Sunday 17 March 2024

 

The Night House, by Jo Nesbo.

 

      


      Internationally acclaimed Swedish crime novelist Jo Nesbo has embarked on a different literary journey this time around:  his classic burnt-out detective Harry Hole is nowhere to be seen as Nesbo decides to take an apparent trip into the supernatural where there are no rules, and no end to the horrific ways that people can die.  He also offers us plot alternatives:

1.      Richard Elauved is 14 years old and has just lost both his parents in a fire that engulfed their apartment.  He has been sent to the country to live with his uncle and aunt, his only relatives.  He hates himself, his life, and his new classmates, and bullies them relentlessly – until he sees one of his victims devoured by a telephone (hey, I’m only the messenger!), then another classmate is turned into a ‘magicicada’ with brilliant red eyes and the wings to escape him when he tries to crush it – in short, he was the last person to see these missing kids alive so the authorities place him in a special ‘school’ to see if he will confess to anything he hasn’t yet told them.  His escape from the school is more unbelievable than cannibalistic phones, but ends on a hopeful note, so that the reader can handle Alternative Two, which is:

2.     Richard Hansen, successful teen fiction writer is invited to a school reunion fifteen years after the above events;  it transpires that we were reading above the plot of his first smash hit and at the subsequent celebrations he is touchingly modest about his literary achievements to his adoring classmates, none of whom  have reached such fame.  It’s great to be the centre of such respectful attention and, in a rare moment of remorse for his 14 year-old behaviour, he apologises for being a bully – only to realise as the evening progresses, that the whole night has been organised by all his ‘fans’ to pay him back for the terrible hurt he caused them all to suffer.  Do they succeed?  Alternative Three reveals that:

3.     It’s time for Richard to wake up – wake up from ElectroConvulsive Therapy applied to him as an experimental treatment to help him forget the terrible memories that have trapped him in a hospital known as the Night House for the last fifteen years, and to take his first tentative steps back to a normal life.

 

Jo Nesbo has again taken his readers on a wild ride to the dark side and back – is there nothing he cannot do to stop us devouring every page?  Even kid-eating telephones get past our BS meter!  He’s the best.  FIVE STARS.

 

Sunday 3 March 2024

 

Until the Road Ends, by Phil Earle.                  Junior Fiction.

 

 


        
Beau is a stray barely existing on the mean streets of London in 1939;  life is haphazard at best, cruel for the rest of the time – until he is rescued from death by Peggy, His Girl, His Saviour, and brought back to her home in Balham to live safely with her family.  Who put up some half-hearted objections which she dispenses with in seconds:  her younger brother Wilf has Mabel, Queen of the Couch, a cat far too full of her own self-importance, so Peggy is entitled to have her very own pet, too.  Who could deny the fairness of that arrangement?  Only Queen Mabel, who loathes Beau on sight and wastes no time in telling him so in the most scathing of tones, but he doesn’t care, because someone, Peggy, loves him!  It is a wonderful, heady feeling and Beau hopes it will never end.

            But.  In the way of all Happily-ever-afters, nothing remains the same:  Hitler and his planes eventually start bombing London, and it is decided that London’s children should be evacuated to ‘the country’ where they will be safe – oh, and people should ‘put their pets down’ because food will be rationed and there will be none to spare for cats and dogs. 

            Peggy and Wilf are devastated.  They don’t want to leave their darling mum and dad, but they will do so only if mum and dad promise to keep looking after Beau and Mabel;  they couldn’t bear it if they were to come home at the end of all the conflict to find that their most-loved pets in the entire world had been killed because they needed to be fed.  Their parents, being honourable people, agreed, and the children were sent off to the coast 100 miles away, to live with Aunty Sylvia, Dad’s sister, who didn’t know one end of a child from another.  But what could be done?  Needs must.

            And Beau went out nightly with Peggy’s Dad who was an air-raid warden, a job Beau became famous for, because Beau could smell people buried under the rubble;  in fact he was so good at it that no-one dare say he should be put down- until the terrible night when a huge bomb destroyed their lives forever, and Beau – and Mabel – are on their own.

            But not quite.  Their next-door neighbour Bomber, a carrier pigeon fully trained in delivering military messages convinces them to try to reach their much-loved Peggy and Wilf:  If it can be done, it WILL be done!  And Beau and Mabel’s adventures begin in earnest.

            This is a beautiful story, predictably heart-breaking and fraught with suspense – but also based on fact:  there really was a dog trained to find people under the rubble;  he sniffed out more than 100 people buried alive beneath their homes.  His name was Rip and he was a Hero.  As so many were at that terrible time.  FIVE STARS.  For readers 11+.  

 

Friday 23 February 2024

 

Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros.

 

     
    
Well, here I went again (nothing wrong with my grammar!), into the amazing fantasy of the Empyrean, Ms Yarros’s five-book series about Dragonkind and the Riders they choose to bond with them.  To be honest, I didn’t think she could keep up the same level of suspense, horror and mile-a-minute adventure plotting, but what do I know:  Yarros has done so with ease and one hand tied behind her back – the other is driving her characters relentlessly along to the next twist in the tale, and there are many of them.

            Frail, tiny Violet Sorrengail has survived her first year at Basgiath War College, bonded with not one dragon like other riders, but two:  Tairn, one of the largest and most fearsome, and Andarna, a half-grown ‘adolescent’ who also decided that Violet was her darling;  between the three of them they make a formidable team, especially when Violet’s signet or special gift, manifests itself:  she finds that she can throw lightning bolts – if only she can ever learn to aim them!

            She is also in a sizzling-hot romance with impossibly handsome Xaden Riorson, erstwhile revolutionary and lover extraordinaire – of her, no-one else.  Violet has her own allure, and emerging gifts of leadership and compassion which wins her devotion from all the other students, so much so that they follow her when she finds out that all their teachers have been lying to them:  evil magical forces are poised to strike their continent, and their leaders – including Violet’s mother the General – are downplaying attacks on outlying towns and subsequent terrible fatalities, saying that all is under control, when it obviously isn’t;  well, it’s time to rebel, to go off and train properly to fight these new, terrible foes and to do so, they must unite with Gryphon fliers, traditional enemies (according to their former teachers) but devoted to their country as the Dragonkind are.

            Ms Yarros has woven a complicated, very detailed plot;  this reader had to go back every now and then to get the finer points down, but she doesn’t falter for a second:  all the I’s are dotted and t’s crossed, as they should be.  There are many great secondary characters, especially amongst Violet’s classmates, and their funny, smart-alicky dialogue is a huge relief from the breakneck pace as we are dragged yet again to a cliff-hanger that I never saw coming until the very last page.

            And I still want a dragon (or two) for Christmas:  I am small and frail, just like Violet – surely I’m eligible?  FIVE STARS.  

 

 

Tuesday 13 February 2024

 

Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros.

           

       


     My nails are totally wrecked, and it’s all HER fault, that Rebecca Yarros!  Her Fantasy novel fairly crackles with suspense, menace, romance (naturally!) and dragons, lots of them.  Dragons are my favourite fantasy creatures, and Ms Yarros has created some truly majestic beasts, as befitting their vital importance to the welfare and protection of their riders, chosen by each dragon from students at Basgiath War College, who all hope to become Dragon Riders, protecting their country from enemies, both territorial and magical.

            Violet Sorrengail is 20 years old and expecting to go to the same college as a Scribe, a recorder of all history and battles fought now and in the future;  her mother is a powerful general in the military and her sister Mira is a Dragon Rider;  her brother Brennan was a Healer but lost his life to Insurrectionists. Because of her small stature and frailty, Violet is happy to have a sedentary but peaceful life as a recorder of her country’s achievements – and failures.

            Until mother suddenly changes her mind:  Violet is to audition as a first-year dragon rider, an audition so cruel and beyond her abilities that Violet knows now beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’s definitely not her mother’s favourite child.  Well, OK, she’ll give it her all:  she’ll show Mother Dear that she went to her death courageously, and the appearance of her sister Mira to give her last-minute private advice and secret notes from her late brother spurs her on to miraculous success:  at the end of the day she’s still here – not dead yet!

            Sadly, her success also releases a dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest attitude from the other first-years.  They see her as a weak link, someone to be disposed of so that choosy dragons will pick them instead – why, she’s too small to even climb on a dragon’s back, much less fight and kill from that position:  better get rid of her by fair means or the other kind.  No self-respecting dragon would choose her anyway:  she’s goneburger.

            But she’s not:  as we all know, love and hate are both sides of one coin;  Xaden Riorson, leader of Fourth Wing, Violet’s first-year group and son of a notorious Insurrectionist (Xaden was forced to watch his father’s execution) has overcome his initial loathing and is now firmly in her corner – because their dragons are mated!  In fact, Violet has TWO dragons who chose her, not one, so that when the showdown comes at the end of Book One, she has twice the power against their enemies.  Well done, Ms Yarros;  you didn’t let me go until the very last sentence, and that will lead me straight into Book Two.  And I want a dragon for Christmas!  FIVE STARS.

 

             

 

Sunday 4 February 2024

 

Over My Dead Body, by Maz Evans.

 


            Miriam Price, arrogant, brilliant A &E Medical Consultant at one of Britain’s most prestigious teaching hospitals – has died.

            And she’s not happy about it!  Firstly, she has been murdered but her death has been arranged to show that she died by misadventure after ingesting heroic amounts of pills and booze:  the nasty cow (Miriam has no friends, doesn’t want any) was an unapologetic alcoholic pill-popper, so her end has come as no surprise to any of her colleagues;  they’re just surprised that it took her so long.  Miriam, on the other hand, knows that her death was no accidental loss of control;  she has been a ‘functioning’ alcoholic since she was sixteen – no, someone else has done this to her and arranged the death scene to look as it did.  But who?  Miriam is furious with herself for not remembering and, after a visit to Limbo, learns that she will be stuck there for many decades unless she can indeed prove that she was murdered.  The Afterlife has more rules and regulations than her posh boarding school before one reaches the Nirvana of Eternity and really, from what she’s seen so far, she could die of boredom all over again unless she can prove to Limbo Admin that she died by foul means.  Then she could meet again with her beloved Dad – and her mother, who had a very unique approach to life – and death.  Is she ready for that?

            First things first:  not everyone can ‘see’ Miriam;  her presence is felt by very few people, which makes eavesdropping very entertaining, especially watching friends and families as they mourn her passing at her memorial service, and the various reactions of people that she cared about (not many) come as a shock – including the appearance of her elderly next-door neighbour with whom she has been feuding for two years:  Miriam’s cat was murdered by that old battleaxe, who squashed her beneath her car, and has come to her service to make sure Miriam is really dead, not to pay any respects. And she is one of the very few who can see her.  AND, by various torturous events, the only one who can help her prove her very real suspicions.  Talk about making a deal with the Devil!

            Which is struck, as it should be in Maz Evans’s hugely entertaining debut novel.  This book is seriously good fun, but also raises the big questions, especially how everyone grieves in their own ways, i.e. Miriam’s father committed suicide and her mother was furious, because she’d already cooked his dinner when Miriam found his body:  there was a meal wasted!  That surely is a singular way to react to one’s nearest and dearest’s death.  There are many more well-drawn characters in this clever story, but Miriam is the star, even though she is initially so unlikeable – which is a shame, because we won’t be meeting her again.  Not in this life, anyway!  FIVE STARS.

               

Monday 22 January 2024

The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, by Karin Smirnoff.







    Swedish Author Stieg Larsson died nearly twenty years ago, but Lisbeth Salander, his most famous character, is still alive and well, having been resurrected by several writers over time – with varying degrees of success. Now it is Karin Smirnoff’s turn to breathe life, truth and logic into Lisbeth – and Mikael Blomkvist, outspoken, prominent Millenium Magazine journalist, her ally when needed, and partner in crime when necessary. 
     Lisbeth’s latest (mis)adventure is set in Northern Sweden, lands and forests teeming with untapped minerals and natural resources: the local councils are rubbing their hands and salivating at the vast profits to be made if they can sell to the highest bidders, huge international companies who will strip everything bare before they leave and go on to the next place to wreak havoc and devastation.                     Coincidentally Mikael is in the area because he has been invited to the wedding of his daughter to the head of the town council – and instigator of all the dodgy deals. Dodgy because it is not his land he is offering for sale but land owned by Reindeer farmers and many other smallholders who have no intention of selling their land. 
     Lisbeth is in the same town – not because she wants to be, but she has been summoned by the authorities because she is the only living relative of Kvala, a precociously intelligent 13 year-old girl whose mother has gone missing: Lisbeth is her aunt, for Kvala is the daughter of Lisbeth’s late, loathed half-brother Ronald Niederman. How the authorities tracked Lisbeth down is anyone’s guess; suffice to say the two relatives do not hit it off immediately: deep suspicion abides, especially when Kvala wants to know about her father, of which she has no memory. What was he like? Fair question. Except that he was a monster and a murderer, impervious to pain – and he tried to kill Lisbeth on their father’s orders. Fortunately for her, she ‘removed’ him from the equation, but how do you tell that to your niece?
     And where is Kvala’s mother? Kvala knows that she was involved with some very shady people, but fully expected to beat them at their own game – nothing like a spot of blackmail to increase the family fortunes! Except that the tables may have been turned: there are some very big players now among the shady people, intent on wrecking and raping the land for its treasure – small fry like Kvala’s mother are flies to be squashed. 
     Ms Smirnoff has created a fitting and masterful tribute to Stig Larsson’s beloved characters. This is the first book of a planned trilogy, and it encompasses all the environmental problems that worry us most, while still more than living up to its thriller status. Roll on Book Two! SIX STARS.

Thursday 11 January 2024

Top 20 Reads for 2023 - Whoopee!!!


 

Nothing like a few exclamation marks to get the party started!  I have read some mighty books this year and praise our wonderful library and Community Centre - Te Takeretanga-o-Kurahaupo for the great reading choices they make for us all. 

There’s something for everyone here and, because my cat is trying to walk all over the keyboard, I’ll get right on it – the list, I mean, not the cat!

The Axeman’s Carnival,  Catherine Chidgey

Less is Lost, Andrew Sean Greer

Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng

Playing Under the Piano, Hugh Bonneville  (Memoir)

The Light in Hidden Places, Sharon Cameron (Young Adults)

Day’s End, Gary Disher

Scythe, Neal Shusterman (Young Adults)

Mrs Jewel and the wreck of the General Grant, Cristina Sanders

Like a Sister,  Kellye Garrett

My Darkest Prayer, S. A. Cosby

Duffy and Son, Damien Owens

Small Mercies, Dennis Lehane

The Sparrow,  Tessa Duder

Kala, Colin Walsh

The Great Swindle, Pierre LeMaitre

All Human Wisdom, Pierre LeMaitre

Night will Find You, Julia Heaberlin

Did I Ever Tell You This?, Sam Neill (Memoir)                     

A Better Place, Stephen Daisley

The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman

The Bone Tree, Airana Ngarewa

What am I doing?? That’s 21, not 20!! Never mind, they are all fabulous reads and this list is a loving tribute to storytellers everywhere who work so hard to entertain and inspire us. 

Have the happiest and safest New Year that you can, and let us still believe in the old adage of Peace and Goodwill to All of us, Everywhere. 

Love and best wishes for 2024 from the staff, Friends of the Library and Volunteers of Te Takeretanga-o-Kurahaupo.