own, but one major difference is a long tradition of cloistered orders where the “avout” live rigidly disciplined lives, apart from the temptations of the “saecular” world. They are drawn to live in “maths” and “concents”, not through belief in a supernatural being, but through a love of reason and learning, and thanks to their dedication, knowledge has been kept alive despite changing fashions.

Through his narrator, young Fraa Erasmus, Stephenson quickly involves the reader in a world where logic truly matters, and theories are subjected to “Diax's Rake” (similar to Occam's Razor in our world) as everything is debated and Enthusiasts (who believe what they want to be true) are despised. But even as the book opens, a powerful new threat from an unknown source is about to send these peaceful thinkers on a dangerous quest.

Anathem is a brilliant, playful tour of the terrain where logic, mathematics, philosophy and quantum physics intersect, a novel of ideas par excellence, melding wordplay and mathematical theory with a gripping, human adventure.

“Do you dream of a city at the end of time?” This question echoes through the ages, and draws together a small group of people in what may be Seattle, all mysteriously connected with the Kalpa - the titular city and last redoubt against chaos in an incomprehensibly distant future.

Greg Bear's City at the End of Time has similarities to some of the death-of-the-Universe scenarios in the works of Olaf Stapledon, William Hope Hodgson and M. John Harrison. There are echoes, too, of T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, along with some stuff about cats, but despite vivid mom-ents, there's too much time spent wandering through vaguely described landscapes, and the overall impression is not as compelling as the subject matter would suggest.

Alison Goodman's The Two Pearls of Wisdom is set in an imaginary empire with strong similarities to ancient China, making a refreshing change from the generic, Eurocentric fantasyland that still tends to dominate the field. Eon, the story's hero, is a disabled youth with an untutored ability to communicate with the invisible, elemental spirit-dragons that control the natural energy known as Hua.

Eon is actually a girl, Eona, but since women, believed to be a source of corruption, are not allowed to learn the dragon arts, she's playing a dangerous game, pretending to be “Moon Shadow” - a eunuch - and hoping to gain the power to save herself before her deception is uncovered. This intelligent, vividly written tale grips from the first page. The only disappointment is having to wait for the conclusion in a promised sequel.

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