Family Friday: Review of Dark Angels by Katherine Langrish

A great atmospheric read for older tweens and teens with compelling characters and plenty of intrigue. I was lucky enough to win a signed copy from the author by retweeting a link to this lovely trailer (which she filmed herself - everyone say "oooh").

Title: Dark Angels
Author: Katherine Langrish
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genre: older children's/YA
Published: 2009

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
A bad feeling hung over the place.
"I'm not going any further," Wolf said, shivering.
BUT HE DID...

Wolf is on the run, lost on a dark hillside said to be haunted by ghosts, demons and other supernatural forces. But Wolf uncovers a creature far more strange and thrilling on his journey into the shadows.

My verdict: An exciting and mysterious read, chock full of great characters. Highly recommended.
This, like Langrish's excellent Troll trilogy (see my review) is a fabulous historical adventure novel with strong fantasy elements. Langrish draws her fantasy aspects from the folk beliefs of the period she's writing in, so this novel, set in the time of the Crusades, is strongly influenced by people's fear of elves and demons.

The compelling characters are a real strength of the book, quickly gaining our sympathy and ensuring we are rooting for them. Her young protagonist, Wolf, is flawed enough to be sympathetic while being someone a tween or teen reader could admire and might choose as a friend. The book is suitable for both boys and girls, since it fits firmly into the fantasy-adventure genre and Wolf is joined by a female protagonist in the form of Lady Nest fairly quickly, ensuring both genders are represented (and eschewing the obvious 'romance' route which can alienate boys and younger readers). Nest herself is a great character, responding negatively to some of the gender-based confines of the age without standing out as anachronistic by being openly rebellious.

As the cover (and trailer) suggests, the setting is important to the novel, and the caves on the hillside feature particularly strongly, offering both temptation and threat. A chilling atmosphere is effectively created through the mystery of the setting, giving us a strong sense of place and its effect on the local residents (and again, this is something Langrish also does particularly well in the Troll trilogy).

Overall, I really enjoyed this and recommend it as a great fantasy adventure. It will definitely be a bedtime read with my eight year old in the not-too-distant-future and I'm sure she'll love it. Although this is shelved as a YA novel (perhaps because the elves are threatening and uncanny rather than sparkly and benign), I think younger children would also enjoy it, especially as a shared read.

This is my twentieth review for the Bookette's British Book Challenge 

More awards!

Somewhat belatedly, as I crawl out from under a pile of Self-Assessment documentation from my day job, I am happy to accept two more awards on the blog. Andrea Michaels, who blogs at Wordy Living, awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award and Jani at Life Debatable passed on the One Lovely Blog Award. How nice!


I'm taking a leaf out of Andrea's book for this and 'theming' my responses. The Versatile Blogger Award requires me to post seven random facts about myself and to pass it on to fifteen bloggers, while the One Lovely Blog Award simply asks that you pass it on to (and recommend) fifteen newly-discovered blogs.

My themed seven things will be things that I can do:

• type fast (according to my students - I don't know my wpm speed)
• read on a bus without feeling sick
• sew (not that I have time at the moment!)
• play the flute
• read a map (take that, gender stereotypes!)
• fold a terry nappy (although I haven't had to for about six years!)
• raise one eyebrow disapprovingly

Since many awards are doing the rounds currently, and given that I have already passed on the Versatile Blogger and the Liebster Blog Award fairly recently, I shall recommend just five blogs without worrying about who already has which award. All of these are relatively new to me. To all you lovely bloggers, please feel free to accept or ignore either or both of these awards without fear of offence :)

• First up, we have the very new InkRunsDry blog, a writing blog run by a very lovely former student of mine, Adam Smith. He's recently been chronicling his attempts to set up a creative writing group in college, so there are bound to be interesting times ahead for him.

• Next comes C D Meetens' blog One Little Spark, which discusses writing, words, inspiration and some fascinating everyday stuff too (I enjoyed the recent 'pet rat' post, for example). I found her through the Writers' Campaign.

• Also found through the Writers' Campaign is Candy Lynn Fite, whose blog features regular 'winks of fiction' as well as posts about writing. 

• Another Writing Campaigner is Clare Robyns, whose novel Second Guessing Fate is just out as an ebook. She posts about the writing process in broad terms as well as about her own work.

• Maria Smith's lovely blog, First Draft Cafe, is also focused mostly on writing, but also mixes it up with some other topics. Maria is also a Campaigner, but I already 'knew' her on Twitter before following her blog.  

In My Mailbox 4

In My Mailbox is a meme run by the Story Siren, in which bloggers share their good fortune and give a mention to all the lovely booky goodness coming their way. It runs weekly but you can do it less often like me.

It's only been a couple of weeks, I know, but it's been a good couple of weeks for the booky arrivals, so I thought another In My Mailbox was in order!

Breaking News: Incredibly Lucky Win

Daughter of Smoke and Bone was an incredibly fortuitous win in a Twitter giveaway run by @Lucyzilb,  publicist at Hodder and Stoughton. Just for being her 500th follower, I received this gorgeous hardback (and the picture really doesn't do it justice - the purply feathers are iridescent)! It was one of those entirely brilliant coincidences that happen online: I saw a tweet from her which mentioned a book I'd seen in our college library. That book was L'Auberge written by Julia Stagg, who is a former student of my college, so that piqued my interest. I followed both Julia and Lucy and found that I had won the giveaway (which I hadn't even known about...). Such a lucky day!

Anyway, as well as being beautiful, the book is an urban fantasy set in Prague, using folklore and some intriguing original ideas. It was only released a fortnight ago and the blogosphere is alight with praise for it, so I am extremely excited (if you can't tell already!) to have received a copy. I expect this will be a half term treat, so look out for my review.

Received For Review

These three lovelies arrived courtesy of the marvellous Caroline at Portrait of a Woman.

The Emerald Atlas:The Books of Beginning is a fantasy adventure for older children (9-12) that I have been wanting to read for a while. People have been calling it 'the new Harry Potter', which probably isn't helpful at all, but it does sound intriguing in its own right.

The Ghostgirl books look quirky (they're even a non-standard physical size and shape!) and a cool goth/emo take on the established YA plot of popularity issues in high school.

Death Sentence is a crime novel with a crime writer as its protagonist. Someone is using his plots to commit horrific murders and ruin his life. Sounds great, no? This one came as part of the Transworld Book Group. Watch out for the review!

Words on Wednesday: a Bit of a Grumble

I hate corporatespeak. I know I'm not alone in this, and it's at least part of the reason I'm not a businesswoman but a public sector worker. However, it's been creeping into the world of education for a while now. Rather than share the Big Rant (especially since I'm pretty sure many of you feel the same...), here are my top three current annoyances (all heard this academic year):

1. Calendarise. "We'll get that calendarised for next term." It's not even easy to say. Ideally that would mean that it won't last long but given its regular use in emails rather than speech, it's hard to be hopeful...
2. Agenda (as a verb). "Let's agenda that for next time." Whilst easier to say than calendarise, it's still clumsy and ugly and oh yes, I wasn't going to rant, was I...
3. Evidence (again, converted to verb). "How do you evidence learning in a snapshot of a lesson?"* Ugh. What, may I ask, is wrong with "provide evidence of". Sorry, yeah, imminent rant engaged again. 

Am I just a grumpy old so-and-so or do you agree?

* If anyone knows, leave me a comment with the answer. Or alternatively, email me and we'll get a book out of it.

PS to any Language students who've wandered over here: I apologise for the prescriptivist nature of this grumble, especially when I tell you all to avoid sounding judgemental about new or non-standard uses of language. But, as we've discussed, we all have our little prescriptivist bugbears. This is (one of) mine. 

Review: Crippen by John Boyne

A brilliantly-organised thriller, dragging the reader towards the inevitable. A fabulous reading experience.

Title: Crippen
Author: John Boyne
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2004
Genre: Crime/Thriller

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
July 1910: The grisly remains of Cora Crippen, music hall singer and wife of Dr Hawley Crippen, are discovered in the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden. But the Doctor and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, have vanished, much to the frustration of Scotland Yard and the outrage of a horrified London.

Across the Channel in Antwerp, the SS Montrose sets sail on its two week voyage to Canada. Amongst its passengers are the overbearing Antonia Drake and her daughter Victoria, who is hell-bent on romance, the enigmatic Mathieu Zela and the modest Martha Hayes. Also on board are the unassuming Mr John Robinson and his seventeen-year-old son Edmund. But all is not as it seems...

My verdict: fascinating and informative, while also creating something new out of the known. Highly recommended for crime readers.

I'm not a 'true crime' reader, but I do enjoy a good whodunnit or a strong crime thriller and this was right up my street. Although I knew some of the pertinent facts in this case, the strength of Boyne's writing still pulled me in and made me need to know what was coming next.

The novel's narrative is divided, with chapters alternating between the 'now' of 1910, after the murder has been discovered, and Hawley Crippen's life leading up to this point. As the book goes on, the two of course get ever closer, leading us to the inevitable climax of the story. This re-organisation of events is what underpins the highly successful reinterpretation of the Crippen case. Both narrative threads are told using a third person voice which is authoritative without ever being dry.

Period detail is crisp and clear and it is easy to plunge yourself into Crippen's world, and even to feel some sympathy for him, even as you know you're reading a murderer's backstory. Yet this sympathy isn't overdone and the story is neither sentimentalised nor sensationalised. Secondary characters, especially the passengers on the Montrose, whom we meet first, are beautifully drawn and contribute colour and movement to the story.

Overall, as a fictionalisation of true events, it is a gripping story. Boyne adds his own twists and details to turn the bare facts into a well-rounded novel. The organisation of the plot is ingenious and really adds to the reader's enjoyment in the book, really adding to the sense of a movement towards an inevitable conclusion. Although the ultimate conclusion will be known to most readers ahead of time, the journey Boyne takes us on to get there is more than worth it.

Big thanks go to Transworld for providing this book for review as part of their Transworld Book Group initiative.

Family Friday: We love The Wombles!

This review is a real family effort, produced with help from my littlest girl, who turned 8 yesterday.

Title: The Wombles
Author: Elisabeth Beresford
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: Nov 2010
Genre: Children's

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
The Wombles is the first ever Wombles book and introduces the stern but kindly Great Uncle Bulgaria; Orinoco, who is particularly fond of his food and a subsequent forty winks; general handyman extraordinaire Tobermory, who can turn almost anything that the Wombles retrieve from Wimbledon Common into something useful; Madame Cholet, who cooks the most delicious and natural foods to keep the Wombles happy and contented; and last but not least, Bungo, one of the youngest and cheekiest Wombles of all, who has much to learn and is due to venture out on to the Common on his own for the very first time . . .

Our verdict: A great read for 6+, (with an up-to-date eco-message).

I bought this for the Kindle because the youngest wanted to read on the Kindle and most of my books weren't suitable for her. She's adopted an Orinoco toy salvaged from my parents' house, so I thought she might like to read about him. I was right! Having enjoyed the book together, I thought it would be a good idea to let her review this one for her, with a few prompts:

The Wombles was written quite a long time ago now. Do you think it's still interesting to read today?

Yes, because it's not too complicated and it doesn't mention old words much.

The book isn't really one big story, but several episodes over a period a time. What do you like about the stories?

The book is mainly about Bungo growing up, but there are different stories that happen. There are very funny bits and very exciting parts. Some of the funny bits are when the Wombles don't understand human stuff properly, like they call things funny names or don't really know what things are for. The descriptions are very good and I found it easy to imagine the situation and the place. The illustrations also help.

Who do you think would enjoy The Wombles?

Children who like fantasy and adventure stories about made-up creatures. It isn't really written for one specific gender; I think boys and girls will like it.

Do you have a favourite Womble?

I like them all quite a lot but I do like Great Uncle Bulgaria best because he is responsible and sensible. 

So, there you have it. She greatly enjoyed The Wombles and is after the next in the series now, The Wandering Wombles. I also found that Bloomsbury have a Wombles website and much fun was had with the activity pack!

Words on Wednesday: NaNoWriMo

Well, I've done it - signed up for this year's NaNoWriMo. You can find me as BethKemp (unsurprisingly!). I'm still not certain whether this is the best or worst idea I've had this year, but we'll see.

For those who don't know (where HAVE you been?), NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month and the aim is to produce 50k words in 30 days. It should more properly be International Novel Writing Month now, since it is a worldwide venture, but that wouldn't be so easy to pronounce. Since it is essentially a quantity over quality exercise (arguably, like all first drafts), it's important to not get bogged down in minutiae and to just keep throwing words down on the page.

I've never done it before, but I did follow Hestia's and Ania's NaNo adventures with interest last year. I'm hoping it will help me to stop pushing my writing to the back of my life, something that's happened a fair bit lately. Although most of that has been due to new term - er 'stuff' at work, it's still a habit I don't want to embed.

I'm currently working on a major rewrite of a story for 5-8s and that will be finished in October, so the NaNo project will give that some drawer time. I also have an end of October deadline for a non-fic project, so the timing's working nicely for me.

I'll be returning to a YA story that I outlined, decided was dull and shelved for the 5-8 piece before coming up with a twist that freshens it nicely (I think!). Beyond jotting the twist as a 'what if' at the top of my outline, I haven't touched it since early summer. I reckon I'll have time to double check and tweak the outline and do the most important research before NaNo starts. Details can come later (see, I have already embraced the NaNo spirit!).

Are there any other NaNo-ers out there?

In My Mailbox 3

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme (but you can do them less often, as I am) which is run by The Story Siren. I've let this one accumulate over a month, as my summer book buying frenzy has slowed down.

My exciting win this month is Catwalk Queen (Million Dollar Mates) by Cathy Hopkins, which I won from the fabulous Girls Heart Books blog.  My resident very-nearly-thirteen-year-old (eek!) was the proud recipient. If you like books for girls from about age 8, this blog is fantastic, with contributions from loads of authors.


I also received two great books for review this month:

Linda Sargent sent me her lovely novel Paper Wings, which I found to be a brilliant nostalgic read (even though I can't be nostalgic for the post-war period since I wasn't there, but I'm sure you know what I mean!). My review for this one went up last week. 

Also for review, this time through the wonderful Transworld Book Group, I have John Boyne's Crippen, which I'm currently reading and finding dangerously absorbing on the train.  Watch out for the review soon, but so far so great.


And finally, just two purchases this month:

Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is attracting all kinds of attention in the blogosphere at the moment and it is just a gorgeous book to behold.  For more images, visit this post on My Favourite Books but take care - it's this post that made me pre-order it. Don't say I didn't warn you!

My final choice for this month is Nicole Peeler's Tempest's Legacy, which I had pre-ordered for my Kindle and had the pleasure of seeing simply appear on release day.  Having loved the previous two Jane True books, I had to have this one.

Magical Monday: The Everyday Magic of Autumn

The leaves around here are looking gorgeous. Driving down the main road closest to my house, the foliage on either side is phenomenal just now: rich reds, russety browns, golden yellows as well as the last vestiges of green.

Now we're firmly in the dark half of the year (the equinox was last week) it's all longer and longer nights until the tipping point of the Winter Solstice. For some, this is a reason to lament, and of course in less developed times, it was a genuine reason to fear, but for us in our heated homes with water literally on tap, that old primal fear is just residual and we can (mostly) enjoy the changing seasons for their beauty. I really like Autumn for its crunchy leaves and crisp mornings. I'm not a fan of hot weather, or of snow and ice, so Spring and Autumn are my favourite times of year.

That is until the first 'leaves on the track' announcement which makes me late for home or traps me at the station when I want to get home... :) Is that a UK-only thing? International readers - please let me know if that's a familiar thing to you too!

Do you have a favourite season?

Thrilling Thursday: Review of Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

A spellbinding tale of love and death. What could be more thrilling?

Title: Midwinterblood

Author: Marcus Sedgwick

Publisher: Indigo

Publishing: 6th October

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you've never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens.

In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they've lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon - the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter's moon, the blood moon - this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting. 

Beautifully imagined, intricately and cleverly structured, this is a heart-wrenching and breathtaking love story with the hallmark Sedgwick gothic touches of atmosphere, blood-spilling and sacrifice.


My verdict: beautiful, haunting and unlike anything else I've read. Highly recommended for those who enjoy a well-crafted story. Don't let the teens keep it to themselves!
This book gripped me instantly. I read it over three days of a very busy working week, which says a lot on its own. I'm not going to leave it there though *grin*. The novel has superb writing and makes intelligent use of folklore/myth, so it was always going to be a winner for me. I still managed to be surprised by just how fantastic it was though. I read recently somewhere that Marcus Sedgwick spends a long time planning (I think I read months), and this book is testament to that degree of careful thought.

The novel as a whole is like an orchestral suite, with different movements all sharing a key theme and a set of motifs which flow through the whole, adding cohesion and providing (I'm sure) satisfying recognition on re-reading. As always, Sedgwick's prose is relatively sparse yet beautifully lyrical. He doesn't waste words, nor does he need to use complex vocabulary to weave a clever story.

A particularly effective aspect of the opening story was the Wicker Man-style creepy vibe. This helps build the sense of inevitability which propels us through all the stories back to the beginning of it all. The trailer conveys this dark and spooky tone brilliantly.



Overall, I enjoyed this book immensely and it's a real contender for the best book I've read this year. I think it's worth saying that, for all the 'doomed lovers' stuff implied in the blurb, it's not a 'romance' title. Also, as an Indigo publication, it's being targeted at the Young Adult market, but I think there's life in it as a literary chiller for adults too.

My grateful thanks go to Orion for providing me with a proof copy of this wonderful book for review.
This is my nineteenth review for the British Books Challenge.