Category: Review

Urban fantasy review: ‘Speak’ by R M Webb

I don’t read much urban fantasy, but this one grabbed me from the opening pages. There’s an intensity to it that I don’t often find in any kind of fantasy, which tends to concern itself much more with actions, events, reactions, battles and magicky stuff. This one is all about Zoe, and is so well embedded in her head that I felt everything that she felt, heard everything she heard, responded exactly as she did. That’s a rare talent, for an author to get under a character’s skin so strongly. Here’s the premise: Zoe seems like just another girl — quieter than most, a bit subdued, a bit odd, perhaps. She has trouble talking to people, and sometimes she just goes into sensory overload, and can hear everything, every last detail. She has a best friend, Becca, who looks out for her, understands her and protects her from the world. […]

Posted November 11, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Sci-fi review: ‘The Trouble With Time’ by Lexi Revellian

The author is one of very few whose work I will buy without hesitation, because I’ve never read a bad one yet. This one didn’t break the pattern, but for me it wasn’t quite the unalloyed pleasure of her previous books. This is mostly because of the time travel theme, one that I find tricky at the best of times. I like a nice, linear plot that proceeds at a steady pace from A to Z without too many meandering deviations. Time travel stories start at A, but after that all bets are off. They may proceed to Z, then jump back and forth, or they may abandon all decorum and simply loop the loop and twizzle about like a demented fly. This one felt quite comfortable and I was keeping up nicely until the midpoint when it suddenly went into a Primer-like tailspin and I got hopelessly confused. I […]

Posted November 6, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Review: ‘The Singing Sands’ by Josephine Tey’

This is an odd sort of book. Part murder mystery, part poetic eulogy to the scenic Highlands of Scotland, part description of a recovering claustrophobic and part despairing (and very funny) description of the post-war way of life in the Highlands. Here’s the plot: Scotland Yard detective Alan Grant is given some time off to recover from what we might nowadays call a nervous breakdown. He goes to his native Scotland to spend a month of restful fishing and striding about the heather with old friends. But on the sleeper travelling north, another passenger arrives dead in his cabin, and initiates the murder mystery part of the story. The various flimsy clues about the dead man lead Grant to the Outer Hebrides and eventually back to London. Along the way, he encounters an unlikely revolutionary, an aristocratic almost-love-interest and any number of caricature locals, who may or may not be […]

Posted November 2, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Urban fantasy review: ‘Stolen Magic’ by Marina Finlayson

The first of a new series, and once again Finlayson offers a book that’s everything I don’t normally read (urban fantasy? Me? Um…), and has me utterly absorbed, hanging on every word. Right from the start, as heroine Lexi breaks into a house with the aid of nine cats, I loved everything about it. The world Finlayson lays out is (to me) a little different. There are shifters – were-wolves and a whole array of other were-species. There are vampires. There are shapers — people with a power over one or more elements. And the result is a very different-looking political spectrum. There’s no pretence here that the ‘other’ species are somehow hidden from the human population, nor that they peacefully coexist. No, the shapers are immensely powerful, and as a result, they call all the shots. There are shaper-controlled areas, where shifters and other non-humans live in cautious subjection. […]

Posted October 23, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Mystery review: ‘Aunt Bessie Assumes’ by Diana Xarissa

As cozy mysteries go, this is about as cozy as it gets. Aunt Bessie is a lady of bus pass age living beside the beach in Laxey on the Isle of Man. One morning she (literally) stumbles over a body on the beach, and, since she knows everyone on the island, she’s roped in by the police and her own curiosity to help solve the crime. As always, there are plenty of suspects, and all sorts of skeletons in closets to be revealed before the murderer is brought to justice. There’s nothing fundamentally amiss with this book, and I was never tempted to abandon it. However, the pace is glacially slow, with inordinate amounts of unnecessary dialogue and repetition, and a great deal of page time is devoted to drinking vast amounts of tea and loving descriptions of every single food item passing Aunt Bessie’s lips. When she cooks, we’re […]

Posted October 18, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Fantasy review: ‘The Healers’ Home’ by S E Robertson

Another awesome story from the author. A world you can immerse yourself in. Characters who are so real, you’re sure you must have met them some time. A story that weaves itself around you like a silk cocoon, soft and gentle and totally mesmerising. If you’re looking for action, this really isn’t the book for you, but if you want literary fantasy, where the characters matter more than anything else, this is the book for you. The premise: in the first book of the series, The Healers’ Road, Agna the healer and Keifon the Medic, with their very different backgrounds and approaches to healing, were thrown together and had to reach a working accommodation. Two years on the road and a lot of adjustments saw them become strong enough friends to consider settling in the same northern town, Wildern. Agna hopes to open an art gallery. Keifon wants to become […]

Posted October 2, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 1 Comment

Fantasy review: ‘For The Wildings’ by Kyra Halland

This is the sixth and final part of the Daughter of the Wildings series. I’ve been trying to think how many series I’ve managed to keep up with for six books, and it’s not many. A couple of murder mystery series, perhaps. But in fantasy? Nope. I rarely even get beyond the first book, and only a few stand-out series keep me hooked for a trilogy. So it’s a testament to the strength of the author’s writing that I’ve read and enjoyed every word of all six books. It was the premise that first caught my eye. Wizards and magic combined with old west cattle ranching and guns? Count me in! And the stories were just as good as I’d hoped. Leading man Silas is a true western hero, tough and determined, but a real gentleman too. His lady, Lainie, is his equal in every respect, and maybe, just maybe, […]

Posted September 29, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Mystery review: ‘A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia’ by Clara Benson

For anyone who read all ten of the Angela Marchmont series of murder mysteries set in the 1920s, this spin-off series is an absolute must. Featuring the gloriously insouciant Freddy Pilkington-Soames, this first book in the new series has all the author’s trademark elegant phrasing and delightful humour, combined with twenties glamour and a gentle murder mystery to be solved. I was a little concerned that Freddy, a comedic bit part in the Angela series, might be too lightweight to carry an entire series on his own, but I needn’t have worried. Freddy turns out to have a very deft hand in managing affairs so that the murderer is brought to justice without his society cronies missing the cocktail hour. Here’s the plot: the magnificently named Ticky Maltravers is the toast of London high society, adored by everyone—or so it seems, until somebody poisons him over dinner. Now it turns […]

Posted September 11, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Urban fantasy review: ‘Gathering Black’ by Jen Rasmussen

Oh, that difficult second book of the series. The first is always full of surprises, every quirk of the author’s created world new and fresh. The final part is the big battle where evil is defeated, all the wrongs are set right and everything ends on a happy note. And then there are those middle books (this is the second in a planned five-book series). It’s very easy to drop the ball at this point, but here the author distracts with plenty of action and a whole heap of mysteries. Where are these precious sapwood seeds that both sides want so badly? Who is the traitor in the clan that’s supposed to be protecting them? And most of all, who can be trusted and who’s following their own agenda? The most delightful aspect of this series, for me, is the concept of place magic, something that our heroine, Verity, has […]

Posted September 7, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Mystery review: Awash by Dawn Lee McKenna

Book 6 of the Forgotten Coast series already, and still more to come. Anyone who’s read this far will know what to expect — fascinating characters, lots of drama, plenty of humour and McKenna’s trademark brilliant dialogue, where the subtext beneath the words stretches halfway to the earth’s core. Never have characters said so much with so few words. I don’t always fully understand exactly what it is they’re saying (or not saying) but trying to work that out is part of the fun. For anyone whose interest is in the crime-of-the-moment, with the personal lives of the characters a minor note, this isn’t the series for you. Here the characters are what it’s all about, and again in this book the crime to be solved is deeply connected to Maggie, the female cop who is the heart of the series. Maggie was raped as a teenager, and when she’s […]

Posted August 15, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments