Thrilling Thursday: Review of Tempest's Legacy by Nicole Peeler

The third fabulous Jane True novel. I am loving this series!

Title: Tempest's Legacy
Author: Nicole Peeler
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2011
Series: Jane True (Book 3 of 6; my review of 1 & 2)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Source: purchased (on Kindle)

Find it at Amazon UK

The Blurb says:
After a peaceful hiatus at home in Rockabill, Jane True thinks that her worst problem is that she still throws like a girl - at least while throwing fireballs. Her peace of mind ends, however, when Anyan arrives one night with terrible news... news that will rock Jane's world to its very core. After demanding to help investigate a series of gruesome attacks on females - supernatural, halfling and human - Jane quickly finds herself forced to confront her darkest nightmares as well as her deepest desires. And she's not sure which she finds more frightening.

My verdict: Just as sassy, pacey and sexy as the first two, with oodles of interesting character development. This series is strongly recommended for urban fantasy fans (and curious newbies to the genre!).
I am really enjoying this series. I love the voice, the realism of the characters (yes, even the supernatural ones - their motivations and behaviour 'feel' real, and that's what makes a character!), and the fact that this isn't a static series with the status quo maintained or restored so that the characters are always the same. Jane, in particular (but not exclusively) changes, adapts and develops through the series, adding to the effective characterisation I already mentioned.

The whole fabulous package is delivered in Jane's voice: a voice with its tongue firmly in its cheek, never taking itself too seriously and located firmly in the now, thanks to various pop culture references. I know that some people feel that 'sassy heroine' is a cliche, but I think that's a sign that it's often poorly done, which is not the case here.

The plot is involving and action-packed. Peeler has ramped it up each time and I'm wondering what on earth she can do for the last three books, but I'll find out! The romance aspect is also intriguing and I'm enjoying the development of Jane's love life alongside her personal development - and these two are clearly linked. As a feminist reader, I have little patience with over-dominant males and passive females held up as the ideal, so I appreciate Peeler's work here.

Overall, this is a great continuation to the series, and I'm keen to read the rest. Peeler is definitely an auto-buy writer for me now and I'm looking forward to seeing what else she comes up with.

Still here

Well, term has ended, I've had my refreshing nap and here I am. We've all had the particularly lovely cold bug that's been doing the rounds this year (*cough cough*) and work got a bit frantic there at the end. But that, as they say, is all over now. I have a lovely pile of poetry analysis coursework to tackle, new lessons to prep for next term and more than a couple of things left to do for Christmas to work as it should.

I will be back to posting more regularly now. Look out for some wonderful kids' books to be reviewed, as well as more language-focused posts and some folklore-infused pieces over the next couple of weeks. A certain seasonal influence may even creep in at some point...

Guest post: Stunt Bunny by Tamsyn Murray

This is a special guest post (of sorts) featuring a book review produced by my 8 year old as homework.  Her class were asked to choose a book to recommend to their classmates, as many of them were saying they did like reading but didn't know which books to read. What a great homework idea!

Here's what she wrote under each of the set headings:

What is the book about?
It's about a bunny called Harriet Houdini who's a stunt bunny. She can do somersaults. There's also a bunnynapper named The Great Mouldini. The Great Mouldini is a magician.

Who would this book be suitable for? Age/interests
The ages are probably about 7 to 11. The interests are about heroes and a little bit of adventure.

Would you/ would you not recommend the book? Why?
I would definitely recommend all of the Stunt Bunny books because it's a great story, it creates tension and they all have a proper ending.

Rating: five stars

And finally, her fabulous drawing:

Thrilling Thursday: Review of The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner

Sally Gardner's new YA novel is an ethereal literary experience, which I would urge you to treat yourself to.

Title: The Double Shadow
Author: Sally Gardner
Publisher: Indigo from Orion
Published: 3 November 2011 (HB) - coming Aug 2012 in PB
Genre: hmm, tough one. Fantasy maybe (since it's not realism)? Magic realism perhaps? Sci-fi (since it posits a fabulous machine)?  I suppose you'll have to read it to decide :)

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
Once there was a girl who asked of her reflection, 'If all I have is fragments of memories and none of them fit together, tell me then, do I exist?'

In a bluebell wood stands a picture palace. Arnold Rubens built it to house an invention of his that could change the war torn world forever. It is to be given to Amaryllis, his daughter, on her seventeenth birthday.

But it's a present she doesn't want, and in it is a past she has to come to terms with and a boy whose name she can't remember.

Who knows what her past has been, or what the future might hold for Amaryllis, lost as she is in this place with no time?

My verdict: beautiful, haunting and evocative, this is a real book to lose yourself in. Recommended for teens upwards.

This novel is extraordinary. Lyrical, elusive and utterly compelling, it draws you and hooks you long before you have any real sense of exactly what is happening.

When I first read the info about this book, it made me think of Angela Carter - probably because of the surreal machine plan and the uncanny double idea hinted at in the title. That comparison was borne out in the reading, due to the lyrical beauty of Gardner's writing, the surrealism and the mythic sense of symbolism created. But that isn't to say this is a derivative work, by any means. This is a truly original novel with genuine literary quality. It's great to see something so unashamedly literary produced for teens.

The characters of Amaryllis and those around her are beautifully drawn and the period detail (the novel is set largely between the world wars) is informative, creating a realistic backdrop to the crazy memory machine. As well as the gorgeous and imagery-rich writing, we are drawn in by the characters' feelings and behaviour, which, together with the setting provide a grounded realism to support the extravagant fantasy of the memory machine, sited in the picture palace. This glorious building stands as a symbol of the nostalgia and unreality which haunt the inventor Ruben.

The narration shifts around in time, adding an additional layer of complexity to the plot, and contributing to the theme of the nature of memory. These shifts in time are matched with changes in tense, switching between a dreamy and fairytale-like past and an immediate and more charged present, giving a sense of urgency to these sections. The narration is all third person in an omniscient style, adding a further sense of the past due to the old-fashioned tone of this narrative style.

The novel has dark overtones and touches on some unpleasant themes. As Gardner stated in her guest post here as part of the blog tour for this book, the past contains some unpleasant truths and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise and prettify them in writing. This darkness, as well as the novel's complexity, make this a book suitable for teens and adults rather than children. I would strongly recommend it to anyone of around 14 and up.

Thank you to Indigo at Orion for sending this lovely book for review.  This review is my twenty-first for the British Book Challenge at the Bookette (to be hosted at the Overflowing Library next year).

One Year On: What I've Learnt Through Blogging

So it's one year ago today that I created this blog and first sent my thoughts out into the ether. I wasn't completely sure what I wanted out of blogging, but I certainly couldn't have predicted or expected everything that I've gained. I've made some great online friends through blogging (and dear Twitter, of course) and have had the opportunity to read a lot of books that I wouldn't have done otherwise.

I've read a lot of blogging advice in the past year or so, much of it specifically aimed at writers (with a view to building a platform). Some of it I've put into practice and discovered it didn't 'fit' for me; some of it I ignored and came around to later (we can all be stubborn, right?); some of it I've followed and found useful. So, in the spirit of paying it forward, here's what my one whole year of experience has taught me so far:

• UK fiction writers don't need a platform before submitting, but blogging and tweeting etc is a good way to demonstrate willingness to contribute to promotion.
• The writing and reading community online is incredible.
• A writer's blog doesn't necessarily need a single unified theme - you can be your blog's theme and cover anything you're interested in. If you think about it, a writer who has no interests outside of writing is extremely hard to imagine: most are interested in particular places, times or cultures, or an area such as myth, physics, environmentalism. 
• Blogging twice or three times a week seems to suit me best and is what I've settled into over the past few months (with a couple of notable exceptions recently). I think I'd lose sight of it if I were aiming for monthly posts, and I know I couldn't keep up with daily blogging!

So, all in all, I'm really glad I took up the blog and expect to be sticking around. 

What blogging gems have you picked up along the way?

Family Friday: Advent Plans

Sorry, we've no pics of our stockings

I really enjoy the lead up to Christmas. We've evolved a great family tradition that really helps to get everyone geared up for the season, using a refillable advent calendar. Ours is a pretty little series of hessian stockings with numbers printed on them, but we first did this using a stack of matchboxes which I'd covered in wrapping paper, assembled in a vaguely attractive pile, and painted numbers onto.

I have quite a lot of fun planning the filling of the stockings, and it's a great way of building up excitement. Some days I'll put chocolate or sweets in, some days it's vouchers and others little toys or (now they're older) little girly stuff like nail stickers or lip balm. If something doesn't fit, I hide it somewhere and put a clue to what it is and its location into the stocking.

The vouchers are everyone's favourite though, and I print these myself. Mostly, these are family things and mark some kind of focused time that we don't always remember to build into our busy lives. Some of the things I'll include on vouchers this year include:

• trip into town on the bus to see the Christmas lights (and get a hot chocolate in a nice coffee place)
• baking session(s)
• crafts - making decorations or gift boxes to share the baking around
• family movie night (sometimes this is cinema vouchers, sometimes a new DVD)
• family games night (again, this might be accompanied by a new board game, or Wii game, or a set of pen and paper game ideas)
• trip to the zoo (when they were younger, we took them to the local city farm to see the 'reingoats'!)

As you can see, many of these are quite old fashioned and somewhat simple ideas, but they always go down really well. I think the girls like the mixture of family stuff, weird little toys (Hawkins and Yellow Moon are brilliant for these), cutesy girly gifts and sweet stuff. It's definitely a tradition I'm glad we started and we all get a lot out of it.

In My Mailbox 6

In My Mailbox is a meme started by the Story Siren. It's available weekly, but you can also do it less often (as I do).  It's been about a month since my last one. A month in which I have:

• received two books I'm looking forward to reviewing
• won a bundle books on Twitter

First up, my review reads are as follows:

New Beginnings was sent to me for review by the lovely Rebecca Emin, who I met online via her blog during the Writers' Platform Challenge. She saw that I like to review children's books and sent me a charming email inviting me to review her debut novel for older children on the theme of bullying. The book is due to be published in late January. I'm looking forward to reading it and probably sharing it with one of my girls.

My other review read for this month's post came from the Transworld Book Group and is Liza Marklund's The Bomber. Publishing next week on the 24th November, this seems like an exciting winter read: a thriller with a smart female lead, set in December. Look out for my review in the next couple of months.

And finally, my exciting win this month comes from the generous team at Scholastic. I won via a Twitter promotion for National Non-Fiction Day and the prize was an amazing set of non-fiction books.  Just look at this:

The parcel contained the following titles:
Horrible History Annual 2012
Horrible Science Annual 2012
Both kids (aged 8 and 13) have been flicking through these and muttering 'cool!' and giggling. Job done, I think!
How to Draw Horrible Science
The 8 yr old dived straight into this and has been practising drawing people and all sorts of creatures. She's particularly impressed with this one, and we're all impressed with her results. Maybe when we review these, she'll let me scan in a picture.
How to Change the World with a Ball of String
This is a quirky volume, showing how coincidences and mistakes have made history. Again, both kids have dipped in and declared their findings 'cool'.
The Murderous Maths of Everything
This was less attractive to the girls to begin with (both are a little maths-shy), but the younger one recognised the author name, since Kjartan Poskitt also wrote Agatha Parrott (which we enjoyed in the summer).

Big thanks to Rebecca Emin, Transworld and Scholastic for enhancing our household with these lovely titles!

Tuesday Tidings: So, How's NaNo Going?

This is a phrase that fills me with dread at the moment. Dread and shame. I have been struggling away, adding shamefully few words every day to arrive at my current word count (7578 at the time of writing but see the widget on the right for an updated figure). I have been writing mostly on the bus and train on my daily commute (on my BlackBerry), with a few additional sessions at home at my desk. It has been going well while I'm writing: I'm happy with my idea and feel like it's going somewhere. The problem is, I am failing to give it enough time. There are excuses I could make, some of them are even legitimate, but I'm finding it way too difficult to put in the necessary time to get up to the word count. It probably didn't help that the first two days of November were both extended work days.

That said, the bottom line is clearly positive: I've written words that I wouldn't have done and I've established a new routine of writing on my commute. That will, of course, reduce my reading time but you can't do everything, can you? And there's still time. I will keep going and see how far I get, but the 50k is not looking very likely at this point (although today I did add more new words than the daily target to get me there on time, but I don't think that's repeatable on a daily basis). I do feel, though, that NaNo may have achieved for me what I needed it too.

I'm still going to grit my teeth when people ask me how it's going, though...

All I Want for Christmas Is No Surprises

"I want a Barbie car for Christmas." My husband and I exchanged looks as our then five-year-old told a family friend this was her dearest wish for Christmas. It was December 23 and this was the first we'd heard of a bloomin' Barbie car. Imagine our delight. Thankfully the extremely generous family friend went shopping and picked up a cute little purple Beetle for her (and she was still pleased with all her gifts), but still... 

So if we look a little shifty leading up to Christmas these days, you know we're just wondering whether the kids still want what they said they did. Did we leave it long enough? If we'd waited, would they have changed their minds? What if we can't get X in time? Argh! So yes, my dearest Christmas wish is for a complete absence of surprises of that nature.

This post is part of a blog party launching the lovely Cally Taylor's new book, Home for Christmas out today. Since her own gorgeous little bundle arrived just over a month ago, she's going for the reduced-stress, stay-at-home launch. She managed to find time to co-write a cute trailer for it though! (see below)

The blurb says:
Beth Prince has always loved fairytales and now, aged twenty-four, she feels like she's finally on the verge of her own happily ever after. She lives by the seaside, works in the Picturebox - a charming but rundown independent cinema - and has a boyfriend who's so debonair and charming she can't believe her luck! There's just one problem - none of her boyfriends have ever told her they love her and it doesn't look like Aiden's going to say it any time soon. Desperate to hear 'I love you' for the first time Beth takes matters into her own hands - and instantly wishes she hadn't. Just when it seems like her luck can't get any worse, bad news arrives in the devilishly handsome shape of Matt Jones. Matt is the regional director of a multiplex cinema and he's determined to get his hands on the Picturebox by Christmas. Can Beth keep her job, her man and her home or is her romantic-comedy life about to turn into a disaster movie?

Review: Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Spider Bones is Temperence Brennan's thirteenth outing. Do take note that the hardback edition had a different title (Mortal Remains) - several people on Amazon and Goodreads are unhappy about accidentally buying the same book twice.

Title: Spider Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Arrow
Published: July 2011
Genre: Crime (forensic)

Find it at Amazon UK

The blurb says:
Dr Temperance Brennan spends her life working amongst the decomposed, the mutilated and the skeletal. So the two-days-dead body she is called to examine holds little to surprise her. Until she discovers that the man is John Lowery, an ex-soldier who was apparently killed in Vietnam in 1968. So who is buried in Lowery's grave?

The case takes Tempe to the heart of the American military, where she must examine the remains of anyone who may have had a connection to the drowned man. It's a harrowing task, but it pays off when she finds Lowery's dog tags amongst the bones of a long-dead soldier.

As Tempe unravels the tangled threads of the soldiers' lives and deaths, she realises there are some who would rather the past stayed dead and buried. And when she proves difficult to frighten, they turn their attention to the one person she would give her life to protect.

My verdict: Full-on, typical Brennan fare. Recommended for Reichs fans.
I always enjoy a good Kathy Reichs novel - lots of procedural and scientific fact, plenty of detail that I half regret reading momentarily, a good dose of uncertainty about Brennan's private life, and all delivered with a healthy dollop of dry humour. This novel doesn't disappoint at all. I've seen other reviews which complain about some of these aspects, but it's not like Reichs has suddenly started writing a different kind of book. To those who don't like scientific and forensic detail in their crime novels, I would point out that there are many crime writers out there to choose from and perhaps reading books by those who are forensic professionals might not be the best idea.

The plot centres around the appearance of a body which suggests that another body was misidentified forty years ago. Naturally, this requires investigation and, also naturally, this is not the end of the matter. On top of this, Brennan is pulled into another case while working on this one, leading to plenty of complexity, red herrings and many character names (several of them already dead!) to remember and keep straight. I did feel a bit like making notes at one point about who was who, but Reichs includes enough reminders to help her readers out, and this never actually became necessary.

I read this in two days, as it just kept pulling me back in. If you've enjoyed other Tempe Brennan novels, I'm sure you'd like Spider Bones as well.