Month: November 2014

Fantasy Review: ‘Among Others’ by Jo Walton

I have no idea what to make of this. Anyone who’s read it will understand when I say that I’ve never read anything like it. It’s so far out to left field that it probably meets itself coming the other way. And yet I loved it. Here’s the premise: Morwenna is a fifteen-year-old girl with eccentric family life, who is, after a dramatic family implosion, under the care of her long-absent father, and starting at a girls’ boarding school. Retreating into a shell of leave-me-alone-ness, she finds consolation in reading – inhaling, almost – every sci-fi and fantasy book she can get her hands on. That’s a fairly bald summary of a story that involves a witchy mother, fairies and magic (possibly), a family for whom the word weird just doesn’t come close, as well as the banal details of school life and an array of glorious asides on the […]

Posted November 30, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Paranormal DNF: ‘Morning Star’ by Desiree Finkbeiner

This is one of those books that I picked up yonks ago in the enthusiasm of a brand new Kindle, which has lurked forgotten ever since. And somehow my tastes have changed in the interim. What seemed like an interesting idea now doesn’t grab me at all. Here’s the premise: Brianna (or Bree) is a normal teenage girl, albeit with an unusual interest in mushrooms, when she encounters a giant dragonfly and falls down the stairs. As anyone would. She recovers remarkably quickly, but then the dragonflies are everywhere, and Bree sees an attractive stranger, Kalen, who fascinates her. He speaks and dresses oddly, and is unfamiliar with common customs. From then onwards, things escalate, involving a specific mushroom Bree found some years earlier, and another stranger with dragonflies and evil intent. And somehow none of it captivated me, and Bree’s insta-lust attraction towards Kalen got tedious very quickly. There’s […]

Posted November 29, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 1 Comment

Fantasy Romance Review: ‘Beneath The Canyons’ by Kyra Halland

What could possibly improve a good old-fashioned western? Why, a little magic, that’s what. Yes, folks, what we have here is a western/fantasy mash-up, complete with horses tied up outside the saloon, gambling and whoring inside, and gunfights in the street, but some of the people wearing the big hats are mages, and the mining going on in the hills is digging up something a lot more powerful than gold. And is it fun? You betcha. Silas is a mage visiting the Wildings from neighbouring Granadaia, a bounty hunter looking to round up a renegade mage for profit. Lainie is a rancher’s daughter with her own untrained magical powers. Silas ought to hand her over for training, or else remove her powers altogether, leaving her a shell of her former self, but somehow he can’t quite bring himself to do either. Meanwhile, the town is being torn apart by the […]

Posted November 28, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

Urban Fantasy Review: ‘Killing Rites’ by M L N Hanover

The fourth in the Black Sun’s Daughter series, written under a pseudonym by Daniel Abraham, and at last things are coming to the boil. Jayne has finally stopped shopping and randomly cataloguing dear Uncle Eric’s many houses, and started to think more carefully, both about herself and what she’s doing, but also about the people who surround her. People who give her (mostly) unconditional love and support, but are also individuals with their own hopes and dreams and murky past histories. And Jayne now knows for sure that she has a rider – a demon residing inside her, who helps her in moments of extreme stress, but who is generally regarded as a Very Bad Thing. This book leaves behind former lover Aubrey, now trying to reconcile with his ex-wife, and, for most of the time, philosophy-man Chogyi Jake, leaving Jayne with one-time priest Ex, a man she now knows […]

Posted November 27, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Fantasy Review: ‘Watcher’s Web’ by Patty Jansen

I’m a sucker for a portal story, where the main character falls through some sort of access point into – well, whatever the author cares to imagine (past, future, parallel world, some other planet altogether). It’s always fun to watch the character work out what’s happened, and trying to deal with the new setting. It can be trite, but there’s always room for a fresh take on the idea. Jessica has always been an outsider. She’s taller than average, for one thing, not very womanly in shape, has some odd birthmarks, and then there’s the whole web of light thing she does with her mind. Useful for dealing with truculent bulls, but it can kill, too, and she’s still not sure how to cope with it. And then one day, something odd happens and the small plane she’s in crashes somewhere weird. As in very weird. Straight away I like […]

Posted November 26, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘My Memories of a Future Life’ by Roz Morris

I have no idea what to make of this. I don’t even know how to characterise it: literary paranormal fiction, maybe? Or a psychological… hmm, not thriller, exactly, but mystery, perhaps. And although it was interesting, in an oddball sort of way, it never quite flowed for me. It felt just a bit out of kilter like a slightly convex mirror, everything coming across as distorted. Maybe that’s appropriate for the story, I don’t know. Certainly the future parts were much more interesting and vivid to read about. The premise is that a talented London pianist, Carol, finds herself unable to play because of repetitive strain injury. Her flatmate, Jerry, is pursuing his personal demons by way of regressive hypnotherapy; he feels he’s been a victim of Jack the Ripper in a previous life. Carol tries it too, but finds herself in the future, a soothesayer called Andreq, someone who […]

Posted November 24, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

I’m back!

Did anyone even notice I was gone? No? Oh well. I’ve just spent three very pleasant weeks in Australia, first in Adelaide, then crossing the Nullarbor desert by train to Perth, then back to Adelaide to catch the plane home. Great weather, great food, great wine, great people – so friendly and just all-round nice people. And an astonishing number of them from my original stamping ground of Merseyside. Very weird to fly half-way round the world and hear so many Scouse accents. I got plenty of reading done on the long flights to and from the UK, and on the train. Thank goodness for a well-stuffed Kindle. I have eight reviews ready to post, and several other books partly read. Lovely to be able to catch up on my reading, and not to have twenty other things vying for my attention. I got some writing done, too, although I […]

Posted November 24, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, Publishing/marketing / 2 Comments