February has been and gone…

I know February is the shortest month of the year, but those two or three missing days make a crazy amount of difference. I feel like we’ve barely started with January, so I find the appearance of March somewhat confusing! It doesn’t help that Spring is refusing to show her face around here. As I write this it is snowing fairly heavily outside and I’m glad to be curled up with a hot cup of tea and relaxing music.

I do love to watch the snow fall. The way it defies gravity and seems to dance in the wind never fails to make me smile. Last month I was in an almost empty supermarket car park as the snow fell heavily all around me. The ground was rapidly turning white and as I looked up to the sky it felt like I was in a giant snow globe. It was magical. Practically speaking it was also freezing cold, really windy and I was happy to be out of it, but just for a moment I stood there and let it fill me with joy.

February has been an unusually slow book month for me. I’ve only read four books, which is a very low count for me. It’s been a bit of a mixed bag too.

I started the month with The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. It is a science fiction book that seems to have made its way onto the shelves of people who don’t normally consider this type of book and I’ve heard a lot about it from all kinds of places I wouldn’t have expected. This might be partly because it was included on the Radio 2 book club which is sure to generate interest outside the usual circles, but the fact that it’s also a really good book probably has something to do with it! In basic terms it’s a time travel book, but instead of travelling back and forth in time in a time machine or through wormholes etc. it features Harry August and a group of people who are reborn into the same lives over and over again. Their ability to affect things outside their lifespan is limited, but through networks of these special people they are able to hear news from the future (or the past), passed back from young to old (or vice versa) through the decades.

The story really makes you think about things like how much responsibility we should take for actions that won’t have negative consequences until generations after we’re dead, how small moments can change the future and how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. However, while the science and thought-provoking material may provide plenty of discussion points for the Radio 2 book club, it’s the human part of things that makes it a great story. Following Harry as he tries to make sense of his relationship with his father, as he loves a woman in one life only to have her not recognise him in the next, these are the moments that make this book such a joy to read. It is heartbreaking in one chapter, heart-warming in the next and all mixed in with a complex and satisfying plot. It’s a jolly good read and if you haven’t tried it yet then I heartily recommend it.

I followed this one up with another book that seems to have been mentioned by everyone I know, The Girl with all the Gifts by M. R. Carey. I’m not much of a zombie fan but I’d heard all about how this challenges the idea of the zombie genre and really turned it into something new, so I thought I’d give it a go. I liked it, but didn’t love it. The essence of it was a horror survival, with the (quite quickly revealed) twist that the little girl featuring as the almost-heroine is infected with the zombie plague, even though she remains cognitively much more functional than the usual staggering, brain-eating zombies that first spring to mind. It was easy enough to like her and to be interested in what was going on in this post-apocalyptic vision of the UK, but it was a little heavy on stereotypes in the other characters. Having said that, the ending was unexpected and strangely satisfying, which gets it some serious bonus points. Also, the cover is a delightful burst of colour to add to your bookshelf.

Next up was another vision of the zombie apocalypse, this time caused by tapeworms in Symbiont by Mira Grant. This is book two in Mira Grant’s Parasitology series. The first book was really interesting scientifically speaking as the idea of genetically modified tapeworms used to deliver health products to their human hosts is pretty plausible and it covered the science in enough detail that it felt realistic. Unfortunately, the second book fell quite a way short of the first book, suffering from second book filler syndrome. It was intended to be a duology but has been extended to trilogy length and I’m wondering whether that was the best idea. Yes, I still want to find out what happens to society when two sentient species are competing for survival; yes, I want to know who gets away with things; yes, I want to see how the characters learn to live in this new world. However, we could have reached that point sooner, and I think this book might be off-putting to a fair few people.

I’ve got a full review of this one up at SFCrowsnest which you can read here.

Finally, and perhaps most disappointingly this month, was the third Memoir of Lady Trent – Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan. I wanted to love this series and after the first book I did. It features a pseudo-Victorian era where an unconventional woman follows her scientific dreams to study dragons, and hang the consequences. There’s adventure, dragons, science and a strong female lead. Sadly, through books two and three it’s become so matter of fact in the way that it is told that I’m finding it hard to get enthusiastic about the next one, even though I still *want* to love this series. It lacks tension, has a few pacing problems and suffers from two dimensional characters so it’s very hard to become emotionally attached to any of them. If you can connect with the characters in this you’ll probably find it more satisfying than I did, so do give it a go if it sounds like your kind of thing.

There’ll be a full review of this up on SFCrowsnest but I think it will be held back until the book has been published in the UK, which is at the end of this month.

I like to finish on a high note so I’ve kept this month’s acquisitions until the end.

Transworld ran a neat competition for Valentine’s Day where you tweeted them the genres you usually read and they set you up with a #BookBlindDate from a totally different genre. I received this beautiful parcel in the post a couple of weeks later:

Pretty exciting huh? And you know what, I’m going to leave you in suspense with this one and not reveal the contents until I review it in a special #BookBlindDate post later in the year. I’ll just say that it is definitely something I wouldn’t have picked out on my own!

In contrast, I was very excited to pick up a copy of V. E. Schwab‘s new book, A Darker Shade of Magic. Can you tell how pleased I was?

I’ll let you know what I think of the book in a later post, I’m saving it up as a reward for slogging through The Casual Vacancy for book group….

Happy reading everyone,

Vinx

January in review

January always feels like a long month. Maybe it’s coming back from the decadent Christmas break that makes it seem to stretch on for ages, getting back to work, leaving the house and returning in darkness. Whatever it is, the start of the year seems like it was a long time ago.

January is usually the month in which I set myself any kind of reading goal and look for new ideas to take my reading in a different direction. This year though I decided there wouldn’t be any kind of challenge, just a year of reading more of what I love. I’ve set a nominal 75 book target on Goodreads but that’s a number I should hit without trying.

I’ll still have a few things from outside the box because of my book group. Our next read for example is The Casual  Vacancy by J. K. Rowling. I’ve absolutely no desire to read it whatsoever, but I’ll try it because that’s the whole point of book group, to get me reading things I otherwise wouldn’t pick up. Sometimes I find things that are brilliant and I think how lucky I am that this book of all possible books was given to me to read. Other times I hate the book, but at least I know.

This Christmas was an unusual one for me in that I didn’t receive a single book. I’m not sure that’s ever happened before, there’s always at least one book, usually more. It was quite strange to not have the new book joy over the holidays, but a spot of good fortune came my way in January that more than made up for it. You see, I was lucky enough to win a twitter competition from Jo Fletcher Books where the prize was a copy of everything they’d published for the first time in 2014. Wow! Over 20 books and it’s been arriving in bits and pieces since then.

Plenty of new books to induce grins and keep me occupied on the cold winter nights!

I was also sent a book by an author called Yen Ooi who I connected with on twitter. It was so lovely and unexpected and the book looks like exactly the kind of thing I’ll enjoy. I really like the cover, and it has a matching card wallet too!

I’ve finished some pretty good books over the last month too…

Let the Games Begin by Niccolo Ammaniti – this was my free bonus book that came with my Christmas order from Canongate books. It’s a surreal Italian fiction featuring a diverse cast of characters, some devil worshipping cult members, plenty of wild animals and some decadent Roman living. Good choice from the lovely book people at Canongate.

The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero – I’ve had my eye on this ghost story for a while thanks to its striking black and white cover and although some of it was what I expected, it probably had the ending that has most surprised me in recent months. I didn’t see it coming at all, which was great. I wrote a full review for this one over on SFcrowsnest – here.

Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty – This is the second in Lafferty’s ‘Shambling Guides’ series, which I am thoroughly enjoying. They’re very light entertainment but really just a pleasure to read. They follow a young woman and her team of mostly non-human writers as they put together travel guides for the supernatural tourist, of course battling some of the local bad guys on the way through. Lots of fun!

Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig – Another dark fantasy featuring the troubled Miriam Black who has the ability to see how people will die when she touches them. Wendig certainly isn’t afraid to take you down some of fiction’s dark alley’s and leave you in the dark for a while before he eventually rescues you so this might not be for the faint of heart. I like that it’s so dark though, it’s a refreshing change. I preferred this to the first book too, I might even have liked Miriam a little more. Plus these books have the wonderful Joey HiFi cover art to ogle – I’d read any book that has his stuff on the cover, there are always more things to find hidden in the bigger picture.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown – I’ve seen a lot of hype over this one and more recently its sequel, Golden Son, so I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s got elements of Hunger Games, a touch of Battle Royale, a dash of mythology and a whole bunch of other things in it. The characters are great, the story kept me turning the pages well into the early hours of the morning and really I just loved it. It’s a book that just carried me away with it completely and earned my first five star rating of the year over on Goodreads.

Lock In by John Scalzi – Red Rising may have earned my first five stars of the year but this one joined it almost immediately. I read this in a day when I had some time to kill in an airport and on flights home from a work trip and it was brilliant. I thought the world Scalzi created was utterly believable, the tech was very cool but not too far-fetched and the characters kept making you think about things you wouldn’t have considered possible ten pages earlier. I’d really like to see more in this world, I think it has a lot of potential and would also make a pretty neat tv series.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard – I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I enjoyed Harry Potter so thought I’d give it a go, but I didn’t get a lot out of it. Not even sure who it’s aimed at. Hey, at least it was short.

Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton – One of the authors on my list to try in 2014 was Peter F. Hamilton because the other half really loves them. I did start this one in 2014 but it is an enormous doorstop of a book with over 1100 pages so I dipped in and out a little bit and only just finished it in January. I enjoyed it, but think I’d have read it earlier had it been split into a couple of smaller instalments. There is a lot of detail, there are many characters to keep up with and a lot of plot strands to follow, many of which I still have no idea about where they’ll end up. Having said that, it’s also rather brilliant, a book that actually deserves to be called epic. Although I might not have rated it all that highly (I gave it 3/5) there are many things I enjoyed about it, it just didn’t make me want to sit there until late at night justifying just one more page. If I could pick one thing though to really rave about, it would be Hamilton’s truly alien creatures, which are magnificently ‘other’ and take a while to get your head around.

Irregularity edited by Jared Shurin – Finishing off the month is a book of short stories published by Jurassic London in conjunction with the National Maritime Museum in London. There are 14 tales of exploration, discovery, experimentation and adventure, many of which feature familiar scientists (e.g. Darwin, Newton and Lovelace) in unfamiliar settings. I’ve never been a big fan of short stories but I do like to try them every so often and there were a few really entertaining ones in this anthology, which also has a very striking cover. I particularly enjoyed M. Suddain’s ‘The Darkness’, with an alternative interpretation of the great fire of London, Simon Guerrier’s tale of automated dinosaurs wreaking havoc in London in ‘An Experiment in the Formulae of Thought’, and the humorous time travel tale ‘The Assassination of Isaac Newton by the Coward Robert Boyle’ by Adam Roberts.

Not a bad month really, and I moved into February in the company of Claire North’s ‘The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August’ so I think the reading year is going to continue to look bright.

So until next time, happy reading everyone!

Vinx

https://www.goodreads.com/Vinxlady

Twitter: @vinxlady

2014: A Year in Books

I’m aware that many people look back on the events of the past year, savouring the happy things that have happened in that time and perhaps feeling sad at the things they’ve lost. There were plenty of moments for me in 2014, with 4 weddings, the new theatre company, becoming a (non-religious) godmother and getting engaged, roughly in that order. Lots of happy memories with some wonderful people.

But what I really like to do is to look back on the year in terms of books I’ve read. They let me visit far more exciting and far-flung places than reality permits. I meet so many new characters (and through them, the authors in a way) and learn a so many new things about the world and about myself that I couldn’t ever list them all.

However, I can list the books, so here we go with 2014’s reading list.

2014 book list

1. Torn by Casey HIll (Reilly Steel #2)
2. The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (Stainless Steel Rat #1)
3. The First Neanderthal on the Moon by Roderick MacDonald
4. The Air War by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt #8)
5. Black Swan Rising by Lee Carroll (Black Swan Rising #1)
6. The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig
7. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
8. Survivor by Sean Slater
9. Slights by Kaaron Warren
10. Back Story by David Mitchell
11. Last to Rise by Francis Knight (Rojan Dizon #3)
12. Unseen by Karin Slaughter
13. Snowdrops by A. D. Miller
14. Black Feathers by Joseph D’Lacey (Black Dawn #1)
15. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
16. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
17. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig (Miriam Black #1)
18. The Watchtower by Lee Carroll (Black Swan Rising #2)
19. Lexicon by Max Barry
20. Deep Sea and Foreign Going by Rose George
21. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
22. My Granny Writes Erotica by Rosen Trevithick
23. Poems Series One by Emily Dickinson (poetry if you hadn’t guessed)
24. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
25. The Dinner by Herman Koch
26. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
27. Devil-Devil by Graeme Kent
28. The Auld Mither by William Meikle
29. Vicious by V. E. Schwab
30. Dream London by Tony Ballantyne
31. Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
32. Boneland by Alan Garner
33. A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire #3)
34. Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough (Mayhem #1)
35. My Granny Writes Erotica 2 by Rosen Trevithick
36. The Shape Stealer by Lee Carroll (Black Swan Rising #3)
37. Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh
38. Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
39. Redshirts by John Scalzi
40. Embassytown by China Mieville
41. The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
42. Control Point by Myke Cole (Shadow Ops #1)
43. Wizard Squared by K. E. Mills (Rogue Agent #3)
44. Parasite by Mira Grant (Parasitology #1)
45. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
46. Why be Happy When you could be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson (non-fiction)
47. McSweeney’s #32 edited by Dave Eggers (short stories)
48. The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett (Demon Cycle #3)
49. The Straight Razor Cure by Daniel Polansky (Low Town #1)
50. Hang Wire by Adam Christopher
51. The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
52. Half A King by Joe Abercrombie (Shattered Sea #1)
53. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
54. The Book of the Crowman by Joseph D’Lacey (Black Dawn #2)
55. The Black Echo by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #1)
56. The Relic Guild by Edward Cox (Relic Guild #1)
57. The Clown Service by Guy Adams (Section 37 #1)
58. The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland
59. The Forever Watch by David Ramirez
60. Tomorrow the Killing by Daniel Polansky (Low Town #2)
61. When Will There Be Good News? By Kate Atkinson (Jackson Brodie #3)
62. A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (Memoirs of Lady Trent #1)
63. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
64. Night Terrors by Tim Waggoner (Shadow Watch #1)
65. The Good Inn by Black Francis and Josh Frank, illustrated by Steven Appleby
66. Charm by Sarah Pinborough (Tales from the Kingdoms #2)
67. War Master’s Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt #9)
68. She Who Waits by Daniel Polansky (Low Town #3)
69. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
70. Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill (Dr. Siri #4)
71. Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
72. Beautiful Blood by Lucius Shepard
73. The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu (Tao #2)
74. Journal of the Plague Year by C. B. Harvey, Malcolm Cross & Adrian Tchaikovsky
75. God Save the Queen by Kate Locke (Immortal Empire #1)
76. Dodger by Terry Pratchett
77. The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn (Swords of Albion #1)
78. World War Z by Max Brooks
79. The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen
80. Terrifying Tudors by Terry Deary (Horrible Histories)
81. A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire #4)
82. Any Other Name by Emma Newman (Split Worlds #2)
83. The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan (Memoirs of Lady Trent #2)
84. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #1)
85. Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Expanse #1)
86. Seal of the Worm by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt #10)
87. The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets by Lloyd Biggle Jr.
88. Storm Glass by Maria V. Snyder (Opal Cowan #1)
89. Sea Glass by Maria V. Snyder (Opal Cowan #2)
90. Spy Glass by Maria V. Snyder (Opal Cowan #3)
91. Smokeheads by Doug Johnstone
92. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
93. Hidden by Benedict Jacka (Alex Verus #5)
94. The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs (Incorruptibles #1)
95. The Rain-Soaked Bride by Guy Adams (Section 37 #2)
96. The Executioner’s Heart by George Mann (Newbury & Hobbes #4)
97. Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

A rather excellent year! As I wrote this I had such vivid images in my head from these books that I’ll be smiling for the rest of the evening. Thank you to all the authors who fill my life with such wonders year after year 😀

I wanted to comment on a few highlights and new authors/series but I really need to go and make dinner so I’ll try to come back to that later.

Happy reading,

Vinx

Where do we go from here?

Apart from the title of this post immediately filling my head with the songs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s oh so catchy musical episode, it’s really all I’ve been thinking about this blog for months now. It was taking up too much time when I tried to review everything I was reading and because I couldn’t quite figure out what direction I wanted to take with the blog it was left hanging, devoid of love and new content, waiting for a burst of inspiration to bring it back to life.

One of the things I’m considering is moving this to a new blog and including some non-bookish things too. Even though I am a bookaholic, there are plenty of other things I enjoy and sometimes I think I’d like to write about those somewhere. Perhaps a little music, maybe a few computer games, possibly a few random thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else.

I haven’t been totally idle in the time I’ve been away from the blog. I’ve of course still been reading (you just try and stop me!) and I’ve been continuing to review a couple of books a month for SFcrowsnest. You can find my reviews here. I’ve even started looking at a few album reviews although I find these take me a long time and are really hard to write.

2014 was a pretty full-on year for me. I went from part time to full time at my regular day job (if you’re interested, I write technical stuff about ships), with a few big projects keeping me really busy. I also helped to set up a brand new theatre company with some friends, and we took our first show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was awesome, but seriously time consuming. If you like Gilbert & Sullivan you should check out the company, they’re called Cat-Like Tread and can be found on Facebook. Oh yeah, and I got engaged. That was a pretty big deal 🙂

Despite all this 2014 saw one of my highest book counts ever. I’ve been dithering about whether to put my 2014 list up but I think I’d like to at least stick with that tradition, so you’ll find it in the next entry in the blog.

I’ll keep trying to figure out what I want from this and will try to keep you updated a little better.

Happy reading folks, and may 2015 bring you lots of bookish joy.

Vinx

Review: Slights by Kaaron Warren

Slights by Kaaron Warren was (I think) the very first book published by one of my favourite publishers, Angry Robot Books. That alone was enough to make me want to read it and I approached it not knowing whether to expect SF, F or WTF!

Image from Goodreads.

It is the story of Stevie, a troubled young woman with a fascination for death and what you might see when you’re close to death. Since her mother’s death in a car accident where Stevie was driving, she has become more and more obsessed with the macabre and starts to go to extraordinary lengths to find out more.

My full review of this is over on SFcrowsnest and you can find it here.

The short version is that I found it a bit disappointing. It was quite a grim book about a girl who was clearly troubled and there weren’t enough supernatural/surreal elements to lift it above that. There are some interesting comments on depression and it’s easy to pity Stevie but it just didn’t really grab me and I was actually quite glad when I finished it.

Never mind, they can’t all be winners.

Happy reading,

Vinx

Review: The Survivor by Sean Slater

After reading Midnight’s Children I was ready for an easy read and when I’m looking for something that keeps the pages turning and requires little brain power I often turn to crime (fiction, not actual criminal acts). I picked up The Survivor by Sean Slater a couple of years ago now but for some reason it had stayed sitting on the shelf. It looked like the kind of thing I needed after the Salman Rushdie so I picked it up and got stuck in.

Image from Goodreads.

The story starts when Jacob Striker, a police detective, is called in to his daughter’s school to see the headteacher. While he is there, masked gunmen open fire in the cafeteria, killing and wounding several children. Striker takes out two of the gunmen but the third escapes and, fearing that the killer isn’t finished, Striker starts a frantic hunt to find that final masked man. It soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary school shooting by disillusioned teenagers, as a complex and carefully planned plot is uncovered. All too soon things get personal and when Striker’s family is threatened he will stop at nothing to protect them.

I haven’t read any Sean Slater books before this but the plot seemed promising and the location, Vancouver, was a new one for me so I thought I’d give it a go. The plot was quite well done, with plenty of twists and turns along the way so that there were always new things to discover. Some of the twists were perhaps a little predictable but I almost prefer that to plot twists that come out of nowhere – it makes more sense to the reader and gives you a chance to work things out, which is part of the appeal of the crime novel. However, there were certainly events that I hadn’t predicted and right up until the end there were things that kept me guessing. There were also some moments of real tension which helped to keep the story going and I liked the variety of pace that Slater managed to include.

I was a little disappointed with the characters because I felt they didn’t really have much depth, but for the first book in a series (and I think a debut novel) they had enough individuality to carry the plot through and keep my interest. Striker is a man recovering from the loss of his wife and dealing with a moody teenager so he fits the weary but well-meaning mould pretty well. His partner at work is the other woman and to be completely honest, just a couple of weeks after finishing the book I’ve already forgotten pretty much everything about her.

That’s probably my main criticism of this book. It just isn’t very memorable. There’s nothing wrong with the plot and the characters are fine, but there’s nothing that makes it stand out above the many other novels with a similar feel.

Would I read another of Sean Slater’s novels? Yes, I probably would. I think there’s room for the characters to grow and I’d quite like to see where he takes them next.

Would I recommend this to someone else? Possibly, but it wouldn’t come in among the top five, only as a ‘well if you’ve run out of those then you could try this’.

Not entirely glowing praise but I did enjoy it and it passed a few hours quite nicely, perfectly fitting my requirements of an easy read that allowed me to relax after a difficult slog through my previous book.

Happy reading,

Vinx

 

Review: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

You’ll have noticed from this blog that quite a large part of my reading tends to be in the science fiction and fantasy genre, with regular but less frequent forays into crime thrillers. I know it’s easy to get stuck in a reading rut, only picking the same kinds of books time after time. This is perfectly acceptable, but I also like to have the occasional read that pushes me out of my comfort zone. That’s why I joined a local book group. It’s organised by the library so we don’t get to choose the books, we just turn up each month and take away a new book to read. The book we discussed at the February meeting was Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and if you’re searching for a challenge then look no further.

Image from Goodreads.

Midnight’s Children is a story about a boy who was born at the stroke of midnight on the day India achieved independence. Due to the timing of his birth, Saleem has a psychic connection with all the other children born in that first hour of India’s independence. They all have gifts and together they could change the world.

That sounded ok to me and I thought this was going to be a book I might enjoy, despite hearing some tales of it being a hard read.

There’re no two ways about it, this is certainly not an easy read. The writing is dense and often annoyingly grammatically stylised – lots of parenthetical diversions that lead nowhere, lists without commas and very long paragraphs to name the most irritating bits. Then there’s the plot, about these telepathically linked children. Well, mostly it isn’t anything to do with them at all. It’s actually more of a family saga chronicling the lives of Saleem’s family from his grandfather down to his son. Then again, it’s also a historical novel telling of the changes in India from the 1920s to the 1970s or thereabouts. Confused? Probably rightly so.

Yet I did finish it, one of three at our book group who did get to the end, out of the nine that started it. Would I have ploughed through to the end if it hadn’t been for book group? No, I’d have given up on page 82 (this was a particularly terrible page of text). But I’m glad I did persevere. Despite the many annoying things about this book, I did find plenty to enjoy about it.

One of the highlights was the imagery Rushdie uses in his descriptions. My book group was particularly fond of the ‘biryanis of despair’ and other similar culinary carriers of emotions. The way the bitter maiden aunt knitted that bitterness into every piece of baby clothing she made and the mother cooked her feelings into the food were brilliantly written.

Despite a (very) slow start I also found myself quite enjoying the story after a while, though it did take a long time for me to get into it. I didn’t know much about this period in India’s past and I found some of the historical detail really interesting. I feel like I know a lot more about Indian culture and have actually learned some interesting things from reading this book.

I was disappointed that not more was made of the magical elements, these were tiny little side plots that got barely a mention, when I thought they were going to be the focus of the book. That might make it more appealing to people who aren’t such fans of the fantastical, but I thought it was a shame they got lost in the family saga that made up the rest of the plot.

So what was my overall opinion of this book? Very mixed! Bits of it I enjoyed. Bits of it I really detested. I feel like I’ve achieved something by getting to the end of it and think I probably learned a few things as a result. However, it will certainly be a while before I pick up another Salman Rushdie book!

I’d love to know what other people thought of it so do drop me a line if you’ve read it.

Happy reading,

Vinx

Review: Black Swan Rising by Lee Carroll

Black Swan Rising is the first of a trilogy (the Black Swan Rising Trilogy) by Lee Carroll,which is the pseudonym of a husband and wife writing team.

Image from Goodreads.

Reading the blurb of this I was expecting an urban fantasy populated by familiar fairy characters, which is in part what the book delivers. However, I think it’s trying to hedge its bets and appeal to both urban fantasy lovers and devotees of the increasingly-popular paranormal romance genre. I’m not saying that a book can’t be both, just that it feels like it was trying too hard to fit in and as a result it failed to deliver fully in either the romance or fantasy plots.

As it is the first in a series I’ll reserve judgement for the later books, but I found this one a little shallow for my tastes – it just didn’t have that immersive quality I look for. However, it was reasonably entertaining and a quick read so I don’t begrudge the time I spent on it, and I am curious to see how it develops over the course of the trilogy.

I’ve written a full review over on SFcrowsnest so do check it out here.

Happy reading,

Vinx

Review: The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig @angryrobotbooks)

Chuck Wendig was on my list of authors I’d like to try in 2014 and when I spotted The Blue Blazes in my local library it was too good to ignore.

Image from Goodreads.

The striking cover gives impressions of violence, darkness, and a dash of the old film noir style and I suppose that’s a fair starter on the book. Angry Robot (the publisher) suggests you file it under “Urban Fantasy [ Family Matters | When Underworlds Collide | Thrill of the Hunt | Chips and Old Blocks ]” and that sounds pretty good to me.

It follows Mookie Pearl (great name Mr. W.), a thug and general dogsbody for one of the big criminal families in New York. Yet this isn’t your standard family, this one controls not only the criminal underworld but also has a stake in the demonic underworld that most New Yorkers never see. Using the drug know as the blue blazes, Mookie and his friends can see, and thus fight, the demons, halfbreeds and creepy creatures of the darkness. Despite these enemies, Mookie’s biggest problem is still his daughter Nora, who is out to prove something to her old dad, and this seems to involve trying to get them both killed by messing with the gangs and the creepies all at once. All kinds of trouble are coming his way, but how much can one man do? Even a man the size of a shed has limits…

If you hear the phrase ‘urban fantasy’ I’d bet that you’ll think of some kind of wizarding situation with lots of magic and supernatural creatures living in an otherwise unremarkable city. That’s certainly true for much of the urban fantasy out there (e.g. the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch, the Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacka) but right from the start The Blue Blazes feels different.

It’s mostly a book about a gangster thug who is having problems with his daughter and rival gangs. It just happens that some of the enemies aren’t entirely human and that a lot of the action takes place underneath the city in a demonic realm. There isn’t a wizard out to solve the city’s supernatural problems, just a guy who wants his daughter to be safe and would quite like to get home to eat some of the meats he’s been curing for his dinner. Mookie is fed up and weary, and it comes across that way. It makes him likeable, even if he is a thug who beats people up and is high most of the time, because he just trudges through the day doing what needs to be done.

I liked the way it was styled, I could imagine it as an old-time gangster movie with the smoke-filled rooms and low-key jazz refrains. The criminal gangs all had their own little quirks, from the traditional mafia style families to the rollerskating 50s-loving girl gang that Nora hangs out with. The city and its underworlds (criminal and demonic) were vividly described so that I’d know where I was almost by the smell of the place (certainly true for the town where the dead people live!).

My first foray into Chuck Wendig’s writing has been a success and I thought it was a completely new type of urban fantasy. I liked his writing style and enjoyed following the characters through their dark days. Following him on twitter I get the impression that Chuck Wendig is currently working on a new Mookie Pearl novel and I’d certainly sign up to read it when it comes out.

That’s one of my ‘to read’ authors crossed off the list and another author to look out for in the future.

Happy reading,

Vinx

Review: The Air War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Over the last couple of years I’ve been working my way through the Shadows of the Apt series and I continue to be amazed at the level of detail that Adrian Tchaikovsky manages to fit in to these books. The Air War is book eight in the series and brings us back to a war-stricken Lowlands fighting once more against the Wasp Empire.

Cover image from Goodreads.

My full review of this book is up on the SFcrowsnest website here but I think I can summarise it in a few sentences for my own blog.

I love reading these books because the setting is incredible and the characters are, for me, almost perfectly written. The battles are epic and detailed and it’s clear that Tchaikovsky loves these because the attention to detail is mind-blowing.

However, I felt that this book spent a little too long in frenetic air battles so that around page 300 I was longing for a change of pace and something different. That certainly isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it, just that I felt the balance was a little off.

There are only two books left in this series – one is sitting on my bookshelf and one comes out later this year I think – and I’m really looking forward to see how it all comes to a conclusion by the end of that.

Keep up the good work Mr Tchaikovsky!

Happy reading,

Vinx