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Review: Prince Of Thorns

27 Monday Oct 2014

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Generally, I research books quite heavily before I pick them up. There has to have been a good review, a personal nomination or a blurb/cover/extract that’s really blown me away. I don’t know quite how Prince of Thorns ended up on my Kindle. I purchased it months ago, seemingly on a total whim, knowing nothing about it other than it was a fantasy novel and increasingly popular.

I also generally only have one or two unread books at a time and read them almost as soon as I buy them, so it’s also odd that this one hung around so long, getting passed over every time for something new that caught my eye. I guess a new fantasy series just feels like a major commitment, and it wasn’t one I felt willing to make.

After a run of books I really didn’t enjoy (notably We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and Kiss Me First) I finally got around to giving this one whirl, still knowing nothing about it and not having even read the blurb. This was Saturday morning, lounging in bed. By Saturday night, I’d finished book one, started book two and forced my husband to start reading it (he liked it too – I’m a great wife!).

PRINCE OF THORNS – Mark Lawrence – 5 Stars

(Now I’ve pasted it, I actually blame this cover for my delay in reading this book. See this old post for my checkered history around books featuring hooded men with big swords, two of which I’ve just realised are actually referenced in this review – fantasy cover designers, please try to branch out!)

Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire, #1)

The opening chapter of this book involves a band of brigands slaughtering most of the male inhabitants of a village, raping their daughters, looting the corpses and then setting the whole place on fire. All of them seem to be having a wonderful time, particularly the deeply sinister first-person narrator.

Having picked this book up without knowing anything about it other than that it was a highly recommended fantasy novel, I wasn’t sure what to make of this attention-grabbing but disturbing opening. Had the author written a prologue that was broadly unrelated to the rest of the novel to set the scene and demonstrate the grimness of his world? Or was the hero going to swoop into the village and be avenged on this bunch of murderous psychopaths? And then, as dying villager muses that his murderer could be no more than fifteen, the chapter ends with the line, “Fifteen! I’d hardly be fifteen and rousting villages. By the time fifteen came around, I’d be King.” And I came to a shocking realisation that this sadist was actually our protagonist, the titular Prince of Thorns. Basically, if you’ve ever read a Song of Ice and Fire and wished that the whole thing was narrated by Ramsay Bolton, then this is the book for you.

The fashion nowadays is undoubtedly for fantasy characters to be presented in moral shades of grey, and often even to be outright anti-heroes. But I’ve never read anything in the fantasy genre that makes the “hero” so utterly, irredeemably villainous. The closest comparator I can think of is a Clockwork Orange, and the main character, Jorg, did seem to share some characteristics with that books hero beyond his love of ultraviolence – a scene where he sits and reads Plutarch following a massacre particularly jumps to mind. I can imagine some people really struggling with this approach to characterisation, but frankly, I loved it. It made for such a different read and the author did a fantastic job of making me root for Jorg while hating myself for doing so. He also struck a nice balance between explaining his behaviour (trauma and a desire for revenge following the brutal death of his mother and young brother, the need to survive and thrive in a cruel world, a horrible father) without ever excusing it. Jorg is almost painfully self-aware, and makes no excuses to the reader. I have an awful tendency to fall in book-love with villainous characters, but some of Jorg’s specific actions as well as his overall attitude to life were sufficiently beyond the pale that I never got to the stage of liking him. Nonetheless, he fascinated me.

While it’s undoubtedly both a clever and a well-executed device, an evil hero is by no means all this book has going for it. The world is interesting, firstly because the concept of a hundred little principalities fighting to seize control of what was once a united empire allows for lots of politics and scheming. Secondly, because what it quickly becomes clear that what as first feels like a classic medieval fantasy world is in fact a post-apocalyptic earth where the survivors have lost the use of technology and returned to feudal ways. And somehow also gained a degree of magic – possibly through radiation left behind by a nuclear war, though that wasn’t fully explained. I’m not sure this always 100% worked (why would people replicate medieval norms quite so exactly?) but it added an extra level of interest and distinguished the setting from your average fantasy novel. It did remind me a bit of the approach used in the Book of the New Sun series, where what appear to be towers are actually abandoned spaceships, but that’s no bad thing.

The plot is entertaining and flows well. The writing is great. It’s not over-clever or pretentious, it simply works. At times it’s actually quite funny, if you can cope with dark humour. The violence is ceaseless and at times extreme, but it’s never really gratuitous or lingered over. Most of the really bad stuff (the rapes, the torture of a bishop by sticking needles in his brain etc etc) happens “off-screen” and is mentioned in passing by characters, not described in loving detail by the author. I’m not someone who likes to read about violence for violence’s sake or who will choose to read a book because it boasts of being “dark.” I could never get on with Joe Abercrombie’s book, partly because the world depressed me too much, but despite the fact that the world and the protagonist presented here are if anything, even darker, it somehow kept me entertained and almost cheerful, swept along by the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the protagonist. In his absolute determination to succeed in his quest to become Emperor of his fragmented world whatever it takes, he reminded me of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, though unlike Milton, Lawrence knows full well he’s of the devil’s party.

There are some books I’d recommend to nearly everyone. This is not one of them. If you like clean-cut heroes, shy away from violence or simply want to see some signs of joy and goodness in your fantasy worlds, you should probably stay away. But if you’re looking for a very different and original fantasy novel and think you can cope with a dark world and a morally empty lead and a ruined world, this is a great and surprisingly fun read.

Holiday Reading Update 3 – Outlander

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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Over the course of this week, I’ve been working through the back-log of reviews of books I read during my honeymoon to Bali. Now, The Luminaries (which I loved) had won the Booker Prize. We Were Liars (which I was ambivalent about) had received rave reviews on several of my favourite blogs.But neither of them had been recommended to me anywhere near as frequently or as evangelically as today’s holiday read, Outlander. In fact, I’m not sure that any book has ever been recommended to me as often as Outlander has. You love eighteenth century history? Outlander. You like time-travel? Outlander. You enjoy romance, as long as it’s done well and had a three-dimensional hero? Outlander, Outlander, Outlander.

So, safely ensconced on my sunlounger, I finally decided to bow to the collective wisdom of Goodreads and WordPress. And while this was a good holiday read in the sense that it combines being reasonably light while providing hours of reading time, rarely can a book have been less suited to a location. It’s the sort of book that’s best read by a warm fire on a stormy night or out on a moor on a wild day. And ideally, it’s probably best read in Scotland. Considering I live in England, none of those conditions would be too difficult to arrange most of the time,  but being difficult, I waited until I had tropical heat and the smell of spice and incense everywhere.

None of those drinks behind us are whisky, and this is definitely not Scotland.

None of those drinks behind us are whisky, and this is definitely not Scotland.

On a similar note, I like to read and drink things that either conjure up the spirit of a book or that characters in a novel particularly enjoy. And in this case, that meant one thing – whisky, and lots of it. The problem being that whisky was not particularly easy to get hold of. Luscious cocktails? Yes. Fresh coconut water? Yes. Locally produced beer and wine? Absolutely. Finest Scottish malts? Not so much.  As a result, I may have ended up panic buying a £16 shot of whisky when I finally saw some on a menu.  (It could have been worse. I could have been reading Book Two which is set in France and involves copious quantities of brandy, which was even more of a challenge to procure).

Though I think the characters roast a whole boar at one point, so I managed one meal that sort of tied in at least

Though I think the characters roast a whole boar at one point, so I managed one meal that sort of tied in at least

OUTLANDER (DIANE GABALDON) 4 STARS

Oh no, it's my pet hate: a cover showing a scene from a film or TV adaptation of a book. Still I (just - by about a week)) read this in time to be a smug "book fan" when watching the tv show!

Oh no, it’s my pet hate: a cover showing a scene from a film or TV adaptation of a book. Still I (just – by about a week)) read this in time to be a smug “book fan” when watching the tv show!

Despite all those recommendations and the fact that I was quite intrigued by the premise – 1940s army nurse finds herself in 1740s Scotland and ends up torn between two husbands in different centuries – I waited so long to read this as I was worried that the romance might be cheesy and the history badly researched. I was also rather put-off by the 900 page length, which seemed a bit over-the-top for what I was expecting to be a light, escapist read.

Firstly, if you’re going to read it, I strongly suggest that you do what I did and save it for a holiday or a time when you’re able to spend hours reading. Its sheer length means it takes ages to get through (and I say this as a very fast reader), plus, it’s the sort of book where you really need to absorb yourself in the world, not dip in and out.

Secondly, I’ve seen some debate about the genre of this book, but in my opinion, it’s predominantly a romance. It’s a well-done romance, and there are certainly also aspects of straight-up historical fiction, of paranormal/fantasy, and of adventure, but frankly, if romance leaves you cold, I really wouldn’t recommend this one. Similarly, I struggle to imagine many men enjoying it.

So, with those two points, out of the way, what did I think about it? In short, there were lots of things I loved and some that I hated, but the story sucked me in to the extent that I was able to happily overlook flaws that would have had me throwing a different book across the room.

For me, the best things about the book were the prose – which is much better than you might expect in this sort of genre novel – the main character (Claire) and the setting. Enjoyably tough and mostly unfazed by the increasingly strange things that happen to her, Clare was also just vulnerable enough to be likeable and believable. I also loved that she was sexually confident and happy to induct a virgin husband into the delights of the flesh – a nice change from all the painfully virginal heroines that seem to be the current trend. The other characters were generally interesting too, though some of the clansmen started to blur into one. Jamie, the main love interest, isn’t really my literary type. I generally prefer suave, charming and slightly edgy men to the rugged but adorable sorts, but while I wasn’t swooning on the floor, he was a strong romantic lead and definitely made me smile. If he could get a response out of me, then if hulking kilted warrior types are your cup of tea, you’re going to be in love.

The setting – both in terms of history and geography – was lovingly described and seemed well-researched. I really felt like I was right there in eighteenth century Scotland. The author mostly resisted the urge to over-romanticise the period, giving readers the danger and dirt as well as the excitement. In-between several dramatic episodes, there are enlightening scenes of everyday life: delivering a foal, preparing for a feast, treating minor injuries.

I felt that having Claire time-travel from the 1940s rather than from the present day was a stroke of genius, for several reasons. Firstly, it gives readers who love history two beautifully depicted periods instead of one. Secondly, it helps to stop the book from having dated. Thirdly, I found it slightly more believable that someone who has lived through WW2 could cope with the deprivations of eighteenth century life, compared to someone from today.

Moving onto the bad. Firstly, while I liked the way the book spent time fully immersing the reader in its world rather than dashing from plot point to plot point, I thought it was a bit too long overall, and got repetitive in parts. I think it would have felt a lot sharper with, say, 150 fewer pages.

Secondly, I found the way that Claire was constantly bouncing from one disaster to another – including seemingly endless attempted rapes – to not quite work. It felt oddly episodic. I also felt the time-travel elements were underplayed. I’d loved to have seen more use made of the fact that Clare knew things about the characters and knew things that would happen in the future.

Thirdly, there was a rather odd obsession with beatings of every kind – from parents chastising their children, to the clan punishing a teenager for indecency, to a brutal flogging, to a torture session, and perhaps most oddly, a scene that sat uncomfortably between a kinky spanking and straight-up wife beating, leading straight into a scene that equally uncomfortably blurred the lines between rough sex and marital rape. Along with the scenes of gratuitous Catholicism, while it may have had some basis in period accuracy, it sometimes felt like a not altogether pleasant look into the author’s psyche.

Above all, the main villain, Randall, was a bit of a let down. The idea that the sadistic English army captain who is oppressing the highlands is Claire’s loving 1940s husband’s ancestor was a brilliant one, but ended up being underused. It would have been brilliant if he was charming as well as cruel and if Claire was having to fight an attraction to him and stop herself from linking him with her husband in her mind. One scene almost suggested things were about to go down that route, but no. He ended up being the most horribly one-dimensional villain I’ve come across in a long time. He literally seemed unable to hold a conversation with someone (male or female, young or old) without attempting to rape and/or beat them, and he didn’t appear to have any sort of grand plan beyond finding more people to rape and beat. This irritated me more than it usually would, as it seemed to be at least partly playing up to the “English=evil, Scottish/Irish = good” stereotype so beloved of Hollywood directors. At times, this book made Braveheart look non-partisan – not always a comfortable read as an English woman.

Overall, despite those issues, I’d recommend this, and I haven’t been able to resist starting Book Two. I’d suggest you consider whether these are things that would put you off a book completely, or whether, with strong characters, a well-realised setting and a generally interesting plot, you’d be able to overlook them.

For what it’s worth, I did end up diving straight into Book Two, which I’m probably enjoying even more, and  I have found myself thinking about the books when I’m not reading them, which is always a good sign – although not wildly helpful when I’ve had to do pieces of work relating to the Scottish Referendum!

Review of The Girl on the Golden Coin

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

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I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front recently, mainly because my wedding is getting ever closer – less than three weeks now – meaning I’m spending far more time looking critically at flowers and cakes than typing merrily away. On the plus side, in an attempt to keep my sanity intact, I’ve been reading loads, and have developed quite the back-log of reviews.

My last post was a list of my planned summer reading, and I described one of the entries on it like this:

“Precisely because I love history so much, I tend to be slightly wary of historical fiction, but from what I hear, this Restoration-era novel about Lady Frances Stewart is both well written and well researched, as well as full of intrigue. And more importantly, the main character marries the son of the real-life Lord George Stewart.”

On that basis, of all the books I’ve read recently, The Girl on the Golden Coin seemed by far the most fitting to review, especially as I read most of during a trip to Oxford to meet with my wedding photographer (who incidentally took some amazing practice shots)

So did the book deliver?

THE GIRL ON THE GOLDEN COIN – MARCI JEFFERSON

THE BLURB

Impoverished and exiled to the French countryside after the overthrow of the English Crown, Frances Stuart survives merely by her blood-relation to the Stuart Royals. But in 1660, the Restoration of Stuart Monarchy in England returns her family to favor. Frances discards threadbare gowns and springs to gilded Fontainebleau Palace, where she soon catches King Louis XIV’s eye. But Frances is no ordinary court beauty, she has Stuart secrets to keep and people to protect. The king turns vengeful when she rejects his offer to become his Official Mistress. He banishes her to England with orders to seduce King Charles II and stop a war.

Armed in pearls and silk, Frances maneuvers through the political turbulence of Whitehall Palace, but still can’t afford to stir a scandal. Her tactic to inspire King Charles to greatness captivates him. He believes her love can make him an honest man and even chooses Frances to pose as Britannia for England’s coins. Frances survives the Great Fire, the Great Plague, and the debauchery of the Restoration Court, yet loses her heart to the very king she must control. Until she is forced to choose between love or war.

On the eve of England’s Glorious Revolution, James II forces Frances to decide whether to remain loyal to her Stuart heritage or, like England, make her stand for Liberty. Her portrait as Britannia is minted on every copper coin. There she remains for generations, an enduring symbol of Britain’s independent spirit and her own struggle for freedom.

 

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MY REVIEW- 3 STARS

I love history, and the Stuart period is a particular favourite of mine – and one that often tends to get neglected by novelists and film makers in favour of the Tudor and Georgian periods that bracket it. Charles II is probably my favourite English King, and I also have a soft spot for Louis XIV and his French court, so this book was really quite an easy sell for me. I was expecting sex, glamour and intrigue – and it’s fair to say it delivered on some of those points and less so on others.

This wasn’t just a general book about the Restoration court. It focussed firmly on the adventures of one woman, Frances Stuart, and as a result, it was always going to stand or fall by a combination of how interesting that character was in real life and how sympathetic and intriguing the author managed to make her. Despite the fact that I used to study history reasonably seriously, I’ve always been far more interested in individuals than in grand, sweeping narratives or battles, so I was all ready for the author to make me develop a massive girl crush of Ms Stuart. Sadly, she mostly didn’t deliver. I went into this book knowing a handful of things about the character – that she’d been a mistress of Charles II, that she was very beautiful and set the fashions of the times, and that she eventually married a character I’d better not name for fear of spoilers (*see footnote), but who I was very interested in hearing more about. By the end of the book, I didn’t feel I’d learnt that much more about her, or forged any kind of real connection.

It’s probably a bit unfair to compare what’s basically a classier than average historical romance with a modern masterpiece, but I couldn’t help contrasting this with my experience of reading Wolf Hall, which also looked at historical events through the eyes of a character who is usually in the background of traditional retellings of the period. By the end of that, I felt that I knew Thomas Cromwell better than my best friends and that I would cheer him on whatever he did. Here, I struggled to get any understanding of Stuart’s motivations or real personality. Did she want to sleep with the French King or was his pursuit stressful and relentless? How about the English King? Who did she want to marry? Her approach to life seemed to vacillate wildly from one moment to the next, and I never knew quite what outcome I should be routing for. To makes matters worse, it was never quite clear what King Charles saw in her apart from her extreme beauty – which is probably quite historically accurate, but makes for a dull read. Throughout, I felt far more interested (and on the verge of cheering for) Frances’ main rival, Lady Castelmaine, who was also beautiful, but who combined it with wit, intelligence and some entertaining scheming.

On the plus side, rooms, clothes and events were lavishly described, and I got a real sense of what life was like for the wealthy and titled in this period. Some of the romance was very sweet and although it was never particularly graphic, some of the sex was really quite hot – indeed it was more interesting because of both the characters’ and the author’s restraint.

The blurb, some of the internet buzz, and the gorgeously classy cover gave me the impression that this was going to be about more than just romance, and that as well as who was sleeping with who, the book would delve into the politics of the time. Despite a few token references to religious conflict and wars, it fundamentally failed to deliver on this point. I haven’t marked it down for this, as it’s no crime for a book not to be quite the genre I was expecting, but if you’re considering whether or not to read this, it’s worth bearing in mind that it is basically just a standard historical romance. Similarly, I disagreed with some of the author’s interpretations of historical events (if you ask me, Louis XIV loved Charles I’s sister, and Frances Stuart loved her eventual husband to the extent she’d defy the king’s wrath to be with him) but again, that hasn’t affected my score – the author had clearly done some research, and part of the fun of history is that people can reach very different conclusions from the same source material.

So, to read or not to read? If you enjoy historical romance and either like the period or are looking for something slightly different, you may well enjoy this. It’s glamorous, sexy and fun, and a fairly easy read. Just don’t expect much from the main character, or much historical context.

*That’s what I wrote in my Goodreads review. I think the not revealing Frances’ eventual husband ship has rather sailed as far as this blog post is concerned, so I’ll just come right out and say I did not like the author’s portrayal of Lord Stewart Junior one little bit, but that’s just because I irrationally wanted him to read like my completely made up portrayal of his father.

 

REVIEW – Dreams of Gods and Monsters

27 Sunday Apr 2014

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For the last couple of weeks, cruel person that I am, I’ve more or less banned myself from reading. Ivory Terrors needed finishing, and then more recently, I needed to prepare for the launch – May 1st, this coming Thursday, in case anyone is in danger of forgetting. It’s surprising how much time doing the final read-through and formatting, requesting reviews, and organising a blog tour takes up. When I’m actually writing, other people’s books inspire and motivate me. When I just need to get my head down and get everything perfected and organised, they risk getting in the way. I decided I needed my imagination firmly inside The Cavaliers, and not in someone else’s world. 

This self-imposed denial was made rather easier by the fact that my beloved Kindle broke a month or two ago. It’s much simpler to resist the lure of an intriguing novel when getting it involves either leaving the house or waiting a few days for it to be delivered. 

But then, my well-intentioned plans were thwarted. Because I realised that Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone No.3) was going to be released on 16th April. And having loved the first two books in the series, and having been waiting for it for ages, and having considered it to be my second most eagerly anticipated book of the year (No. 1 is Ruin is Rising), there was simply no way I wasn’t going to buy it on release day. Conveniently, release day pretty much coincided with the long Easter weekend, so I thought I’d be justified in losing myself in a book. And purchasing myself a shiny new Kindle Paperwhite. 

The review is below. In short, it was good, which is lucky, as it’s so long that reading it took up a good proportion of that weekend!

DREAMS OF GODS AND MONSTERS- LAINI TAYLOR 

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THE BLURB

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.

Common enemy, common cause. 
When Jael’s brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz … something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy. 

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

THE REVIEW – 4 STARS

I hugely enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy. If you’re reading this review, I bet you did too, and I bet nothing I could say could put you off buying it. I absolutely couldn’t wait to read it, and on the whole, this final book doesn’t disappoint.

All the old characters make a return, along with some interesting new ones, and both the war-focussed and the romantic plotlines are satisfyingly resolved. This is an extremely long book (I read it on my kindle, but the hardcopy must be around 600 pages), but between the intriguing plot, engaging characters, and strong writing style, it never dragged – though I found it to be slightly less of a page-turner than the previous instalment.

This series has always trod a strange line between YA paranormal romance/urban fantasy, and the sort of full-blown high fantasy that George R Martin would be proud of.For me, the first book fell more into the former category, especially towards the end, while the second book prioritised war and history over forbidden love. This instalment falls somewhere in-between, combining scenes of relatively normal life on earth with full-scale battles in another world.

I enjoy both of those genres, but I prefer this series when it focusses on the latter, and gives the reader strange creatures and conspiracies in other worlds rather than concentrating on the romance between an angel and a (more or less) human girl. For some reason, the relationship between Karou and Akiva doesn’t do much for me. He doesn’t capture my imagination, and they never seem to have much chemistry. Things were better in Book Two, when there was real tension and distance between them and I started to warm to their story, but here, the author seemed to be manufacturing reasons to keep them apart, and it didn’t really capture my imagination. It’s odd, because the relationship between the two supporting characters, Mik and Zuzana, is always both touching and funny, and a new cross-species love affair that sprung up in this book really touched me too.

The more fantastical side of things continued to be very well done. We get more history, more folklore and more of the ongoing war between chimera and angels, along with lots of internal conflicts within the two sides. We finally get to see the Stelians, a different race of angels with a totally different culture and history and different powers. There are all sorts of revelations and drama. With the new ruler of the angels “off-screen” for 95% of the time and the White Wolf dead, it sometimes felt like we were lacking an immediately loathable villain. The latter really made the second book for me, so though I couldn’t regret his well-deserved death, I did miss his effect on the plot. That said, Ziri’s attempts to portray him to keep the army under control and the internal struggles it causes him were some of the highlights of the book. Generally, I really couldn’t fault the fantasy side of things.

From reading some other reviews, I suspect I’m in a minority here, but one of my very favourite aspects was the completely new plot involving a genetics PHD student who has terrifying, literally heart-stopping dreams about the end of the world, in which the apocalypse is her fault, and who is hiding some initially undisclosed secret about herself and her family. The “what on earth is going on here” aspect of this reminded me of the sense of mystery I loved so much in the first book, when you didn’t know why Karou was collecting teeth for monsters. And when the answers were finally revealed, the backstory and revelations it led to were amazing.

Overall, not quite a perfect book, due mainly to the sometimes lacklustre romance, but a really fantastic one all the same, and absolutely worth a read. A fitting end to a great series.

 

Review of Before I Go to Sleep

10 Monday Feb 2014

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Friday was my seventh anniversary of getting together with my lovely fiancé Freddie, and we spent it in Oxford, wedding planning during the day and having lots of fun in the gorgeous Malmaison hotel in the evening.

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It’s always slightly odd to visit Oxford nowadays. I do it about once or twice a year on average, and I can generally barely remember how to navigate the place, but it always helps to refresh my writing. Malmaison is built around the old Oxford Castle, and the weird mound that I use as the Cavaliers headquarters/cells in Screaming Spires. It was very strange to wake up and see that through my bedroom window in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

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I seem to be promising this every week, but now I’m starting to get drafts of Ivory Terrors back from my beta readers, there’ll be a post with a cover and a definite release date asap – within a week maybe, or two if I’m really lax. 

For today, here’s a review of a book that everybody seems to have been talking about for a while, and that I was in two minds about whether to read, but have finally got round to: Before I Go to Sleep. 

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP – SJ WATSON 

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The Blurb

Memories define us.

So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love – all forgotten overnight.

And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine’s life.

The Review

You know how when you really love someone, you’re aware of their faults, but they somehow don’t bother you in the slightest? That’s how I felt about this book. Sometimes, I read negative reviews of books I’ve really enjoyed, and can barely believe the reviewer has read the same book as me. That’s not the case here. If you look on Goodreads or Amazon, you’ll find several one star reviews that accuse the book’s plot of being far-fetched, contrived and predictable – and on reflection, I agree with them. And yet I managed to entirely suspend my disbelief whilst reading, and I enjoyed it so much that those faults don’t bother me one little bit.

The story was so compellingly written and whizzed along at such a pace that I could barely wait to find out both what was going to happen next and what was really going on. There was a great air of mystery, and of tension, even fear. Most of the time, the heroine does little more than wander around her house, write in her diary, look at old photographs, and have dinner with her husband. And yet the author rachets up the pressure so that these superficially homely scenes have more drama and menace than most authors manage to achieve with scenes of a police shoot-out or a bank heist.

Amnesia has been used many times before in books and films (this particularly reminded me of Memento), but this book makes it feel fresh, and really gets you thinking about what it would be like to wake up every morning not knowing who you are or what happened either the day before or ten years ago. Even without the underlying sense that something creepy was going on, this premise would have been terrifying and moving enough on its own.

Christine is the ultimate unreliable narrator – so unreliable that even she has no idea whether or not she’s telling the truth about anything that has happened previously. For the last few decades, following an initially unspecified accident, she loses her memories every time she goes to sleep, and each morning has to be reminded of her age and reintroduced to her husband. But when the book opens, she’s started to write a diary on the advice of a new doctor. There’s a bit of conventional present tense narrative to open and close the novel, but the bulk of the text is made up of this diary, which slowly starts to give her the thing she’s lacked for so long – a sense of continuity and of who she is.

Previously, with no frame of reference, Christine would accept anything her husband told her as absolute truth, but through her journal, she, and the reader, start to realise he is hiding things, if not outright lying. But it’s never clear whether he’s doing it to protect her, for his own convenience or for a darker motive – and the evidence swings back and forth as the days pass, until the reader is unsure what to believe. The journal and the slow reveal both worked really well for me.

I’d highly recommend this as a quick, thrilling and unique read. I’ve gone for four stars rather than five as it’s ultimately a little lacking in substance and because while the overly convenient plot devices didn’t spoil my enjoyment, they did stop me from regarding it as a truly great novel.

Book Review – The Uninvited

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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There’ll be an update on Ivory Terrors very, very soon. With any look, within a week or two I should have a cover, a blurb, and an official release date, all of which I will of course immediately share on here. 

In the meantime, while it’s not quite as exciting, here’s a book review. And unusually for me, it’s a review of a real book, made of real paper. My beloved Kindle died a few weeks ago (this old post might give you some idea of my feelings on the situation), so until I get round to buying myself a shiny new Paperwhite, I’ve been desperately hunting down paperbacks, a skill I almost seem to have lost over the last two years. They feel all heavy in my hand and get soggy in the bath and I have to physically turn the pages. It’s like writing with a quill. Still, at least they don’t suddenly and inexplicably go blank… This review is dedicated to the charity shop near work, and its great collection of books that cost a pound.

THE UNINVITED – LIZ JENSEN

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THE BLURB 

A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. 

Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. 

Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.

THE REVIEW – 4 STARS

Recently, I’ve tended to read books that I’ve heard a lot about and that come heavily recommended. I’d never heard of this book before I started reading it, and it’s not really my normal genre, but I spotted it in a charity shop and the premise – young children all over the world start killing their parents – intrigued me so much that I had to give it a go.

On the whole, I’m not disappointed that I did. Throughout, the writing is really brilliant, especially for what’s ultimately basically a thriller. It’s narrated by Hesketh, a brilliant anthropologist with Asperger’s Syndrome. I think the autistic narrator concept has been a bit overdone in recent years, and I groaned a little when I realised that it was being used here, but it actually worked really well. Making Hesketh extremely physically handsome but utterly socially dysfunctional made for an interesting dynamic – he gets about as much attention from women as James Bond, but let’s just say he doesn’t handle these situations quite as smoothly! I ended up really liking Hesketh, both as a character and a person, and his strange, fact-filled narration really made the book for me.

The plot of the first half was utterly compelling. There are several instances from all over the world of very young children killing their parents, and other instances of good employees sabotaging their companies and then brutally killing themselves. The connection between the individual cases and the two types of cases is unclear, but there are weird factors that keep cropping up – those affected eat lots of salt, eat insects, have problems with their eyes. They talk about being possessed by strange children, and in a very clever move, characters from around the world blame the same issues on different beings from their own superstition – whether that’s jinns, trolls or UFOs. Throughout this section, I was racking my brain trying to link together the little clues and work out what was happening. I also found it fantastically creepy and disturbing – perhaps even outright scary. I don’t know whether it was fear or the need to solve the puzzle of the plot that kept my awake the night that I read the first half in a mad rush, but I certainly didn’t get much sleep, and couldn’t wait to start reading again the next day.

The second half wasn’t bad, but it didn’t grab me in the same way. The more extreme the international situation became and the more people died or started displaying the odd symptoms, the less I cared. I was reminded of that old quote that “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” Furthermore, the story took an odd soap opera style turn, with far too much time spent on Hesketh’s relationship with his ex-partner, her new lover, and a behavioural scientist he was interested in. That said, there was a very well handled twist in the story of the breakdown of his relationship, and his bond with his stepson was utterly touching.

So even if it had dipped a little in my estimation, I was still rushing towards the end, dying to reach the big reveal, see how the crisis would be resolved, find out just how the little clues fitted together and find out what exactly had been going on. And then I reached the last chapter, and it did none of that. It reminded me of when kids write stories, tie themselves up in knots, panic and conclude with “and then I woke up and it was all a dream.” Okay, that’s not literally what happens – the events are perfectly real – but readers are given no proper explanation of how this has happened or how it’s going to end. Just as irritatingly, the narration suddenly takes on an overly heavy handed environmentalist message and seems to imply that all the murder and barbarism we’ve seen is okay, because maybe it will stop global warming.

In conclusion, this is a well-written and gripping thriller with an interesting sci-fi or paranormal edge and a great protagonist. It’s definitely worth a read, just don’t expect all the little hints and mysteries to coalesce. If it wasn’t for the ending and certain bits of the second half, I’d have considered giving five star, as it was I was so disappointed that it nearly ended up with a three. But it kept me thoroughly entertained and intrigued for hours, so I’ll just pretend the last couple of chapters never happened.

 

Review of Throne of Glass

08 Sunday Dec 2013

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Tonight, I’m reviewing Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas, which I’d heard great things about but which has proven to be one of my most disappointing reads of the year. 

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THE BLURB

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake: she got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament—fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?

MY REVIEW – 2.5 STARS

There seems to have been a mini-trend recently for full-blown high-fantasy (rather than the more traditional paranormal) aimed at a broadly female and teenage market. I’ve read several of these sorts of books recently – Seraphina, Shadow and Bone, and Smoke and Bone (yes, the last two are different books!) and really enjoyed them, but thIs book was by far the weakest of the four. There was nothing actively wrong with it and nothing that wowwed me. Plot, characters, prose – it was all just okay, readable but instantly forgettable.

The plot revolves around Celaena, a young female assassin who’s released from captivity in a hellish salt mine to compete to the death against various other murderers and thieves to become the champion of the despotic king. The main focus of the book is the months long death match, but there’s also a romantic subplot (both the Crown Prince and the Captain of the Guards have a thing for her) and a plot around something evil stirring in the castle and portals to other dimensions.

I quite liked Celaena. She combines toughness, vulnerability and a taste for pretty dresses. Most heroic fantasy tends to have its heroes start from scratch. I thought the cleverest part of the book was making Celaena someone who’s already become famous as an assassin but has since hit rock bottom and lost most of her physical fitness and mental drive. The author didn’t shy away from showing her throwing up when she ate a proper meal after months or starvation, or struggling to keep up on a run. It wasn’t quite as extreme, but the general approach almost reminded me of the broken hero-turned-torturer from The Blade Itself – not a place I’d have expected this sort of book to go. And unlike many similar characters, I thought that most of her decisions made sense, though at times I became frustrated with her refusal to share her suspicions and worries with people.

I’ve always said that I have a high tolerance for “Mary-Sue” type characters – I’d rather read about someone who is extraordinary than someone who is mediocre – but I’ve got to admit that at times Celaena tested even my patience. Fair enough, she had to be an amazing fighter for the competition and she (arguably) had to be beautiful for the love story, but did she also have to be a brilliant piano player and a great dancer? Also, she loves to read, but to me, this felt as though it had been shoehorned in to make her more sympathetic to readers and it didn’t quite work.

The main weakness however was the romance. I just had zero interest in either of the two options and I didn’t feel any real chemistry between them and Celaena, or any real tension between the two of them over who would end up with her.

The other plots were competently handled and quite fun in places, but I just felt like everything here had been done better elsewhere. Just because there’s a kick-ass heroine and a love triangle, it doesn’t mean that a book automatically has to feel clichéd. Shadow and Bone covered similar ground and made it feel fresh and new. But here, the plot just seems a bit old. It didn’t help that I didn’t really enjoy the author’s writing style.

I think that this is much more squarely suited to teen girls than some of the similar books I mentioned, which seem to have more cross-over appeal – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if you’re an older YA fan, consider yourself warned.

Despite my fairly critical review, I’d cautiously recommend this to people who like the genre and are in the target audience. It’s a vaguely entertaining way to while away a few hours, just don’t expect anything that amazing or new. And if you haven’t read them yet, I’d recommend trying one of the other books in this genre before resorting to this. I’m probably not going to bother with the sequel.

Review of Fangirl

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

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Today I’m reviewing Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, aka the book with the best cover ever. I doubt any writer can look at this image and fail to identify with the daydreaming author locked in her story, but the combination of the girl looking a bit like me in my more casual moments and the characters in her thought bubble being just about able to pass as George and Tom (wrong hair colour to hair length split, but I’ll settle for what I can get) left me a little more overcome than most. I saw this a few weeks before it was released, and bought it the day it came out, something I usually only do for favourite authors or long awaited sequels. So, can I judge a book by it’s cover?

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THE BLURB (and I’ve got to admit, once I’d stopped cooing over the cover long enough to read the blurb, it left me even more desperate to get my hands on the book)

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan . . .

But for Cath, being a fan is her life — and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

 

THE REVIEW – 4 STARS

“Why are you reading that? Something without a dragon or an elf on the cover,” the main character’s twin sister asks her at one point in this book.

I could have asked myself the same question. As a general rule, I like paranormal, fantasy, futuristic or historical books – anything that doesn’t deal with life in the here and now. Or on occasion, something serious and Booker Prize winning. So why was I making this rare foray into contemporary coming of age romance? Quite simply, the moment I saw the cover, I knew I was going to love this book. That girl, sitting there, daydreaming about her characters and typing away while her boyfriend tries to get her attention – that’s me. I’ve never actually written fanfiction (though I’ve occasionally been tempted) but I’ve read plenty of it, I’ve been slightly unhealthily obsessed with various books at one time or another, and I do a lot of my own writing. Therefore the idea of a main character who’s an obsessive writer of fanfiction really caught my imagination.

I went in with high expectations, and the book didn’t disappoint. It’s actually almost three books in one: the story of the geeky heroine Cath’s first year at university, extracts from the series she’s so obsessed with, and extracts from her own fanfiction. Themes from the two fantasy worlds intertwine neatly with Cath’s experiences in the “real” world.

Cath been an uber-fan of a Harry Potter-esque series called Simon Snow for years. Most other serious Snow fans know and love her writing, especially the epic “Carry On, Simon”, her full-length imagining of the yet to be released eighth book which she’s desperately trying to finish before the real book comes out. To some degree, her writing is a coping mechanism for dealing with the way her mum walked out on her when she was six and her loving but heavily bi-polar father. Over the course of the year, she’s torn between sinking deeper into her fantasy world or making a life for herself at college.

These sections are beautifully done. The joy of writing really leapt off the page, and there were so many comments that I could hugely identify with – some in a poignant way, others in a literally laughing out loud way. It was great to come across a book with so many nice characters. I can’t be the only person sick to death of backstabbing female friends and borderline abusive alpha male boyfriends in books, so Reagan (bitchy and edgy, but fundamentally supportive and decent room-mate) and Levi (nicest boy in the world love interest)were a refreshing change. Levi and Cath’s slowly burgeoning romance was utterly delightful.

It’s worth pointing out that Cath’s a little more extreme than I was initially anticipating. I was expecting a character who was very geeky and a bit shy, whereas she actually comes across more like someone with a serious anxiety disorder and a major self-defeating streak. This made it harder than I was expecting for me to fully identify with her, but I still loved her as a character. I also felt at times that the way nearly everyone had an “issue” (bi-polar dad! severely dyslexic boyfriend! borderline alcoholic sister!) sometimes left the book in danger of turning into a psychology handbook, but the author managed to avoid letting things get too heavy or saccharine.

The interspersed extracts from the book and the fanfic were great fun, and although it’s heavily Harry Potter based, the author did a great job of simultaneously creating both her own world and her character’s interpretation of it. That said, apart from whether or not the two males leads are kissing each other (yep, Cath’s a slash kind of girl), it was generally hard to tell which bits were “real” and which were fics. Fair enough, by the time of Carry On Simon, Cath’s meant to be writing as well as, if not better than, the original author, but she’s been doing this since her early teens and some of the extracts are from that period. A few badly written, Mary-Sue strewn early bits of her writing would have been hilarious and also demonstrated the development of her writing over time.

Speaking of writing style, I thought the author’s prose was really quite clever. In several places, she seemed to take examples of the sort of bad or clichéd writing you can sometimes get in fanfiction (over-use of adverbs, meaningless descriptions of people’s movements) and turn them on their head. “Reagan rolled her eyes again. Cath made a mental note to stop rolling her eyes at people.” “They pulled crunchily into Cath’s driveway.”

In short, I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who’s ever loved a book a bit too much. I think you probably have to have at least a passing familiarity with fanfiction to properly appreciate the book (and ideally a basic understanding of Harry Potter), but it’s a lovely story regardless. It will make you laugh, make you smile, and make you think about the right balance between your inner life and outer life. And if you’re anything like me, it will also make you want to drink a gingerbread latte, listen to Kayne West and read the Outsiders out loud, because the descriptions of Cath doing those things are just so fun and evocative.

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Has anyone read Fangirl, and what do you think?  And more generally, what’s your opinion on fanfiction? Forget glowing reviews, prizes, or bestselling status, I think few things would make me feel happier as an author than if someone wrote Cavaliers fanfic! The closest I’ve ever come was when someone wrote fanfiction of my university thesis – I kid you not.

Review of Siege and Storm

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

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As promised in this post from Monday,  from now on I’m going to try to put up reviews of all the books I read on this blog, not just on Amazon and Goodreads. I started with my 5-star review of Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo. I immediately read the sequel, Siege and Storm, so here’s my review of that one. Warning –  If you haven’t read the first book and you’re as neurotic about spoilers as I am, you might not want to read any further.

SIEGE AND STORM

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Blurb:

Darkness never dies.

Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. She can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her–or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm

My Review:

4 Stars

I finished Shadow and Bone, the first book in the trilogy, at about 10
PM. Instead of stopping reading and getting ready for bed, I immediately downloaded this sequel and launched straight into reading it, not stopping until it was 3.30 am and I physically couldn’t keep my eyes open. The next morning, I blasted through the rest of it. This hopefully gives an idea of how much I’ve been enjoying the series, and I can’t wait for Book Three to come out next year.

That said, while I gave Book One a definite 5 star rating, I’ve dropped this one to a 4. Most of what made the first book great – the interesting setting, the developed magic, the twists and turns, the fab characters – were still all present and correct but it just didn’t grab and thrill and obsess me to quite the same extent.

I think part of the problem is the one that’s a constant danger for the middle books of epic trilogies: the novelty and the uniqueness and the sense of the main character finding themselves that you get with a good first book has worn off, but until the third book, there can’t be any real resolution. A good chunk of the middle section of the book felt like filler – entertaining, well-written filler, but not something that really advanced the plot.

For me though, the major factor in the drop in star rating was the distinct lack of Darkling action. He was by far my favourite character in the first book and instantly entered the ranks of my favourite characters of all time. It was striking how much my attention waned when he wasn’t around in this book, and perked up in the few instances he reappeared. In fact, it made me feel rather shallow – I thought I’d loved the series for its unusual setting and interesting system of magic, but it turns out that a huge part of it was good old-fashioned crushing over the hot evil guy!

Speaking of evil guys,  it was also concerning than whenever he did appear, he was pretty unequivocally evil. I much preferred him aa a darkly sinister love interest than a full blown supervillian, and while there’s a part of me that would still like to see him and Alina end up together, I think he crossed several lines that will make this extremely difficult. It’s good that the author took some risks and moved the plot on, but I preferred the dynamic of the previous book where he was in charge of all the Grisha and been courted by him was an honour. And above all I missed them having any romantic scenes. There were a few tiny hints, but of their few scenes together, most were unutterably grim.

This is a little more rambling and emotional than most of my reviews and I think that’s a sign of how much the book got to me, so can only be regarded as a good thing. You should definitely read this book if you enjoyed the first one, just brace yourself for a bit of a different feel.