Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review: Feed by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire)

Zombie apocalypse’s: I do so love them.

Bloggers: News reporters, entertainers, educators. I have a soft spot for them as well.

What happens when you combine them?

Georgia and Shaun Mason, and their colleagues, that’s what.

The adopted children of the first people to lose a child to a zombie labrador, their entire lives have been dictated by, and dedicated to, the ratings.

Shaun likes to poke dead things with sticks, in the hope that its moan back, and then he can shoot it. Of the siblings he’s expected to die first, he lives with reckless abandon, goes out in to the field and returns to tell exciting tales. He’s an ‘Irwin’.

Georgette ‘Buffy’ Meissonier, their partner, friend and tech expert, likes to write poetry and romantic prose while giving the CIA a run for it money – if its electronic and can collect information she can improve it. Mostly she’s a ‘Fictional’, barely ever seen outside of the haven of their van and rarely in the field.

And finally, there’s Georgia ‘George’ Mason. All she wants is the Truth.

They run ‘After the End Times’, a blog site, that’s home to all three kinds of bloggers. They’re organised, determined and young. When they get the job of official press covering the presidential campaign of Senator Ryman, of Wisconsin, they also think they’re made. Travelling with the campaign, they give the public everything they need to know with as little bias as possible. They become among the most popular blog sites on the ‘net. And their candidate is gaining support.

And then things start to go very wrong. After a series of tragedies, sabotage and betrayal, events come to a head at the party Conference. Things will never be the same again for those who remain at ‘After the End Times’.

Well, that’s the story (or at least all I’m going to give you because I don’t want to give too much away), so what did I think?

The characterisation was well done, although Senator Ryman was a little too good, no politician is that decent. The world, a post-Zombie-apocalyse world, is carefully thought through and the society it presents is convincing. The story itself is riveting, keeping the readers interest throughout, exciting and intelligent.

Plus, there’s a sensible explanation for the living dead. Which is always a bonus.

In other words, I liked it. I’d even recommend it.

Now I’m off to read the second book in the series, Deadline.

Bye,

Rose

Review: The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

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

Reviews

I’ve officially given up attempting to read 50 Shades of Grey and its sequels. Sorry if you wanted a review, all can say is I got so bored of the bad writing and repetition I gave up. I’m glad I didn’t buy them, only borrowed them, because they really aren’t worth the money. You can get better smut free on the internet – go have a look around Live Journal or http://www.archiveofourown.org for instance.

However, I will be reviewing ‘The Long Earth’ by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I had to wait a month to get it because out library got flooded in June (we had flash floods) and has only just re-opened. I started reading it this morning, If I hadn’t had other things to do I’d have finished it this evening. Safe to say so far i like it. So, review sometime in the next few days, dodgy internet connection and other commitments (a.k.a. work, why do I have to work? I’d much rather spend my time reading and writing than go to work) permitting.

Bye for now,

Rose

50 Shades of Gray: The review might not happen

I know I said I’d read and review EL James’s 50 Shades trilogy but I got 150 pages in to the first one and got sick of it. I am going to finish reading them, eventually. So far the writing is poor. It’s really not that shocking in its contents, so I really don’t know what the fuss is about. I’m more irritated by the poor writing than anything else.

Give me a few weeks and I might actually post a review.

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Review: The Wolf Gift, A Novel, by Anne Rice

After years of writing about vampires, witches and demons Anne Rice has turned her authorial eye on the werewolf myth. Set in the damp northern Californian city of San Francisco and its environs, over a period of a few months this 404 page novel attempts to explore the nature of good and evil, as the author does in ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and its subsequent series. As with the Vampire Chronicles Ms. Rice has built a world and history of a species that has its origins deep in human prehistory, in this case before the early cities of the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia.

It starts with a young ‘gentleman journalist’ falling in love with a house and its owner. Inheriting the house after a vicious attack that leaves him changed the journalist struggles to find his way. Luckily he meets a beautiful woman, falls in love, and finally finds guidance in the form of much older werewolves. It’s a coming of age novel with werewolves.

Okay, I’m really being succinct and I’ve missed out the big ‘adventure’ that provides all the action, but that’s because I found it a bit predictable. It was a fun read once I got into it. Unfortunately that’s the best I can say about it.

The characters are such stock archetypes I couldn’t really feel any sympathy for them. The hero is too good, always questioning himself, poetic, handsome, and wealthy; his mother is too much the protective superwoman with a brilliant career, his father the retired and retiring academic. His true love is so patient and perfect, his mentor so wise and good, the ‘bad guys’ are truly evil. In short, none of them felt real.

While the plot is good, it lacks any true excitement, one never feels the imperative to continue reading because one absolutely must, there is no feeling of doubt that the hero will overcome  and there will be a ‘happily ever after’. Basically it doesn’t go for the throat. It took me almost two weeks to read, and for a book of just over 400 words that’s a long time by my standards.

The prose is at times poetic, especially when describing the freedom the werewolf feels running through the forests and hunting, but at other times it is heavy, clumsy almost. And she should never, ever again attempt to write ‘intimate’ scenes, they sound awful.

It feels like Ms. Rice is re-writing her old books with a different species, and more Catholicism. Theological and philosophical questions of good and evil enter the narrative right from the first chapter. I don’t have a problem with people allowing their religious feeling to influence their writing; I just don’t like it shoved down my throat in fiction. The theology and philosophy is too heavily laid on; instead of being a subtle background melody informing the narrative, it is more like someone wanders in every few pages to beat you about the head with some religious tract.

I liked it by and large, but it never reaches the eloquence or genius of ‘The Vampire Lestat’ or ‘Queen of the Damned’.  There’s nothing original about the story but it was still a decent read, if nothing else is available. It’s a fairly good werewolf story, but Reuben Golding is forgettable where Lestat de Lioncourt is a genre-defining legend.

That’s all for now,

Rose

xXx

Book Review – future books I shall be reviewing

I have finally bowed to public pressure (i.e. my cousins wife and my dad’s wife, plus some friends and people at work) and agreed to read ‘Fifty shades of Grey’ and the books that follow it. So expect that sometime in the next month.

I will also be reviewing ‘The Wolf Gift’ by Anne Rice in the next two weeks (I need to read it before the 28th, when it has to go back to the library).

Once I manage to get the library to order me ‘The Long Earth’ by Terry Pratchet and Stephen Baxter I shall review that as well.

So expect a few book reviews in the next month or so.

 

Book Review: Deadlocked – True Blood 12 – Charlaine Harris

I have read every single one of this series, I’ve even read most of the short stories found in anthologies of vampire/supernatural romance. When I heard that thw twelfth in the series was to be published I immediateely put in an order with the local library for it.

I enjoyed the book, it resolved many of the plot lines of the past few books and allowed a certain amount of character development for the fae characters and for Sookie’s thoroughly human friends. We finally find out what she does with the cluvial dor. The end provides the reader with a clue as to the plot line for the thirteenth book, which is rumoured to be the final book in the series.

All this said, I do have some problems with it. The misdirection in the story line was fairly obvious and the plot threads were resolved rather abruptly in the last chapter.

3/5 – Good story, but Charlaine Harris has written better.

Book Review: Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

‘Rivers of London’ is the first of two books (currently available) detailing the adventures of Detective Constable Peter Grant of the Met, and last Apprentice Wizard in Britain.

In ‘Rivers of London’ we are introduced to Peter Grant, a probationary constable in the Metropolitan Police. At the scene of a murder he tries to take a witness statement from a ghost and thus comes to the attention of the last official Wizard in Britian, Nightingale. Nightingale is the head, and only member,  of a specialist crime unit known as ‘the Folly’, about whom most police officers have no knowledge, and the ones who do know about it don’t like talking about the Folly. Constable Grant becomes the second member of the Folly and an apprentice wizard. Between solving a series of supernatural murders and settling a territorial debate between the genii loca of the Thames and the Thames  valley/London rivers, the Folly are stretched to capactity. Covent Garden gets set on fire and flooded, Punch causes a riot in the Royal Opera House and eventually a sacrifice has to be made.

With a cast of well written, funny and occaisionally creepy characters this novel races around London giving a new twist to old tales. The central character is well drawn, heavily embedded in the location and very ‘real’. Constable Grant’s struggle’s to learn a vast body of arcane knowledge and match his scientific understanding of the world to that of magic is entertaining. Especially the exploding apples.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can’t wait to read the next one, ‘Moon over Soho’.