IN A world somewhat similar to post-Roman Britain, but with intriguing differences, the land of Albion is home to the human Sutherners as well as the giant, long-lived Anakim.

Mutual incomprehension means that the two races have often been at war and The Wolf by Leo Carew (Wildfire, £16.99), the first of a new epic fantasy series, begins with a period of unsatisfactory peace coming to an end.

Leaders of both nations have independently concluded that co-existence is unsustainable — there must be a final war, with one final winner. The Anakim's new lord is young, unprepared, and friendless. The Sutherners' general is a commoner without wealth or background. Both men are only ever half a step ahead of death from their own side.

This is a glorious debut by a British writer in his mid-twenties. It's a while since I've read a fantasy story of politics and war written with such subtlety, vigour, depth of characterisation and world-building.

Zero Day (Gollancz, £14.99) is the third and final part of Ezekiel Boone's story about an ancient race of flesh-eating spiders who have awoken after thousands of years to take on our modern world.

You don't need to have read the first two volumes to enjoy this notably uncynical, but often cheekily witty, climax in which the US military is determined to bomb the whole country to pieces if that means defeating the enemy, while the White House is trying to hold the line at only blowing up bits of the country, tactically.

What will wipe out the human race first — the nukes or the eight-legs? It's a constitutional crisis in the middle of a spiderpocalypse and I'm not sure horror fiction has ever been this much fun.

In the world of Ack-Ack Macaque: The Complete Trilogy by Gareth L. Powell (Solaris, £10.99) France and Britain  merged in 1959.

A century later, a fascist cult is plotting to provoke war with China. The eponymous monkey was previously the lead character in an immersive computer game. Now corporeal and aboard a high-tech Zeppelin with his allies, including the disenchanted teenage heir to the throne and a young Glaswegian hacker, he sets out to save democracy.

This bargain paperback omnibus collects all three Ack-Ack novels, the short story that started it all, a new epilogue and barrels of swashbuckling SF, fizzing with invention and ideas as well as action.

Tim Lebbon's The Folded Land (Titan, £7.99) is the second in a series in which all the mythical beings — vampires, wraiths, centaurs and the rest — exist in our world but have been in hiding for millennia.

Now, a self-appointed leader of one faction of the Kin believes it's time for them to ascend again and resume their rightful place. If that means war with the humans, so much the better.

Lebbon is a master at mixing a fast adventure plot with the delight of discovering a hidden world that's always been one of the mainstays of fantasy fiction.