Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
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’.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Warring States: Book II of the Wave Trilogy’ by Aiden Harte”
There’s a list, and I’ll be working ky way through it in the next couple of weeks, now I’ve done my civic duty.
2013
Gollancz
Book 4 of the ‘Peter Grant Series’
Peter, Lesley and their boss Thomas Nightingale (and Toby the dog) are back, continuing their search for the Faceless Man, while still dealing with all the weird stuff the rest of the Met would rather not admit existed. After several murders and the Spring Court, they track the Faceless Man and his organisation to a housing estate at Elephant and Castle.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Broken Homes’ by Ben Aaronovitch”
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.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Tethers Book One of the Tethers Trilogy’ by Jack Croxall”
2013
Madeleine Maxwell, an historian, is suggested for a position at St. Mary’s Priory, Institute of Historical Research, by her former school headmistress. She goes for the interview and finds that not all is as it seems at St. Mary’s Priory. Having taken the position she joins St Mary’s rigorous training programme at the end of which she gets the job, and a whole new life. And it is certainly eventful.
There are dinosaurs and explosions. And the great library at Alexandria burning down. With time-travel, adventure, gun fights, and a great dollop of humour the story starts slowly and picks up the pace until the aforesaid dinosaurs, explosions and burning libraries pull the story to its end at a great speed. I really liked this e-book. There were minor editing errors – misspellings mainly – but nothing to detract greatly from the plot.
Sarah Milton is a criminal profiler with the LAPD’s Violent Crime Unit; she’s helped solve several serial killings, and when she was a child she had an imaginary friend called Anna Nigma. Anna disappeared when Sarah’s mother was murdered.
During a trip to get some dog food Sarah is shot; a trip to the afterlife provides a clue to her mother’s murder, and then, when miraculously Sarah survives, Anna has returned. Sarah believes she’s going mad, until an old friend, in the course of investigating another serial killer ‘Raithe’, sends her to an old Chinese mystic, who collects ancient books. There’s a surprise in store for Sarah, and Anna.
Sarah, with Anna’s assistance, tracks down Raithe and his incorporeal accomplices. She goes to investigate, alone. Which is a big mistake. Her colleagues arrive a little too late.
I quite enjoyed this novel; the characters are engaging and the plot kept my interest. I especially enjoyed the development of the relationship between Sarah and Anna. Anna is a great character; she pulls pranks, is gobby and obnoxious, prone to temper tantrums, loves Sarah unconditionally and likes to play Scrabble. There’s a lot of potential in this series of books, especially for the development of the damaged Sarah, and her relationship with Ryan (a colleague), and the solving of her mother’s murder. Hopefully, Anna will eventually find out who she is as well.
I try not to judge harshly, but I do have a couple of criticisms. I found some of the characters too convenient and predictable – Meghan the trust fund baby, who just so happens to be the owner of a rare and ancient book collection, just when Sarah needs such a friend. I hope she’s developed as more than just helpful scenery in the rest of the books. Sarah needs a friend. Sarah’s dad is also a bit of a caricature of the distant father/politician. Unfortunately I found myself guessing the plot about half way through. It was obvious that Anna’s a ghost and that Raithe is murdering people as revenge for the already dead. I was only mildly surprised when I discovered that the same already dead were pulling his strings – it’s in his name, after all.
It’s possible I’ve read far too many supernatural and crime novels and I’m being picky; it doesn’t matter that this means I can predict a plot with a decent amount of accuracy because I can still enjoy a new story. I look forward to reading the next in the Sarah Milton Chronicles ‘Fidelis In Æternum’.
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
July 2012
Dark Minds Press
I found this collection of short stories in the library; I wish I’d left it there. Not because it’s bad but because the stories are so effectively creepy I’ve given myself a new set of nightmares. Which I don’t need, thanks a lot for asking.
If you like dark fiction and psychological stuff it’s a great collection but I’m a wuss and only managed to read four of the fifteen takes. The artwork throughout is sufficiently weird and is well drawn.
Bye
Rose
It’s 2004 and Thursday Next is in semi-retirement after a terrible accident which has left her unable to visit the BookWorld and means she has had to give up her Jurisfiction job. Her old mob SO-27 are back in business, but she’s not getting the job of leading them. Instead she becomes Wessex Chief Librarian.
Unfortunately, Swindon is due to be smote by a pillar of holy fire, unless Thursday’s daughter Tuesday can fin a way to get the anti-smiting shield to work. Then of course there is the additional problem that Friday Next is going to kill Tuesday’s boyfriend Gavin.
Jasper Fforde’s seventh Thursday Next novel is as surreal and entertaining as the first, with the additional bonus that it us internally consistent, so it makes marginally more sense, because I’ve been there before. Thursday as got older and wiser, the characters are developed further and the plot is as unique as ever.
2001
Hodder
This book was Jasper Fforde’s debut novel, and the first to feature Thursday Next as heroine. A surreal adventure set in a 1985 where literary theft has become a terrible problem, the Crimea is still being fought over by England and Russia, Wales is a secretive Socialist Republic, the mega-corporation Goliath bank roll the economy and the biggest controversy is who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare.
Thursday Next is a LiteraTec in Special Operations 27. Based in London, but originally from Swindon, a veteran of the Crimea and desperately seeking a way out of the Literary Detectives and into a more interesting Spec Op department, she takes a temporary assignment to Spec Op 5 and is thrown against an enemy more deadly than Russian Howitzers, Acheron Hades. Hades has stolen the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript but nobody can work out how.
Grievously injured in an operation that sees her losing all her colleagues, Thursday opts to take a job with Swindon’s LiteraTec department, on her own advice. Convinced that Hades is still alive despite everyone believing otherwise, Thursday is up against the Goliath Corporation and their representative Jack Schitt, who’s after a marvellous new weapon that will win the war in the Crimea, as well as Hades.
When Thursday’s eccentric but brilliant uncle Mycroft and her aunt Polly go missing, Hades is the first to be suspected. Thursday must rescue her aunt and uncle, defeat Hades, regain the Chuzzlewit and Jane Eyre manuscripts and outwit Jack Schitt. And all before her former-fiancé gets married at 3pm a week Saturday.
I’ve read one of the later Thursday Next books, and it definitely makes slightly more sense now. As much as anything makes sense in Jasper Fforde’s novels at least. This novel was highly praised when it was first published 12 years ago and it still stands as an excellent piece of literature; full of wit, bibliographic in-jokes, with unique characters and an incredibly inventive plot.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 