This is what book reviews are for. Find the relevant journal for the field, and for really important books general historical journals (like, in the US, the American Historical Review). Most books that will be reviewed are done within 1-2 years; particularly important books (and important does not mean 'without flaws') might get an entire section or forum like Michael Gomez's African Dominion did in the last year in the AHR. However, if you want to get an idea of a book's reception, where it falls historiographically, and what its strengths and weaknesses may be, you will want to read academic reviews in scholarly journals. Get at least 3-5 if you can. A lot of very good books in relatively small niches only get a handful, however, and may not command the attention of the really big journals. They have limited space to print, and reviewers have limited time to render such free service. Usually a reviewer will only review a book once, in one venue.

The full importance of many works may therefore only become apparent after a few years' time. It's why many new books that promise a lot include blurbs on the back from eminent scholars who gave their opinion before publication (or even reviewed the manuscript). So look at book reviews--note who's writing them, see if the book said anything about THEIR work first, and you can start getting a sense of what the academic topography is like. So when (for example) Ivor Wilks wrote reviews of Sara Berry's work on time and space in Asante, that's intensely important. You will develop that knowledge from reading your book in question and then looking at the reviews, over time. It's something we learn in grad school if we didn't already learn it in our last year of undergraduate.

As for consensus, that may take longer to determine. I'm not sure when one can say that a given work of history has become 'the consensus' in toto.

nb: If the book is a tertiary work of history (that is, it aggregates others' books that are based on original documentation) it may get some reviews and, for high-profile ones, even some major treatments (like the New York Review of Books or others if it's got a political purpose that isn't strictly historical, like Zinn's People's History of the United States did). But ultimately, a lot of those books don't get the same range of scholarly reviews--they'll get reviews in more popular-readership venues.