Books that caught my eye: ‘Hawkridge’ by Julian Kindred

Generally, when I write about books here, it’s a review of a book I’ve read. I read and review perhaps 50 books a year. There are many more I’d love to get to, but… so many books, so little time. And if I don’t read it, I won’t review it. But sometimes a book will catch my eye for some reason, and even though I don’t have time to read it myself, it’s interesting enough to mention here. This is one I found in Joel Friedlander’s cover design awards. I love a book that blurs genre boundaries, and this one does it in glorious style – it’s a fantasy western, complete with ranch hands roping… wait for it, dragon calves. Wonderful! Here’s the cover and blurb. Note that I haven’t read this, but if anyone has, do post a comment. Colt Hawkridge thought he was content with his life on […]

Posted February 17, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Books that caught my eye / 0 Comments

‘The Plains of Kallanash’: only $0.99!

For those of you in the US or UK, you can pick up a copy of ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ for the special price of $0.99 instead of $3.99 (it’s £0.99 in the UK). The discount will be running all week. If you’ve already bought your copy – thank you! If you have any friends you think might enjoy it, let them know. Enjoy!

Posted February 16, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘The Italian Girl’ by Iris Murdoch

What this book needs is more orcs. Or any orcs at all, really, but preferably a great horde of slavering, rampaging, hell-bent-on-destruction orcs. Failing that, zombies would do the trick. Or perhaps we could push swords into the characters’ hands and toss them into the gladiator arena. Frankly, they need something of the sort. A post-apocalypse world to shake them out of their fairyland and give them something serious to worry about. Because I’ve never come across such a snivelling bunch of whiny, self-absorbed morons who so badly need to just get over themselves. Here’s the plot, such as it is. Matriarch Lydia has just died, and son Edmund returns to the family home wherein reside his brother Otto and his wife Isabel, along with Otto’s apprentice and his sister, and the resident nanny-turned-housekeeper, the eponymous Italian girl. The story then unfolds with one melodramatic revelation after another, accompanied by […]

Posted February 12, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

‘The Fire Mages’ launch: promotion results

My first epic fantasy book, ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, was published in September with no promotion, apart from me wittering excitedly on social media. It performed exactly as you might suspect (around 60 sales in the first month before flatlining, and only 3 reviews). I always intended to delay heavy promotion until I had at least three books out, but the new book, ‘The Fire Mages’, is a much more marketable candidate (coming of age, young girl finding her powers, loads of magic), so I wanted to give it a bit of a head-start without pushing the boat out financially. The plan was to keep it at $0.99 for the first two weeks after release, combining that with some promotion every day. The first week would be smaller sites, with the big hitters in the second week. The objective was to generate steady sales which would give the book some […]

Posted February 10, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Fire Mages / 3 Comments

Five-star archives: ‘The Lions of al-Rassan’ by Guy Gavriel Kay

I read this is 2011, as a follow-on to ‘Tigana’, and while it avoids the flaws of that work, it has a few all its own. I went on to read ‘A Song For Arbonne’, which I gave 4 stars, and haven’t read any Kay since. I do enjoy his work, but it is terribly over-wrought, and I have to get myself in the right frame of mind for it. My tastes nowadays veer more towards smaller, less ambitious tomes. Or perhaps just writing that doesn’t take itself quite so seriously. Well, this was a three Kleenex book and no mistake. That’s three boxes of Kleenex, of course. Not a book to read on public transport, unless you have no embarrassment gene. No one does grand tragedy quite like Kay. But I’m not totally sure what genre this is. It’s more fantasy than anything else, but the world-building is lifted […]

Posted February 8, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Review / 2 Comments

Fantasy Review: ‘Watersmeet’ by Rachel Cotterill

Some stories keep you on the edge of your seat with non-stop drama, and some are gentler tales, of people learning about themselves and each other, quietly resolving their problems with thoughtful research or experimentation or negotiation, instead of reaching for the swords every time. This book is in the latter category, which makes it very much my kind of story. The opening of the book is a nice introduction to the background, one of a basically illiterate population, where both magic and writing are frowned upon. Ailith can read and write, but she has to keep that secret. However, a meeting with a mysterious older man, Malachi, reveals that she has another secret – she is a mage. Ailith is one of twins, with several other sisters and (maybe?) a brother, too. Her twin is about to be married to a man three times her age, a match arranged […]

Posted February 4, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘One Fine Day’ by Mollie Panter-Downes

This is a book from another era, in every sense. Written in 1946, it shines a light on a different age, a brief moment of history, and quite a narrow aspect of history, at that. In the aftermath of the war, an upper-class couple in southeastern England adjusts to the reality of life without servants and wealth. The main character, Laura, is the slightly dippy wife whose day we follow as she goes about her chores. No longer able to sit idly at home, or gad about the countryside visiting or walking, she shares the household chores with her sole remaining ‘help’, queues for food at the shops with other matrons, tries to arrange for a gardener and cycles off to retrieve a missing dog. Meanwhile, husband Stephen and daughter Victoria are going about their equally mundane lives. And if this sounds dull, indeed it is, as a story. The […]

Posted February 2, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Magic in the Brightmoon world

With ‘The Fire Mages’ now out, I thought it might be interesting to look at the way magic is used in the book, and compare it with magic in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’. WARNING: slight spoiler for ‘The Fire Mages’ at the end. ‘The Fire Mages’ is set in the realm of Bennamore. Magic is invoked by the use of spellpages: a trained scribe writes out the words of a spell using magically imbued paper, pen and ink. A special script is used, with many flourishes and symbolic additions to each letter, which can subtly modify the spell, for instance to change the strength, to add constraints or expand it. The spellpage is then burnt in a crucible, with an invocation to the gods: “By the sun, bring light and fire and colour; by the moon, enable the darkness.” The Bennamorians believe that the gods are the final arbiters of […]

Posted January 30, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Brightmoon world, The Fire Mages, The Plains of Kallanash / 3 Comments

Five-Star Archives: ‘The Name of the Wind’ by Patrick Rothfuss

I thought it might be amusing to dig out some of my old reviews from the mists of time. This is one I read and reviewed in February 2011, and despite the glowing five star review, I haven’t yet got round to reading the follow-on. Hmm. Maybe I’m just less interested in wordy, doorstopper books these days. This is a debut book, and inevitably the first in a trilogy (‘The Kingkiller Chronicles’), by this author, and it is quite stunning. It is focused quite tightly on just one character, for it is his story, told largely in autobiographical form, from the perspective of a point in his life when he is still relatively young but has already become something of a legend. Unlike many fantasy books, the reader is not dropped headfirst into a morass of names and places and customs. Rather it builds very gently and precisely, a step […]

Posted January 27, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Review / 0 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘See You’ by Dawn Lee McKenna

I hardly know what to say about this book. I cried almost all the way through, yet I couldn’t put it down. Actually, I laughed almost as much as I cried. So be warned – unless you’re made of much sterner stuff than I am, you’ll need a good supply of hankies nearby while you read. This is an extraordinary book. It’s a love story, and no, that’s not a euphemism for romance, this really is a story about love. And not your conventional couple, either. Jack was raised by his best friend’s mother, Miss Margret, and returned every year to visit her and her granddaughter, Emma Lee. When Miss Margret died, the visits stopped but now Jack’s back, and finds Emma Lee still living in the same house, and raising her own daughter. Jack has some secrets to share, but Emma has a secret of her own – she’s […]

Posted January 22, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 4 Comments