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Book Review: Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Book Review: Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

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Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1) by Sarah Rees Brennan

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Publish date: 1st August 2024

 

How many times have you dreamt of entering the world of your favourite novel or series? Got lost in the thought of meeting that character or leading the charge against that villain? Being the one to entice that dark haired, shadow wielding … *cough* ok, let me bring it back to the point. Many of us dream of entering our favourite fantasy novel, with the usual caveats, of course. Obviously, we want to be one of the rich or powerful or beautiful characters, not the cannon fodder or poverty stricken nobodies that hover in the background, worth nothing more than a passing reference, if that. But what would it take you to actually DO it? Maybe your imminent death? That’s what happens to Rae. When a mysterious woman reveals that there’s no hope left for her, that her tumours have spread and the upcoming costs of treatment will destroy her family before she dies anyway, she’s offered one opportunity to change it all, to live. And she takes it. Who wouldn’t? Finding herself in the pages of her favourite fantasy series, Rae uses every bit of her (admittedly patchy) knowledge of the plot to keep herself alive and manipulate her way to her goal – stealing the Flower of Life and Death. It’s her only chance to live her real life again, free of disease and pain. But being a villain is harder than it looks and the real world is not the only place where death stalks the story…

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Book Review: Sanctuary by Ilona Andrews

Book Review: Sanctuary by Ilona Andrews

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Sanctuary by Ilona Andrews

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Publish date: 30th July 2024

Imagine this. You’re home for the holidays, sorting out the final trimmings for the best meal of the year. But just when you thought it was safe to relax and enjoy your Christmas, Chernobog, the God of Destruction, Darkness and Death, decides he needs something doing. Immediately. So he sends a dream request with no get out clause. We’ve all had bosses like it – no boundaries and can’t take no for an answer. On top of that, a child, bloody and near death, rocks up asking for sanctuary, with elite mercenaries and a catastrophically powerful priest hot on his tail. The whole situation reads like disaster – now, nobody gets to eat turkey and perhaps even worse, they might actually die. A rubbish outcome all round.

For Roman, a classic homebody (read: recluse with no desire to see or speak to people), this means a Christmas break gone completely to hell. But like any proud homeowner, he is more than prepared to defend his space, and everyone in it, from bad guys. Especially when they turn up with very bad attitudes and suspicious reasons for wanting to ‘take the child home to his parents’. Yeah right. We know how this works. And so does Roman. If you know anything about him from the Kate Daniels books, you know he has a bit of an attitude himself. More than enough to take on some jumped up soldiers, he’s the Black Volhv after all.

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Book Review: Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham (Kithamar, #1)

Book Review: Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham (Kithamar, #1)

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Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Publish date: 15th February 2022 (Orbit)

 

Alys is just another nobody from Longhill, a gutter rat relying on ‘pulls’ to survive. Each theft wins her little more than enough to keep a roof over her head and food in her belly, the spoils shared between disparate players, together only for the sake of the job. Her big brother Darro, on the other hand, is running far bigger plays. The high-stakes kind that might help him escape this low-born world. That brings in gold. That gets him killed. Losing the only family she cares about puts Alys on a path of revenge. Desperate to find out who killed him and why, she finds herself playing a very dangerous game with people who know far more about the city than she does. As she starts to lose herself to the chase, Alys must decide how far she’s willing to go to avenge her dead brother, especially when she’s not the only one who’ll be paying the price for her success…

 

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Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake (The Atlas, #1)

Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake (The Atlas, #1)

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The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Rating: 2 out of 5

Published: 3rd March 2022 (Tor)

What would you do if someone offered you knowledge? Power? The potential to be part of a secret society tasked with looking after the hidden (not lost) Library of Alexandria? I know what you’d say, because’s precisely the reason I picked up the book. Power, I could take or leave, but the books? Those I could never resist. And it is a good hook. Except… everything was promised and nothing delivered.

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Book Review: Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Book Review: Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

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Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Published: 9th September (Vintage)

 

 

It’s her first day at college, but Chloe Sevre isn’t nervous at all. She has a plan. Get rid of Mom, take the best room before her dorm-mate arrives, make 6-8 new friends before 4pm, and find Will. If you’re thinking ‘how sweet’, she must be looking for her boyfriend, you’re dead wrong. Will’s days are numbered (literally, the book includes a countdown), because the main reason Chloe came to John Adams University is to kill him. And she doesn’t plan on giving up till it’s done…

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Book Review: Protector (Athenian series, #2) by Conn Iggulden

Book Review: Protector (Athenian series, #2) by Conn Iggulden

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Protector by Conn Iggulden

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Published: 13th May 2021 (Michael Joseph)

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Picking up where The Gates of Athens left off, Protector launches the reader right back into the thick of war..

The situation is desperate. The people of Athens have fled from the advancing Persian army- the woman and children evacuated to safety, men conscripted to the fleet. Now, their city burns. But the Athenians are down, not out. Their navy remains strong and there’s hope that Sparta might, finally, come out from behind its wall. Only working together can the Greeks hope to stand against the overwhelming numbers of the Persian forces. Anything other than a definitive victory will mean utter destruction. What happens next will change the world as they know it…

 

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Review: Ravenna by Judith Herrin

Review: Ravenna by Judith Herrin

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Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published:  27th August 2020 (Allen Lane)

O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old’ (Oscar Wilde)

Wilde’s 1878 poem ‘Ravenna’, for which he won the prestigious Newdigate prize, is a celebration of the city’s rich history, and a lamentation of its decline, ‘in ruined loveliness thou liest dead’. In the poem, his 19th century experience of Ravenna is strikingly contrasted with its classical past, but the sense of loss he evokes well reflects every period of Ravenna’s history. A deathly commemoration may be one poetic step too far, but Ravenna is a city which doesn’t loom large in historical memory, despite its long term significance. Even for this history buff, Ravenna’s role at the heart of empires, especially between 402 and the end of the 7th century, was almost entirely unknown. Here, Judith Herrin seeks to fill in those gaps, charting Ravenna from its time as capital of the Western Roman Empire to the late 8th century, when it acts as inspiration for Charlemagne’s imperial and religious building projects in Aachen.

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Book Review: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

Book Review: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

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The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Published: 15th October 2020 (Orbit)

‘Proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way.

… everything important comes in threes.’

‘Once upon a time there were three sisters…’ Three Eastwood sisters, to be precise. Agnes, Bella, and James Juniper. They live in a world where magic and power were female, once. Now it is all hushed words passed from mother to daughter, hidden workings and small tricks, all the better to stay beneath notice. For in this place, which is also our place, women are less than they were. They are made small by the power of men— and expected to stay that way.

The year is 1893 and in New Salem the suffragists are rallying for the vote. But the ballot box isn’t the only path to change and a little witchery might be what’s needed to counter the arrival of a new danger, one cloaked in shadows and sickness. Juniper certainly thinks so. But these are sisters are riven by their past, too uncertain with each other in the present. To have a future, they’ll need mend the hurts that broke them, find a way to bring back what was forgotten, and forge something new… something wild and witchy.

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Book Review: Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Book Review: Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

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Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the wrong hands a secret is a weapon.

Caroline Corsham’s life is forever altered the night she stumbles over the brutalised body of a woman she thought she knew…and hears her dying words. Caro can’t get the tortured whisper of ‘he knows’ out of her mind. Could it be about the secret she holds close? But then everything changes. It stuns her to discover that her ‘friend’ was not an Italian noblewoman, but a high-class prostitute. One with dangerous acquaintances in both high and low society. It’s clear that the police intend to brush the murder aside. After all, who cares about a dead whore? But Caro isn’t the type of lady to let things slide. Hiring the thief-taker Peregrine Child to assist her enquiries, she sets out to discover what happened in the bower of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens that evening. And it turns out that there are, in fact, a good number of people taking an interest in this murdered girl, because they all have something to hide. To bring the killer to justice, Caro is going to have to put everything she has on the line…

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