A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set in the fictional land of Westeros ‘Game of Thrones’ is the first in the series of George RR Martin’s epic saga ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’. It’s since been adapted into a HBO series, for which many of you will have been prompted to pick up the book, and in that there is a testament to both the imagination of GRRM and the fidelity of the television adaptation (if you’ve not yet seen the series, read the book first otherwise knowing what’s happening next ruins the experience). Often pinned as fantasy, while there are dragons and whispered folklore, Game of Thrones reads more like a historical fiction novel since this volume is heavily dedicated to the politics of Westeros. Do not be disheartened by the threat of politics for this is medieval fantasy and here politics is synonymous with murder, kidnapping, war, sex, and a dwarf thrown in for comic relief.

Using several character viewpoints, a style not dissimilar from that of Conn Iggulden’s Stormbird, GRRM tells his story from both sides of the good/evil divide. Having said that you will be hard pressed to firmly define a character as good or bad (with the exception of Joffrey who is just the personification of period cramps) as GRRM is master at writing characters. None are without faults or sympathies: Ned Stark, the all but hero of this book, is honourable but at the cost of naivety; Cersei is intelligent but cruelty yet not without a reader’s sympathy for her situation. Naturally though this will have you screaming at the book as you see a character lie about something you just read about. As a fan of both historical fiction and medieval fantasy, this has been somewhat of a perfect storm for me. Too often fantasy novels close as a prince, king, or hero slays whatever evil is threatening the land, and we are left to assume ‘they lived happily ever after’. In what world is that convincing? Yes, I said convincing when I’m talking about a genre that often involves Elves, shush. GRRM takes that trope and tears it to pieces; in the Game of Thrones it is not enough to be morally good.

A very basic formula for this book? Take Lord of the Rings, remove any elements Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft copy, fill in the gaps with Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

My only warning would be that at 800 pages it is a long read. It’s a marathon, but don’t abandon it if your stamina runs out. If you are not the sort of reader who can sit and devour a book this size, do as I did and take it in small chunks. A chapter is enough a day really. But do, do, do finish it!

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Terry Pratchett 1948 – 2015

Sir Terry Pratchett, 28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015

“DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”  

‘Check Mort’ by Paul Kidby

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though I found ‘Hitchhikers’ enjoyable this was A bit up and down for me. THHGTTG felt like a lot of exposition and Adams could have benefited from releasing THHGTTG and RATEOTU together as a longer novel. It is funny, both with wonderful one-liners and lovely tongue in cheek moments (the police from Blagulon Kappa being my favourite), but I found myself often waylaid by Adams’ use of almost never-ending techno-babble; there was so much of it at one point that I entirely forgot how a sentence had started by the time I’d finished it. And yes I know this is itself a joke at how Sci-fi uses techno-babble to sound smart but a joke should never get in a reader’s way of enjoying the book.

Overall I liked it but the experience is probably improved vastly, I’m assuming, by reading the entire series – or at least first two or three – rather than as a standalone. Might revise this review once I’ve read them.

Probably spoilt it for myself by watching the film first and making it impossible to imagine other than the Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell et al casting (though not having been alive in the 80s, I found Freeman a rather good mental Arthur Dent). Shame that human brains stubbornly work like that sometimes.

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The Princess of Egypt Must Die, by Stephanie Day.

The Princess of Egypt Must Die by Stephanie Dray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Incredibly short, read it on an e-reader and approximately 30% is a preview of another of Dray’s books Lily of the Nile.

Actually about Arsinoe II, not Arsinoe III the sister of Cleopatra as I assumed since Cleopatra had her sister murdered which sounded like the title – though that’s entirely my fault for not reading the book description more thoroughly.

The story is about Arsinoe as a young girl; very much a coming of age story, attempting to fictionally explain what built Arsinoe II into the ambitious and powerful woman who went on to rule Egypt. Of course, being a girl, such a feat could only be promoted by a love affair gone wrong.
I admit that might have sounded more cynical but really, for a short story, the build up and climax was good. The writing style is definitely that of a young-adult (I’d go as far to say Teen) discourse but that does make it an easy read, the sort of thing you could read at an airport while waiting for a flight.

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London Shadows by J.L. Weaver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Full disclosure – I won this book via a Goodreads giveaway.

London Shadows is a young adult supernatural work. Set in Victorian London it follows the story of Alfred Westman, and Sophie and George Penderry as they investigate the disappearance of the latter’s elder brother, Jim. During which they come into conflict with demons, witches, spirits, a mysterious cult, and a werewolf (or at least part of one), not to mention the unexplained disappearances of several young women in the city.

Short review: Overall it’s a charming story with familiar character types, perhaps not groundbreaking, but a fun and easy little read for anyone who likes harmless ghost stories and doesn’t need their historical set fiction to be a dramatised text book. It has great potential to be expanded into a series but reads fine as a standalone novel.

Upon finishing it I felt a bit like I’d watched ‘Hocus Pocus’. While supernatural, ‘London Shadows’ isn’t terrifying – not that it is without tense moments of course! – but is definitely fun and occupies an area of spontaneous ridiculousness, such as defeating a demon with a plum pudding, that prevents the characters from being pulled down by melodrama no matter how aloof they might try to act. The speed of the plot varies somewhat, as should be expected of a story that involves investigation. The books throws you into a fight with the fire breathing demon, ‘Creeping Clem’, but then pulls sharply on the reins to introduce characters and details, only to throw the reader forward with another adversary.

As mentioned while reading this, the character of Westman is like the love child of Indiana Jones and Sherlock Holmes; specifically the Robert Downey Jnr. incarnation since the London the book occupies feels like that same slightly-steampunky or filmic vision of Victorian London rather than an idiosyncratic historical depiction of the period. (Though if you were expecting an absolute true-to-fact accuracy I do wonder why you chose to read a book about demon hunting). Westman’s relationship with Sophie Penderry provides both comedy, as the worlds of a sceptic and demon hunter collide, and the romance which teases “will-they-won’t-they”.

Sophie is an intelligent girl and is your typical “independent but not entirely because this is historical fiction” female lead. She doesn’t stray too far from what we already expect of female characters so she is a safe, easily recognisable character that anyone who would rather be in the library than a PE lesson will sympathise with. [Spoiler] My only one true criticism is that I would have preferred her personality and sense of agency to have been her focus in this book, and for her relationship with Westman to have come in another book or build up gradually over a series (assuming Weaver intends this to be the start of many…). However, that aside she’s a fine character and the relationship creates an interesting dynamic and subplot.

Other characters, such as George and Blinks, served largely as comic relief or plot devices. However, some ancillary characters feel a bit stock and will be familiar to those who’ve read Dickens (or indeed one of the many other Victorian set works that have used his character types). The dim but dependable manservant, a street-wily gutter snipe, the endearingly demented elder uncle, a jilted lover, and so on. This isn’t detrimental to the work but it’s something that could be worked on so to avoid Victorian set fiction swirling around the same Dickens branded watering pool.

Somewhat irrelevant to the story, I’m awarding this a couple extra points for the quality of the book itself. The pages are a little thicker than usual (or at least I thought so), and have quite a smooth finish – I could fit in a pun about page turning here but I won’t, it’s just a very nice book to hold. Also throughout the book there are a few illustrations; rather charming regardless of what you think of the art style, they made me think a little of ‘Invention of Hugo Cabret’, though the publishers could have placed them better since they give away exactly what’s happening on the page opposite.

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Rules for Virgins by Amy Tan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Not really a book, more of a vignette extracted and adapted from Amy Tan’s book “The Valley of Amazement”.

It’s written in the style of a long monologue, or lecture, from an experienced courtesan while mentoring a virgin courtesan. Just as Machiavelli made a list of rules for a Medici prince, this work lays down the law of being a Shanghai courtesan and how a virgin can make the most of her naivety; which songs to learn and why, how to speak inside the jewellery shop with a patron, how to deal with clients who expect more than they paid for, ways to maintain a good reputation, etc.

If you’ve read “Memoirs of a Geisha” this will seem incredibly familiar. It reads like a missing chapter from during Sayuri’s education and, barring the difference in setting, if you imagine it it’s not hard to hear Mameha giving the lesson.

It’s a light read, both in tone and length, and it’s interesting. Not only to those with an interest, fictionally or otherwise, in this era of China’s past or of this section of culture; but also into the assumed value of a woman in a male dominated subculture and, to greater extent, society. Plus it’s free on Kindle which is always a advantage.

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The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘The Hobbit’ is an adventure story following the journey of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit (a species of small folk found in Middle Earth), after having been hired by a band of dwarves to travel to their former home in the mountains to reclaim it from the dragon, Smaug.

The book charming and typically British… Or typically so of the period in which the book was written. However, at times it is a little long winded. Reputedly Tolkien would take forever to walk around a garden because he’d pause to look at every tree and flower… That rather explains ‘The Hobbit’. Not that it’s boring, merely that Tolkien does capture the often ignored longness of a journey actually requires but thankfully it is broken up with a goblin chase, a cursed forest, the prisons of an elven king, a dragon, and a battle that will break your heart.

That being the case. Tolkien is fantastic at describing settings and characters – and I would hope so since he created the entire world of Middle Earth from scratch – his only let down are the action scenes which are frequently over before they can gather momentum, a clear example of this would be Smaug [spoiler] attacking Lake Town.

You’ll love Bilbo as a hero, he’s not the infallible ‘superman’ type hero typical of action genre – fantasy or otherwise. Bilbo is middle-aged when the dwarves arrive to hire him, he likes his creature comforts, and where it not for being a hobbit you could describe his as ‘the every man’. He goes through the book with the wits of someone who would most definitely survive a horror story – not because he can miraculously defeated the bad guy, but because he’s the sort to listen to the millions of ‘don’t go in there’ screams. Plus he’s occasionally a snarky little shi- hobbit, which I greatly appreciated in the current climate of congenial Mary/Marty-Sues.

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Combo breaker. Breaking Dawn, by Stephanie Meyer.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Having read the previous titles in the Twilight saga I approached ‘Breaking Dawn’ with eagerness. I already knew that this being the last book, it would draw to a close to two loose ends from the previous book, ‘Eclipse’ – will or won’t Bella become a vampire, and how will the situation with the Volturi be resolved. My first hint should have been to ask why those two questions require nearly 800 pages to answer.

Overall ‘Breaking Dawn’ felt like an unnecessary addition to the Twilight saga. Meyer could have quite easily written an additional chapter for ‘Eclipse’ telling us that Edward and Bella marry and live happily forever after. Quite literally forever since Bella finally has her wish of vampiric immortality granted but in easily the most gruesome birth depiction since the labour scene in Kenneth Brannagh’s ‘Frankenstein’. Instead we have plot that is stretched out and never really takes off.

Anti-climactic is perhaps the best word to describe it; just as the novel seems to be reaching a climax with a conflict between the Volturi, and the Cullens and Allies, it deflates faster than an untied balloon.

Added to that, even for Vampire Fiction there are too many moments that are bizarre: Bella’s pregnancy, Jacob’s reaction to Renesmee, certain things I won’t mention because of spoilers but they all felt like plot holes that Meyer hastily filled without thinking them through.

Good things come in threes. ‘Breaking Dawn’ reads like mediocre fanfiction, give it a miss.

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