5 GOLD stars
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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
In a nutshell: three novellas, set in different historical eras, about the same place, Llys y Garn, a rambling Pembrokeshire mansion in which aspects of its former lives still remain ~ and not just within the building itself.
I loved every word of this book; I kept trying to read it slowly, so it wouldn't end. The stories are haunting and sad, and say much about the sad lot of women in eras in which they are set.
The Good Servant takes place around the turn of the 20th century, and is about an old spinster maid, Eluned Skeel, who has no one and nothing to love but the unwanted nephew of the family she serves, taken in by them when he has no one else. As Cyril Lawson grows up he causes everyone around him pain - but he is Skeel's reason for being, whatever he does.
The Witch is the story of 17th century Elizabeth, daughter of a father who cares nothing for her aside from the fortune or social standing she can bring him through marriage. Elizabeth, though, cares only for Llys y Garn, and wonders if she might be a servant of the devil, as ill falls all who would seek to take it from her.
The Dragon Slayer tells of Angharad, in the 14th century, who longs to escape from the brutality, pain and death of her father's house, and see the world.
I didn't have a favourite; they're all as good as each other. Beautifully written, marvellous stories. This book reminded me, in subject matter and writing style, of Norah Lofts' books The House at Old Vine and A Wayside Tavern. Can't recommend too highly.
3 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
In a nutshell: Fairy story/sweet romance, long-short story.
In an undisclosed historical era and place, this story is about lowly gardener Dash, who wants to marry the daughter of the noble for whom he works. Dismissing his request, Lilian's father sets him a task: he hands him a box of tomatoes and says that if he can make his fortune before they rot, he may have Lilian's hand in marriage. Then follows adventure after adventure, as he struggles to complete the seemingly impossible, while Lilian does her best to postpone the engagement to the man her parents want her to marry.
This is a fun idea and a nicely put together story. I admit to being slightly bothered throughout by the incorrect use of titles; for instance, a 'Sir' should be referred to by both first and surnames, never as 'Sir Barrymore', and a Duke would be known as the Duke of such-and-such a place, not as Duke followed by his surname. This sort of thing is easy to find out; I just checked it in a few minutes on Google, to make sure I wasn't wrong. Having said that, the story has fantasy elements, so perhaps it doesn't matter too much! It should appeal to lovers of fairy tale romance and happy endings.
4 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
Genre: Crime and abduction, set in New Zealand
The book opens with an excellent prologue about Faith, a teenage foster kid getting abducted, back in 2001. It then goes back to the main story, about Zoe, a thirty-something, recently unemployed teacher whose life is all at sea, going back to small town Crawton because her mother has died. Zoe's feelings about this can hardly even be called 'mixed' ~ her relationship with Lilian was cold and distant, and she hasn't seen her since she was eighteen. When she arrives in Crawton, though, she is left wondering what really happened to her mother.
Meanwhile, meth-head Megan has been abducted, and is kept prisoner in a storage cupboard.
Despite the themes of abduction, murder and the sleazy underworld of drugs, I'd describe this as a low-key thriller; much of the novel concerns Zoe's relationship with her mother and the other issues she is working through, and there is quite a lot of domestic and day-to-day conversational detail, which, together with the writing style, lends itself more to a dark drama with gradually unfolding sinister developments than edge-of-your-seat suspense. It's nicely written and the characterisation is good, particularly Faith, with whom the book opens. One of the characters has Alzheimer's, and I thought this was most realistic.
I had a feeling who the baddie(s) might be about half way through, but that's probably because I watch a lot of TV of this genre; it's not at all obvious. The plot is convincing and cleverly structured, I thought the descriptions of what the abducted girls went through was particularly well done, and the ending was good ~ I do appreciate a well-thought out ending. I can imagine this being the sort of book you might get into reading on holiday.
5 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: I will read anything by Gemma Lawrence; coupled with my love of dark, dystopian futures, I could hardly open this quickly enough, once I'd bought it!
Genre: Dark fantasy, dystopian, horror
This story takes place thousands of years into the future, after the world as we know it has been all but destroyed by the greed of those in power. After widespread war, death and famine, the waters rose and many species became extinct. Now, the corner of the world in which this story takes place is governed once more by the rich and greedy, with the less affluent in society doing as they're told. But there is a yet less fortunate underclass ~ those who fought against the rich back in times of war were enslaved, with their descendants kept captive and used for meat. They are bred in the Factory, never seeing the light of day. At puberty, suitable girls become 'breeders'.
There are those, though, who still live free, or have escaped the Factory, and are hunted by the flesh-eaters; wild, non-Factory meat is much prized. The free people eat only that which they can grow in the soil of their land.
'Those who founded this place, our forebears, told us that All Life Is Sacred...as the flesh-eaters had denied our rights, we should not deny them to other sentient creatures...who can think, feel and experience pleasure and pain.'
Then there are the other dangers; insects have evolved and become larger. Much larger.
Farm Land: Sentience can be read as a dark, futuristic fantasy ~ it's great fiction, exciting and well-written. I think, though, that it has deeper meaning, and I've found myself thinking about it a lot, when I'm not reading it.
The flesh-eaters believe that those bred for meat have no feelings, are not the same as them; they choose to believe this, because they have been told it is so, by those who rule over them; if they see anything in the slaughtering process that makes them feel uncomfortable, they close their eyes ~ except one, who begins to understand what is actually going on.
The story is told from the POV of a sixteen-year-old girl; an old woman she meets tells her more about how and why the old world ended. There are so many parallels with our own destruction of our planet and the evils of animal agriculture that I could quote away until this review was far too long, but the book does not preach, at all. It talks of belief in gods, and whether or not they were all imaginary; either way, by now they are long gone, with the flesh-eaters living only to satisfy their own immediate needs.
The main character discovers that she is a 'Reacher', in that she can enter the thoughts of others, and communicate with the few who have this ability. Much about this, and the evolution of other species, made me think of something else I've read lately, ie, that man as we know it now has not necessarily finished evolving. For all we know, we may indeed develop other abilities much, much farther down the line ~ if we do not destroy ourselves.
'They are careless with lives because they do not consider anything to be as important as themselves...they started to use everything, exhausting the world, ignoring warnings screamed by the earth... the greed of man is such that they will seek to consume the world, and never stop to wonder what will be left for them to stand upon.'
Whether you read this as compelling and unpredictable fantasy fiction or see more parallels with our own society within, it's a terrific book. It's about the possibility of love, acceptance and care for others being allowed to triumph over greed, selfishness and evil. Unmissable.
4 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
Genre: Crime, heist, kidnapping.
This book has a great opening. Military contractor Kyle Logan messes up his already messed up life by assaulting his wife's divorce lawyer, who also happens to be her lover. He's then offered a role in the theft of some pieces of valuable artwork, by his friend Ryan. Kyle is also suffering from injuries caused by an IED when he was in Iraq.
I warmed to the characters and the writing style straight away. There's plenty of dark stuff going on, but lots of humour, too - I liked the observations about characters, and often just the way stuff was phrased ('I hated losing her to a puke like Fenster'). The guy-on-his-uppers-with-wife-who-has-moved-on-to-a-more-straight-and-successful-new-man thing is an oft-used scenario in this genre in both books and on screen (I'm currently watching the TV series Get Shorty - there it is again!), but it works every time, and J Gregory Smith has painted all participants most colourfully.
When Kyle realises that involvement in Ryan's criminal schemes means re-acquaintance with childhood chum-turned-gangster Danny 'Iceballs' Sheehan, he knows his life is not going to be easy. Smith has portrayed the atmosphere of the criminal underworld of Philadelphia so well; this book is fast-paced and flows very well, with a convincing plot, and is, basically, a good, solid novel. I haven't got anything negative to say about it. Nice one.
5 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: I love Gemma Lawrence and have read the rest of this series, of which this is book 5!
Genre: History, Biography, Tudors, Elizabeth 1st.
Treason in Trust covers the middle part of Elizabeth's reign, or some of it ~ not a period of history with which I am familiar, so this was quite a new experience for me with one of Gemma Lawrence's books.
The attention to detail in this book is as good as ever, and I especially loved the descriptions of London itself and how the people lived, made all the more meaningful because of Elizabeth's well-documented view that she was married to her country, with her subjects her children. She talks often about the reasons for her remaining single, and her thoughts about the patriarchal society in which she lives ~ an early feminist, indeed.
I enjoyed reading about Francis Drake, battles upon the seas, the customs, medicines and superstitions of the time ~ and the introduction of the wristwatch: "A clock... for my wrist?" I asked. "What a novel idea, Robin!"
Much of the novel deals with the problem of the disgraced Mary, Queen of Scots, and the rebellions within her beloved England, as the problems of religious differences rear their ugly heads over and over again. Death haunts her, as she thinks of all those she has lost, especially as she grows older and succumbs to illness ... and learns of terrible massacre and relgious persecution abroad.
Reading this, you will feel as though Gemma Lawrence knows the older Elizabeth every bit as well as she knew the girl. There has not yet been one of her historical novels that I don't consider worthy of five stars.
5 out of 5 stars
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How I discovered this book: I had already bought Book #1, because I'd read and loved GONE: Catastrophe in Paradise by this author, but then it appeared on the Rosie Amber's Book Review Team list; as a member of this review team, I said I would read it for Rosie's blog, too. I bought the second book, about the killers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, as soon as I'd finished it. Thus, I am reviewing the books as one.
Genre: True Crime (non fiction); serial killers.
This two part series, Murder by Increments, is about the crimes of the Hillside Stranglers, who made LA a frightening place to be in the late 1970s. The first book, A City Owned, starts with a picture of what LA was like back then. Such a clever way to start; to understand the lives of the victims and why Bianchi and Buono went undiscovered for so long, we have first to be aware of the culture of the time. LA was a seedy place indeed, peopled by many who'd arrived seeking the Hollywood dream, only to be sucked into the underworld of prostitution, porn, drugs and crime. The cops were overworked and jaded, with few resources; these were the days before the internet, before reliable criminal profiling, and before DNA databases. Reading how carelessly they bungled the investigations, over and over again, made me think that crime solving had moved on very little in the hundred years since the London police tried in vain to identify Jack the Ripper.
O J Modjeska writes about the victims with great respect for each girl's short life, drawing a heartbreaking picture each time. These are not just names, and the book is far from being just a list of heinous crimes. Only towards the end of the book do Bianchi and Buono themselves appear, and by then I had to know the whole story; I went back to Amazon and bought Killing Cousins as soon as I'd finished A City Owned.
I found Killing Cousins the most absorbing of the two books, as I am more interested in the psychological background of killers than the solving of crimes. The drawn out trial was at times farcical, not only because of Bianchi's attempts to convince psychiatrists that he suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder, but because of the self-interest and prejudice of many involved.
'There were the cops who thought the lives of prostitutes were worthless, the officials who wanted to look good in front of the media, the shrinks seeking professional recognition, the prosecutors who assumed middle-aged women were crazy, and the politicians seeking office. There was stupidity, there was self-aggrandizement, there was sexism and the tyranny of the herd.'
This two-book series is everything that true crime should be, without being in any way sensationalised. O J Modjeska has not only written a riveting account of the victims, perpetrators and law enforcement bodies, but also shown how very different attitudes in general were, only forty years ago; if just a few incidents had not taken place, a few people not spoken up, if a few jurors been swayed by the individuals who defended these two monsters, the outcome might have been very different.
