I’M NOT sure the Guild of Literary Critics include it in their list of approved descriptions, but really, “gorgeous” is the only word that makes sense of Alan Moore’s The Great When (Bloomsbury, £20).

It’s one of those lavish cakes of a book which is so full of plums — hilarious and horrific, touching and obscene, surreal and familiar — that you can’t help gorging yourself on it.

It belongs to the small but much-loved subgenre of “hidden London” fantasies, in which another version of the city overlaps or intersects with the one we know.

The hero is Dennis Knuckleyard, who in 1949 is 18 years old and pretty much alone in the world apart from his terrifying landlady, Coffin Ada, who’s also his employer at a second-hand bookshop amid the bombsites of Shoreditch.

On an errand for Ada, Dennis unwittingly becomes entangled with a parallel London and his survival depends on negotiating a way out.

Supported by characters historical as well as fictional, such as Jack Spot, the Jewish gangster who fought at Cable Street, and Prince Monolulu, the celebrity tipster, Dennis discovers that his life is richer in solidarity than he’d imagined.

During his development of this deeply textured universe Moore has clearly drunk from many pumps: the writings of Charles Dickens, George Gissing and Michael Moorcock, most obviously, but perhaps also Peter Ackroyd’s historical works, Christopher Fowler’s Roofworld, and the 1950s London novels of Colin MacInnes. And did I imagine it, or was there a tang of Keith Waterhouse in there, too?

The first in a series of biotech thrillers, Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz, £18.99) is set a few years from now, after a “Decade of Plagues” almost destroyed civilisation.

Science is our saviour, through wearable vaccine factories — but that also means that everyone’s well-being depends on the whims of monopoly capitalism. And, as ever, not everyone is happy to accept that situation.

Intriguing science and an eventful, unpredictable plot make for an electric read.

The Wilding by Ian McDonald (Gollancz, £25) is an ideal bit of science fiction-infused horror for an autumn night. It takes place inside a rewilding project in rural Ireland, where a young ranger is in charge of a group of city kids as they head out into the former peat bog for a wilderness camping experience.

They should be safe enough for a couple of days, provided they do as they’re told. But there’s a slight air of unease around.

During the Covid lockdown the land was left largely to its own devices, and since staff returned to their duties there have been hints that the controlled wildness under their stewardship may not be as controlled as it used to be.

After a long, teasing set-up, the action suddenly explodes and the last two-thirds of the novel move at speed from one danger to another as Lisa — who’s only there because of a community service order — tries to get her charges back to base in one piece.