book review – Page 31

Book Review – A Time of Blood by John Gwynne – Fantasy – Highly Recommended

Here’s the blurb;

Defy the darkness. Defend the light . . . At the battle of Starstone Lake, Drem and his friends witnessed horrors they’ll never forget. They saw magic warping men into beasts and a demon rise from the dead, creating something new and terrifying. So they flee to warn the Order of the Bright Star. But the demons’ high priestess, Fritha, is determined to hunt them down. Concealed in Forn Forest, Riv struggles to understand her half-breed heritage. She represents the warrior angels’ biggest secret, one which could break their society. So when she’s found by the Ben-Elim’s high captain, he goes in for the kill. Meanwhile, demonic forces are gathering a mighty war-host, to crush their enemies and rule the world of man. All while the Ben-Elim are fractured and facing betrayal. Like heroes of old, Riv, Drem and the Bright Star’s warriors must battle to save their land. But can the light triumph when the dark is rising? A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone: Book Two) is the spectacular follow-up to A Time of Dread by John Gwynne.

‘This is extraordinarily good, an epic feat of the imagination. In this series Gwynne is setting a new benchmark in fantasy. I’d love to see it on screen’

Giles Kristian ‘A great read that accelerates the pace and goes one up on its excellent predecessor . . . Exciting, action-packed fantasy’

Mark Lawrence A Time of Blood by John Gwynne is a great book. Or rather, A GREAT BOOK.
I have not read any of John Gwynne’s other books, and yes, this is Book 2 in a series and I HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1. (If you read the book, you’ll understand the capitals.) I was interested in it because it’s title is so like that of the wonderful Deverry books by Katharine Kerr – at least in the UK – where one of the series is called A Time of Omens, A Time of Justice, A Time of Exile and A Time of War. I was hoping for something as good as Deverry and found it, although it is much bloodier, as the title suggests.
It is a sign of just how well this book is written, that I picked it up, and by 5% through, was fully committed to the characters even though I had no back story, and, to be honest, very little idea of what was actually going on, and it is not that easy to work out what’s happening, but I wanted to.
The main characters are all intriguing and well-written, and there is a great deal of action and many battle scenes. The different POV’s mean that we don’t always know what’s happening with some characters, as the scenes taking place are described by someone else, even though the others are there. I believe it’s this that allows the story to move so quickly.
While the idea behind the story may not be that original, two sides on opposite sides of an impending war, the way the story unfolds is exhilarating and exquisitely well told.
I’m already a bit forlorn as I need to know what happens next!

A Time of Blood was released in hardback and ebook on 18th April 2019 and is available here (as well as with other retailers). I highly recommend this book. A firm 5/5. I read it in a day!

Book Review – Queen of the North by Anne O’Brien – historical fiction

Here’s the blurb;

“To those around her she was a loyal subject.

In her heart she was a traitor.

1399: England’s crown is under threat. King Richard II holds onto his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne.

For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King – her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes, and protect her family’s rule over the precious Northern lands bordering Scotland.

But many, including Elizabeth’s husband, do not want another child-King. Elizabeth must hide her true ambitions in Court, and go against her husband’s wishes to help build a rebel army.

To question her loyalty to the King places Elizabeth in the shadow of the axe.

To concede would curdle her Plantagenet blood.

This is one woman’s quest to turn history on its head.”

Queen of the North by Anne O’Brien is an engaging novel. Elizabeth Percy is an intriguing character – in many ways just as headstrong as her husband – Harry Hotspur, and with a firm belief in the value of her own royal birthright.

The blurb for the book is, sadly, misleading. Much of Elizabeth Percy’s vitriol is not directed against Richard II, indeed she seems to really rather like him for the brief appearance he makes, but rather against the next king, Henry IV, who usurps the throne, with the support of the Earl of Northumberland and her husband, but who then fails to pay the desired blood price. It is Henry IV that she wishes to see removed from the throne of England, not Richard II, although it is her nephew that she wishes to replace him with. In this, her husband is very much in agreement.

There is a wonderful sense of impending doom throughout the first half of the novel, but I didn’t feel as though the second half succeeded with quite the same sense of drama. That said, Elizabeth is too interesting a character to not want to read about all of her life, and I enjoyed the character’s own journey to self-realisation that occurs by the final pages of the book.

All in all, a firm addition to Anne O’Brien’s cast of somewhat ‘unlikely’ heroic women of the Middle Ages who have sadly been overlooked by the joy that is popular history.

A firm 4/5 and my thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the review copy.

Queen of the North is released in paperback on 18th April 2019, and you can grab your copy here, although other retailers are available. (To all GOT fans, I dare you to say this title without a bit of Jon Snow – King of the North – ’cause I can’t.)

And, just to tease you, the next book in Anne O’Brien’s expanding collection, A Tapestry of Treason, due out in August 2019, is a wonderful and delightful book. Check it out as well.

Book Review – Breaking the Lore by Andy Redsmith – Fantasy

Here’s the blurb;

“A magical, mischievous mystery perfect for fans of Douglas Adams and Ben Aaronovitch

How do you stop a demon invasion… when you don’t believe in magic? Inspector Nick Paris is a man of logic and whisky. So staring down at the crucified form of a murder victim who is fifteen centimetres tall leaves the seasoned detective at a loss… and the dead fairy is only the beginning.

Suddenly the inspector is offering political asylum to dwarves, consulting with witches, getting tactical advice from elves and taking orders from a chain-smoking talking crow who, technically, outranks him.

With the fate of both the human and magic worlds in his hands Nick will have to leave logic behind and embrace his inner mystic to solve the crime and stop an army of demons from invading Manchester!”

I am a fan of quirky fantasy (Robert Rankin/Terry Pratchett) and was intrigued by the concept of Breaking the Lore. And for about 50% of the book I really quite enjoyed it. It’s not a difficult read, the chapters are short, the characters quite fun – although Malbus is the standout character. However, the story quickly ran out of steam, and I found the last 40% really hard to get into. At this point, the really short chapters didn’t help a great deal, the jokes were all getting a bit stale, and Nick Paris was spending a lot of his time ‘pondering’ but never really finding any answers to his questions, or indeed, doing a great deal to find the answers.
There’s a great deal of potential in Breaking the Lore, but in the end, it fails to live up to that potential, and I was just pleased to get to the end.
With a little less pondering, more of Nick Paris actually doing some police work and following up on his hunches as opposed to leaving them hanging in an effort to extend the story, this could be a really fun book. Perhaps Book 2 will be stronger.
A firm 3/5. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.

Breaking the Lore was released on 15th April 2019 and is available now from here;

One Word Kill – Book Review – Mark Lawrence

Here’s the blurb;

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.

He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.

Challenge accepted.

I kept my visible review on Goodreads for this one quite short,

“Ah, the 1980’s! Recaptured in all its glory.”

This is mainly because a lot of people are loving this book, and the reason that I gave it 3/5 is that it’s just not really my sort of thing. It is clever, in places, and Good God, if you want to understand the concept of quantum mechanics, I can’t see how there’s a better way to be taught it, but even all the Back to the Future references couldn’t quite make me love this book as much as others even though I am a fan Mark Lawrence’s previous three trilogies – which I would classify as fantasy.

Will I read the next one and then the final part of the trilogy? Time will tell. Right now I’m not too fussed either way, although I am pleased they’re all being released this year so we don’t have to wait forever to read on! What I would say is that if you do like a bit of sci-fi mixed in with Dungeon and Dragons, some bad 80’s clothes and hairstyles, then this is the book for you. Enjoy it, but sadly, it isn’t quite as good as the new 80’s favourite of Stranger Things.

One Word Kill has an official launch date of 1st May 2019. But if you have Prime, you seem to be able to get it now, and it’s also on the Amazon First Reads scheme.

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence – Book Review – released today in the UK 4th April 2019

Here’s the blurb;

“Nona Grey’s story reaches its shattering conclusion in the third instalment of Book of the Ancestor.

THEY CAME AGAINST HER AS A CHILD. NOW THEY FACE THE WOMAN.

The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat.

Nona faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that Nona and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep.

Even a warrior like Nona cannot hope to turn the tide of war.
The shiphearts offer strength that she might use to protect those she loves, but it’s a power that corrupts. A final battle is coming in which she will be torn between friends, unable to save them all. A battle in which her own demons will try to unmake her.

A battle in which hearts will be broken, lovers lost, thrones burned.

HOLY SISTER completes the Book of the Ancestor trilogy that began with RED SISTER and GREY SISTER. A ground-breaking series, it has established Mark Lawrence as one of the most exciting new voices in modern speculative fiction.”

Holy Sister is a satisfying conclusion to the Book of the Ancestor Trilogy. For other authors, I would have found that acceptable, but for Mark Lawrence, I confess, I was a bit disappointed.
As with the ending of the previous two trilogies, especially Jalan’s, I’m left wishing there had just been ‘more’.
The concurrent storylines are not without excitement, indeed from about 50-80% the storyline is extremely exciting, but to get there I had to wade through the first 35% and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped I would. Yes, a year has passed since I read the previous book, and I had forgotten much, but even so, and especially considering the ‘summation’ at the beginning, I feel I should have been able to grab the characters and events far more quickly. For readers who can just plough on through all 3 books one after another, I’m sure this won’t be a problem but I’m far too impatient to have actually waited for the end of the trilogy.
And the eventual ending, well. It was somewhat anti-climatic.
If this was merely a coming of age story, then I would say the job had been accomplished very well, but it was always more than that, and sadly, Book 3 doesn’t quite do justice to the characters.
I appreciate that there are many who love this book – I’ve been seeing 5-star reviews flying around for Holy Sister for about 6 months. It might just be that, for me, the book suffers from too much hype, and so I would like to apologise to the author if my comments seem too harsh. It’s truly not the author’s fault when something gets blown out of all proportion.
The majority of people will love this book – and I’m excited for Mark Lawrence because that means he’ll get to write more and more books, and share his wonderful ideas with a wider and wider audience.
I think we will get to return to the world of the Book of the Ancestor, and I look forward to that. Perhaps then all my unanswered questions will find answers. Although I doubt it. Mark Lawrence is a sly old fox for a good reason!
Thank you to the publisher for sending me an E-Arc. I confess, there may have been a squeal of delight.

Holy Sister is released in the UK today in hardback, ebook and audiobook and you can purchase it here (other retailers are also available). I give it a 4/5;

2018 in review – (better late than never)

2018 has been an amazing year, and yet, as I think back over it, I struggle to remember all the small details that added up to make it feel so good. Even, I confess, I struggle to remember what books I wrote/published and when they all came out. This, no doubt, is because I had much of December 2018 away from the keyboard (apart from an editing job I had to do) following on from the exhaustion of nailing a ‘quite large’ word count during NaNoWriMo (or November for those not yet inducted into the world of National Novel Writing Month (The word count was bigger than the 50K NaNo suggests, but I’m not bragging about it:))).

But, perhaps, NaNoWriMo is a good place to start, because, I hope, NaNoWriMo2017 brought forth my first release of 2018. Wait. Wait! I tell a lie. NaNoWriMo2017 was a fantasy project. Sigh. Ask me about events 1000 years ago, and I’m fine. Ask me about last January and I utterly fail!

So, again.

Right, 2018 began with the release of The First Queen of England Part 2 on 24th December 2017. My next project, perhaps unsurprisingly, was The First Queen of England Part 3, released in April 2018, and the final title in The First Queen of England Trilogy, although not the last I wrote about Queen Elfrida.

With the trilogy finished, I turned my attention back to a slightly abandoned project, The Earls of Mercia. Quite frankly, I was a bit terrified. I’d not written an Earls book for some time – allowing myself to be swept along by Queen Elfrida, Lady Ælfwynn, a fantasy book and no doubt other things I now can’t remember. What made the return to the Earls all the more terrifying, is that I’d long moved on from the time period I’d studied for my dissertation, and was getting to what I would term, ‘the more complicated bit’ of the eleventh century. Even my ‘timeline’ had run out – filled only with the sporadic accounts of people’s births and deaths and little else. This is the time period (1035 onwards) which many people think they ‘know’ but which was still filled with huge potential for Leofric and his son.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Leofric, and Book 7 was released in July 2018. By now I’d made a monumental ‘life’ decision, and given up the ‘day job’ to turn my hand to full-time writing. This, I confess, worried the hell out of me for the first few weeks – when effectively, I wrote a book in 3 weeks flat – so desperate to prove I had the motivation and desire to succeed without the dislike of the ‘day job’ to drive me ever onwards with my writing goals.

The result was, a somewhat unexpected, return to the world of Queen Elfrida, and The King’s Mother. Purposefully designed to be a little ‘harsher’ in outlook, to give Queen Elfrida the ‘savvy’ she needed to succeed, I thoroughly enjoyed writing The King’s Mother.

So what next? In true style, I didn’t opt for the ‘easier’ option of writing the next book in The King’s Mother Trilogy but instead returned to the world of The Earls of Mercia, and The Earl’s King was released on 24th December 2018.

I’ve taught myself a few tricks when writing sequels. I used to, back in the day, immediately write a draft beginning and end for the next book when I’d finished the previous book, now, I make copious notes on the final edit, and then make even more notes on what I think should happen next – it’s normally a long list of questions and a few character names but I rely on it when I return to old projects to get the ‘feel’ right for the next book. I’ve also started ‘character’ and ‘plot’ summaries for each character. I have a little book for The Earls of Mercia, filled with characters and descriptions, and I’m not sharing it!

But that wasn’t the end of my writing. So to NaNoWriMo2018, and I gave myself (I know, how devilish) a month away from historical fiction (just about), and a month to write fantasy (my first love). I had half a novel from NaNoWriMo2017 which needed finishing, and also another idea that was making my head hurt with its desire to be written. As a back-up, I also had the sequel to The King’s Mother should my fantasy projects crash and burn.

In the end, I wrote a huge amount of words – and have two good first drafts to edit for both my fantasy projects and a small beginning on the historical fiction novel, which will be finished in February this year.

Aside from writing, I went to two author events, (daunting stuff), and met some great people, and had my work assessed by an agent at one of the events, and a publisher at another. While neither moved forward with the project, the feedback was excellent – perhaps if I didn’t write in such a ‘niche’ time-period I would fare better with publishers/agents – but hey, don’t call Anglo-Saxon England and the Viking era ‘niche’!

I also met some lovely authors at the events – all of us just about as awkward as we can be – authors, they don’t get out much you know.

As for book sales throughout 2018 – I must thank each and every reader who chose one of my titles and enjoyed it. Sales have increased, and not just because of ‘new releases’ and I step into 2019 confident that I ‘might’ (just about) finally know what I’m about and how I can achieve it – both with historical fiction and fantasy. I’m still teaming with ideas and have made no firm plans for my writing after the end of February – otherwise, I’ll be stubborn and rebel against it!

I also have a new, far flashier, website thanks to ‘tech-support’ teenager. (I would recommend that all author’s get a ‘tech-support’ teenager – although they are quite an expensive investment.)

Website

So, here’s to an exciting 2018, and hopefully, an even more thrilling 2019.

(I’m going to do a year review of books I recommend next.)

Book Review – Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII’s Unwanted Wife – historical biography

Here’s the blurb;

Anne of Cleves left her homeland in 1539 to marry the king of England. She was never brought up to be a queen yet out of many possible choices, she was the bride Henry VIII chose as his fourth wife. Yet from their first meeting the king decided he liked her not and sought an immediate divorce. After just six months their marriage was annulled, leaving Anne one of the wealthiest women in England. This is the story of Anne’s marriage to Henry, how the daughter of Cleves survived him and her life afterwards.

Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII’s Unwanted Wife is a well-researched, if short, biography of Henry VIII’s fourth wife.

It is clearly very well researched, but it seems that there is little source material to be found, and it is hard to discover who Anne truly was, and just what she thought of the bizarre situation she found herself in. There are some very lengthy quotations from the correspondence of the period, and while these add to the story, the insistence on keeping the original spelling can make it a bit of a challenge to read pages of letters.

Much of the book is taken up with Anne’s short marriage to Henry VIII and I thought the biography was at its strongest when discussing what happened to Anne after the annulment of her marriage, much of which I didn’t know.

Overall, an interesting, short, and enjoyable read. Recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley for my EArc.

Anne of Cleves is available now.

Book Review – Murder on a Midsummer Night – Miss Fisher Book 17 – thoroughly enjoyable

Here’s the blurb;

“The year is 1929, and Melbourne is in the grip of an exhausting heatwave. But for elegant and irrepressible private investigator Phryne Fisher, the temperature is the least of her worries. She finds herself simultaneously investigating the apparent suicide of a man on St Kilda beach, and trying to find a lost child.”

Murder on a Midsummer Night is, I believe, one of the stories that hasn’t been made into a tv show. It’s quite nice to find one that hasn’t! As such, I got to appreciate the delight that is a Miss Fisher murder mystery without already knowing ‘who dun it’.

I am a self-confessed fan of these books, and probably also the time period, as I also love a good Poirot! Not that the two could be any more different if they tried. As such, I always expect to enjoy them, and enjoy this story I did very much. It is one of the more cleverly put together of the novels, with all the main characters making an appearance at some point, and not one, but two good mysteries to solve.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks to Netgalley for my copy.

It’s available now, from here;

Book Review – The Turn of Midnight – Minette Walters (Black Death Book 2)

Here’s the blurb;

As the year 1349 approaches, the Black Death continues its devastating course across England. In Dorseteshire, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors.

Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone they will have no choice but to leave. But where will they find safety in the desolate wasteland outside?

One man has the courage to find out.

Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, strikes out in search of supplies and news. A compelling leader, he and his companions quickly throw off the shackles of serfdom and set their minds to ensuring Develish’s future – and freedom for its people.

But what use is freedom that cannot be gained lawfully? When Lady Anne and Thaddeus conceive an audacious plan to secure her people’s independence, neither foresees the life-threatening struggle over power, money and religion that follows…

The sequel to The Last Hours continues the story of the people of Develish, Lady Anne and Thurkell in particular, although the younger and older generation aren’t missed.

With the Black Death seemingly on the wane, Thurkell and the five young men who accompany him, are able to move around Dorsetshire with more ease. The bleak aftermath of the plague is never far from them, and the depictions of a deserted landscape are haunting.

The suggestions of social mobility, explored throughout The Last Hours, and by the serfs of Develish, who have long worked in secrecy to buy themselves out of serfdom, are cast into stark relief when Thurkell comes into contact with different demesnes, where the Norman Lords have ruled through the threat of the Church and the whip. Perhaps more than anything, it is this which truly reveals the hierarchical society of the time and the fear with which serfs were ruled. The ideas, conveyed against the more common sense approach of those from Develish, that even when starving the men and women of different demesnes are too fearful to eat food that is freely available for fear of the wrath of their Lord’s stewards, no doubt dead, even though they’ve tried to outrun the plague, is shocking. Time and again, I felt rage for these fictional characters, who, I hope, are a representation of what the time period was truly like when so many were oppressed.

It is a delight of the novel, that it manages to convey the coming social changes with a skill that never becomes tedious.

The novel, does, unfortunately, fail to maintain the tension of the first book in the series, and the end scenes only truly work because the reader is so desperate for Lady Anne and Thurkell to succeed in their attempts.

That said, this is a deeply satisfying novel, and it was a delight to read.

The Turn of Midnight is now available;

Book Review – The Last Hours – Minette Walters – historical fiction – highly recommended

Here’s the blurb;

“June, 1348: the Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe in the county of Dorsetshire. Unprepared for the virulence of the disease, and the speed with which it spreads, the people of the county start to die in their thousands.

In the estate of Develish, Lady Anne takes control of her people’s future – including the lives of two hundred bonded serfs. Strong, compassionate and resourceful, Lady Anne chooses a bastard slave, Thaddeus Thurkell, to act as her steward. Together, they decide to quarantine Develish by bringing the serfs inside the walls. With this sudden overturning of the accepted social order, where serfs exist only to serve their lords, conflicts soon arise. Ignorant of what is happening in the world outside, they wrestle with themselves, with God and with the terrible uncertainty of their futures.

Lady Anne’s people fear starvation but they fear the pestilence more. Who amongst them has the courage to leave the security of the walls?

And how safe is anyone in Develish when a dreadful event threatens the uneasy status quo..?”

With the second book of the series out on 4th October, I’ve been lucky enough to get to read both Book 1 and Book 2 before release date.

A stunning novel. Thank you to Netgalley for providing a copy.

The Last Hours is a wonderful book. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s been some time since something has hooked me so entirely and I was thoroughly engrossed by the characters, time period and the portrayal of the Black Death and its devastating consequences. The fact that I now want to research the time period more, is a sure sign that the novel has well and truly drawn me in.

Social upheaval lies at the heart of The Last Hours, with the juxtaposition of the ‘status quo’ of the Norman ‘overlords’ against the perceived possibilities of a future for the serfs of Develish, where they’ve paid their way out of their serfdom, which gains momentum when the implications of the devastation to the population of Dorsetshire starts to be understood and comprehended by those in isolation. Coupled with the influence of the Church, as directed by the Papacy, and a more enlightened Christian doctrine as understood by Lady Anne, raised in a nunnery, social strife is inevitable in the confined space of the seclusion on the moated manor house of Lady Anne’s dead husband.

This is a novel that weaves many threads, and while the images of the devastated villages might be the most haunting, with unburied bodies and an explosion of the rat population, it is the combination of all the stories, that makes this such a rich tapestry. I am only pleased that I have Book 2 to read immediately!

The Last Hours is available now (and it’s only 99p);