‘The Bride’ by Kacie Taylor. Ms Taylor contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d be interested in reviewing her take on the ‘beauty and the beast’ fairy tale. Of course I love to read new authors and I was intrigued by the premise so I said yes. So far I’m enjoying the story. I will post a review once I’ve finished the novel.
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Category Archives: Fantasy
Review: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
Transworld Publishers
2013-11-07
In the 40th Discworld novel it’s steam engine time.
Two book reviews
I know I said I wasn’t reviewing any books this month because I’m concentrating on my novel but I got to 43000 words yesterday so I took some time off to finish reading an ARC I’d got from http://www.netgalley.com and another book I’d borrowed from the library. My reviews follow.
Review: A Study in Darkness Book 2 of The Baskerville Affair by Emma Jane Holloway
29th October 2013
Del Ray
- ISBN 9780345537195
- $7.99
- Mass Market Paperback
After the events of A study in silk Eveline Cooper was exiled to her Grandmamma Holmes’ Devon estate, Nick has given up the circus and his horses to become a pirate, captain of the Red Jack, Imogen Roth is fending off unsuitable suitors and Tobias Roth is engaged to the Gold King’s daughter Alice Keating, who is pregnant. Desperate for her company in Scotland Imogen persuades Alice to invite Eveline to visit them at the Keating shooting estate. After a joyous reunion all is turned upside down by Tobias’s unexpected arrival. The Gold King manipulates all concerned and Eveline is once more exiled, this time to Whitechapel. Her mission is to seek out the Blue King’s ‘maker’ – the person designing and creating his weapons and war machines.
Review: A study in silks by Emma Jane Holloway
- Random House Publishing Group – Del Rey Spectra
- 24th September 2013
- ISBN 9780345537188
- $7.99
- EditionMass Market Paperback
I recently had the pleasure of reading an uncorrected proof copy of this, the first title in Emma Jane Holloway’s trilogy ‘The Baskerville Affair’. The next part, ‘A study in darkness’ will be published later this month and the final part ‘A study in ashes’ will be published in December. I have already started reading the second book and have requested the third.
But what are these novels about?
As the title suggests, these are a riff on the Sherlock Holmes canon (for my friends in the fandom it’s an AU fanfic). Set in an alternative Steampunk Victorian England ruled by ‘Steam Barons’ who control the power supply and ruthlessly suppress competition using any and all means possible. Eveline Cooper, the orphaned daughter of Sherlock Holmes’s disgraced younger sister and the army captain she eloped with, is making her entrance into Society with her dearest friend Imogen Roth, daughter of Lord Bancroft, former Ambassador to Vienna.
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Review: ‘Dead Ever After’ by Charlaine Harris
2013
Gollancz
The final adventure of Sookie Stackhouse begins the day after the penultimate novel ended: Sam the Shapeshifter lived and Eric the Vampire is not happy that Sookie used the fairy gift from her great-grandfather to bring Sam back and not to get him out of a sticky political situation. Everyone is upset. And then an old enemy comes back in to Sookie’s life, an instrument of unknown enemies. When she is murdered the police would quite like it if Sookie were the murderer. It all gets very stressful for Sookie as more enemies come out of the woodwork and Eric divorces her. Sam is distant and confusing, Bill a little too friendly.
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Review: ‘The Woken Gods’ by Gwenda Bond
Not yet published – Publication date 3rd September 2013
Angry Robot Ltd
Recently I joined www.netgalley.com, as I mentioned in a previous post, and this is one of the first books I have had the pleasure of reading and reviewing. It, like most of the books on Net Galley, is an ARC, or advance reader copy. Therefore I shall restrict this review to the plot and characters, and not discuss any perceived faults in the text, just as the author has asked. I’m nice like that.
‘The Woken Gods’ is set in Washington D.C. in the near future where all the gods have been woken from an eons long sleep. The Society of the Sun, which effectively rules the world now, as they were the ones who subdued the gods, keeps everything under control, with the help of magical relics.
Review: ‘The Warring States: Book II of the Wave Trilogy’ by Aiden Harte
2013
Quercus
Not too long ago I read a book called Irenicon, the first book in the Wave Trilogy. The adventures of Sofia Scaligeri and the fractious city of Rasenna continue in ‘The Warring States’.
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Review: ‘Tethers Book One of the Tethers Trilogy’ by Jack Croxall
5th February 2013
Karl and Esther live in a small village in Lincolnshire in the nineteenth century. Karl is the son of a German architect, dead for many years, and is brought up by his mother and aunt. Esther’s family runs the village pub. They are best friends. By sheer accident (and Karl’s inability to listen to his mother’s warning) they get drawn into the machinations of a secret organisation trying to find an artefact which will allow them to see the future. Travelling by yacht and narrow boat they make it to Nottingham and help interrupt the conspirator’s plans, gaining, and losing, several new friends along the way.
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Review: ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’ by Neil Gaiman
2013
Headline Publishing Group
The unknown narrator, escaping from a family funeral, returns to his childhood home, but not finding what he sought he carries on down the Lane, to the Hempstock Farm, home of his only childhood friend Lettie Hempstock, her mother and grandmother. While there he remembers the bizarre events that happened in the spring just after he turned seven, forty odd years before. Then, he forgets again.
The genius of Neil Gaiman’s storytelling is his ability to weave myth, memory and fantasy into original narratives. His unique take on stories that have been around forever makes them fresh and new, where a less inventive writer would be dull and repetitive.
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is another fine example of his creativity, and is currently fighting with ‘American Gods’ for first place on my list of favourite Neil Gaiman books (Mr Wednesday and ‘Lo-key’ Lyesmith are such wonderfully devious bastards – I love them), and by the end of the book I was crying. I felt so sorry for the narrator, and Ginnie Hempstock. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Hempstock ladies are based on the weird sisters. Whoever they are based on though, they are archetypal characters – the wise old lady, the motherly farm-wife, the wild country girls – without being caricatures. The narration, with it’s changing perspective, is a seamless reflection on memory; what is real? Which of our childhood memories do we forget and why?
This is a thought-provoking, beautifully written book. At 243 pages it isn’t huge, but I read it in four and a half hours. I couldn’t put it down.
Rose
Everything Is Better With Dragons 