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Ayşe Kulin – Last Train to Istanbul
This was a beautiful and uplifting tale of love and family and the ties that hold us together.
The story took quite a while to get going, we are introduced to Selva and Sabiha, two sisters from Muslim Turkey, who are about as alike as cats and dogs. Sabiha has always been jealous of Selva, but when Selva decides to defy her parents and marry a Jewish man, she is cut off from her family without a second though. She decides to move with her husband to France to be away from both their disapproving families, but it soon becomes clear that it might have been a mistake when France is occupied by the Nazi Germans.
Once the book got going, the tension was palpable, and you felt all the heartbreak, trepidation and fear felt by the characters. The risks that some of the took to save their fellow countrymen and friends made you wish more than anything for their safe journey.
Although the train journey itself was the most thrilling part of the book, I did very much enjoy the first part of the book where we find out more about family ties and the structure that holds the family together. I do think that we possibly spent a bit too much time stuck inside Sabiha’s head, but it did make sense I guess. I would have preferred to have more of Selva’s thoughts and fears though.
Although the book wasn’t based on real-life characters, the plot about the Turkish government rescuing it’s citizens on trains from France was based on real life events. I found it to be quite heart-breaking that these things could need to happen. And the stories of some of the citizens on board the train really wanted to break my heart.
The only negative I have was not of the book, but of the audio book. The narrator of the audiobook made a valiant attempt to do the accents, but they came off sounds incredibly dodgy, especially the women. It made me want to laugh out loud, I’d much rather they used an actual woman (turkish or not) for the voices.
Considering I only decided to read this book because the cover caught my eye, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and I would definitely recommend it. As I said before, it takes a while for the story to get going, but it’s definitely worth sticking with it!
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Charlie N. Holmberg – The Glass Magician
Despite my fears that this book would move on from Ceony and Thane, I was delighted when I started reading and it was a continuation of their story. As with the first book, I loved the complicated relationship between the two characters and how this was developed slowly throughout the book.
After Ceony had defeated Lira in the previous book, she thought that she’d be able to live happily ever after with Thane, progressing through her apprenticeship and maybe more. But it turns out that Lira’s accomplices aren’t very forgiving, and they want Ceony to undo the spell she placed on Lira. And when Thane decides to speak to the authorities about the problems, Ceony is not very happy to be left out, especially since it’s her life that is threatened. So she decides to take matters into her own hands (yet again), and with the help of her glass magician friend, she takes a perilous journey to take on the bad guys herself.
Unlike most of the reviewers on Goodreads, I found the romance in the book quite lovely. At times it seemed a little over the top, but it’s a young girl so that’s kind of to be expected. I found the action full of tension and perfectly described so that I felt like I could be there. The pacing of the book was quite nice, slow to begin with and picking up pace as the story continued. The development of our understanding of the magical world is great, we learn a lot more about the process of bonding with a material and what that entails and rather than just paper magic in the first book, we get a broader picture.
I really can’t wait for the third book in the series, I’m sure it’s going to be great!
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Charlie N. Holmberg – The Paper Magician
Well I really didn’t know what to expect from this book, but it completely blew my socks off! The blurb on Goodreads was:
“Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.”
It sounded like it could be an enchanting tale of growth and discovery and an interesting concept with ‘paper magic’. I was definitely very intrigued to see what that entailed, and I was finding the book funny and endearing when BAM! All of a sudden the book takes a very dark twist! Turns out that I should have clicked the ‘more’ link on the blurb on Goodreads and I might have expected this:
“An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.”
Well let me tell you, I was NOT expecting that! But as we follow Ceony on a journey through Thane’s heart and uncover his deepest desires and hopes, we also learn more about Ceony and the strength and determination that she didn’t know she had. Pursued all along her journey by the excisioner Lira – Thane’s ex wife, Ceony must find a way to free herself in time to save Thane, without getting herself killed or trapped in the process.
I found the book beautifully written and every twist and turn was so carefully considered that it felt like a perfect story. The character development was spot on, and the magic was brought to life so incredibly that it felt like it could almost be real. The book had many quotes that really made me stop and think, and some that made me laugh out loud. Here’s a few of my favourites:
“Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
“Everyone has a dark side! But it’s their choice whether or not they cultivate it.”
“ma always said the word damn came from beavers who gave up on their houses one stick short.”
I’ve already downloaded the second book (The Glass Magician) to my kindle, but I don’t want to read the blurb to spoil it, as I really quite liked the shock that I got from this book and I feel like Holmberg could have a few more tricks up her sleeve. I would dearly love for the story to continue with Ceony and Thane, but since it’s named after a different type of magic, I fear I may be sorely disappointed!
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Jeff Wheeler – The Scourge of Muirwood
Well what a stonking way to finish off this series. At the end of the last book, Lia has figured out that she is the real Ellowyn Demont, heir of Pry-ree. And this means that she needs to make the trip to Dochte Abbey to give the warning about the coming blight. But it looks like the fake Ellowyn Demont has been corrupted by the Hetaera, and will do anything she can to stop Lia from accomplishing her goals, and more importantly, from getting to Colvin.
We still have a little moping in this book from Lia about how she wants to be with Colvin, but she seems more determined to seal her own fate and go and grab what she wants. And even when it looks like it might be too late for her, she still doesn’t get downhearted, instead choosing to trust implicitly in the medium and the path that has been predetermined for her.
Lia’s journey from Muirwood to Dahomey is perilous and fraught with danger, but Lia fits well with her new found Maston status, and with the help of some unlikely companions, she’s able to deliver the warning that she needs to. But it doesn’t seem like even that is enough, as she still finds herself being led into a fire for not converting to the hetaera.
Of course, the book doesn’t end there. Lia is so powerful with the medium that she truly believes that the medium will protect her and lead her through to accomplish what has been pre-defined for her. And yes, there may be a little element of happily-ever-after right at the end. But I didn’t mind that, because Lia was kick ass and didn’t rely on a man to help her to save Muirwood.
I loved the characters in the book. They were so well developed through books one and two that some things left you completely floored. But because you feel like you know the characters so well, you feel such a connection to how the story will end, and it kept me flipping pages again and again until it was over.
One thing I will say about my experience with this book was that I found it much easier to read it than to listen to it. I don’t know if it was just because there was so much going on, or maybe I just wasn’t in the zone, but I found myself missing out on important nuances in the text when I was listening to it. Probably just me though!
I really enjoyed reading this book, and I do like the way that the story was left open at the end to give an opportunity for further books down the line. I’ll definitely keep my eye out for them!
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Jeff Wheeler – The Blight of Muirwood
I was fully expecting this book to suffer from the usual ‘middle-book-blues’, where the middle book seems to just be filler while we wait for the final conclusion. But this book was no disappointment, building on the story perfectly and setting up intriguingly for the concluding book.
I did think towards the start of the book that Lia was going to turn into a pathetic mopey girl, but she quickly amped it back up to being kick-ass, just how I like her. Nothing worse than a wet blanket for a female lead (I’m looking at you Bella Swan).
The aldermaston has asked her to become the new hunter for Muirwood Abbey, and she’s been given a special assignment to safeguard Ellowyn Demont from the Queen Dowager. And even though she feels like she’s lost out on Colvin, she still manages to suck it up and save his life a couple of times. And along with scheming ‘friends’ and a blight that is threatening the entire land, she’s not having an easy time of it.
We find out a lot about the history of Muirwood and Pry-Ree throughout this book, learning along with Lia. When the aldermaston decides that Lia must take the maston test in order to save the abbey, she learns things that she would never otherwise have been able to find out. And this comes in very handy when she must journey to Pry-Ree to find Ellowyn before it’s too late.
Most of the complaints about this book on Goodreads seem to focus on the heavy religious connotations to the book, and the parallels of the medium to different religions and how this can feel preachy. But I honestly didn’t think it felt preachy at all, and I think the journey of discovery that we go on along with Lia was really satisfying.
The book ends on a huge cliffhanger! I absolutely can’t wait to pick up the next book now that we’ve had that massive bombshell dropped on us. I’m really loving this series so far, and I’m sure the final book in the trilogy won’t disappoint.
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Jeff Wheeler – The Wretched of Muirwood
Well after my last disastrous foray out of the fantasy world, I decided to jump straight back in with the first in this series of books which was supposedly one of the top books in the ‘kindle unlimited with narration’ section.
I did enjoy listening to this book, the narrator did several accents and definitely not in a cringeworthy manner like the last book. There were times when the rhythm of the speech seemed a bit jilted and more like a computer voice, but this didn’t happen too often to become distracting.
In Muirwood, a wretched is the worst, most unfortunate person you can be. Unlike an orphan who has lost both their parents to death, a wretched is someone who was abandoned by their parents to live a lowly life of servitude. Lia works in the kitchen of the aldermaston, toiling every day to prepare food for the abbey. All she dreams of is learning to read and write, but this is something that will never be possible for a mere wretched.
But when a wounded man is carried into her kitchen by a knight Maston, Lia’s quiet world is turned upside down. The powers that she has to reach the medium are not normal, and become vital to help this wounded man protect Muirwood, and herself. Along the journey, she learns a lot about herself, and about her world in general. As a wretched, she’s never left the abbey grounds, so it’s an experience being out so far from home. And not one she’s particularly fond of, with the sheriffs men hot on her heels.
But why do they want her so badly? And can she and Colvin achieve what they need to?
I loved the storyline to this book, a young girl so desperate to read and write that she’ll go on such a treacherous quest. I found Colvin very hard to like. Such a surly character who is often abrupt and even rude to Lia. Hopefully he’ll be back for the next book with a sunnier disposition.
The book seemed quite short, although it’s supposedly 300 pages long, maybe the traffic jams to work and back were longer than usual, the narration is definitely a good distraction!
I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this series develops through books 2 and 3, it’s very promising so far.
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Matt Dunn – A Day at the Office
I can’t remember if I’ve read any other Matt Dunn books, but if I did, I’d imagine that I enjoyed them much more than this.
I don’t think it was helped by the fact that the audio book sounded like it was being read by my sat nav, with a spectacular array of terrible accents. It actually made me laugh in places it was just so ridiculous.
Kind of like the storyline to the book. Based around the employees of an office in London, and set on Valentines day, it was full of cringy moments and horrendously predictable. The characters were incredibly stereotyped and annoying, I just wanted to punch most of them.
You’ve got a grown man moping around over a colleague he kissed at the Christmas party who hasn’t mentioned it since, because she’s secretly married and doesn’t want to lead him on, even though she fancies him too. You’ve got the mopey blonde girl who loves shopping and has a massive crush on another colleague, but he’s not interested as he still hasn’t got over his proposal being rejected on valentine’s day three years ago. And then the nervous mid 20’s virgin who hasn’t had any luck with actually dating and is meeting his internet dating site girl for the first time tonight.
Setting the book in an office was pretty odd, since none of the characters seemed to do any work, darting in and out of the office to prepare for Valentine’s Day like it was the end of the world and pulling their hair out because it didn’t seem like it was going to be perfect.
And we go through miscommunication after miscommunication all the while just wanting to scream at these people that THERE’S NOTHING THAT SPECIAL ABOUT VALENTINE’S DAY!! It’s not the end of the world if you don’t cop off with someone just because everyone says you should.
As you can probably tell, I really didn’t like this book. I don’t know if I’ve been spoilt recently with the fantasy books I’ve been reading, but I just found this too predictable and the characters so inane that I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it.
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Yann Martel – Life of Pi
With the amount of hype that surrounds this book (and the subsequent film, which I haven’t yet seen), I feel like I should have loved this book. But unfortunately, I didn’t.I signed up for a free trial of Kindle Unlimited, which comes with free audio versions of selected books via Audible. This was my first download, and I alternated between reading and listening, but mostly listening in this case, with a 4 hour return train journey to Blackpool providing the perfect opportunity.
I did feel the book suited the audiobook format perfectly, it’s pretty much just a man telling a story, so having it read to you does enhance the experience. However, I found the first part of the book extremely slow and not very enticing; it seemed to be endless lists and not much action.
I did feel the book picked up in the middle, once Pi actually ended up stranded on the lifeboat, but even then it became slow in places.
And then at the end, when it comes out that maybe the story wasn’t real at all, and it could all have been way more brutal than the nice story he told, well I just didn’t know what to think really.
I’ll probably give the film a try as it seemed to garner a lot of praise, but I was left feeling disappointed by the book overall, not quite what I expected.
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Jill Mansell – The One You Really Want
Well after a lot of heavy fantasy books, I decided to give my brain a bit of a break and catch up on some of the books I’ve got downloaded on my Kindle. I’m not one to dismiss chick-lit as useless or mind-numbing, and I definitely don’t use chick-lit as a derogatory word. When it’s well written, I find it more like a warm, comforting, relaxing experience, more like watching a lovely film.And this one was quite lovely. When I first got in to reading, I used to read quite a bit of Jill Mansell, she seemed to be quite a popular option at my local charity shop where I used to buy my books for 25p a pop. But it’s been a while since I read any of her books, so when this one came up in the ‘Top 100 free’ list on Kindle, I just couldn’t say no!
The book starts with a fateful ride-on lawnmower. Not exactly the romantic Christmas present a woman wants to receive from her husband,and especially not when she’s just received a Christmas Card from a jewellers through the mail. It’s not hard for Nancy to put two and two together, and she decides to leave her husband and move in with her friend Carmen in London.
Carmen is still grieving for her late husband Spike. He was in a supremely successful rock band with his brother Rennie, but he also liked to experiment with drugs, which led to his untimely demise. And when Rennie rocks up on Carmen’s doorstep, she can’t deny that she feels something for him, try as she might.
The book contains a lot of speedbumps on the way to true love for each of the characters, who I came to love so much by the middle of the book that I was sat hoping and praying that they’d end up with the right people. Of course, you can tell quite early on how the book is going to end, but that doesn’t stop you from laughing and crying along with the characters and enjoying a thoroughly good read.
I’m only giving this book four out of five because I think some of the characters were just a little too stereotyped for my liking, but a brilliant read nonetheless.
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Brandon Sanderson – The Alloy of Law
I reserved this book at Waterstones while I was reading Hero of Ages, and I was very surprised when I went to pick it up that it was so short! The other books have been 700+ monsters, and this one clocked in at just over 300 pages. Let me tell you, my shoulder was very glad for a rest!!
The book itself took a little while to get into, the only real common element with the previous 3 books was the elements of Allomancy and Feruchemy, the book was set far in the future from Vin and Elend, and since they destroyed all the cities when they rescued the final empire, even the cities in this book were different.
However, once I got my head around how different it was, I loved it. I’m used to fantasy books being set in worlds which seem quite far back in time, with pretty much no technology, so it was intriguing for this one to be set around the time of the invention of electricity.
The main character in the book is a man called Waxillium, he’s just returned to Elendel after the untimely death of his Uncle. Once an unofficial lawmaker out in the roughs, he’s now in charge of an entire noble household and all that entails. But when women start going missing in strange robberies, he finds himself interested in the goings on, and when his future wife-to-be Steris is one of the kidnapees, he has to get involved with the help of his old partner-in-anti-crime Wayne.
Now in this future world, there are certain people who have an allomantic power and a feruchemical one. Certain combinations can make you very very powerful indeed. Wayne, for example, can allomantically create a speed bubble that slows down time for everyone inside the bubble, letting him conduct entire conversations in what seems like seconds to the outside world, and he can feruchemically heal himself using health stored inside his metalminds. Quite a useful trick when you’re in the midst of a gunfight!
All through the book, we’re reminded by Lady Marasi (Steris’ half-sister), that her powers are useless. After all, why would anyone want to create a speed bubble to slow down time so that everyone in the outside world is going at normal speed while you’re sat in super slow motion. However, with the number of times that this ‘useless’ skill is mentioned, it’s obvious that it’s going to come in extremely handy at the end.
Talking of the end, it was left on quite the cliffhanger, definitely setting up for further books in the series. I would be very disappointed if Wax ended up with Steris instead of Marasi, but Sanderson always has a twist up his sleeve so who knows what will happen!
Once again, a superbly written book by Brandon Sanderson. I have to wonder what goes on inside his brain to allow him to write something so complex and superbly detailed, which each character having such unique characteristics and the world described in such vivid detail that you could almost be there!
Sanderson is fast becoming one of my favourite authors!
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 