Publication date Thursday, July 14, 2022 Price £16.99 EAN\ISBN-13 9781913068738 Travel & holiday (WT) Biography: general (BG) Binding Hardback
Blurb The harrowing story of the Zaandam cruise ship, which set sail with a deadly and little-understood stowaway – Covid-19 – days before the world shut down in March 2020. A story of human kindness, peril and bravery.
In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hotspots, the cruise ship Zaandam was preparing to sail from Buenos Aires loaded with 1,200 passengers – British, American, Australian, European and South American tourists, plus 600 crew. Most passengers were over the age of 65. There was concern about the virus in the news but that was oceans away. Escaping to sea at the ends of the earth for a few weeks seemed like it might be a good option. The cruise line had said the voyage would go ahead as scheduled and it would be safe.
Within days, people aboard the Zaandam began to fall sick. The world’s ports shut down. Zaandam became a top story on the news and was denied safe harbour everywhere. With only two doctors aboard and few medical supplies to test for or treat Covid-19, and with dwindling food and water, the ship wandered the oceans on an unthinkable journey
Cabin Fever is a riveting narrative thriller, taking readers behind the scenes of the ship’s complex workings, and below decks into the personal lives of passengers and crew who were caught unprepared for the deadly ordeal that lay ahead. It is a story layered with moments of peril, perseverance and kindness. A remarkable tale that is filled with individual acts of heroism and the struggles and the tragedies of the crew and passengers.
Pub date: 21 JULY 2022 ISBN 13: 978-1-914585-20-3 EPUB: 978-1-914585-21-0 Price: £9.99
The small community of Akranes is devastated when a young man dies in a mysterious house fire, and when Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case involving multiple suspects. What’s more, the dead man’s final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two.
A few months before the fire, a young Dutch woman takes a job as an au pair in Iceland, desperate to make a new life for herself after the death of her father. But the seemingly perfect family who employs her turns out to have problems of its own and she soon discovers she is running out of people to turn to.
As the police begin to home in on the truth, Elma, already struggling to come to terms with a life-changing event, finds herself in mortal danger as it becomes clear that someone has secrets they’ll do anything to hide…
Information about the Book Title: Me, My Brother and the Monster Meltdown Author: Rob Lloyd Jones Illustrator: Alex Patrick Publisher:Walker Books Release Date: 7th July 2022 Genre: MG
All the adults are freaking out. Giant monsters are smashing up supermarkets across the country. The army can’t stop them and the prime minister is hiding in panic. A colossal six-headed gingerbread man, a massive emoji poo, a gigantic bouncing bum… Top scientists have no idea where they come from – or why they seem to hate supermarkets so much. But nine-year-old Otis has an idea. The creatures are exactly the same as drawings by his five-year-old brother, Jago: what if Jago brought his crazy creations to life with a magic pen? But their parents won’t listen, so it’s up to Otis and his pals to sort this monster mess out!
My Review
Thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic Tours for organising this tour, and the author and publisher for sending me a copy of this book. I was a little worried it wouldn’t arrive on time but it did on Thursday. I think I read it Thursday evening.
Monsters are attacking Rottingdean, and all the adults are going a bit mad. It’s up to Otis, Jago and their friends to find out where the monsters are coming from and stop them. Their adventures are hilarious as they dodge monsters, soldiers and their Dad, who keeps running into walls. They outwit the adults, defeat the monsters and get covered in chocolate.
At 157 pages with illustrations and a couple of paragraphs a page, it’s not a long read, but for a young child it would be a good starter book, once they’ve moved beyond picture books. Six to nine year olds will love this book. They will also learn about the damage our government has done to libraries. The book was written during lockdown to help Lloyd Jones’ sons cope with the pandemic through humour. The illustrations of the increasingly frantic prime minister in his bunker were particularly pointed.
The group of friends are a balanced group, characters who bounce off each others’ silliness and manage to work well together to solve a problem. I liked the depiction of the people at the care home having lives beyond their status as old people waiting for their family to visit or to die of boredom in their care home. I giggled quite a lot reading the book.
The illustrations are really good, very humorous. It’s a familiar style in books for the age group.
I would definitely recommend this book, especially for kids struggling to cope with the pandemic and lockdowns of the last couple of years.
Author Information
Rob Lloyd Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed middle-grade novels Wild Boy and Wild Boy and the Black Terror, as well as the Jake Atlas adventure series.
Created with his sons, Otis (9) and Jago (5), during home-schooling, Me, My Brother and the Monster Meltdown is his first funny fiction for younger readers. In Rob’s words, “it celebrates the power of children’s imaginations and their strength in adversity and adventure…and a monster apocalypse.”
Rob lives in East Sussex with his wife, and monster-mad Otis and Jago.
Paperback, 480 pages Published July 7th 2022 by Head of Zeus (first published October 5th 2021) ISBN13: 9781788543248 Edition Language: English Series: Burningblade & Silvereye #2
Blurb
Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, two siblings discover that not even ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.
Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open and exterminated the Elder races. Amid the ashes, their human inheritor, the Dawn Republic, stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Maya and Gyre have found themselves on opposite sides.
At the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic’s rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister… whatever the cost.
Twelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is Burningblade, the Twilight Order’s brightest prodigy; he is Silvereye, thief, bandit, revolutionary.
For centuries, the Dawn Republic has ruled over the land unopposed. No more.
Deep below the Gap, Gyre Silvereye discovered a city, hidden far from human eyes. There, the ghouls have dwelt for four hundred years in hibernation, awaiting the moment to wreak their vengeance on the Dawn Republic.
With their help, Gyre can finally see a way to overthrow the all-powerful Twilight Order. But the ghouls do not give their trust easily, and Gyre will need to secure the alliance of the human rebels to the south if they are to even stand a chance. And uniting the two won’t be simple.
His sister Maya still fights for the Order. But after recent events, she is no longer certain where her loyalties lie. Chasing the origins of a mysterious artefact to a long-lost library, she just might find the truth – whether she is ready for it or not.
My Review
I have two editions of this book, and the first one in the series. I have Goldsboro Books special editions in hardback, and paperbacks. The paperback from Head of Zeus arrived on Thursday, because I had it on pre-order. I have two copies of the first book in the Burningblade & Silvereye series too,Ashes of the Sun, which I reviewed in March 2021. I also have both as audiobooks. I couldn’t get on with the audiobook narration for this one, or I’d have reviewed it before now. It’s very unfortunate, since I quite liked the audiobook of Ashes of the Sun and was looking forward to listening to this one too.
Gyre Silvereye and Maya Burningblade are siblings on opposite sides of the social order. As a Centarch, Maya represents the ruling Order, heirs to the mysterious Chosen, while Gyre is a rebel, a thief and determined to bring the Order down, with the help of the ‘ghouls’, a sentient species who are almost extinct and hated by humanity.
The ghouls are a rather large, humanoid species, with hair and fangs, who use dhak, a form of magic. They live in the hidden Refuge, an ancient ghoul city that is now almost empty after 99% of the ghouls died because of the plague that also wiped out the Chosen. Ghouls use constructs to do all the heavy lifting, and have weapons that Gyre can use in his rebellion. He ropes Elariel, a ghoul who worked for Naumoriel (villain in the first book), into helping him. He offers the ruling parliament of the ghouls a way to get revenge on the Chosen and the Order by supporting his rebellion with weapons and tools. Elariel undergoes a terrible operation as punishment which makes her look human to help with the mission.
Kit is now happily running around in multiple construct bodies, lamenting only her inability to fuck, although she does discover how much she enjoys voyeurism and fighting in multiple places at once. The three leave Refuge for Deepfire, where they collect three large wagons and a lot of alchemical equipment, and Sarah, an alchemist formerly of the Order who joined the rebels in Deepfire. They travel through the Splintered Kingdoms to Khirkhaz, a mountainous and forested region where a Commune led by the ousted Apphia, Baron Kotzed, fights to retake the area from the Republic and return to her family’s tower.
Meanwhile, Maya, her partner Beq, and their scout, Varo, go looking for an Archive in the mountains in the north west, beyond Deepfire and near the coast. Many Centarchs had attempted to clear the place of plaguespawn to reach the Archive, but had failed. Maya and her small team find a village, a mystery and information about the Thing and Maya’s deiat. Beq gets over-excited by the possibilities of the archive. They return to the Forge, where they are sent out on a secret mission that involves them going to the capital of the Republic, Skyreach to break into Kyriliarch Prodominus’ private warehouse. There, they discover a great secret and more information about betrayal in the Order.
The two groups meet in Khirkhaz during the fight to defend Apphia’s claim from the Republic. They go off on a mission of their own that could destroy or save the world…
The world and its history is explored further as the two groups travel across the continent by different means, and we learn more about the Chosen and the ghouls. It becomes increasingly obvious that humans have been lied to for centuries and that the Order is fractured. Who can anyone trust? The tension lies between what the reader knows from following Gyre and his group, and what Maya believes to be true based on what she is told and what she finds in her adventures. They are both driven by idealism, which doesn’t do well in the real world. Gyre finds his Khirkhaz Commune is really a collection of argumentative, disunited factions from different backgrounds, only nominally led by Apphia. Maya discovers that she’s been lied to repeatedly, although we don’t really see how it changes things for her, other than her internal confusion about who to trust. Hopefully, it’ll become clearer in the third book.
The relationship between Gyre and Maya is fraught before they meet up in battle, but it becomes more so as they realise they need to work together. Gyre is deeply affected by his sister’s actions in the last chapters, but still helps her. I’ll be interested to see the fall out in the next book. I have a feeling that Gyre and company might be arrested and Maya is placed in an even more compromised position, or the Corruptor will overcome the Order. Pretty sure Tanax and Basal are corrupted. I hope the ghouls are able to save themselves though and humanity gets its collective head out of its collective arse. The Order and Republic are clearly positioned as compromised and controlling in these books, while Gyre and the rebels as ‘heroes’, but it’s more complicated. No one group is evil or good. They’re humans; venal, greedy and selfish in some cases, deceived and deceptive, selfless, determined to improve the world, and generous. The technology has limits even if magic is involved and people get exhausted, no one can fight forever, weapons and tools break and ammunition or fuel runs out. Like in the real world.
There is a development of Maya and Beq’s relationship carries through their chapters, as they support each other and realise how important they are to each other. I like their relationship; they’re young and inexperienced, and trying to work out what they are to each other. It’s sweet. Thankfully, the author manages not to make their sexuality a big deal, it’s just a background fact that both are girls and they are in a relationship. It’s the development of their relationship that’s important, not the fact it exists.
Beq is a marvellous character, geeky, intelligent and brave, who doesn’t have much confidence in herself, but can do anything she sets her mind to. I also enjoyed the little scene where she’s reading while waiting for Maya to finish her visit Jaedia in the hospital, and doesn’t notice Maya come out of the room because the book is so engrossing. Been there, done that. Haven’t we all? She also struggles with jokes and is very literal. She’s practical and loves Maya deeply although she doesn’t seem to have many other relationships or friends.
Kit, having died and then returned as the controlling intellect in a construct army, is a lot more fun that in the first book. Death seems to have allowed her to put aside her angst and enjoy life. The abilities she has as a construct allow her to be in so many places at once, which helps her and Gyre to escape from various traps, fight battles and rescue each other. The image of chicken sized mechanical spiders carrying smoking ceramic bombs attacking Maya and Legionaries made me giggle but at the same time are very practical. They would be useful.
This is a world where both magic and technology mix to allow aircraft, long distance almost instantaneous travel, but humans still live in squalor in cities, hide behind high walls in the countryside, and the magic and tech developed by two species though to be extinct is limited to a certain class or group. It’s a blending of science fiction and fantasy that works well. I enjoyed Elariel’s questioning of the social rules and distinctions, because things are very different on ghoul society, where helping anyone in pain is an obligation, all the work is done by constructs, and decisions are made by a representative group. Her complaints about clothes are funny, and true. They are uncomfortable.
Details like Elariel being in pain because she isn’t used to walking in shoes or the difficulties of getting wagons along forest paths bring a touch of reality to this book. The descriptions of the environments people travel through and the different societies of the continent seem to have been well thought out. The writing is fluid and gripping, it’s punchy and fast paced at times while also having slower, more reflective sections. I stayed up rather later to finish the book and can’t wait for the next in the series. I know it’ll be out next year and the title ‘Emperor of Ruin’ which sounds promising.
Because I’m a bit obsessive, and I have Ashes of the Sun in the Orbit paperback edition (US publisher), and Blood of the Chosen in the Head of Zeus edition (UK publisher). I’ve just bought the opposites so I have both books in both editions. I’ll get the Goldsboro Books special hardback of the third book and the two different paperbacks. They have different covers, I’m not just being pedantic about having matching publisher’s editions. I am however aware that most people don’t do this,
Now to my criticisms. There aren’t many. Elariel’s appearance, especially the comments about her attractiveness get a bit repetitive and aren’t really adding to the plot. Other people’s reactions and her utter cluelessness get the message across adequately. The ability of the ghoul swords to cut through unmetal armour where it’s thin is mentioned in every fight, which is just unnecessary, the reader won’t forget that these swords are pretty amazing even if they do have limits. I knew we were heading into the final fight when Maya and Gyre meet up to go to the Purifier and that they would be betrayed, because the same thing happened in Ashes of the Sun. It’s a little formulaic, even though it works.
Generally, I was impressed by this solid sequel, even with the minor irritants. I recommend it to fans of science fiction and fantasy.
When Herman the hermit crab gets too big for his shell, he can’t find a new one that feels just right. With his sister, Hiro, he travels up and down the beach in search of a shell he can call home.
They don’t find a shell, but they do find something else – a pile of rubbish left behind on the sand. But can Herman make a home out of any of it?
My Review
Thanks to the author for sending me a copy of this book and to Love Books Tours for organising this tour. I received a lovely parcel from Lucy Noguera.
Herman and his sister Hiro need new shells, so their family line up and swap shells. Unfortunately, Herman is bigger than any of the others and needs to find a new shell. Hiro and Herman go for a walk on the beach to fins a new shell. Instead they find a large pile of rubbish. Nothing fits right, of course but as night falls, Herman hides in a broken tennis ball. The next day he goes on an unexpected trip.
I reviewed another book by Lucy Noguera last year, SWOP the satsuma sized secret, and really enjoyed it. That came in a lovely parcel, too. This book is for younger children and is beautifully illustrated by Emma Latham. As with SWOP, there is a lesson for young readers. In this case, it’s about the damage rubbish can cause to sealife and ends with a page about how to look after the coast by clearing up rubbish.
The illustrations are lovely, bright and colourful. The paper is high quality, dense and solid, so it’ll last a good long time. The writing is fun and bouncy, and I suggest it’ll be good reading for both parents and children.
I generally send these books to my cousin’s kids, and I’m looking forward to hearing what they think of this one. I think they’ll love it.
Paperback, 351 pages Published October 3rd 2017 by Akashic Books
Blurb
Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.
Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human.
When the autopsy of Matilda‘s sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother’s suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother’s footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she’s willing to fight for it.
My Review
I’ve reviewed this book on my podcast Everything Is Better With Dragons, episode 2 which will be available soon, but I’m sharing a written review for those who don’t listen to podcasts.
I liked this book.
Aster is clearly Autistic, like Rivers Solomon, and later in the book we learn Aster is probably non-binary too. A bit of intersectional representation! Aster also comes from the lower decks of the arc ship she’s travelling in. The society of the HSS Matilda is highly stratified by skin colour, the darker you are the lower down the ship you live and the worse your living conditions are. Aster, unlike many of her deck mates, has a lot of mobility between decks due to her position as assistant to the Surgeon General, Theo. Aster has a complex relationship with Theo, neither really know what they are to each other beyond their professional relationship, and both struggle to express what they feel for each other.
Complex relationships are a theme in this novel.
Theo has a complex relationship with his uncle, Lieutenant, who eventually becomes Sovereign. Theo is frightened of his uncle and aware that his uncle is highly conflicted about his feelings for Theo.
Lieutenant has a complex relationship with morality. He is attracted to his feminine nephew, appalled by his attraction and also by the ‘pollution’ of the family bloodline represented by Theo’s skin colour. He’s also jealous of Theo’s relationship with Aster. He assumes it’s sexual, although it doesn’t get that far. He can’t punish Theo directly, because they are equals as Commander of the Guard and Surgeon General, but he can hurt Aster. After his ascension to Sovereign, he takes his sadistic hate out on everyone on Q deck, where Aster lives. He claims that his authority comes from a deity, and that as a ‘pure’ human he is better than lower deck residents.
The society in the book is heavily based on the Antebellum South of the U.S., so incredibly unequal, racist and screwed up. Aster and her friend Giselle are irritants in the society they are forced to tolerate. Aster because she is able to code switch in both gender and language, doesn’t get the point of a lot of the social conventions and has the ability to move about. Giselle because she’s bat shit crazy and is happy to cause mayhem and be a Devil. It is her ability to withstand abuse and trauma, and react in unexpected ways that prevent the Guards or any authority from keeping her down.
Another complex relationship, that between Aster and Giselle, defines and triggers major events in the novel. They love and hate each other, but they also need each other. Aster couldn’t interpret her mother’s notes without Giselle, who sees the world from an entirely different angle, possibly upside down and inside out. Giselle is paranoid, and has delusions of persecution; she is convinced someone is trying to poison her for much of the book. She gets into all sorts of places because she wants to hide from her persecutors.
Aster has complex relationships with maternal figures in her life, firstly her absent mother and secondly Q-deck leader, Aint Melusine. Lune, Aster’s mother, left a riddle for her child to unravel, which becomes Aster’s driving interest, along with botany, astronomy and chemistry. It is Aster’s need to answer the question of Lune and where she went that gives Aster the resilience to survive persecution by Lieutenant and to save HSS Matilda from pointless wandering.
Ainy Melusine replaced the mother Aster never knew. She is not particularly maternal despite being a Nanny on the upper decks, and teacher to the children of Q deck, but she does her best for Aster who she recognises as an unusual child from an early age and helps her to gain an education beyond that normal for a low deck child. Melusine is also Theo’s mother, which complicates her relationship with both Theo and Aster, as she can’t tell either of them. Theo’s father was a previous Sovereign, and the relationship between him and Melusine was clandestine and considered immoral on the upper decks.
These complicated relationships and characters travel through space on a large arc ship that has been travelling at near light speed for 350 years, although on Earth a thousand years has passed. They are powered by Baby, a miniature star, who provides power for the drive and provides light for the crops on a complicated layering system of fields. The ship is clearly and vividly described as is the society that has evolved in different decks and over the ship as a whole. The contrast between the metal and decay of the lower decks with the lush extravagance of the upper decks provides a visual narrative about the people of the Matilda. Despite the harshness of their lives, the lower deckers are inventive, loving and preserve their own food, languages and storytelling cultures against all odds.
The narrative is broken up with stories that Melusine has told Aster in the past. These stories are colourful and clearly draw on Black American and African stories. Melusine or Aster reflect on the stories and what they mean to them, which brings them seamlessly into the narrative.
The narrative is mostly told from Aster’s perspective but occasionally Theo, Melusine and Giselle have chapters. I found this a really interesting structure and have used a similar structure in my novels. I enjoyed the direct plotline with past events being pulled in as memories that fit into the story seamlessly. There’s no skipping between past and future. It’s a lot less confusing that way, at least for me.
The writing and the language used is particularly effective for showing the different cultures and social structure with its minute gradations based on minor differences in skin tone. The language has impact, especially during traumatic events. Some things are heavily implied and some are outright stated, depending on the needs of the narrative. I have the audiobook as well as the paperback and listening to the story had a strong impact on me.
I really enjoyed this novel. I read the last 100 pages in an afternoon, so engrossed by the action and events, I had to know what happened next, and I’d love to see a sequel.
A collection of stories featuring favourite characters from Visions of Zarua and ‘Silent Sea Chronicles’, plus a glimpse into the new series, ‘Starlight Prophecy’.
The Guardian
With an assassin picking off wizards one-by-one, Kalesh visits Cassima, a former student, hoping to persuade her to re-join the Royal Wizards and use their protection to keep her family safe.
Kalesh’s newest charge, Paddren, has strange visions which link to a past event known only to a select few. The knowledge hidden in Paddren’s visions is invaluable so Kalesh must guard the boy at any cost.
Can Kalesh keep his students off the assassin’s radar long enough for his order to stop the killer?
Garrick the Protector
Fifteen-year-old Garrick is helping at his uncle’s farm when his cousin’s illegal use of magic threatens the family’s safety.
Mara is in immediate danger from the Assembly who deem all magic as a threat. The only safe place for her is the Turrak Mountains where exiled mystics have found sanctuary alongside the island’s Sentinel.
Can Garrick get Mara to safety before the Assembly catch up with them?
War Wounds
Conscripted to fight off raiders, Calder finds the months of bloody battle unleash a sixth sense buried inside him.
Finally released from duty, he travels home and encounters a mysterious woman who insists his life is destined to serve a higher purpose. Calder rejects her claims, wanting only to return to a simple existence with his wife.
But can Calder pick up his old life when the powers within him have been stirred? And why does he feel such misgivings about his return?
All three stories give readers a tantalising glimpse into the fantasy worlds created by Suzanne Rogerson.
Paperback, 305 pages Published February 22nd 2022 ISBN13: 9798985663211
Blurb
High Fantasy with a double-shot of self-reinvention
Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.
However, her dreams of a fresh start pulling shots instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners and a different kind of resolve.
A hot cup of fantasy slice-of-life with a dollop of romantic froth.
My Review
This book arrived on Monday and to be honest it didn’t make it to the TBR pile. I took it upstairs to add to the pile and instead spent two hours reading. I finished it today. Didn’t have the energy yesterday after work, but I’m okay today. Not going to the Wellbeing Hub at the leisure centre on Monday might have something to do with that. I’m disappointed in myself and my body that a fairly gentle exercise routine two days a week and working one afternoon a week results is enough to knock me off my feet for two to three days. It’s ridiculous.
But ignore all that, you’re not here for updates on my dodgy health and energy levels, you’re here for the book review.
Viv is an orc adventurer, sick of all the travelling and killing. After one final mission she settles down in the town of Thune and opens a coffee shop, an utterly unheard-of venture. Making friends with a giant cat, a succubus in a sweater, a rattkin baker, a hob carpenter, Arcanist (wizard but with scientist overtones) who refuses to drink hot drinks and a musician who invents soft rock, Viv finds a home. She also has to cope with the local crime family demanding protection money and an old companion who thinks her good fortune is unfair. Their friendship sees them through trials and tribulations, and Viv finally finds love.
I enjoyed this novel. The plot is not new. Lots of cosy romances have a similar plot, but none I’ve ever heard of involve fantasy creations. I don’t read romance much, but if you add it to a fantasy setting and don’t make the romance overwhelming, I’m fine with it. I found the characters fun and realistic. The worldbuilding is really good. It’s not heavy handed, but there’s enough detail added as colour, like mentions of far off places and organisations that it comes across as a complex complete world. It was easy to read and I rooted for Viv and her friends.
I had a read of the acknowledgements. It looks like Baldree wrote this book for NaNoWriMo 2021, and somehow managed to publish it by February 2022. The press, Cryptid Press, looks like it’s the author’s own press, so I assume it’s self-published. I also looked briefly at the author’s website https://travisbaldree.com/ which seems to confirm it. It’s well edited. The benefits of having a proper editor and plenty of beta readers. Having tried something similar, without those benefits, I can only doff my overly large hat to Baldree. Nice work.
If you want to try a fantasy that is light and fun, with high fantasy elements, I recommend this novel.
Thanks to Anne of Random Things Tours for organising this blog tour and to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.
I found this book fascinating and shocking. The author writes with candour about her struggles, life within the closed community of fundamentalist Judaism her parents adopted, and her journey to freedom. She is not afraid to call out the hypocrisy of fundamental religions and their followers, and identifies the mechanisms of control that permeate them. Her anger is clear and makes it’s appearance several times as she discusses the abuses in her former community, as well as the ways people take advantage of those who escape controlling groups. She trusted people who she thought were good people only to discover that they were cheats and liars. Help from good people, who understood that getting everything is writing and having contracts is the only way to go in business, got her into a better position and eventually her hard work and creative flare saved her business and freed her family.
The author correctly identifies that women are often used to reinforce their own oppression in these groups; teaching the ‘laws’ to the next generation after a lifetime of indoctrination and abuse, by means of indoctrination and abuse, because they’ve been told it’ll make them holy. Since they can’t be holy or good just by being a decent human, only men can be that. Social pressure, gossip and ostracism are tools used to control women by other women; once the system is set up and in place for a couple of generation, the men no longer have to actively police it, they merely passively benefit from it and never question the problem. In some fundamentalist communities, young men are also thrown out and the stories of their struggles to adapt to a world they haven’t been prepared for are used as lessons to keep others in line.
I would be interested to know how she brought her children and ex-husband away from fundamentalism, as he’s now a Modern Orthodox Jew and the children are all in higher education. The denial of education to children and forcing adults into pre-defined roles based on genitalia are major problems in all fundamentalist religious groups, unfortunately.
Haart’s devotion to her children shines through and she is at pains to make it clear that every risk she took was to give them better lives away where they wouldn’t be forced into early marriage or denied an education.
It doesn’t matter which particular prophet they follow, when your god is a psychopath and his priests can get away with manipulating the people, you’re going to get abuse. Fear of being called a bigot often prevents authorities from intervening where they can, such as in the unregulated and unregistered schools children of fundamentalist parents are often sent to, and to ‘schools with a religious ethos’ in the UK. Just because the parents are *insert religion or denomination here* doesn’t mean the children should be subjected to ignorant, outdated ideas and denied an education. And the ‘God/Allah/YHWH/Jehovah says so’ excuse is lazy and stupid. No, a bunch of old men wrote a load of myths and rules about how to live safely at different times over a thousand years and in different cultural contexts and now you’re trying to force that crap on children living in totally different cultural contexts, in a world with more knowledge available than ever before. You want to believe the myths, go ahead, but you don’t get to force that on other people. Can you tell I have little time for the god of Abraham, and a lot of time for his victims? My Gran would be so upset if she read this.
Back to the book
I found the writing spirited and easy to read. It is a heartfelt plea against fundamentalism and a demand for freedom. I found the descriptions of her creative process and the difficulties of starting a business gripping, while her life in her former community and her travels are fascinatingly told. The details of lives usually hidden from the wider world are enough to give anyone pause, and her discussion of her mental health struggles as she fought to escape and then to build a business are compassionate to herself and others. I’m still surprised at how much compassion she has for her ex-husband, given his behaviour, and that she still has a belief in a higher power, but everyone is different.
I didn’t particularly enjoy reading about Haart’s post-separation sexual adventures, but that’s just me. Some people might be interested. I found some of the phrasing repetitive. There’s only so many times I can read that returning to Monsey was like returning to jail for her, or that she doesn’t let people take advantage of her now. And it felt like it finished a bit abruptly.
In summary
A worthwhile memoir, and peak into the behind the scenes life of a fashion designer.
About the Author
Julia Haart is the star of the Netflix docuseries My Unorthodox Life.
She is the CEO, co-owner and chief creative officer of Elite World Group, the world’s first talent media agency, which is comprised of 48 global agencies representing the most dynamic and culturally connected talent in the world.
She was previously the creative director of La Perla, the luxury Italian intimates brand, and launched her career as a designer with her namesake shoe collection.
Amira Valdez’s adventures continue in the sequel to The Sentient,as she finds herself in unprecedented danger. The ruthless new leader of the fundamentalist Trinity Compound seeks to understand his strange neurological connection with Amira and unleash an army on an unstable North America. The first human clone has been born, but thanks to the mysterious scientist Tony Barlow, it may unlock the secret to human immortality– or disaster. Together, Amira and Barlow form an uneasy alliance in pursuit of scientific breakthroughs and protection from shared enemies.
But new discoveries uncover dark secrets that Barlow wants to keep hidden.
My Review
Thanks to Anne of Random Things Tours for organising this blog tour, and to Flame Tree Press for sending me a copy of the book.
Oh my goodness me! I just finished reading this novel (28th May 2022), I read the remaining 250 pages of this 310 page book today after getting started on it earlier in the week but being too exhausted to read for most of the week. I think I read most of it in about 4 hours, which is about normal for me. It was a real page-turner, though, because once I got settled with food and fluids, I didn’t move until I finished reading it.
Amira and friends return some months after the end of The Sentient, the first book in this series. After being cleared by Westport Police of any crimes, Amira has been tagged by the Aldwych Council to prevent her escaping before they could bring her to trial. The opening is tense and moving as Amira deals with her fears about what would happen if she was found guilty on spurious charges. She copes by getting drunk the night before her trial and hiding in an ancient vertical farm. Found and returned to civilisation by her friends D’Arcy and Julian, she finds she has more friends than she thought, or at least people who need her for things, including Dr Barlow. Amira also gets a boyfriend, despite her fears and internalised guilt.
What follows is a rollicking adventure that bounces from calm to tension to explosions and back again several times before an ending that is totally unexpected. There are several gun and ship battles, and once again Amira goes into space and has to do some high level clambering around buildings.
The plot was gripping and I liked the character development of Amira as she realises that she can be someone other than the ‘compound girl come good’ through seeing the manipulation of power players in the city. We learn more about the history of the Pandora project and the Cosmics, and see more of the world post-Cataclysm. There’s an eight year period which demands it’s own novel, from Lee, D’Arcy, Maxine or Hadrian’s POV.
There were some minor typographical errors, couldn’t tell if the author meant to use ‘commandeered’ when ‘commanded’ would make more sense. I can see why, in the context, it would sometimes be appropriate, but not always and it could be a mistake.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 