Review: ‘Brooklyn’ by Colm Toibin

An interesting story historically, perhaps, but in many ways it fell short for me. Eilis is a young woman in a small town in post-war Ireland, a place with few prospects. Her brothers have gone to England to find work, and her glamorous older sister, Rose, has a job and a social life and a worldly wisdom Eilis is entirely lacking. So when Rose arranges for Eilis to go to New York, with a job and accommodation organised by a helpful priest, Eilis meekly goes along with it. It’s never very clear to me exactly why Rose does this, especially given the later revelations of the story, but then there wouldn’t be much plot if she hadn’t, so I’ll go along with it. The section dealing with Eilis’s journey to America and settling into life in Brooklyn is quite interesting, but it’s curiously flat. We never get any real inkling […]

Posted December 17, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Authors Answer #18: Have you ever wanted to rewrite the ending of another author’s published book? How would you change it?

Wow, long time since I did one of these! The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant There are very few books that get me so mad that I want to throw them across the room, but this is one of them. The author wrote a perfect historical romance, well-written, well-researched, the era brilliantly conveyed and the characters fascinating. She then destroyed it utterly by bookending it with a prologue and last chapter which turned it into something else altogether. I suppose the intention was to elevate the book from the realms of mere romance to historical fiction or even literature, and I daresay for many, possibly most, readers that worked fine. My book group, for instance, for whom this was a monthly pick, liked it well enough and most saw nothing wrong with the ending. But for me, it ruined the whole story. It took a main character who had, […]

Posted December 2, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in AuthorsAnswer / 0 Comments

Mystery review: ‘Web Of Fear’ by Mike Omer

The third outing with Omer’s gloriously quirky cops in the Glenmore Park Police Department. This time the spotlight is firmly on Hannah, who’s a bit of a mess in lots of ways, but grimly determined to prove her worth to the department. Naturally, almost everything that can go wrong does. Poor Hannah! This story was a bit different, since it focused on a child kidnapping case. That’s always going to be harrowing, and occasionally the author’s sense of humour jarred with the grimness of a child in captivity. I’d find myself laughing at one of those wildly funny scenes the author does so well, and then the switch to Abigail in her cellar would have me feeling guilty for finding anything funny. And therein lies the skill of the writer, to invoke that very visceral response in a reader. If I have a complaint at all about this series, it’s […]

Posted November 25, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Fantasy review: ‘Assassin’s Charge’ by Claire Frank

It’s a novelty these days to find an assassin character who visibly fulfils that role, both in practice and in temperament. Rhisia Sen is a paid killer for the Attalon Empire, so well-paid for her work that she can almost afford to retire. But when she’s offered an outrageous amount of money for a kill, she can’t resist just one more job. But if something seems too good to be true, it usually is, and this is the job where Rhis finds out just how far she will go to fulfil a contract, and where she’ll draw the line. This book drew me in right from the first chapter, where we see Rhis on a mission, and realise how skilled she is, and how cold-blooded an assassin needs to be. But her next job is a little different, and when she finds out that she has to kill a child, […]

Posted November 14, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

One to watch for: ‘Where The Waters Turn Black’ by Benedict Patrick

Occasionally, I like to tell you about a book that’s caught my eye, one that I haven’t yet read myself, but one I feel deserves a bit of a spotlight shining on it. Benedict Patrick is an author who’s already attracted a lot of attention. His debut novel, They Mostly Come Out At Night, has been highly praised and was a round-winner in Mark Lawrence’s competition for indie fantasy, the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 2016 (or #SPFBO2), although sadly it missed out on making the final group of ten. Now his second book, Where The Waters Turn Black, is about to be released, and it sounds just as original and fascinating as the first. You can pre-order now, or buy on the 16th, at just 99c (or equivalent) until 22nd. If you have a subscription to Kindle Unlimited or Prime, you can borrow for free. It’s a stand-alone, so no worries if […]

Posted November 11, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Books that caught my eye / 0 Comments

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