Published 17th July 2025 by Armillary Books.
From the cover of the book:
When opposition MP Harry Colbey uncovers a corrupt plot between senior government ministers and a big tech organisation intent on enriching its owners, he finds himself the target of a strange form of harassment. His train pass and credit cards won't work, his phone won't get signal and every traffic light he comes to is red. Only his colleague, Esme Kanha, believes him. She's investigating the suspicious death of another anti-corruption MP.But when Colbey's daughter gets engaged to the son of one of the tech company's owners, he is forced to venture straight into the heart of the sinister elite. Colbey intends to expose them – but in a world dominated by AI, where every movement is tracked and every conversation listened to, the stakes are dangerously high.
The ‘terrifying’ conclusion to the Kanha and Colbey thriller series.
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If MP Harry Colbey thought being in opposition would make his fight against the insidious spread of AI harder, he is now finding that being pushed even further into the wilderness as an Independent might be making it a battle he can no longer win. Forced to hold-up inside Westminster since he has been denied access to his credit cards, bank account, travel pass, and even his library card courtesy of Henri Lauvaux's terrifying AI creation, Divinity, Colbey's options are limited - not to mention the fact that the last time he saw daylight he was attacked by drones that meant to do him serious harm.
Meanwhile, Colbey's confederate (and lover), MP Esme Kanha has been banished to the back benches, having lost her coveted position of Chief Whip in the moves and counter moves that have played out. But she is determined to keep fighting against the political corruption that now has Lauvaux's Alcheminna empire with its fingers in every conceivable pie related to public life and the security forces. Somehow she must find incontrovertible evidence that democracy is being subverted by The Owners, a powerful elite with a dangerous agenda, in a world where the truth is increasingly difficult to establish.
When Colbey's daughter gets engaged to the son of one of the central players among The Owners, he is catapulted into the heart of a nest of vipers. It is a dangerous place to be, but it might also give him a chance to search for cracks in the ever-strengthening walls of their entitled palisade... especially if Kanha is able to get the evidence of wrongdoing that they need to aid their cause.
Building of the beautiful wrought previous novels in the Kanha and Colbey series, Lou Gilmond pulls out all the stops in this blockbuster third outing to create a political-thriller-meets-near future-chiller that keeps you enthralled from the first page to the last.
Colbey and Kanha are really up against it in this novel, facing the sheer enormity of trying to prove what is going on in the corridors of power as Lauvaux sees his megalomaniac-level plans coming to fruition. With Orwellian levels of dystopian devilry (and a lovely nod to 1984) Gilmond has an absolute ball spinning her threads to speculate about what could happen in a society where AI not only sees, hears, and reads everything, but is also given the power to manipulate at will.
This is one of my favourite series of recent years, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I love so many things about what Gilmond achieves with it on literary, and thought provoking fronts. Her characters are wonderfully engaging, especially Colbey and Kanha, who it is a joy to follow in their quest to uphold democracy, even if they know the system is far from perfect. They are surrounded by a fabulous supporting cast, and the antagonists are genuinely frightening. And yet nothing that Gilmond has them doing seems beyond credibility, given the bitter taste of a near future that does not seem too far away.
This book is a delicious culmination of everything that has come before, weaving themes of surveillance, propaganda, power, truth, security, and privacy into an intelligent, exciting, and often witty story that comes full circle from Gilmond's opening gambit in Dirty Geese (Book One). Although this is said to be the conclusion to the series, there is an unsettling twist at the end that could be a hook into another adventure for Kanha and Colbey... I will keep my fingers crossed!
Gilmond's writing is as good as any of the renowned political thriller authors plying their trade today - if you have yet to discover it, then you are in for a treat!
Divinity Games is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.
Thank you to Armillary Books for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Midas PR for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
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