Maya Panika's Blog, page 10

This must be the Winter of my discontent

We have a dash of snow this morning, snow with a frost on top, not the best conditions for driving up the Very Steep Hill over Royd Moor to buy the Christmas tree, plans might have to be altered. It’s a gorgeous day! The sky is striped pink, green, gold and blue. A big red ball of a sun is just coming up. The landscape looks as if some deity has been playing silly buggers in the night with a bag of icing sugar. There are goldfinches on the bird pole, hares are bouncing in the frozen field at the back of the house, sheep are running full-pelt across the horizon; I suspect they’re getting extra rations today. Sadly, it was still dark when Poppy had her first experience of snow this morning so I couldn’t film it or take successful pictures. She went a little bit mental. It’s all been a bit too much for the young princess; she’s sleeping it off on the bed.

How are you all? My life has been well-thwarted of late by a sulky laptop. He keeps claiming drive E is full, the cheeky bitch, and in a fit of pique and spite, turned off the interwebz while I was out walking the dog. Even the IT-genius who shares my bed couldn’t put humpty back together again (he thinks something has spontaneously corrupted deep in its innards. I always knew this computer had a secret dark side). Anyway, he’s finally, and after long, hard toil, got me re-connected by means of dark magik and a dongle, enabling me to witter on and talk my usual bollocks this bright, cold morning. It’s a bit sluggish and slow but it functions and for that, I am truly grateful.

And I can (at last!) post an interview with wonder-writer Chris Hill, author of Song of the Sea God. Hopefully later today – for lo! the Gods have smited us with a double-plumbing emergency this morning. Interestingly, neither are related or due to the weather. You won’t believe how long it’s taken to write this short blog-post. I’ve been making and receiving calls, fending off postmen and trying to keep the – still-unwalked and very unhappy about it – puppy, and the cat out of each other’s space and… Oh. Everything.

Today, Matthew, I’m gonna be Job…

Review: The Secret Rooms

by Catherine Bailey

5*

An absolutely corking tale, better by far than most novels I’ve read recently. I don’t think I’ve ever read a non-fic book with so many cliff-hangers.

My one and only bug bear (and it is but a small gripe) is with the chapters on the Great War where there is, to my mind, a lot of superfluous detail about the war. Obviously some historical background is necessary, to put the events of John’s life into context. I don’t think we needed quite so much as we got. I can’t help but feel that Catherine Bailey’s original intention to write a book about the Belvoir Volunteers – the ‘mysterious army of ploughmen, horsemen and field workers’, an entire generation lost to the war – meant she found herself a lot of surplus-to-requirements research on her hands that was such good stuff, she was determined to put it in anyway. It’s interesting stuff in its own right, but it’s not all pertinent to John’s story and it does slow the – otherwise terrific – pace dreadfully.

It is my only complaint and it’s a VERY small one. In every respect, this is a richly detailed, beautifully (but not overly) descriptive, engaging and terrifically well-written biography of a privileged life with more than its fair share of mysteries.

It’s a crying shame Ms Bailey never discovered the whole truth of about Haddon’s death (I so wanted to know!). It seems John covered the details around that particular tragedy far too well.

The Secret Rooms is a wonderfully good read. It’s 450 pages long and I read it in 3 days, I just couldn’t put it down. A brilliant book. Highly recommended.

Review: The Dark Monk

by Oliver Pötzsch

5*

Our heroes search for Templar treasure in 17th century Bavaria, trying to keep one step ahead of some very dark monks. Semi-comic, occasionally tragic, this is a terrific story and very well told.

All the characters – and they’re a delightfully mixed bunch – are well drawn and real. The translation is excellent, completely natural and good modern English. Refreshingly for an historical novel, there is no attempt at ye olde Englishe-speake, no annoying ‘Tolkienese’.

The Dark Monk is a sequel, but there are very few references to the earlier novel and it can easily be read as a stand alone, it was never a problem for me that I hadn’t read the first book, The Hangman’s Daughter, though I certainly will now.

In short, this is a brilliant tale very well told. The most enjoyable book I’ve read this year and very highly recommended indeed.

Review: This Is Life

by Dan Rhodes

4*

Life – from start to finish, in all its flavours – is explored and dissected and detailed through the day to day experiences of a group of lightly connected characters. Art student Aurelie, who finds herself suddenly and unexpectedly in charge of a stranger’s baby. Her friend Sylvie, who wants only to be married with babies, but cannot find the right man – until she falls in love with the least likely candidate in the strangest way. Most dramatically of all, through the eyes of Le Machine, who puts the nuts and bolts of life – all its dirt, grime and beauty – on display, through his installation, LIFE, that places himself and all his bodily functions on display and calls it Art.

This Is Life wears its depths lightly. It is never dense or trying too hard to be clever. Consequently, it’s an enjoyable and easy read, sometimes surprisingly profound, sometimes shockingly shallow; I‘m still uncertain where on that spectrum, my feelings finally came to rest.

Real people rarely behave as these characters do. Paris, the Japanese, the English – they’re all stereotypes, but gentle ones, the digs are mildly comic and, like the rest of the tale, not meant to be taken too seriously. Nothing is believable in any sense, but I doubt it’s meant to be. It’s a modern fairytale. It would make a great film of the Michelle Pfeiffer meets George Clooney type.

The ending was especially affecting. As Life ends, a life ends.

Touching, poignant and funny. A pleasant, if unchallenging, read.

Review: Alex Woods Versus The Universe

by Gavin Extence

4* (Pre-publication review. Publication Date: 31 Jan 2013)

The tale of Alex Woods, age 17, as told by himself, in a steady, logical, borderline-autistic voice.

Struck on the head by a meteorite when he was a child, Alex lives a quietly extraordinary life. An epileptic, obsessed by maths, astronomy and Kurt Vonnegut, Alex is a deeply geeky, lonely boy with few friends but a complex inner life. The story is rich in references – His Dark Materials, A Prayer for Owen Meany, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Catch 22, Schubert – but most of all, Kurt Vonnegut, who Alex discovers through his accidental friendship with a Vietnam vet, a friendship destined to change the entire course of Alex’s life.

This is, in many ways, a very profound book, that philosophises on the meaning of life and death – or lack of meaning; Alex is something of an existentialist. Which is not to say Alex Woods Versus the Universe is in any way dry or dull or even worthy; it’s a consistently entertaining and very funny – laugh out loud funny – read, which I highly recommend.

Review: The Falcons of Fire and Ice

by Karen Maitland

4*

Set in the sixteenth century amidst the horrors of religious persecution and `holy’ wars of all stamps, Karen Maitland’s tale traverses the Atlantic, from Portugal under the Inquisition, to Iceland under the heel of the Lutheran Danes.

It opens with a lot of unconnected storylines that eventually come together; a lot of characters too, many with names that I found difficult to remember. I did lose track a bit at first, but not too radically and as the individual threads begin to draw together, and the main purpose of the story – Isabella’s near-impossible quest to steal a pair of rare and legendary Gyrfalcon from an Icelandic mountain and save herself and her family from death at the hands of the inquisition – begins to coalesce, Falcons of Fire and Ice becomes a truly riveting read.

It’s a multi-faceted and lengthy tale. There’s a lot of historical detail mixed with a goodly dose of the supernatural, but it’s skilfully told and never confusing and I don’t know why it’s not more special than it is. Maybe there’s too great an emphasis on plot over setting and character. The supernatural element veers more to the horrific than the magical. It wasn’t perfect, but it was very good. It’s the first Karen Maitland I’ve read but I’ll certainly be reading more.

I particularly loved the ending. Nothing is neatly tied up, everything leaves you guessing. Will there be a sequel? Probably, but it really doesn’t matter if there isn’t.

Pinterest

Bless its mutton chops. I love it, terrible thief of time that it is. I’ve just whittled away a very pleasant, sunny Sunday morning finding pictures to illustrate Entanglement. Many are the actual real locations I used in the book, the rest are just the closest approximations I could find to the pictures in my head.

Do you pin? If you do, I’d love to link up. Just click on the button and I’ll see you there. A click on the suspension bridge takes you to my Entanglement board. This gorgeous image comes courtesy of Nick Luxemburg via GeoLocation.

Amazon.

Personally, I have no beef at all with the mighty A. They send me books, I write them some reviews. I buy a lot of 1p books through their sellers. I have a kindle. I published my novel with them, since they were prepared to publish the book I had written, rather than the book my editor thought I should have written – but a lot of people do not like Amazon. I understand their reasons, but…

What do you think, dear reader, is Amazon a fine and goodly thing that has improved the book-buying experience? Or a pestilential hound of Hell? Answers on a postcard – or in the comments. The latter is probably more convenient for us all.

Some stuff off the interwebs:

Amazon removes book reviews by fellow authors

Shunning Amazon. Booksellers resist a transformation.



Amazon wipes customer’s Kindle and deletes account with no explanation

The 10 most difficult books to finish

As chosen by Robert Crum. From Saturday’s Guardian.

Ah. Will Self…

A Page of Reviews

I write a lot of book reviews. I’ve been writing them for longer than I’ve been keeping this blog, so I decided to make a page linking to my reviews on Goodreads – incomplete right now, because Goodreads is giving me the dread Alice pic, and I really must get out and walk Poppy while the weather holds.

The link is right at the top of the page, with all the Entanglement stuff. It’s called – perhaps a tad unimaginatively, yet honest, and descriptive of its content -  ‘Book Reviews’. Or just click on the kitten.