Jessica Rydill's Blog, page 3
September 18, 2020
Filming at the Library
On Tuesday it should have been the September 6×6 Reading Café at Hanley Library. Jan and I have been running this event for quite a while and four …
Filming at the Library
September 10, 2020
New cover for The Girl from the Sea
I’m so happy to reveal the new cover for the eBook and paperback editions of The Girl from the Sea. I’ve been sharing it all over the place, and I wanted to thank the artist, Greta Paliulyte, who has done such a wonderful job.
I feel the cover works really well alongside the great artwork Grimbold Books commissioned from Daniele Serra, which was turned into the finished cover with layout and lettering by Ken Dawson.
And so without more ado, here’s the new cover…
[image error] The Girl from the Sea
September 2, 2020
Review of Island of Fear: The Third Adventure of Letty Parker by Misha Herwin
This book drops you straight into the action and never lets up. Feisty young heroine Letty Parker runs her own detective agency in the English west country city of Bristol – but this is an alternative Bristol, newly escaped from the thrall of the Dark Ones, where gargoyles come to life at night, dragons live on the rooftops, and the streets below are menaced by man-eating Barbary Eels.
It is a place full of perils, as Letty and her associates know only too well. Her friend Hepzibah Harrington is dying of a fever, and she begs Letty to go in search of her lost brother Simeon, who vanished when he was packed off to Jamaica as a boy. The only thing Hepzibah has to remember her brother by is a mysterious token given her by a stranger, a gold chain with a seal and gold coin.
Letty enlists her friend and ally, pickpocket Jebediah Hill to help her in her quest, but no sooner has he agreed to help than he is betrayed by one of his own comrades into the clutches of half-human ganglord, the Bear. In return for sparing Jeb’s life, the Bear sends him on a quest to steal the cursed Blue Sapphire he regards as rightfully his, which he believes to be in the possession of the governor of Jamaica.
Soon Letty and her friend Mango find themselves dragged on board the same ship as Jeb, where Letty is forced to impersonate the governor’s privileged daughter Arabella, who happens to also have red hair, while Mango must pretend to be her slave. But a much worse peril awaits when the ship is attacked by pirates, who take Letty and Mango with them as part of their booty.
The narrative cracks along at a terrific pace. Letty herself is full of character and pluck, and both the language the characters speak with its echoes of thieves’ cant and the tone recall the writing of Joan Aiken. The magic is adroitly handled, and the plot and concern for the characters keeps you hooked.
Once the story reaches Jamaica and the scene is set for the confrontation on the Harrington Plantation, the tone darkens considerably. Mr Harrington, father of the lost Simeon and of Hepzibah, has left the plantation in the care of Mr and Mrs Lewin, who have taken to running it for their own benefit, using slave labour. They are an evil, Dickensian couple, and it soon becomes clear that Letty’s life is in peril from both them and their crazed son Richard.
The story works well, the characters are appealing, and there are some vivid and haunting descriptions of Bristol and even more of Jamaica and their shadow/magical aspects. The plight of the enslaved people is captured through the point of view of Mango, who has always been free. There is also something of Leon Garfield about the characters, particularly the more grotesque adults, and their names. Jebediah Hill, Letitia Parker, Hepzibah Harrington, Danny Dinmont, Miss Liddy, the Bear, Ma Parker: the names resound in the memory long after the story has ended.
Thank you to the author and Penkhull Press for this digital advance review copy. As always, my opinion is my own.
About Misha Herwin:
Misha Herwin on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Misha-Herwin/e/B0034P2O9I
Misha’s blog: https://mishaherwin.wordpress.com/
Penkhull Press at: https://thepenkhullpress.wordpress.com/
Nissen v Nissan – the joys of spellchecking @mishaherwin @rasumova @ktscribbles #amwriting #dyslexia
This! The curse of autocorrect. My other “favourite” thing is when it corrects everything to US spelling.
Because of my dyslexia I do keep the spellchecking function on as a matter of course but Microsoft and other software/social media sites can make this incredibly frustrating.
I have watched as Word especially (though Facebook can be as guilty) will change a word, without red-underlining it, not just once but several times after I have gone back and altered it.
These anomalies can often be put down to syntax – i.e. when writing dialogue where characters are not speaking in grammatically correct sentences.
At other times it is down to the software’s limited dictionary. I always have Word in the UK, rather than US, spelling and language mode but still have occasions when it throws a wobbly over Z versus S.
Because The Bunch Courtney Investigations are a crime series set in WW2 the number of ‘unrecognised’ words rises by some margin.
Today it was ‘Nissen’, as in Nissen hut. I was typing fairly…
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August 31, 2020
SFF REVIEWS bundle from StoryOrigin
Find your next favourite books from StoryOrigin. From 1-30 September you can get copies of any and all of the books on the page below to review for free.
We’re looking at all kinds of Fantasy and Science Fiction in a bundle from authors across the world. Click on the link below to see the books.
Let’s go!
August 28, 2020
More free books and booklets
Here’s a new Science Fiction and Fantasy giveaway bundle for the August Bank Holiday and beyond. StoryOrigin and SFF author Jay Toney bring you a choice of novels, novellas and previews. Just boldly click on the link below to see the books!
Now read on
August 1, 2020
Review of Listed Dead by Jan Edwards
A compelling story of murder set in war-time Sussex
In this, the third instalment in the Bunch Courtney Investigates series, Bunch becomes a consulting detective with the local constabulary for the first time, and gets to work in an official capacity with the tantalising Inspector Wright, who has some mysterious work of his own to pursue.
We learn more about the milieu in which Bunch and her younger sister Dodo grew up; the background of the narrative is the interwar social whirl of the Bright Young Things, and the marriage mart in which young women from an aristocratic background come out into society and mingle with eligible bachelors. But there is a darker undertow to this world, a mixture of drug-addiction, cruelty and sexual obsession that contradicts the image of carefree hedonism.
The story starts with a car accident that turns out to be anything but, and a second body is soon discovered. Claude Naysmith, the crash victim, was a naval officer, and Penelope James, the second to die, also has a connection with the armed forces.
The narrative teases the reader with a number of different leads, motives and perpetrators for the crime. Once again there is a hint at possible right-wing sympathies amongst the group of suspects, who appear to be linked on more than one level.
It is deeply satisfying to follow Bunch and Inspector Wright as they work together – and sometimes at odds – to solve the case. At the same time, Bunch has to deal with the reluctant homecoming of her socialite mother, Theadora, who has been told by a Harley Street specialist that she must stop drinking or risk imminent death. Bunch, her father Sir Edward and her redoubtable paternal grandmother all try to support for the recalcitrant Theadora, who had never recovered from the loss of her two sons to the Spanish flu pandemic.
The war forms much more than a backdrop to the story. Bunch has to run the gauntlet of the blackout, the beginning of the Blitz and the crowded underground in London, where it seems attempts are made on her life. Once again, the details have been researched with great care and thought, giving a flavour of authenticity to the period setting sometimes missing from historical crime fiction. A date at the underground bar at the Cafe de Paris is haunted by the fate of that doomed venue.
The Sussex landscape and setting is evoked with love and a real feel for the sense of place. There is a thread of melancholy running through the story, with the losses of the current war and the last, and the deaths of the murder victims keenly felt. None of these people are mere ciphers, even those who appear in the narrative only as corpses.
Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It has a compelling quality that meant I wanted to keep reading through to the end to discover whodunit – and why. I was not disappointed.
*Thank you to the author and Penkhull Press for this digital advance review copy. As always, my opinion is my own.*
Listed Dead will be released on 6th August 2020
About the author:
Jan Edwards is a winner of the Arnold Bennett Book Prize for Winter Downs, the first book in the Bunch Courtney Investigates Series. Jan was born in Sussex, currently living in North Staffordshire. In addition to being a writer she is also a Reiki Master.
Jan Edwards on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jan-Edwards/e/B009BAA3R0/
Jan’s blog page: https://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com/
Penkhull Press at: https://thepenkhullpress.wordpress.com/
July 27, 2020
Science Fiction and Fantasy Bargain Books
Starting today, July 27 through August 31, you will find a great new bundle of Science Fiction and Fantasy bargains from lots of authors new and old.
Click here
With many thanks to organiser Jay Toney, author of Hunted and many more!
November 11, 2019
Review of The Daughters of Men by Carole McDonnell
The Daughters of Men by Carole McDonnell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this book very much and look forward to reading the sequel. It has a haunting quality that stayed with me after I finished, and I became attached to several of the main characters, who are complex and fascinating.
The story is set in the far future, when the earth is ruled by the Nephilim, superhuman beings whose beautiful outward appearance belies their great age. As in the original reference in the Bible, we learn that they are descended from rebel angels or demons, who they refer to as their spirit fathers. But the Nephilim are anything but demonic, though their enemies refer to them as “demon-spawn”; instead they not only strive to live better lives than the humans they rule as “Overseers”, but also dream of salvation, which is available to the (flawed) humans but not to them. You get a real sense of their yearning; when they die, they experience complete desolation because they are separated from the Creator, a God who seems to have abandoned them; so they call themselves the Forsaken.
This theme of loss and regret runs strongly through the novel. The main character, Ellie, is one of the Creed, a human sect that rejects the authority of the overseers. But Ellie is alienated from fellow members of the Creed, finding them all-too-human –hypocritical and judgemental. She has won the love of one of the Princes of the Nephilim, Woden, a sweet and appealing character, who nonetheless shares certain human (male) traits like jealousy and possessiveness.
Ellie’s faith tells her to reject the Overseers as demonic, but she faces a real struggle; not only is Woden protective, kindly and intelligent; she has also fallen in love with another younger Overseer, Siddhart, who is more impulsive and sensitive than Woden. Siddhart drinks, but he does not attempt to run from pain and grief, whereas Woden and the other Nephilim erase all memory of grief and loss when their fellows die.
The story centres on Ellie, Woden, Siddhart and a fourth character: Medusa, a chimera who is descended from a human clone created long ago by arrogant scientists. Medusa is a host to innumerable parasitic worms and lives in symbiosis with them, but she has to be kept hidden because humans and even her fellow chimeras would find her appearance too horrific to sustain.
But on another level, Medusa is a human teenager; she is big-hearted, intelligent, affectionate and tactless. The Overseers are training her to be a queen of the Chimerans, one of three queens; but she has had little exposure to the outside world, or anything other than the Nephilim who tell her she is beautiful.
When she meets Siddhart, Medusa learns that not everyone will love her and that some may and will find her repugnant. Though it is a brutal shock for her, she also becomes fond of Siddhart because he tells her the truth.
The engine of the narrative is a prophecy, one of several uttered by the first of the Nephilim to die in battle. It speaks of a beloved Scarred Woman who will bring conflict and disruption to the Nephilim. But like all prophecies, the meaning is obscure – will she bring discord, or lead to reconciliation between them and the Creator? Other prophecies speak of a Beautiful One and the possibility that he will reunite the Nephilim – the Forsaken – with the Silent One, the God who seems to have abandoned the earth, and them.
Along with these prophecies, we follow the account of Woden’s love for Ellie, who is torn between human Josh and the gentle Siddhart. Woden holds over Ellie the threat of an invitation to the Balance Feast, when a number of humans are sacrificed to pay for their sins and crimes. Though Ellie has not committed any crimes, Woden invites her to the feast, together with her mother. Ellie has already attended the feast before, when Woden saved her; she acquired a scar on her face, when she was hit by a bullet that changed the shape of an old birthmark.
The sinister nature of the feast is hinted at in flashback. I felt a real tension and concern, not just for Ellie, who is not only someone striving to live a moral life in a confusing and often dystopian world, but also a complex and likeable human being; but also for Woden, who truly loves her, and for Siddhart, who is younger and more idealistic than his Prince.
There are also some memorable villains. Seti and Janar are two of the more brutal overseers, preoccupied with power and paranoid about their fellows. Janar is beautiful and charming in person, but a tyrannical ruler whose followers have fascistic tendencies. Seti is downright cruel and vindictive, particularly when Siddhart tries to sabotage his war-mongering. There is also the sneaky Creed woman Tamara, to whom Ellie gives safe harbour, and who proves duplicitous. And the sinister Pseudes, the only one of the Nephilim who is wholly demonic.
I was gripped by the book right to the end. The only quibble I have is that the passages leading up to the end felt a bit rushed. The ending gave me a tremendous shock, because the outcome was not what I had expected. I can’t say what happened, because spoilers, but it was one of those moments when the author kills off someone you hoped would live to fight another day.
I started listening to this on Audible, via a giveaway with no obligation from the author, and then got so caught up in it that I went and got the book on Kindle. The Audible edition is impressive, and the narrator does justice to the book, giving the different characters distinctive voices and making it crystal clear when they are using telepathy. The Audible version also showcases the author’s prose, which is sinewy and poetic.
View all my reviews
August 29, 2019
A letter to my MP
This is the text of a letter I have just sent to my MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg:
Dear Mr Rees-Mogg,
As one of your constituents, I am writing to express in the strongest terms my opposition to the prorogation of Parliament by the Prime Minister.
Despite the Prime Minister’s assertion that he intends to bring forward important legislation, his action appears to be a blatant attempt to subvert the sovereignty of Parliament, which you yourself have asserted you wish to protect from the derogations of the European Union.
There appears to be a contradiction in your position. If Parliament is sovereign, why is it appropriate to suspend its sitting at a crucial moment when there are weeks to go before this country is due to leave the EU?
The appeal by the Prime Minister to the electorate over the head of Parliament is a discredited tactic used by demagogues in this and the last century. It invokes the idea of government by plebiscite, which can become the pretext for authoritarian rule in the event of any opposition. Rule by plebiscite, like rule by prerogative powers, has no place in a parliamentary democracy.
The most dispiriting aspect is the bad faith with which both the prorogation and a “no deal” Brexit are presented as being the popular, legitimate and indeed the only alternatives. I cannot help suspecting that the entire Brexit adventure represents an attempt to restore laissez-faire capitalism in this country. The “will of the people” represents the good of the few.
The Prime Minister’s speech reminds me of a Roman Dictator offering bread and circuses to the plebeians, as if he believes that we, the electorate, are stupid and will accept his explanation without demur. I hope I am wrong.
What meaning do the words “parliamentary democracy” have when an unelected prime minister whose party retains a vestigial Commons majority flouts the constitution he claims to defend?
Yours sincerely,
