Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review of several e-books

I had a bit of a foray in to Amazon the other day and found several free e-books (thanks to the freebie page at  http://www.everythingbooksandauthors.com) and read them quite quickly. Most were short stories but one,‘Georgiana Darcy’s Diary’, is probably more of a novella. Since I took the time to read to them I thought I should probably review them.

Georgiana Darcy’s diary: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Continued

Anna Elliott, with illustrations by Laura Masselos

2011

Wilton Press

It’s 1814 and the war with Napoleon is coming to an end, Elizabeth and Darcy have been married a year, Georgiana is 18 years old and still living at Pemberley with them, and their Aunt De Bourgh has organised a house party. She’s trying to marry Georgiana off too some suitable gentleman.

Georgiana feels the need to start writing a diary again, and starts writing about her life. Sick of the fawning fortune hunters, Georgiana is in love with her cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. Unfortunately rumour tells her he is engaged to someone else, and when he returns to Pemberley to recover from a wound taken at Toulouse she is determined not to give in to her feelings.

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young lady of rank and property will have packs of money- or land-hungry suitors yapping around her heels like hounds after a fox.‘

In the interests of not giving the whole plot away, all I’ll say is the denouement of the storyline is fairly obvious. I mostly liked the story but was slightly unsatisfied by it. I would be interested to read the other two books in this Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, Pemberley to Waterloo, and Kitty Bennet’s Diary.

3/5

 

Cait the Cat Burglar (55 Portobello Road)

Christine London

2013

 

Cait is a waitress, stranded in London as she tries to earn money to send home to her sick mother and sister in America. Bribed and threatened in to becoming a thief by the sinister Rothwell, Cait tries to steal the work of an Australian musician. The first time she fails miserably. There were croquet hoops involved.

At work the next day her target comes in for a meal and Cait finds herself questioning her resolve.

 

This short story is entertaining, although I found it a little too soppy for my taste and too much ‘fairy-tale ending’. I’m not sure I’d bother to read the series of books that this short story is a part of.

2/5

 

How to talk to girls at parties, A short story

Neil Gaiman

2006

Headline

Originally published 2006 and republished as an e-book 2013 with an exclusive first chapter from Neil Gaiman’s new book, ‘The ocean at the end of the lane’, due out mid-June. Vic and Enn are going to a party Vic heard about from his friend Alison, unfortunately they end up at entirely wrong party with interesting consequences. It’s a fun little story, but then I like Neil Gaiman’s work, having read a couple of his books. He’s a truly original writer.

4/5

 

A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies 20th Anniversary Edition

John Wiley & Sons, Inc

2011

This book is exactly what it says on the cover, a sample of their published work since the first …For Dummies book in 1991. Covering everything from Windows 7 to Puppies to Sex, this book is an interesting one to flip through.

3/5

 

And that’s the lot for now.

Bye,

Rose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming soon, a spate of book reviews

I’ve just had a phone call from the library; they’ve got (finally!) the latest Science of Discworld. I’m going to collect it this afternoon. When I get back, and before I start reading it, I’m going to review a couple of e-books I downloaded yesterday.

The first ‘Georgiana Darcy’s Diary’ by Anna Elliott is a continuation of the Jane Austen classic ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and the second is a celebratory edition of the ‘For Dummies…’ series marking their 20th anniversary.

Bye for one,

Rose

I’ve got quite a few books to review

I found my way to a website called http://www.everythingbooksandauthors.com/ this morning, and on their ‘Special Offers & Freebies’ page there were a few books that I thought looked interesting. I’m going to read them all and review them.

I love having the Kindle for PC app. I have so many books on it, most of them free.

Bye

Rose

Review: ‘Etiquette & Espionage’ by Gail Carriger

image

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

Review: “Atheism: Genetics to Geology and Much More Science” by Maurice de Bona Jr.

I offered to review this book because the title suggested it would be of interest to someone of my education and background. I was wrong. Within the first twenty pages I became frustrated by the author’s polemic, ignorance of the subjects, scientific and historical, on which he was commenting, disjointed arguments and outdated assumptions in statements such as ‘’Under monotheism, man shifted from a maternally structured society to a paternally structured society’’ and ‘’There was a time religious men feared science.’’

Among the basic mistakes the author makes is to suggest that matter can’t be created or destroyed only change form, and that ‘Electricity, for example, is a faster moving, less consolidated form of matter than the matter that comprises a rock.’ He is wrong, it is energy which is neither made nor destroyed but merely changes form. It’s called the conservation of energy. Electricity is the movement of electrons through a substance and rocks are made up of atoms in a crystal structure.

The author makes contradictory statements as well as blatantly incorrect ones. He also displays latent racism and sexism on occasion. Examples:
(1) ‘The average European cranial capacity is 90 cubic inches. The Hottentot natives have a capacity of about 65 cubic inches. Some Hindus have capacities as low as 45 cubic inches. This approaches the capacity of gorillas.’
(2) ‘Women, in general, have a greater sensitivity to emotions, such as love, than men. They are less capable of separating love and sex than men. Many women convince themselves that sex without love is impossible.’
He has a terrible habit of dumbing down his prose, assuming all readers will be as historically uneducated as well as scientifically ignorant, and that all atheists have the same beliefs as he does, despite claiming that he doesn’t.
I looked at the sources the author provided. Only four were less than ten years old, many much, much older. With such outdated attitudes I am not surprised he had had to find outdated sources to back his assertions.
The author clearly has a problem with religion but his sweeping generalisations about the nature of religion and the religious, and his ham-fisted attempts at scientific refutation of some religious beliefs does nobody any good. His tract may provide those with no education some basic, if inaccurate, knowledge, but anyone with even a basic education will be frustrated with this book.

Don’t bother with it.

It took me a good couple of months to read and I had to force myself to finish it. I wanted to punch the author after about ten pages. The spelling is atrocious (even if one takes Americanisms into account) he’s bombastic and insulting. Sorry I got really riled by this book. If you believe in something poorly disguised insults to your intelligence and education will not convince a person to take someone’s arguments seriously. if you are already an atheist or agnostic poorly constructed sources will do nothing to strengthen your resolve. Scientific arguments for evolution and the obvious great age of the Universe are strong enough that the this sort of pamphlet are no longer necessary.

Rant over, sorry again,

Rose

Review: ‘Irenicon’ by Aiden Harte

Irenicon

The Wave Trilogy Book 1

Aiden Harte

2012

Jo Fletcher Books

Sofia Scaligeri is Contessa of Rasenna, or she will be when she turns seventeen. If she lives that long. Her inheritance, the once great city of Rasenna, is divided. It is divided by jealousy, petty rivalries and old vendettas. It is also divided by the Irenicon, an unnatural river blasted through the city when the Engineers of the Concordian Empire sent the Wave to pacify the fractious city. Divided and weak, the people of Rasenna have retreated to their towers, leaving only to send raids into enemy streets.

When a young Concordian Engineer is sent to Rasenna to bridge the Irenicon the locals are suspicious, and the habitual violence blossoms into the opening stages of a civil war.  Opposing Towers circle each other, probing for weaknesses and delaying the bridges construction.

But the bridge must be built or the city will be destroyed once and for all when the Twelfth Legion arrives at the end of summer. Somehow Sofia, Giovanni the Engineer, and the Small People of Rasenna must find a way to unite the city before that happens. They are hampered by the suspicion and violence that inhabits the hearts of their people. They must have Faith in a world of Reason in order to succeed. Victory has it’s price and they will all have to pay it; Rasenna, and all of Etruria will have to change. But everyone has their secrets and not even love might be able to save them.

It took me a while to get in to this book, but once I got past the first dozen or so pages and managed to make sense of what was going on I couldn’t put it down. Sofia’s story of self discovery and personal evolution – from thug being given orders by her guardian to self-aware leader, and Rasenna’s concurrent transformation from divided, poor, violence ravaged, once-great city into a peaceful, wealthy and united community, is an interesting study in politics. There’s something of the polemic to this novel – we can only make things better if we build bridges and end violence; but ignore that if you want and enjoy the story. The characters are well written and sympathetic; their growth as characters explained sensibly, and the story line is good. A mix of historical adventure and fantasy, and an AU reworking of the Middle Ages where Rome was defeated by another Empire and Jesus died during Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents leaving the distraught Mary to pass on the message, and the water has it’s own consciousness.  This novel entertains and provokes thought. 3/5

The next part ‘The Warring States: Book 2 of the Wave trilogy’ is out this month; the library is ordering it for me. I’ll let you knoiw what I think.

Review: Ben Aaronovitch ‘Whispers Under Ground’

Review: Ben Aaronovitch ‘Whispers Under Ground’
2012
Gollancz

Ben Aaronovitch returns with his third DC Peter Grant novel. And what a return! It’s much more enjoyable than the second novel in the series, ‘Moon Over Soho’, although you really do have to read all three to pick up some of the long running story lines. The novel is narrated, as always, by DC Grant as he attempts to solve the murder of an American senator’s son, in London studying art and living with a half-fae with an inability to tell the truth when asked a direct question. Obviously there’s something a bit weird about the murder – like how on earth the deceased got where he did – so the Folly is called in to help the Murder Squad investigate. More precisely, DC Grant and PC Lesley May (unofficially officially).

It starts with a body on the underground, Baker Street appropriately enough, just before Christmas. It ends with an arrest just after Christmas. In between there is magic, sewer luge, rivers holding illegal raves, geek humour, an underground pig-powered pottery works, and a perplexed FBI agent. This is a very enjoyable book; a mix of the ever popular murder mystery, police procedural and supernatural mystery genres. It’s done exceedingly well; the story moves forward at a good pace, the characters are well rounded and realistic, and the dénouement is suitably surprising/sensible. There’s no deus ex machine here, despite the fact that two of the investigation officers are trainee wizards and one of the suspects is only slightly human.

Five out of five from me

Rose

Review: ‘Who Needs Mr Darcy?’

Jean Burnett

2012

Sphere (Little Brown Book Group)

Opening at Pemberley in September 1815 and concluding aboard a ship to Brazil in 1818, this novel follows ‘The adventures and exploits of the bad Miss Bennet’. Lydia Wickham, married three years and widowed at Waterloo, when her husband had the decency to die in battle (although not as heroically as Lydia was telling people), is at a loose end. Currently in residence at Pemberley, living as a dependant of her humourless brother-in-law Darcy and her sister Lizzy, Lydia dreams of escape, of London, Paris and Lord Byron, of making her fortune by marriage to a rich man and dancing among the fashionable world at Almack’s. She has become her husband’s mirror image. Darcy wants rid of her, and Lydia is eager to be got rid of, provided she can have an allowance from her relatives and the freedom to do whatever she wants.

By subterfuge Lydia gets her way and travels to London to stay with the impecunious and immoral Selena and Miles Caruthers, friends from her days as an army wife. On the way she is robbed by a handsome highwayman, in London she plays with marked cards and becomes involved with a banker. Travelling to Brighton she meets the Prince Regent, becomes involved in a murder and robbery, and is kidnapped by her highwayman

Eventually Lydia finds her way to the no longer fashionable Bath, as her banker is arrested and she acquires a new admirer. Plans are made for Paris, but first she must go to Pemberley. Here a letter arrives from Longbourne; Kitty, who Lydia has kept informed of all her adventures, has had an attack of conscience and drops Lydia in it up to her neck. Sent away to be a companion to a rich, elderly widow (it was that or the asylum, suitable husbands not being forthcoming) in Bath, Lydia despairs.

Until she hatches a plan and her employer is persuaded to end her retired life and go to the Continent. Lydia is ecstatic and finally gets to see Paris and Venice. But her past catches up with her and she is forced to work for the British Government in a delicate matter.

This Lydia is has learnt no restraint, no humility or respectability. She is as immodest, reckless and ignorant as would be expected from the youngest Bennet girl. She blames all her misfortunes on others and takes no responsibility for her actions. She sees her family as interfering, disapproving and spiteful.

She is not an endearing character at all, and the plot has too much gothic extravagance about it to be very enjoyable, and yet I raced through this novel. More could have been made of the royal intrigue, financial scandal and international politics, which are the main drivers of the plot and which effect Lydia’s fate the most, but the story, like it’s narrator is rather shallow. Leaving Lydia and her criminal beau aboard ship and bound for Brazil clearly leaves the way open for a sequel should the author choose to pen one.

I think this would have been a fun book, in the mould of Regency romances, if the main character had been an original rather than a pale attempt at writing Lydia Bennet. Jean Burnett simply does not write Lydia Bennet as well as Jane Austen drew her two hundred years ago. The character is a flat caricature. It’s enjoyable enough I suppose but I wouldn’t go out and buy it. That’s what the library is for.

And that is all I have to say on the subject.

Bye,

Rose