Published By: Pen & Sword – Imprint: White Owl Price: £13.99 ISBN: 9781526765505 Published: 6th July 2020
The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the first full biography of Sir Terry Pratchett ever written. Sir Terry was Britain’s best-selling living author*, and before his death in 2015 had sold more than 85 million copies of his books worldwide. Best known for the Discworld series, his work has been translated into 37 languages and performed as plays on every continent in the world, including Antarctica. Journalist, comedian and Pratchett fan Marc Burrows delves into the back story of one of UK’s most enduring and beloved authors; from his childhood in the Chiltern Hills, to his time as a journalist, and the journey that would take him – via more than sixty best-selling books – to an OBE, a knighthood and national treasure status. The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the result of painstaking archival research alongside interviews with friends and contemporaries who knew the real man under the famous black hat, helping to piece together the full story of one of British literature’s most remarkable and beloved figures for the very first time.
Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life.
While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.
But something even more sinister emerges when a drumming student of Dorothy’s disappears, and suspicion falls on her parents. The Skelf women find themselves immersed in an unbearable darkness – but could the real threat be to themselves?
Fast-paced, darkly funny, yet touching and tender, the Skelf family series is a welcome reboot to the classic PI novel, whilst also asking deeper questions about family, society and grief.
Dark History of Tea looks at our long relationship with this most revered of hot beverages. Renowned food historian Seren Charrington-Hollins digs into the history of one of the world’s oldest beverages, tracing tea’s significance on the tables of the high and mighty as well as providing relief for workers who had to contend with the ardours of manual labour.
This humble herbal infusion has been used in burial rituals, as a dowry payment for aristocrats; it has fuelled wars and spelled fortunes as it built empires and sipped itself into being an integral part of the cultural fabric of British life. This book delves into the less tasteful history of a drink now considered quintessentially British. It tells the story of how, carried on the backs of the cruelty of slavery and illicit opium smuggling, it flowed into the cups of British society as an enchanting beverage.
Chart the exportation of spices, silks and other goods like opium in exchange for tea, and explain how the array of good fortunes – a huge demand in Britain, a marriage with sugar, naval trade and the existence of the huge trading firms – all spurred the first impulses of modern capitalism and floated countries.
The story of tea takes the reader on a fascinating journey from myth, fable and folklore to murky stories of swindling, adulteration, greed, waging of wars, boosting of trade in hard drugs and slavery and the great, albeit dark engines that drove the globalisation of the world economy. All of this is spattered with interesting facts about tea etiquette, tradition and illicit liaisons making it an enjoyable rollercoaster of dark discoveries that will cast away any thoughts of tea as something that merely accompanies breaks, sit downs and biscuits.
My Review
Thanks to Rosie Crofts at Pen & Sword for sending me a copy of this book for review.
The Rosie Synopsis
A non-fiction book briefly covering the history of tea in CHina and how it came to be a staple of the British diet, through Opium Wars, adulterated supplies and the Assam tea gardens.
The Good
I like tea.
Green tea, black tea, herbal teas, you name it, I’ll drink it. I’ve been to Twinnings shop in London and had a tea tasting session. I have a small collection of loose leaf teas. I can’t decide if Rington’s or Betty’s of Harrogate do the best household tea bags. I once gave myself a migraine from drinking way too much builders tea.
This book is broadly chronologically organised and provides a fairly well-researched introduction to the topic. It is quite easy to read. You can pick up a chapter and there’s enough information to put things in context even if you missed earlier chapters. It is wide ranging in time although very specific in its British centrism. It covers quite a bit about the opium wars and their origins, the detrimental effect of the opium and tea trades on China and in Britain.
There is a limited bibliography that would make a good place to start for people interested in deepening their knowledge. Personally, I will finally be getting around to reading ‘Empire of Crime’ by Tim Newark, which covers the opium wars in more detail and has been sat on my Pen & Sword pile for far too long.
The Not-So-Good
I like tea.
I do not like the history of tea. Britain, or more precisely the East India Company of London under their Government issued monopoly, had a hugely damaging effect on the world and helped build an empire on slavery, tea, sugar and opium. I thought this book would be about the machinations of the tea trade in the 16th to 19th centuries and about food adulteration in the domestic tea market. I assumed it would be Anglocentric because most Pen & Sword books are and it is clearly aimed at the British market – it has a BBC history documentary series feel to it – , so I wasn’t overly disappointed that there was not much about the other European empires built partly on the tea trade, or the development of tea growing in places other than China and Assam. I would have liked to learn about that, and more details about life on the tea plantations in both those places.
The book was interesting but felt like a series of essays written on different tea-related topics and then joined together. There was a lot of repetition and chronology was all over the place. One sentence is about Victorian horror at lower class tea drinking and the next mentions a Georgian criminal case. There was also the random chapter on tea magic at the end. I don’t understand the point of that and found the use of ‘gypsy’ to refer to Roma jarring and the constant use of ‘coolies’, even when in quotation marks, unnecessary. Why not mention the historical term and then use a less loaded, more accurate description of the indentured servants on the Assam tea plantations?
My Verdict
Not a bad introduction to the subject, a gateway to wider reading.
A revised edition of the publisher’s inaugural publication in 1990 which won the Pandora Award from Women-in-Publishing. Inspirational in its original format, this new edition offers insight and motivation for budding writers from dozens of distinguished authors, celebrating the breadth of women’s writing in all its forms. Also includes the original writing workshops from the first edition plus quirky B/W illustrations as well as a foreword by Cheryl Robson, publisher and Managing Editor, who was a recent finalist in the ITV National Diversity Awards – Lifetime Achievement category. Aurora Metro Books was a finalist in the 2019 IPG Diversity in Publishing Awards and has a 30 year history of ground-breaking publishing, featuring both diverse and international authors.
The complete list of contributors:
A.S. Byatt, Saskia Calliste, April De Angelis, Kit de Waal, Carol Ann Duffy, Sian Evans, Philippa Gregory, Mary Hamer, Jackie Kay, Shuchi Kothari, Bryony Lavery, Annee Lawrence, Roseanne Liang, Suchen Christine Lim, Jackie McCarrick, Laura Miles, Raman Mundair, Magda Oldziejewska, Kaite O’Reilly, Jacqueline Pepall, Gabi Reigh, Djamila Ribeiro, Fiona Rintoul, Jasvinder Sanghera, Anne Sebba, Kalista Sy, Debbie Taylor, Madeleine Thien, Claire Tomalin, Ida Vitale, Sarah Waters, Emma Woolf
Editor Ann Sandham
A wide-ranging collection of over 30 essays, poems and interviews from top, international women writers, poets, screen writers and journalists.
20% of profits to go to the Virginia Woolf statue campaign.
Clay model of proposed statue
The Virginia Woolf statue campaign: The proposed statue will be located in Richmond on Thames where Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived from 1914-1924 and set up the Hogarth Press. A public consultation by the local council was 83% in favour of the statue and planning permission has been granted to site the first life-size statue in bronze of the famous author on Richmond riverside where the author walked her dog daily. Over 20% of the £50,000 target has been raised so far.
Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.
One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.
But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government’s horrifying crimes—and the awful source of the magical pigments they use—they find they can no longer stay out of politics.
What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry’s mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight…
Hardcover, Signed and lettered, 346 pages
Published May 2020 by Solaris Books in association with Goldsboro Books
This was my May Goldsboro Books SFF Fellowship book. It is gorgeous
The Rosie Synopsis
Jebi is an artist. Their sister Bongsunga does whatever she can to keep them both alive. They both have secrets. Jebi has taken the exams for the Ministry of Art but gets co-opted by the Ministry of Armor, Bongsunga is a commander in the Hwagugin resistance to the Razanei invaders who n ow govern Hwagun – or District Fourteen as the Razan call the country.
Jebi discovers something in their time at the Ministry that forces them to make a decision. WIth the help of Vei, their lover and the Duelist Prime of Armor, and the automaton dragon Arazi they must escape, protect art and fight the Razanei. Bit of a tall order for an artist who just wants to paint.
The Good
I love it.
I really enjoyed this book, I took me far too long to realise it was a allegory for the Japanese invasion and occupation of Korea in the late 19th century. But with magic and automata. The Westerners – threat and boogie men held over the Hwagugin bu the Razanei – should have tipped me off.
The writing was really immersive, the story engaging and I am so happy about the Queer representation. A non-binary character is amazing, and so many different relationships. It makes such a change from the heteronormative relationships in a lot of fantasy.
The ending left me wanting to know what happened next (although obviously I have some idea of what happened in the real world) in this magical version of Korea. What did Jebi, Vei and Arazi find on the moon?
Would you turn your back on a teenage Jihadi bride and her innocent children?
‘Jihad isn’t a war. It’s an objective. An aberration. If there are young women with children, lost boys… If they are trapped in that hell and we can get them out, don’t we have a duty to do so? Every person we can bring back is living proof that Islamic State is a failure.’
Ex-British Army Soldier, John Carney, ran a close protection operation in Iraq for oil executives when he was asked by the family of a young Dutch woman to extract her from the collapsing Islamic State in Syria. Hearing first-hand of the shocking living hell of tricked naive young girls, many from the West, trapped, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing – he had to get them out.
Armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks, he launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many as he could. With a small band of committed Kurdish freedom fighters, backed by humanitarian NGOs, and feeding intel to MI6, Carney and his men went behind enemy lines in the heart of the Syrian lead storm, risking their lives to deliver the women and their children to the authorities, to de-radicalisation programmes and fair trials.
Gripping, shocking and thought-provoking, Operation Jihadi Bride takes the complex issue of the Jihadi brides head-on – a vital read for our troubled times.
Hola, this month might be a bit sparse, because I have had to turn down ‘digital only’ tour, but I have a few reviews and extract posts for you
Reviews
2nd
Fresh Eggs and dog beds 2
Nick Albert
Audiobook
Memoir
Rachel’s Random Resources blog tour
6th
Operation Jihadi Bride
John Carney
Hardback
Memoir
Random Things Tours blog tour
11th
The Women Writers’ Handbook
ed. Ann Sandham
Paperback
Non-fiction
Love Books Tours blog tour
26th
The Big Chill
Doug Johnston
Paperback
Crime/Thriller
Orenda blog tour
Extract, cover reveals and book blitz posts
2nd – Extract
Warbringer
Aaron Hodges
Rachel’s Random Resources blog tour
6th – Book Blitz
Sunrise on the Coast
Lilac Mills
Rachel’s Random Resources
9th – Extract
Pauper and Prince in Harlem
Delia C. Pitts
Rachel’s Random Resources
9th – Cover Reveal
Buried Treasure
Gilli Allen
Random Things Tours
10th -Extract
Empire’s Reckoning
Marian L Thorpe
Rachel’s Random Resources
20th – Extract
Deadly Wishes
Rachel Mclean
Rachel’s Random Resources
22nd- Extract
Deathe Remembered
K.E. Coburn
Rachel’s Random Resources
22nd – Book Blitz
Kissing Daisy Parker
Michael Malton
Love Books Tours
23rd – Extract
A Little Pick Me Up
Kate Portman
Love Books Tours
It’s a bit sparse, but you should also expect a couple of Pen & Sword reviews, plus some of my TBR pile reviews. My Goldsboro SFF Fellowship books and the pre-orders have been arriving and starting to pile up so I will be doing my best to get them read and reviewed.
Every cloud has a silver lining… doesn’t it? Anna is thirteen years old, lives in London with her father, and has Asperger’s syndrome. When her father dies, she moves to Scotland to live with her estranged, reclusive mother. With little support to help her t in, she must use every coping strategy her father taught her—especially her ‘Happy Game’—as she tries to connect with her mother, discover her past, and deal with the challenges of being thrown into a brand new life along the way.
Today we are aware of how the rich and privileged have lived in the past because historians write about them endlessly. The poor have largely been ignored and, as a result, their contributions to our modern world are harder to unearth.
Skilled raconteur TERRY DEARY takes us back through the centuries with a poignant but humorous look at how life treated the common folk who scratched out a living at the very bottom of society. Their world was one of foul food, terrible toilets, danger, disease and death – the last, usually premature.
Discover the stories of the teacher turned child-catcher who rounded up local waifs and strays and put them to work, and the thousands of children who descended into the hazardous depths to dig for coal. Read all about the agricultural workers who escaped the Black Death only to be thwarted by greedy landowners. And would you believe the one about the man who betrothed his 7-year-old daughter to a Holy Roman Emperor, or even the brothel that was run by a bishop?
On the flip side, learn how cash-strapped citizens used animal droppings for house building and as a cure for baldness; how sparrow’s brains were incorporated into aphrodisiacal brews; and how mixing tea with dried elder leaves could turn an extra profit. And of the milestones that brought some meaning to ordinary lives, here are the trials and tribulations of courtship and marriage; the ruthless terrors of the sporting arena; and the harsh disciplines of education – all helping to alleviate the daily grind.
The Peasants’ Revolting… Lives celebrates those who have endured against the odds. From medieval miseries to the idiosyncrasies of being a twenty-first-century peasant, tragedy and comedy sit side by side in these tales of survival and endurance in the face of hardship.
Caught up in a space station turf war between gangs and corrupt law, a lone asteroid miner decides to take them all down.
When an asteroid miner comes to Station 35 looking to sell her cargo and get back to the solitude she craves, she gets swept up in a three-way standoff with gangs and crooked cops. Faced with either taking sides or cleaning out the Augean Stables, she breaks out the flamethrower.
The Rosie Synopsis
‘Jane’ or ‘the Miner’ desperately needs food and fuel, so she puts in to an asteroid-based space station, Station 35. Here she is ripped off by the ore company, finds three rival gangs in control and at each others’ throats, while the ‘decent’ population, lead by ‘Mr Shine’ hunker down in the lower depths of the station, except bar-owner/chef Takata and Station Master Herrera, who both refuse to be forced out of the galleria. Jane decides she’s going to clean up the Station and hand it back to ‘decent folks’.
Plans don’t exactly go as expected.
Basically, have you seen any of those old westerns, the ones based on Japanese films, like Seven Samurai, reworked as westerns, or Clint Eastwood’s work, like Fistful of Dollars? Think that aesthetic, but in space.
The Good
The novel calls on the traditions and tropes of westerns and on those westerns based on Japanese films, and obviously on the original Japanese work. So, the protagonist isn’t named, or only briefly, there are rival gangs and corrupt law officers, the place is far from anywhere with no help coming. I have seen an interesting collection of movies over the years but even if I haven’t seen the specific films, I know enough and can get the feeling over the originals, that the book’s references and plot points make sense.
An example of this tradition is in the naming of the protagonist. The ‘Miner’ is unnamed, given nicknames and only once is her real name and some clue about her identity revealed. This is going to be familiar to lovers of dodgy 60s Westerns based on Japanese books and films. Clint Eastwood famously play ‘The Man with No Name’ in the Dollars Trilogy. If you get the aesthetic and understand the tradition it stands in, this is marvelous fun. It’s not the first ‘spaghetti western in space’ sci fi novel, but it’s the first I’ve read and I liked it.
The pace is fast and choppy, moving between Jane and a character called Steven, although he doesn’t go by that name initially – he’s known as Screwball. They are nominally on the same, then opposed to each other and finally they’re allies. Jane doesn’t like people, preferring to stay out in space, mining and tending her orchids and bonsai trees on her little ship. Steven is a hired thug, working for Feeney, the original crime boss on Station 35. Over the course of the book Jane discovers she doesn’t actually hate humans as much as she thinks she does, and Steven finds himself questioning his life choices after a series of unexpected and painful events.
Basically, they follow the character arcs expected in the genre. They both play hero and anti-hero roles at different points and they both have similar motives initially – they need money. They both become more self-aware and ‘better people’ due to their experiences although acknowledging that they aren’t heroes.
As you can imagine from the foregoing, I found the characterisation enjoyable and fitting perfectly for the genre of the book.
The origins of the dispute and the background of the Station are mentioned in different places in the narrative, so the reader learns more as the Miner does. There are logical reasons for Station 35 being where it is when she arrives. None of the characters are surplus to requirements and the main characters as fairly well fleshed out.
Herrera’s insults are fabulous.
The Not-So-Good
Not much. I’d have liked to know more about the ‘universe’ and Herrera gets a bit characateurish at times.
The Verdict
I enjoyed reading this book, it’s given me hours of enjoyment over the three days I spent reading it. I was on the edge of my seat a lot of the time.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 