Category Archives: Reviews

Review: A Study in Darkness Book 2 of The Baskerville Affair by Emma Jane Holloway

 

29th October 2013

Del Ray

asid

  • ISBN 9780345537195
  • $7.99
  • Mass Market Paperback

 

After the events of A study in silk Eveline Cooper was exiled to her Grandmamma Holmes’ Devon estate, Nick has given up the circus and his horses to become a pirate, captain of the Red Jack, Imogen Roth is fending off unsuitable suitors and Tobias Roth is engaged to the Gold King’s daughter Alice Keating, who is pregnant. Desperate for her company in Scotland Imogen persuades Alice to invite Eveline to visit them at the Keating shooting estate. After a joyous reunion all is turned upside down by Tobias’s unexpected arrival. The Gold King manipulates all concerned and Eveline is once more exiled, this time to Whitechapel. Her mission is to seek out the Blue King’s ‘maker’ – the person designing and creating his weapons and war machines.

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Review: Welbeck Hotel, Talbot Street, Nottingham

I just got back from another weekend in Nottingham and this time I stayed at the hotel that is right next to Rock City, partly because it was the cheapest hotel available for the night and partly because HIM – no other excuse needed.

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Review: ‘When Hollywood was Right: How movie stars, studio moguls and big business remade American politics’ by Donald T Critchlow

5th November 2013
Cambridge University Press

Donald Critchlow describes the history of Hollywood from a political perspective, a conservative Republican one. Hollywood hasn’t always been a liberal place; in the first half of the twentieth century the Republican party was very strong among actors and studio bosses. This is the story of the vacitudes of fate that took the Hollywood Right from repeated decline to success between the 30’s and 80’s. The political careers of key players such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Cecil B DeMille, Barry Goldwater, and supporters like John Wayne and Hedda Hopper are interwoven in this account pf the changing fortunes of the Republican party not just in Hollywood, but in California as a whole.

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Review: ‘The Fifth Estate’

Featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in the film adaptation of Daniel Berg’s book ‘Inside WikiLeaks: My time with Julian Assange’, The Fifth Estate is a fascinating look at the website that exposed they secrets of governments and businesses the world over from someone on the inside.
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Review: Donny and Ursula Save the World by Sharon Weil

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.

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Review: The Strathdon Hotel, Derby Road, Nottingham

index

I found this hotel on bookings.com, and for two nights I was pleased with the price. Unusually enough I was able to get a single room. It was an easy hotel to get to from the train station, once I got to Maid Marion Way, and very close to Rock City which was a bonus.

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Hot night in Rock City

Yes, you are getting a cheesy title for this review; I am, after all, reviewing an incredibly cheesy band.They are fantastic fun though. I’m half deaf and can’t speak either from all the singing I did. Plus I got really close to the front!

Down to the serious stuff though.

Reckless Love

Rock City, Nottingham

Support: Laura Wilde

Jalle Verne and Olli Herman - Bassist and singer - prancing about on stage.
Jalle Verne and Olli Herman – bassist and singer – prancing about on stage.

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Review: A study in silks by Emma Jane Holloway

silks

  • Random House Publishing Group – Del Rey Spectra
  • 24th September 2013
  • ISBN 9780345537188
  • $7.99
  • EditionMass Market Paperback

I recently had the pleasure of reading an uncorrected proof copy of this, the first title in Emma Jane Holloway’s trilogy ‘The Baskerville Affair’. The next part, ‘A study in darkness’ will be published later this month and the final part ‘A study in ashes’ will be published in December. I have already started reading the second book and have requested the third.

But what are these novels about?

As the title suggests, these are a riff on the Sherlock Holmes canon (for my friends in the fandom it’s an AU fanfic). Set in an alternative Steampunk Victorian England ruled by ‘Steam Barons’ who control the power supply and ruthlessly suppress competition using any and all means possible. Eveline Cooper, the orphaned daughter of Sherlock Holmes’s disgraced younger sister and the army captain she eloped with, is making her entrance into Society with her dearest friend Imogen Roth, daughter of Lord Bancroft, former Ambassador to Vienna.

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