Just to update: i finished Adam Roberts 'The Thing Itself' - and it was excellent - mindbending in places (i'm now awaiiting the arrival of AK (applied Kant) technology). I think he should win a booker prize for something - if Margaret Atwood can win it by dressing up sf as 'literature', he should win it (he has been shortlisted for 'Yellow Blue Tibia')
Just started Tricia Sullivan 'Occupy Me' - the blurb says something about angels, but i know the author enough to not want to read the blurb too closely in case it puts me off - she does good intelligent sci-fi/speculative fiction that's always engaging and human (someone to watch over me, dreaming in smoke, lethe, sound mind, double vision are all good reads).