Year: 2018

Review: Wake Me After The Apocalypse by Jordan Rivet

Review: Wake Me After The Apocalypse by Jordan Rivet

So let’s get one thing straight right from the start – I don’t read post-apocalypse books. Got that? Good. So… erm, what happened here? I made the mistake of reading the blurb, that’s what happened, and instantly I was hooked. That’s one powerful opening scene. Here’s the premise: there’s a massive comet hurtling towards the earth which is going to devastate the whole planetary surface, destroying not just civilisation but pretty much all life forms. There’ll then be a long perma-winter before plants start growing again. Humans are doomed, basically. But luckily, cryo-sleep technology has been invented, and there’s enough time (just!) to build some underground storage facilities, train up some carefully chosen representatives of humanity and shut them away in cryo-tanks for two hundred years. Joanna wakes up, right on cue, and finds that she’s the only survivor after a massive cave-in. So far, so intriguing, and this is […]

Posted November 19, 2018 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Urban fantasy review: ‘Hidden Goddess’ and ‘Caged Lightning’ by Marina Finlayson

Urban fantasy review: ‘Hidden Goddess’ and ‘Caged Lightning’ by Marina Finlayson

The fourth and penultimate part of this fine urban fantasy series, and finally we’re getting some answers. I didn’t enjoy the third book, Rivers of Hell, quite as much as the previous two, partly because it dropped a lot of interesting plot threads and went haring off down a very big rabbit hole – to Hell, in fact – and partly because, in the underworld, heroine Lexi’s most interesting attribute, that of control over all sorts of animals and birds, just doesn’t work in a place where everything is dead. Not to mention that one of the most interesting side characters, Lexi’s cat-shifter friend Syl, was miserably stuck in human form, and love interest Jake was captured by the evil Styx. But now Lexi’s out of Hell, Syl’s free again and has an interesting new boyfriend and we’re finally getting close to working out how to defeat those pesky shadow […]

Posted April 25, 2018 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Review: ‘The Crysalids’ by John Wyndham

Review: ‘The Crysalids’ by John Wyndham

This was a book group read and it was my suggestion, yet when one of the other members asked why I’d chosen it, the only reason I could come up with was that I couldn’t remember anything about it. I’ve read many of Wyndham’s books, like The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Trouble With Lichen and Chocky, and I have vivid memories of them, but The Crysalids? Not so much. Turns out there’s a reason for that – I’ve never read it before. Several others in the group were in the same position, avid Wyndham fans but hadn’t read this one. We’re all of a certain age, so it made me wonder whether it was regarded as subversive in its day, and not sold as widely as some of the others. The premise is that there’s been a nuclear holocaust at some time in the past. Large […]

Posted April 12, 2018 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments