Finally! First great read of 2013. Admittedly, that's because I'm hoarding Days of Blood & Starlight and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There like a survivalist with canned goods, or a chocoholic with a secret stash of Toblerone in the back of the freezer (not that I'm speaking from experience). And while I tempered down my five stars to a more reasonable four, the fact is this was a perfect read the first time through.

I'll save the detailed summary; this is one time More...

page turner, page turner! lady wakes in park with no memory! battered & bruised & bloody! surrounded by dead people! that she killed with her bare hands! cause she has special powers! the same special powers that i have often imagined myself having if dreams came true! quelle coincidence!

the narrative is propulsive. the ideas are automatically right up my alley. the whole thing is clearly built for fun; i gave it to a colleague and he immediately halted the book he was reading because th More...

Latex gloves...They're not just for proctologists anymore.

This was a promising plot idea from a decent writer who got carried away by his own cleverness. He lost me after about 100 pages.

"The Rook" is basically the story of two Myfanwy Thomases. The first one we never officially meet: she exists in the letters (a suitcase full) that she writes to the second Myfanwy-- the one who wakes up with two black eyes and her memory scrubbed. The idea of having Myfawny write letters to herself is a clever device that neatly side-steppes the common predictability of a story centered around an amnesiac. Myfawny has the information she needs at hand-- If only she can read the letters fast eno More...

My only issue with this book was determining whether or not it was a tongue in cheek whodunit, or if it took itself seriously. Once I realized that the book and it's title character was doing both, I was able to settle into a highly imaginative and extremely enjoyable book! I found the development of the lead to be quite fascinating, her interesting assortment of supporting cast, and finally the rather spectacular world she lived in. I sincerely look forward to a sequel!

Let me just get this off my chest. The cover is awful. Not that it assaults any design sensibilities. It's just scans as a YA novel, intimating the houses at Hogwarts or the Districts of Panem. The Rook is more a pulpy, supernatural action thriller laced throughout with a dry wit. This deserves to be a BBC mini along the lines of Sherlock. As to the book, it warrants something a bit more oblique, like a Justin Cronin cover.

The book opens with our protagonist in the rain, surrounded by a ring of More...

The only reason this isn't getting a 5star from me is because I'm not sure about its re-readability. If I ever re-read this, and like it as much as I did this time, I'll be bumping it up to 5.

The writing was clean and tight. No spelling gaffs, or grammatical errors or awkward sentence structures to pull you out of the story. this was written well, then even better, EDITED well. with the influx of indies, good editing shows, sadly.

The story. Mysterious, engaging, cool, neat and wraps up well. Th More...

The Rook by Daniel O’ Malley is a startingly well executed and engaging debut novel with a Jason Bourne like spy, but set in a supernatural urban fantasy setting. The spy in question, Myfawany Alice Thomas is one of several fantastical beings who guard unknowing England from supernatural and otherworldly attacks. But she has been mindwiped by one of her fellow guardians and must both discover who the traitor is and why she was targeted before it is too late. Her predecessor in body, a chief admi More...

The Rook
by Daniel O'Malley
Rating 4.5/5.0
This is the debut work of the author Daniel O'Malley and is a 2012 release. I picked this book because it had a good rating at Goodreads and it was Fantasy. Every now and again I escape to Fantasy to find something new. However, for those who read Fantasy generally, two things will strike you in the beginning of the book,
1) Unlike most Fantasy books, this is a Stand Alone Fantasy. There are no sequels and series.
2) A love story or such isn't pivotal. (I a More...

I bought this because Lev Grossman recommended it highly. The novel opens with woman in her early thirties awakening in a park with two black eyes and no memory of who she is or what happened. She opens a letter explaining that her name is Myfanwy Thomas. The original Myfanwy Thomas knew she would lose her memory and made preparations to protect the new one. The new Myfanwy learns that she is a high-ranking official in England's supernatural secret service (called the Checquy) and that a traitor More...

I'm like a termite in a lumber yard, I don't know where to begin. This book literally grabbed me from the first sentence. It's amazingly creative and has loads of original ideas. And it is written with a great sense of humor. What a fun, enjoyable read this was. Honest, this is not just hyperbole. I hope Daniel O'Malley wins an award for this novel.
Why didn't someone think of this before? Imagine there was a secret service branch that had to deal with supernatural problems. And one of the people More...

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I really, really enjoyed The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. In fact, it was probably my most pleasantly surprising read of 2012. It's a straight-up urban fantasy (no romance found here) and I thought the plot was unique and very entertaining. It had a bit of a slow start, but once Myfanwy (pronounced Miffany) got the hang of the Chequy everything started to happen really quickly. I enjoyed the first-person narration and the "letter reading" d More...

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The Rook is an interesting and innovative novel, combining favorite aspects from various genres into one odd 500 page gem of weirdness. If you were to mix up the most prevalent aspects of some of the most popular books and movies out there today, The Rook is likely what your mixture would spit out as an end result. Take, for instance, the school for only British magically/supernaturally gifted kids - much like Harry Potter's Hogwarts with a dash of More...

Warning: Don't start this book if you have to get anything done within, say, the next two days (depending on your reading speed).

Without giving any of its delicious secrets away, I will say that The Rook is expertly plotted, with a fast-paced mystery that will engross you, sharply drawn characters that will engage you (including a believable heroine that you can't help rooting for, something of a rarity in genre novels), a fascinatingly strange (yet familiar) world that will suck you in, and an More...

I desperately wanted to like this book. But I kept feeling like something was off. The dialogue wasn't where it needed to be, the characters seemed not nearly well-fleshed out enough. In the end, it just didn't do it for me. I'd recommend it if you wait for it on paperback or something, but it's not a must-read book that you need to spend a bunch of best-seller cash to read up front just because it gets a ton of good reviews...because the people saying otherwise aren't missing the boat, there ar More...

Somewhere (Audible?) I saw this book listed as a "great sci-fi beach read" or something like that. I totally concur.

This book opens with a phenomenal bang:
“Dear You, The body you are wearing used to be mine.”

Myfanwy Thomas "wakes up" in the driving rain, surrounded by bodies and has no idea who she was. She has notes to help her along the way, and she discovers that she's some sort of agent for a magical secret service agency of Britain. She has to decide if she wants to work for the agency and More...

Myfanwy Thomas wakes up in the middle of carnage, surrounded by dead people wearing latex gloves, and with no memory of who she is or was. Apparently, according to the note in her hand, she is in somebody else's body. Luckily for herself, the former owner has left her extensive notes on this body's former life which include the running of a section of a British secret government agency called the "Chequy" that keeps a lid on supernatural people, creatures and phenomenon and is run by people with More...

There enough blood and gore and other twisted things in The Rook to make one a bit squeamish, yet, I don't think I have laughed as frequently or consistently in any other book ever. There is also the fact that three-quarters of the book could be used to create more books. Every chapter is chock full of little nuggets of things that just make your mind go, that sounds oddly cool as hell, I'd love to read some more about that, please.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it takes you away from More...

I liked this book, I really did. After all, the story is completely unique and one of the most ingenious I've read (and this is coming from someone who's stuffed herself with the likes of Christopher Moore, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett). In fact, I'm sure O'Malley has probably stuffed himself with a couple of these authors as well judging by some of the humor and situations I encountered within the novel.

Myfanwy Thomas wakes up in a London garden in the pouring rain surrounded More...

So frustrating, this book and its colossally massive mega info dumps not so cleverly disguised as epistles. So I'm reading along, interested, vibing with the story as all get out and then bam!, another epistolary interruption, an unsightly kink in the harmonic vibration happening between us. Why, book, why? Nevertheless, my resolve could not be shaken, so I continued on. I'm gonna like this book dammit! A few pages later, the story's momentum was halted once again with more stupendously boring i More...

This book is. So. Good. I can't stop reading it, can't read it fast enough. I mean, I am in peril of not returning it in time! All those pesky things that get in the way of happy reading. This book would be delightful for a book discussion. There are so many layers and with two different perspectives, it is a nice challenge to keep up with the characters, but not at all frustrating. The premise, that the world is full of people with...abilities who must be monitored and in some cases, controlled More...

I thought this book was fantastic despite it being more of a challenging read for me. Part of my problem may have been that I thought this was more of a "invasion of the body snatchers" type of book versus a memory-loss/amnesia book. But that's my fault for not reading the blurb more carefully, which is also maybe why this sat on my ipad unread for months. Also, I tend to be a bit of a lazy and/or impatient reader at times and this isn't the kind of book that you can be lazy about because there' More...

This book is not my usual kind of book (there wasn't even any romance!) but it was good! Myfanwy Thomas wakes up in the park, badly beaten, and surrounded by dead bodies, all wearing latex gloves. She doesn't know who she is, or how she even got there. Luckily, she finds a letter in her jacket pocket to her, from her. She finds out that she works for a super secret supernatural agency in London. She has special powers and everyone else she works with his special powers. Her former self has left More...

Wow! This was a fun ride. Think X-men meets MI5 meets Ghostbusters meets Jason Bourne... and add in humor, silliness, and a great story. This would make an outrageous film. I also read that the audio book was one of the best ever.

I highly recommend this very entertaining and exciting novel.

Myfanwy Thomas is a young woman who knows she is going to have her memories taken away and makes plans to save herself. She is a Rook in an organization called the Checquy Group. A secret group that is around strictly to protect the world from another group trying for world domination. Myfanwy leaves letters for the woman she is to become when her memories are taken away. The letters explain the history of the Checquy Group as well as Myfanwy's own life up to the point that she will no longer be More...

This is a non stop action book that's also pretty funny. If you take it as a tongue in cheek super-powers-like story you'll enjoy it. This is the first novel from O'Malley. He's chosen to write as a female character and I think he pulls it off really well. Mafanwy's character is the most fleshed out in the book - some of the other characters are a little more sketchy and some are basic stereotypes.

Many of these types of books find it hard to limit "powers". TV's Hero's suffered from this problem More...

Having "you" standing in a park, in the rain, and tired isn't totally impossible, but what if, added to that, was the fact that 6 or 7 assassins in latex gloves lay dead, paralyzed around you? This is the start of the new Myfanwy Thomas's life (great way to start, huh). As the new inheritor of a body once belonging to Ms. Thomas, the new person, soul , whatever you call it, is given two choices, 1) to start a new life, new name, everything (and a hansom sum of money) and 2) to continue the job a More...

What a treat! This book is a rather silly, yet very well written account of the second Myfanwy Thomas, who wakes up in a park surrounded by people she killed with her bare hands and no memory of anything before that moment. Luckily, the original Myfanwy Thomas (I know - confusing) knew that she would lose her memory after being betrayed by a coworker, and worked hard to write letters intended to guide and inform the new Myfanwy Thomas in her body.

Myfanwy is actually a leader in the British Super More...

All the reviews I've read have tried to make comparisons to various famous examples of speculative fiction to explain the unique appeal of this book. It's Harry Potter meets Ghostbusters! It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with James Bond as told by Douglas Adams! We've gone Down the Rabbit Hole, but everybody is holding a script from a Die Hard movie.

I was reminded of many, many other stories. The description of the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The way UNI More...