The Gift of Darkness

In Seattle, a few weeks before Christmas, a family of four are horribly murdered in their own home.  All evidence points to one man.  A man already wanted by the police, but who had also been through a traumatic event years earlier with one of the victims and was supposed to be one of his closet friends.  It's up to Detective Alice Madison, who has only been with the Homicide unit for little over a month, to untangle the secrets and impossibilities of this strange case.

V. M. Giambanco's debut novel gets off to a slow start.  There's a lot of information to process regarding not only the crime scene and the resulting investigation, but core character back stories, too.  However, don't let this put you off, as halfway through the majority of the explaining stops and all of those details begin to make sense.  This is when The Gift of Darkness becomes a proper page-turner.

Giambanco has created fantastic characters, all with their own set of moral ambiguities, and placed them within a clever plot.  I was kept guessing why the Sinclair family was murdered for the majority of the book.  When Giambanco finally revealed this information, I found the reason behind the murders slightly anticlimactic; although I did wonder if this made the killers actions even worse?  In the end it is not so much the reveal of the killer's motive, but as to how the final show-down unfolds provides an exciting, and somewhat horrifying, conclusion.

After reading I am still left with questions about certain aspects, but I always welcome a book that makes me think long after I have finished reading.  I would love to read more from V. M. Giambanco in the future, especially if she carries on with Alice Madison as her lead character.

The Master and Margarita

The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit.  With his disorderly band of accomplices - including a demonic, gun-totting tomcat - he immediately begins to create havoc.

Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos.  Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try a little black magic of her own to save the man she loves...

While I wish I could get my old University brain back, I think I mushed that up a few years ago, so this isn't going to be a thoughtful literary review on how Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is a commentary on Soviet Russia.  

Instead I can tell you that I fell in love the cover of The Master and Margarita at first sight.  I'm not sure if it's the Moscow skyline, the bright blue or the cat mask but I love it, okay?  The story itself, not so much.   Although I found parts of the text engaging, often when events took an absurd turn (the Devil's ball, the séance and Berlioz's meeting with Annushka...to name a few), my mind couldn't help but drift off in other sections that were perhaps too dull in comparison.  I think I would need to re-read The Master and Margarita to fully appreciate Bulgakov's writing, and all of the intricacies laced within the narrative, but I have no intention of doing that at least for another couple of years.

Stop Dead

I had not read any of the Geraldine Steel series prior to Stop Dead, this is the fifth instalment, and nor at any point during reading did I feel that I was at a disadvantage for not having done so.

Having recently transferred to London, Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel is investigating the murder of a wealthy businessman, Patrick Henshaw.  His body was found in a car, brutally mutilated.  At first it is thought to have been a crime of passion conducted by either his wife or her lover.  It is not until Henshaw's business partner is found dead, murdered in the same horrible way, that Steel realises that there's possibly more to these murders than what it originally seemed.
 
In the beginning, I was reminded of Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series, as Russell was mixing her murder case with details about her detective's home life.  However, unlike one of Gerritsen's impeccably paced novels, the narrative of Stop Dead was bogged down by multiple (and sometimes needless) P.O.Vs and the details of Steel's life outside of work.  At no point did I feel that rush to find out who was committing these grizzly murders. 

In fact, all those red herring's that are so heavily promoted in the blurb were needless; halfway through the book it becomes rather obvious as to who the real culprit is. 

Another flaw of Stop Dead is that I felt characterization was completely off.  Many of the suspects are typical two dimensional stereotypical characters you'd find in any generic crime novel.  Then there's Steel's Sergeant, Sam, who reads like a stroppy teenager who only cares about her stomach and chips.  How on earth, in real life, would this girl be able to work in a homicide investigations department?  

One redeeming feature, for me, were the scenes where the bodies were discovered, often in odd places.  However, while Leigh Russell's latest offering would probably be a good disposable beach read, Stop Dead doesn't inspire me to read any of Russell's other books.


This was an ARC review for Real Readers, Stop Dead is published by No Exit Press on the 30th May.

Bad Monkeys

Jane Charlotte: A woman with a serious attitude problem, a drug habit and a licence to kill.

She has been arrested for murder, and during questioning tells police that she is a member of a secret organisation devoted to fighting evil.  Her division, 'The Department for The Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons' - or 'Bad Monkeys' for short - is an execution squad that rids the world of especially evil people.  However, the man Jane has been arrested for killing was not on the official target list.

This strange confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor interviews her at length about her supposed career as an assassin.  Her tale grows increasingly bizarre, with references to hidden messages in crosswords, dollar bills that can see and scary, axe-wielding clowns.  The doctor does his best to sort truth from lies, but whenever it seems he's getting to the bottom of things, there's another twist to unravel.

Not until the full, extraordinary story is told will we learn whether Jane is lying, crazy...or playing a different game altogether.

I first saw Bad Monkeys on a display in Norwich Waterstones that also included quirky books such as Ernest Cline's Ready Player One and Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.  The version they currently stock has an awesome cover, but as I borrowed my copy from the library I had to settle for one that was a little different. 

Cover snobbery over with, I really enjoyed reading Bad Monkeys.  And by that, I mean I loved reading this book!  Matt Ruff's tale of good and evil is completely insane and only gets barmier as the story progresses.  Fast paced and frantic, Ruff has you by the scruff of the neck from the beginning, dragging you along with Jane's tales of how she came to be involved with a mysterious organisation that uses toy guns to exterminate evil people. 

Ruff is clear from the beginning that Jane is an unreliable narrator, someone who is potential holding back important details, which is my favourite type of storyteller.  She's kind of a more drug addled Miriam Black.  The white room chapters, where Jane is being interrogated and which serve as interludes between Jane's recollections, are reminders that not all is as it seems.  Or is it? 

My only criticism is that the ending does spiral out of control.  In fact it reminded me of a scene from a Doctor Who episode entitled Lets Kill Hitler, in which the Doctor and River keep out witting each other in Hitler's office.   Where Ruff's introductory chapters of Jane as a deviant school girl had purpose and a sense that these type of events could actually happen, the last few chapters are a touch extreme and test the limits of believability.

Nonetheless I would recommend Bad Monkeys to anyone and everyone.  I'm definitely going to buy myself a copy sometime soon.  It is just a shame that it is a standalone novel, as for once I wouldn't mind returning to Ruff's deranged world and finding out more about the Bad Monkeys and the Scary Clowns.



P.S Here's the cover for the version the stock in Waterstones Norwich (from goodreads):

Code Name Verity

 

I have two weeks.  You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That's what you do to enemy agents.  It's what we do to enemy agents.  But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out.  Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine - and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need.  All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort.  And I'm going to.  But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie.  She is the pilot who flew me into France - an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.

I am always on the look out for different types of YA fiction.  Having seen Elizabeth Wein's WWII set Code Name Verity being reviewed positively on quite a few other blogs, I decided to get a copy out from the library.

Code Name Verity is interesting without being too teachy, even if now, after reading, I can't remember all the details about the various planes used in WWII.  However, it's hard to talk about this book in depth without giving away major plot developments.  So, as usual, I will try to be as vague as possible. 

All of the twists and turns that are expected from a novel about war time espionage are there, feeding my love of an unreliable narrator.  The epistolary style can take some getting used to, especially when it doesn't seem like some of the narrative should be included in the girl's accounts.  The latter half of the novel changes to a first person narrative with a few letters added in, providing a secondary look on what has already been divulged.

Yet, more than this, Code Name Verity is about the strength of friendship.  There's no big romance to be found here, only the 'Allied Invasion of Two'.  The relationship between the two leads is portrayed excellently.  I was continually shown why these two girls were best friends and I believed in them.  I also liked that Wein  gave her 'villain' Hauptsturmfuhrer a family, emphasising that normal people did horrible things in the war because they had to.

The ending is heart-breaking, but then Wein's tale could not have ended in any other way.  Also, if you normally skip the author's acknowledgements at the end, then make an exception for those as the end of Code Name Verity.  I found them to be extremely informative, and answered a few of my questions.   For example, why are some of the locations in her tale non-existent/misnamed?

I thought this was a great book.  No romance, kick-ass heroines and a cover that ties into the novel: what more could I ask for?  Admittedly I did get a little unenthused about reading somewhere in the middle, but if you're fed up of YA dystopia's and fancy something a bit different, then why not give Code Name Verity a try?

The Book Thief

I don't know why I hadn't read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak until recently and I couldn't tell yo why I decided that it was finally time to read it.  I did a little bit of research beforehand and had seen a comment on Goodreads that this wasn't a book you could read quickly.  I'd argue against that as I steamed through the Book Thief like a locomotion on it's way to get Anna Karenina.  I thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction that I have ever read. 

Here's the blurb from Goodreads (the picture is from there too as I forgot to take one of my copy, d'oh!): HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH. It's a small story, about: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES

Captivating and harrowing at the same time, I thought that Zusack had found a perfect voice in which to tell his story.  The narrator, Death, wasn't a characicture like you'd expect, just an observer who had become fascinated with Lisel's story.  The reasons for this are left unclear.  Did Death follow Liesel and those who lived on Himmel Street to prove to itself that there was some good in humanity during a time when there appeared to be none?  Or as a prime example of the evils that others can do to each other? 

Even though it may have been heartbreaking, there were proper consequneces for everyone in this sad tale.  The narrative was set up like a stack of dominoes that the Zusack was waiting to flick at just the right moment, so that they all topple.  When he knocked his dominoes down I was in tears, heartbroken for Liesel and all of the people I had grown to love over the course of the novel.  Yet even in death there was beauty and I'm definately going to buy my own copy of this tremendous book.

The Teleportation Accident

History happened while you were hungover.

 

When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.

 

If you're living in Germany in the 1930's, it probably isn't.

 

But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with cosmic evil that claimed the life of his hero, the great seventeenth-century stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.

 

 

I am a sucker for beautiful covers and Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident happens to have a cracking cover.  When I finally managed to stop staring and open the book to read the first page, I was worried. Was Beauman's second novel going to be a verbose waffle, trying too hard to be what a Man Booker Prize longlisted book should be?  He certainly had me going for a while...and then it became funny.  Not small laughs either, but proper out loud, I have to repeat what I've just read to everyone I can find, funny.  Beauman had me hooked at 'Tassels on Tassels on Tassels on Tassels' and my worries about not understanding a thing melted away. 

That's not to say that The Teleportation Accident is just a barrel of laughs.  It's frustratingly bonkers and that's down to the lead character.  Loeser is pretty much a loser.  He could have been an Ian McEwan character, for he is totally, unequivocally selfish.  He's completely oblivious to events outside of his own small world, including the impending WWII, and only cares about his ever decreasing sex life.  Loeser only starts to look like a better human being when he is in the company of the other demented characters that populate this weird world. 

There's a haphazard nature to the book, in the way that Loeser keeps falling into trouble, but at the same time Beauman makes sure that everything that happens stays interconnected and relevant to the core story.  I also found that just because the setting and the year changes, it doesn't mean the story or Loeser will, turning The Teleportation Accident into a bizarre version of groundhog day. 

The ending, while wrapping everything up, is still a bit WTF?!? but after I finished I realised how glad I was I kept reading even though I wasn't keen on the first few pages.  It makes me wish that more of this sort of fiction would find a way onto the Man Booker Prize longlist/shortlist each year, proving that intelligent reads don't always have to be uptight and dreary.

Legend

Los Angeles, California, Republic of America.

He is Day, the boy who walks in the light.

She is June, the girl who seeks her brother's killer.

On the run and undercover, they meet by chance.  Irresistibly drawn together neither knows the other's past.  But Day murdered June's brother and she has sworn to avenge his death...

I saw Legend on so many TTT lists last year that I had to know what all the fuss was about.

While I enjoyed Marie Lu's dystopian tale, I could have done without the smoochies.  It just read like this: "Oh I find you attractive, now I must save youuuuu!".  I know I'm a grinch, but Lu had developed more than enough to bind Day and June together.  Without the romance there would have been a far more interesting dynamic between the two of them and how they represent the same ideals whilst having completely different backgrounds.

Other than that one disappointment, I was astounded and fascinated with the world that Lu had created.  Maybe I haven't had my share of Dystopian novels yet, so I'm still pretty amazed that writers can come up with all these different post-apocalyptic situations.  I'm not surprised that the film rights have already been snapped up.

I'm still interested to see how Lu will develop her characters, and expand the world outside the Republic, when book two in the planned trilogy, Prodigy, is released at the end of the month.

Capital

I received John Lanchester's Capital as part of a 'Mystery Book' scheme Waterstones.com held for their cardholders just before Christmas.

The residents of Pepys Road, London - a banker and his shopaholic wife, an elderly woman dying of a brain tumour, the Pakistani family who run the local shop, the young football star from Senegal and his minder - all receive an anonymous postcard with a simple message: 

We Want What You Have.  Who is behind it? What do they want?

  As the mystery of the postcards deepens, the world around Pepys Road is turned upside down by the financial crash and all of its residents' lives change beyond recognition over the course of the next year.

When I started reading Capital, I loved it.  It was so easy to read and Lanchester introduced me to a variety of interesting characters inhabiting a wealthy London Street.  He also provided an element of mystery with the 'We Want What You Have' cards being posted through the residents doors. 

  Unfortunately, at about 200 pages in, I became less enthused about reading Capital, and it was a struggle to reach the end.  The problem with the book for me was that Lanchester couldn't stop adding POV's of minor characters.  Not only this, he never develops them into something more than a cliche.  I was disappointed with the revelation of who was posting the cards - that whole element of the plot could be erased and no one would notice - and I  wish that Lanchester had developed this plot line into something a bit more sinister.  In fact, I wish the whole book had been developed into something more thoughtful and original.


Perhaps with some tweaks Capital could have been great, as Lanchester certainly has a readable writing style, but as it stands, I don't think I would ever want to read it again.



 

Lost Souls

At a club in Missing Mile, just outside New Orleans, the children of the night gather.  They dress in black and they're looking for acceptance.  There's Ghost, who sees what others do not; Ann, looking for love; and Jason, whose real name is Nothing, seeking the deathless truth about his father - and himself.
  But into Missing Mile tonight come three beautiful, hip vagabonds.  They are on their own lost journey, slaking their ancient thirst for blood, aching for supple young flesh.
  They find it in Nothing and Ann.  Now Ghost must pursue them all to save Ann from her new friends, to save Nothing from himself.


When telling my Mum about this book she was sure she had read it.  However, upon reading the blurb to her she was all, "that's not what my copy said...and mine had a green cover', which is to be expected when the book is about 20-years-old.  When I started reading Lost Souls I realised that both the blurb and the cover had been re-done to appeal to a Twilight obsessed market looking for their next fix of those lovable people of the night.  The problem with this is that Lost Souls is most certainly not Twilight.  Poppy Z. Brite's book is dark and twisty to the extreme, and most certainly an adult read where anything (and I am not using that word lightly...) goes.  It has shades of Interview with the Vampire, not just because of it's partial New Orleans setting, but with it's non romanticised concept of what a vampire truly is. 

I'll be the first to admit that I was disturbed by some of the content.  Nonetheless, I couldn't stop reading this book.  I did wonder if Brite wanted her story to be as offensive as possible, to get a rise out of her readers, but then I'm always complaining that all vampire stories have merged into one huge sparkly love fest.  It was nice that behind all this sometimes heinous activity, there was complexity and interesting discussion points; the standout being only a few lines with Ghost's musings on, and if you can even define, what is evil.  I'm not sure I would read it again, even if I did enjoy the ride, but it did help me realise that maybe I have been reading books that have been written in the wrong decade.  Obviously, pre-noughties is the way to go for original vampire fiction.

Gone Girl

Just how well can you ever know the person you love?  This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears.  The police immediately suspect Nick.  Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him.  He swears it isn't true.  A police examination of his computer shows strange searches.  He says they aren't his.  And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.  So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?


Gillian Flynn has one dark mind as Gone Girl is a boat load of crazy.  The narration is split into two, alternating between Nick's thoughts while searching for his wife and Amy's diary entries that reveal more about their marriage than Nick will share.  Right from the start each section of prose has this jittery quality which promptly informed me that this was not going to be a bog standard thriller.  Sure enough, the further I followed Flynn down the rabbit hole that is Amy Dunne's disappearance, the more intense my feelings for the book became.
  I don't want to go into any detail so as to spoil Gone Girl, but it has so many twists, some obvious, some not, and by the end it is hard to know who to empathise with.  A great well paced story, that has some truly horrific moments, I was up until 2 am two nights in a row reading this noir-esque thriller desperate to know what happened next. 

Enduring Love

One windy spring day in the Chilterns, Jose Rose's calm, organised life is shattered by a ballooning accident.  The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry.  Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

 

Enduring Love didn't capture my attention, much to my dismay.   I have loved reading every other Ian McEwan book that I could get my mitts on (Attonement, Saturday, Amsterdam, Sweet Tooth, Solar) but I couldn't continue reading this tale of obsession for any prolonged amounts of time.

  Maybe I have been in an odd mood for the past week, or maybe I found the
prose alienating. Rose rattles on like an elitist madman about his scientific
beliefs for much of the book. I know this was supposed to add to the confusion
and cement Rose as a character but I was only interested in finding out who was
the madman - Rose or Parry? - and couldn't really engage with Joe and his
plight. This is odd, as normally McEwan can make the most detestable characters
readable and interesting. I'm not denying that Enduring Love is a good read, it just wasn't a good read for me.

Lost in a Good Book

Thursday Next is back.  This Time, it's personal.
For Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, life should be good.  Riding high on a wave of celebrity following the safe return of kidnapped Jane Eyre, Thursday ties the knot with the man she loves.
  But marital bliss isn't quite as it should be.  It turns out her husband of one month actually drowned thirty-eight years ago, and no one but Thursday has any memory of him at all.
  Someone, somewhere is responsible.
  Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday heads back into fiction in search of the truth, discovering that paper politicians, lost Shakespearean manuscripts, a flurry of near-fatal coincidences and impending Armageddon are all part of a greater plan.
  But whose?  And why?


Lost in A Good Book is the second instalment of the Thursday Next series written by Jasper Fforde.  Lets get all the gushy stuff out of the way first.  I love the alternative Britain that Fforde has created. I love all the wacky literature references and the silly character names.  I love how Fforde plays around with the form of the text (conversations happening in the footnotes!), but most of all, I love Thursday.  Landen has disappeared but does she sit around and mope like any other heroine would?  No, she investigates!  Is this all Thursday gets up to in Lost in a Good Book?  No!  There's neanderthals, the Chesire Cat and even Miss Havisham.  Plus if you need a supernatural hit, like in the Eyre Affair, there is what I like to call the intermission moment where the main plot is put aside and Thursday goes off on an amusing adventure with SO-17 officer Spike Stoker. 
  Lost in A Good Book isn't always a barrel of laughs and the quieter thoughtful moments come from scenes with Thursday's parents and the Landen who now only exists in her memories, all adding a more detailed history for Thursday and the Next family.
  Sometimes I do get a bit lost with all the goings on in Thursday's world, and not all chapters captivated my imagination or even my attention.  However, there is still plenty to enjoy when reading Lost in a Good Book.  Although I'm not rushing to order the third book in the series, if The Well of Lost Plots happens to be in the library, I will be revisiting Thursday and Pickwick the dodo sometime next year.  

The Other Life

3 years, 1 month, 1 week and 6 days since I’d seen daylight. One-fifth of my life. 98,409,602 seconds since the heavy, steel door had fallen shut and sealed us off from the world

Sherry has lived with her family in a sealed bunker since things went wrong up above. But when they run out of food, Sherry and her dad must venture outside. There they find a world of devastation, desolation...and the Weepers: savage, mutant killers.

When Sherry's dad is snatched, she joins forces with gorgeous but troubled Joshua - an Avenger, determined to destroy the Weepers.

But can Sherry keep her family and Joshua safe, when his desire for vengeance threatens them all?

The Other Life is packed full of teen speculative fiction cliches, including my pet hate of a burgeoning romance between the two leads which normally causes me to scream, "why can they never just be friends?" and then throw the book across the room for good measure!  However; against all odds, I found Susanne Winnacker's debut novel to be a great read.

Susanne Winnacker knows how to spin a good yarn, and The Other Life's success lies in it's pacing.  She explains a lot, and yet there's always something going on, propelling Sherry deeper into the rabbit hole, and I found myself literally unable to put this book down.  I think what I loved most were the Weepers; people who had been infected with a strain of rabies that had killed the other half of the population.  They are a clever way of not using your average zombie in this post-outbreak wasteland and I liked that they all looked different apart from their human-like weeping eyes.  Very unsettling!

I also have to mention, as I always do, that the cover work is beautifully creepy (look at that moth a bit closer) and extends to inside the book as well, with the barbed wire trailing across the chapter headers.  The last couple chapters take the story in a different direction, and I hope that will be explored in the second book of the series, due out spring next year.  So, if you can, get you hands on a copy if only to stare at that lovely cover!

Amped

Twenty-nine-year-old Owen Gray always believed the miraculous device in his brain had been implanted for purely medical reasons, as a way of controlling the debilitating seizures he suffered in his youth.  But when the Supreme Court rules that 'amplified' humans like Owen are not protected by the same basic laws as pure humans, his world instantly fractures.  As society begins to unravel and a new class war is ignited by fear, Owen's father, a doctor who originally implanted the 'amp', confides something that will send him on a harrowing journey - and he is now in grave danger.
  All roads lead to a dusty community in rural Oklahoma, where Owen must find the one man who can explain what is really in his head.  There he also meets Lyle Crosby, a dangerous and unpredictable leader of the fast-growing 'amp' movement, someone whose stunning physical abilities and ruthless ideas show Owen how to harness his own startling gifts - but threaten to draw him into a world from which there may be no moral return.


The blurb for Amped sounds so good doesn't it? I haven't read Daniel H. Wilson's other novel Robopocalypse, but have been tempted many times to purchase it.  However; after reading Amped that compulsion has completely died.
 
The first few pages start off great, and I was devouring the story at a fast pace, but after Owen ends up on the lamb my interest in this book soon disintegrated and I couldn't for ages figure out why.  It's not that Amped isn't based on a great idea, or that any of the technical jargon went overboard - I do think that Wilson's primary strength is incorporating his vast knowledge of robotics into the text - however; the whole thing is just soulless.

My main problem was that Wilson's lead character Owen reads as being completely 2-dimensional and only existing for the purpose of this stand-alone story.  Was this Wilson's intent?  To make 'Amped' characters seem less human because they have been altered?  Well, if that is the case, then I think he succeeded.  It's a shame, as with some tweaking, Amped could have become something completely different, something a lot more thrilling and attention grabbing but unfortunately it's just a generic, bland piece of speculative fiction.    

Heart Shaped Bruise

I've seen this on a couple of blogs, yet I didn't set out to read it, but it was another a case of it catching my eye in the library and me thinking why not?

They say I'm evil. The police. The newspapers. The girls from school who shake their heads on the six o’clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me. And everyone believes it. Including you. But you don't know. You don't know who I used to be.

Who I could have been.

Awaiting trial at Archway Young Offenders Institution, Emily Koll is going to tell her side of the story for the first time.

Heart-Shaped Bruise is a compulsive and moving novel about infamy, identity and how far a person might go to seek revenge.

Heart-Shaped Bruise is a YA Crime/Thriller, probably a good introduction for budding crime novel devourers.  The only problem I had, and this may be a tad spoilery, was that I found myself waiting for a twist that never came.  There were too many coincidences for me and I was expecting something a little more complex from the ending.  Still I read it in one sitting.  Tanya Byrne's writing style is definitely compelling, and in Emily she has created a brittle and fascinating character, that perhaps deserved a better story to inhabit.  So, while Heart-Shaped Bruise is not a bad read, and I would recommend it, it is just not what I expected.

The Eyre Affair

This was another recommendation from a friend and I can't believe I hadn't heard of this series until earlier this year!


There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime waves Mr Big.
Archeron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom.  Jane Eyre is gone.  Missing.
Thursday sets out to find a way in the book to repair the damage.  But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.
Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day.  Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself.  Fiction will never be the same again...


There is plenty to like about the Eyre affair: all the puns, the names, the dodos and how broad the spectrum for Thursday's world is.  Fforde has created a great female character who is completely no-nonsense and comes across as somewhat normal in a bizarre, off-kilter, version of 80's Britain.  Thursday is middle aged, of average looks, wants to progress in her career and struggles to forgive her ex-boyfriend for ratting out her brother.  There are plenty of  colourful characters introduced throughout the book, and some scenes that may be brought up later on in the series.  The Eyre affair reads like Robert Rankin at his nutty best; so much so that I kept wanting to dig out my copy of The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.  I've got the second instalment, Lost in a Good Book, waiting in line to be read and I hope it is just as good as this fantastic introduction to the world of Thursday Next. 

Costume Not Included

As I've mentioned in a previous review, I was disappointed with the first book in Matthew Hughes' To Hell and Back series.  I had ordered the sequel, Costume Not Included, at the same time from the library and I wasn't over enthused to begin reading.  So after a break of a few weeks I decided with trepidation to go on another adventure with Chesney ' Actionary' Arnstruther and and his demon sidekick Xaphan.

Chesney Arnstruther's efforts to Save the Day and Get the Girl are making slow progress.  This superhero stuff is more complicated than he first thought, even with a cigar-chomping demon for a sidekick.
But while Chesney is trying to learn the ropes, Boss Greeley has made a deal with the Devil, a pact that is making the villain stronger by the minute.  Meanwhile, the Reverend Hardacre has been doing some research into matters spiritual and has found that not everything in the Garden (of Eden) is rosy.

For me, Costume Not Included was a marked improvement, and I wish that this was the first book in the series.  I found it easy to read and finished within a day.  Hughes grapples with the same concepts of good and evil and everything in between as before, but has moved the story in a different direction; focusing more on his characters relationships with each other and the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre's intentions for writing The Book of Chesney.  While slightly plot light, the cast of characters are all written well, and there has been plenty of development between the two books, with Chesney dealing with his new relationship and introducing Melda to his his somewhat hypocritical uptight mother.  Then there's Xaphan, who, as always, was fantastic as the chain cigar smoking, constant rum drinking fiend.
  I look forward to more Hell and Back Adventures, and hope that Hughes can find an even better way to utilise his characters through a stronger plot.
 

Of Bees and Mist

Initially, I struggled to read Of Bees of Mist.  An original fairytale following the life of Meridia, who upon marrying, leaves her childhood home full of mysterious mist and discord between her parents, only to find that life with her husband's family is not the safe haven she first believed it to be.

Once I reached the core of the story I began to really enjoy Erick Setiawan's debut novel.  I liked how Meridia grew over the course of the book, and that although it is a modern fairytale, nothing explicitly supernatural happens, anything unusual, like the bees, can be taken as analogies of events that occur in everyday life.  I also liked the ending, as it stayed true to each of the characters individual journeys.  Most of all I liked the timeless nature of the story. 

The Long Earth

This collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter came as a recommendation from a friend.  If I'm honest, even a few weeks after I finished reading The Long Earth, I am still unsure if I really enjoyed this speculative tale. 

1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No man's Land gone?

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there's no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds a curious gadget - a box, containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a 'stepper'. An invention he put up on the web for all the world to see, and use, an invention that would to change the way mankind viewed his world Earth for ever. And that's an understatement if ever there was one...

...because the stepper allowed the person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth, and if you kept on stepping, you kept on entering even more Earths...this is the Long Earth. It's not our Earth but one of chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side each differing from its neighbour by really very little (or actually quite a lot). It's an infinite chain, offering 'steppers' an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger - and sometimes more dangerous - the Earths get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently.

But, until Willis Linsay invented his stepper, only our Earth hosted mankind...or so we thought. Because it turns out there are some people who are natural 'steppers', who don't need his invention and now the great migration has begun...

Pratchett and Baxter present some interesting concepts and as you would expect that are some amusing pieces of prose, I especially liked Joshua's background and the mentions of the somewhat progressive nuns that raised him, but The Long Earth was more of a prologue than a proper stand-alone story.  I would have loved to have found out more about Lobsang and the Black Corporation, and about the history of the 'natural' steppers.

  Also, when it comes to the structure of a book, I'm normally of the opinion the shorter the chapter the better.  However, in this case, the chapters (which only consisted of a few pages and would often drift from the main story of Lobsang and Joshua) made the book read like collection of short stories.  I do hope that Pratchett and Baxter collaborate again and produce  a sequel for The Long Earth, perhaps they could combine the two in an 1Q84 books one and two to make a more comprehensive novel?