Category: Review

Review: Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Review: Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

A fascinating book, on a number of different levels. Usually my book group reads fail to impress me in one of three ways: the story itself is dull or depressing or plain boring; the characters are unbelievable, or uninteresting, or simply fall flat; or the prose is uninspiring. A rare one or two have managed to fail on all three counts. This book succeeds in every way. My book group spent forty minutes discussing (and psychoanalysing!) Kate, and more than one person commented that we treated her exactly as if she were a real person. Which, of course, she was. The author dreamt her up and described her on the page so vividly that we were all able to create a living, breathing image of her in our heads. That is the epitome of good writing. The other characters were just as well done in their different ways, and even […]

Posted March 4, 2019 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 4 Comments

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

Mystery review: ‘Duplicity in Dorset’ by Clara Benson

Mystery review: ‘Duplicity in Dorset’ by Clara Benson

A cracking read, definitely the best Freddy yet. In this, the fourth book of the series, he finally leaves London behind and sets off for a pleasant country house party with various members of his family (headed by the Duke and Duchess of Purbeck) and an array of other eccentric characters. What with a body in the library, a stolen necklace, secret passages and lots of guests creeping about in the middle of the night, this is perfect murder mystery escapism. Here’s the plot: the Duke and Duchess of Purbeck are hosting a party to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of their daughter, Ro, at which she will wear the famous Belsingham pearl necklace. But several of the guests have pasts they wish to conceal, which makes things awkward when the trouble-making Professor Coddingham is found murdered with the pearls in his hands. Freddy has his own difficulties with his present […]

Posted December 5, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Review: ‘White Silence’ by Jodi Taylor

Review: ‘White Silence’ by Jodi Taylor

What on earth to say about this mish-mash of a book? It’s a hot mess of episodic vignettes that supposedly tell a complete story, but feel as if they were written by several different people, and with an ending (using the word in its loosest sense) that almost reaches book-to-wall levels of annoyance. The premise is wonderful – the heroine, Elizabeth Cage, has a seemingly unique talent to see the colours surrounding people, like an aura. From these colours, she can identify mood and other characteristics in people. She quickly learns to keep a low profile and not attract attention to herself, and she marries a rather dull but loving man who gives her the sort of low-key life she’s looking for. This part of the book is excellent. Sadly, it doesn’t last long. When her husband dies, Elizabeth discovers that he was not what he seemed to be, and […]

Posted November 26, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 1 Comment

Review: ‘Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase’ by Louise Walters

Review: ‘Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase’ by Louise Walters

This is one of those books with a great premise let down by less than perfect execution. It’s ambitious – a dual-timeline story, with the grandmother in the second world war and her granddaughter in the present day. Each woman has her own story, but needless to say they have echoes of each other and eventually overlap. The grandmother’s story is by far the more interesting to me. Dorothy is married to Albert, a working class man she married as much to escape her mother as for any other reason. Mother then casts her off for marrying beneath her. The marriage seems dogged by tragedy, with a succession of miscarriages followed by a stillbirth. When war breaks out, Albert takes off, leaving Dorothy alone, where she falls under the spell of a young Polish airman. Modern woman Roberta works in a new and second-hand bookshop, leading a pretty dull life, […]

Posted October 29, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

Review: ‘Forsaken Kingdom’ by J R Rasmussen

Review: ‘Forsaken Kingdom’ by J R Rasmussen

This book has all the elements of epic fantasy that I’ve poked fun at in the past. You know the sort of thing – the lost heir to the kingdom, the enchanted sword (which has a name, naturally), the school for magic, the trusty sidekicks… I should have hated it, but instead I inhaled it almost at one sitting. Why? Because it’s so much fun. And there are positively no boring bits. The book starts in the most awesome way imaginable. Wardin Rath is a prince, whose uncle and father have just lost a war. Wardin is the last of his line, and will be the object of the victorious king’s searches until he’s found. And then killed. But Wardin is somewhere very special, the last Magistery in the kingdom, the sole remaining repository for magic in the land. If Wardin is tracked down there, not only his own life […]

Posted October 27, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Review: ‘Beguilement: The Sharing Knife #1’ by Lois McMaster Bujold

Review: ‘Beguilement: The Sharing Knife #1’ by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is an awesome book. As a fantasy, the setting is brilliantly evoked, so that it feels utterly real, and the magic is suitably intriguing. But don’t be fooled: this is a romance through and through. Apart from a few high-action moments, which are mostly designed to throw our hero and heroine together, the plot is pure romance – the accidental meeting, the turning away because they’re on different sides of the cultural divide, the crisis that unites them, the nursing back to health, the long-drawn-out courtship and so on and so on. The premise of this world is that there are two kinds of people. One kind has no magic. They’re farmers, living on settled plots of land, patriarchal and with a largely pre-industrial way of life. The other kind, the ones with magic, are called Lakewalkers (because they are constantly moving around the perimeter of the massive lake […]

Posted October 5, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 6 Comments

Review: ‘Terms of Enlistment’ by Marko Kloos

Review: ‘Terms of Enlistment’ by Marko Kloos

Oh boy. Military Sci-fi. Not something I would ever choose for myself, but I’ll try anything once. This is a mega-seller, so it must be hitting the spot for a lot of people. I have no point of comparison, but it seems to me like a well-written book of its type.The world-building is superb, and I never once doubted any aspect of it. The military stuff – well, if you like blow-by-blow battles, lots of explosions and guns and general mayhem of the blowing-stuff-up category, and a succession of we’re-all-doomed moments – this book is for you. The characters? Not much depth, and to be honest I didn’t much care if any of them lived or died, even the hero. There was a love interest of sorts, but not a romance by any stretch of the imagination. But really, that’s not what it’s all about. It’s the set-piece battles that […]

Posted August 26, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 1 Comment