Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
2013
Passing4Normal Press
Ursula has never had a orgasm, she has drank an awful lot of wheatgrass juice though. She belly dances badly and keeps bowls of mushrooms all over the house.
Donny lives alone with his comic book collection, and has never touched wheatgrass. Until he meets Ursula.
Continue reading “Review: Donny and Ursula Save the World by Sharon Weil”
Originally: 2010 – Lyrical Press
Edition reviewed: 2013 – Momentum
In forty years a new underground craze will start – splash parties. Time travellers known as ‘bricks’ will be thrown back in time, ‘lobbed’, and their actions in the past will cause a ‘splash’ as their presence disrupts the timelines. The back wash from the ‘splash’ mixed with the new drug tempus causes a high. It’s marginally illegal; police forces concentrate on controlling the drugs and noise caused by the splash parties, after all the timeline can’t be changed because it fixes itself.
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.
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.
2012
Dare Heisenberg (adopted great-nephew of the great Heisenberg of Uncertainty Principle fame) is a drop-out living on the streets of Denver. A disappointment to his adopted-parents, his teachers and just about everyone he ever met, including himself, Dare doesn’t really see much of a future for himself. That is until one night he meets a blob named Bob. Bob has an offer for Dare that changes his existence. Dare can go on as he is or join the Keepers, who regulate time and space.
Naturally he accepts.
Dare is sent on his first mission, which goes horribly wrong and sets off a chain of events which results in Dare ending up on (and above) Mars with giant hamster aliens and an indestructible spider-creature. Oh, yes and four anti-matter bombs. Dare and his new friend Lauri must race against time to prevent the destruction of a species.
I was sent this e-book to review at the request of www.everythingbooksandauthors.com (thanks Toni); it’s been a while since I read much science fiction but I used to enjoy it so I thought I’d give this book a go.
Overall I’d say I enjoyed the novel, especially the final third, when it felt like the author had really got in to his storytelling stride, describing the scenes and action well. I grew to sympathise with Dare, a character whose self-centredness irritated until he started to develop.
The only significant negative point I could make is that the pacing is a little uneven. The first hundred pages were slow, but once the action started it sped up. The change in pace came at a point that, when I read it, felt disjointed; as though this were two separate stories that had been put together but the join wasn’t smooth. It also felt a little rushed towards the ending, with an element of deus ex machina. I also found some of the early descriptions of Dare’s family background and education repetitive and laboured.
These are minor quibbles and this is an enjoyable sci-fi novel, with an interesting premise; the author clearly has some understanding of current theories in physics. In addition, I especially liked the pahsahni (giant hamster aliens) and their back-story. It is a good introduction to Sci-Fi suitable for YA audience.
I’m hoping to do write a few more reviews for www.everythingbooksandauthors.com, Toni the Admin is really nice, she gets back to you quickly and doesn’t preasurise readers/reviewers. I’ve got a great long list of books I’m reveiwing at the minute, so expect a few more over the next week or so!
Rose
Finishing School Book the First
2013
Atom
Fourteen years old and not at all ladylike, thats Sophronia Angelina Temminnick. She’s the youngest of the Temminnick girls and a terrible bother to her mother. After an incident involving a dumb waiter and a trifle, Sophronia is packed off to finishing school.
But Madam Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is not quite what she expects. After an eventful journey she arrives to find a werewolf waiting and no obvious way aboard.
Making several new friends and learning to be ladylike, Sophronia becomes embroiled in a plot which sees her clambering around engine rooms, confronting thieves and setting fire to her mother’s gazebo. She also learns how to curtsey properly and to dance.
Set several decades before the author’s previous series, ‘The Alexia Tarrabotti Series’ and featuring characters from that series as children, this book is an admirable addition to her body of work and suitable for YA readers. The characters are interesting, well-rounded and develop as the novel progresses. The plot is engaging and mystery elements intriguing.
I enjoyed Gail Carriger’s earlier books and would recommend this new series. Now I just need to get the next book in the series.
Bye
Rose
Good evening,
It’s just occurred to me that I forgot to review this book. No excuse really, I have a day job and sometimes it gets in the way of writing, before I know it things have got away from me.
Anyway, on with the purpose of this post.
The Long Earth is an interesting book, intelligent and gripping. And there should clearly be a sequel, because I want to know what happens next.
The hero, and he is a hero in the traditional sense of a flawed yet almost superhuman main character, is Joshua Valiente, who was born on another Earth, just a step away. When the Long Earth’s are discovered he rescues scores of children and returns them home. The discovery of untold numbers of Earth’s has an interesting effect on home, or Datum, Earth economics and politics as people drift away.
Eventually Joshua takes on a mission to see how far a person can step, with the assistance of the re-incarnated soul of a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic currently embodied in a computer. Along the way they discover new hominid species and societies of humans, with the help of ‘Sally’ another ‘natural Stepper’ like Joshua.
But back on Datum Earth, among those unable to Step at all a rebellion is brewing and the results will be devastating for everyone.
And I’m not saying anything else because I don’t want to spoil it for you.
This is an interesting new direction for Terry Pratchett (I love his Discworld books) but the fun, insightful nature of his writing clearly shows in this book. I have never read any of Stephen Baxter’s work so I can’t compare The Long Earth to any of them. However, I think I might have to take a trip to the library to find something of his to read.
That’s it, not my most insightful review I know, but I had to write it quickly while I had a decent net connection,
Good bye
Rose
Everything Is Better With Dragons 