MORE GREAT READS FOR SEPTEMBER, 2015

Saving Midnight, by Suzy Zail                 Young Adult fiction

 Alexander Altmann is fourteen.  He hasn’t been known by his name for a long time, ever since he was transported from Hungary by cattle train with his mother and sister to Poland’s  Birkenau/Auschwitz concentration camps.  He is A10567 now, regarded by his Nazi captors as Jewish vermin, subhuman, and there to work until he dies or is shot for not moving quickly enough.  He knows his ten year-old sister Lili has already been gassed, but a miraculous meeting with his mother who was herded into a different line causes him to promise her that he will do his utmost to live so that they can come home to each other - if she can survive, so will he!

            As each nightmare day passes, however, he finds it harder and harder to bear the terrible, gnawing hunger every inmate feels, and to subject his wasting body to backbreaking work for all the hours of daylight for food that an animal would reject – and for what?  Because he is a Jew?  His family were farmers first, Jews second.  His religious teachings were practically non-existent.  In any case, it is painfully obvious that God is not present in the Hellhole of Birkenau;  he has discarded His Chosen People in quite spectacular fashion, and Alexander has nothing but contempt for Him, and those who still chant all their silly, futile prayers.

            Until a tiny glimmer, a pinprick of hope presents itself:  those of the inmates who have experience tending to horses are told to put up their hands:  they are to look after the German Officers’ mounts for the immediate future, but like all work they must do they are always subject to the caprices of those who hold the guns.  The whippings and killings will continue for the slightest infraction, or for no reason at all.

            Alexander doesn’t care – he was raised on the family farm to look after all the animals, particularly horses, for which he has a deep affinity:  to be working in stables again, to be tending the animals he loves most is an opportunity he would gladly risk his life for – and if he is sneaky smart, he can help his charges to eat their food!  Life suddenly seems survivable after all.

            So begins Alexander’s time at Auschwitz, and his eventual meeting with a spooked, damaged horse he calls Midnight.  Midnight a, purebred Arabian stallion, so badly treated on his journey that no-one can approach him.  To his horror, Alexander is informed by Commander Ziegler, the flint-eyed officer who acquired him, that the horse must be ready for riding in two weeks – otherwise both Alexander and the horse will be shot.

            Suzy Zail has given young readers a story that sends shivers up the spine;  that breaks hearts with the sheer cruelty and brutality inflicted on hapless millions;  and the ongoing nightmares experienced by those who managed to survive the unspeakable.  As shocking and terrible as Alexander’s story is, it is still a story that must be told – ‘so that it doesn’t happen again.’

            And it is also a story of love, the emotion that Alexander succumbs to and revels in when he and Midnight bond;  and hope, even more essential than love.  Where would we be without either? This is a wonderful story.  FIVE STARS.

Palace of Treason, by Jason Matthews

30-year CIA veteran Jason Matthews has followed up his international best-seller ‘Red Sparrow ’ (see review below) with a sequel that is hugely disappointing.  We still have the same fascinating protagonists;  Dominika Egorova, fearless and resourceful Russian ‘diplomat’, now a mole for the CIA;  Nathaniel Nash, her case officer and reluctant lover;  lesser characters who are absolute delights, i.e. Simon Benford, CIA boss with the best turn of phrase ever, referring to a couple of ineffectual Heads of Station as future nautch dancers in Bollywood movies;  Marty Gable, Deputy Chief of Station who keeps Nate on the straight and narrow and grounded by such common-sense observations as ‘Make up your mind whether you’re gonna be the insightful case officer handling his agent with perceptivity and skill or the spoony little choirboy chewing his quivering lower lip’.

            And what could Nate say but ‘Golly Marty, the way you put it, it’s a tough choice’.

 Yep, nothing wrong with the repartee, but what has happened to the plot??  Mr Matthews has reduced the action to fits and starts – he combines furiously paced suspense with bewilderingly slow and tiresome details of the inner workings of the CIA and its Russian counterpart the SVR, complete with acronyms, cryptonyms and every other ‘nym’ that ever was – and the recipes are there, too, as in ‘Red Sparrow’, at the end of every chapter.  They are still as lethal as ever, which makes one wonder why the spies don’t try to kill each other at the dinner table, but what do I know:  suffice it to say that Domenika’s foes are more dangerous than ever as she moves up the Kremlin ladder and into the rarefied orbit of President Putin.  (I wonder if he has read this book?  If so, he won’t be pleased!)

Nate has been seconded to the Athens Station, and both he and Marty are shocked when a high-ranking  military officer from the Russian Consulate makes contact, offering to pass on sensitive information about the latest Russian weaponry.  He is not interested in financial gain or to bring ruin on a colleague or a department;  instead he is disgusted and appalled at the direction his beloved Motherland is taking in the world:  this is his idea of payback – a poke in the eye of Putin’s Russia.  Codenamed Lyric, he passes on first class intelligence – until a disgruntled CIA officer in Washington who has just missed out on a promotion he feels should be his by right, learns of his existence, and sells the information to the Russian Washington representative for money.

Add to the mix Domenika Egorova’s homicidal boss who hates her to the extent that he tries to have her killed more than once, (the man should take a pill!) and the reader should have more than enough action to contend with – until the pace is inevitably slackened by the minutiae of everyday ‘spycraft’, not to mention exhaustive explanations of uranium extraction and even a seismic floor, which could glaze the eyes of even the most devoted Jason Matthews fan.

That said, I would still read a third book in the series:  Domenika is fearless;  Nate is hapless;  Marty Gable is shameless, and Simon Benford is peerless.  So there .  FOUR STARS.

Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews

Red Sparrow is not new;  it was published in 2013, but what impresses me about it enough to write a review is that a sequel has been written, ‘Palace of Treason’, and if it is anything like Red Sparrow’ then we are all in for a fabulous treat.

            Russian Dominika Egarova is a privileged, ambitious and enormously talented young woman who adores her country and believes unquestioningly in its leadership under Mr Putin.  Her parents, a respected university professor and a prodigiously talented concert violinist are more circumspect, having felt and suffered enormous discrimination from lesser talents, purely because the lesser talents had ‘connections’ which would always put them in front.

            Dominika aspires to be a ballerina but eventually is sabotaged, just like her parents by a staged accident that ends her career permanently;  enter her influential uncle, who decides that she could be useful as an intelligence officer/honey trap;  a ‘sparrow’ to lure with her great beauty various victims into impossible and irreversible situations.  Dominika gradually realises that she has been coerced and blackmailed herself into an irreversible situation, but because she is a person of intelligence with an exceptional gift – not to mention a huge thirst for revenge,  she decides to play the long game:  after all, ‘Revenge is a Dish that People of Taste Prefer to Eat Cold’.  Yes indeed.

            Dominika’s masters have no idea what hit them when their instructions for her to lure an American CIA agent into her embrace go horribly awry – for them, and  hapless CIA agent Nathaniel Nash:  he has found that his life has changed forever, whether he wanted it to or not!

            Mr Matthews is well qualified to write a spy novel;  he was a CIA officer for more than 30 years and knows the Spook business from every angle, and what a bonus it is for the reader that he is a smart, witty writer who can generate huge suspense, then relieve the tension with much-needed humour.  His characters are (in the main) very believable – except that the villains are more evil than usual, and definitely uglier (!) and I have to say that there were so many abbreviations, acronyms and cryptonyms that I felt battered about the head – oh, and at the end of every chapter was the recipe for a meal that the characters consumed as part of the action:  nothing wrong with that, except that each recipe had enough cream, butter, oil etc to send us all to an early grave.  Did I mind, though?  Of course not.  I am impatiently awaiting ‘Palace of Treason’ which I trust will be full to bursting with more vengeance, corpses and lethal recipes.  FIVE STARS.     

GREAT READS FOR SEPTEMBER, 2015

Disclaimer, by Renee Knight

Catherine and her husband Robert have just downsized to a smaller house;  the move has been fraught with the usual chaos – things lost, misplaced, and things mysteriously appearing without any logic at all, like the book on her bedside table, ‘The Perfect Stranger’.  How did it get there?  She doesn’t remember buying it or receiving it as a gift, but it is late and she is tired;  she’ll read a few pages to relax.

            Until she realises that the usual disclaimer ‘any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead etc, has a neat red line through it, and as Cath reads on it is clear that what she is reading is account of the disastrous (for her) holiday that she, Robert and their 5 year-old son Nick had in Spain twenty years before:  the horrendous secret that she thought would never be revealed is now the plot of this mysterious book, and she is its main character – and the villain of the piece.

            Ms Knight’s debut novel is a  finely constructed story which expertly manipulates the reader’s sensibilities;  for most of the novel we are suitably outraged at Catherine’s duplicity;  we feel her husband’s shock and grief at her presumed betrayal – all orchestrated expertly by a man who has lost everything, and has laid the blame for his family’s ruin squarely on her shoulders.  His revenge is intended to be all-encompassing and absolute:  everything he loved is dead – by her actions.  He will make her suffer as he does.  Then he will drive her to her (self-inflicted) death:  it is only what she deserves, but not until her husband, son, and reputation are lost to her, then there will be no way back.  There will be no recovery from the grievous consequences of her selfishness, and it gives him enormous satisfaction to see every part of his vengeful plan unfolding without a hitch:  finally, in its last stages, his life has some meaning.

            Ms Knight’s characters are uniformly credible and well realised, from Cath herself who degenerates from a strong-minded 21^st century woman used to calling the shots at work and in her family life to a floundering, near hysterical shadow of herself;  Robert, the honourable lawyer and supportive husband, unmanned completely by his wife’s betrayal, then hating her for it;  and Nick, their only child, an aimless drop-out with a drug problem:  he reacts to his mother’s supposed sins by going on an enormous binge, ending up in hospital with a life-threatening stroke - and finally, that last terrible event gives Cath the impetus she needs:  it is time to fight back.

            There is a satisfying resolution, if not an entirely happy ending, to the story:  Ms Knight prefers reality to hearts and flowers, and that’s as it should be, for her characters all live in the real world, with varying degrees of success. As do we.  FIVE STARS.

Time and Time Again, by Ben Elton

Ben Elton has written many books on subjects we would all rather not think about, climate change and the end of the world being cases in point.  He is not afraid to question and explore the consequences of man’s actions on earth, that beautiful planet that is his home, and expose through clever fiction mankind’s sorry blunders.

            This time, he poses the question put to Hugh Stanton, a man who has lost everything worthwhile in his life:  ‘if you had one chance to change history, where would you go?  What would you do?  WHO would you kill to make the world a better place?’

            The year is 2025.  Stanton is a retired SAS officer, an historian, and a shattered man, having lost his wife and two children to a hit-and-run driver six months previously.  There is nothing left for him in life, and he doesn’t know why he accepted the invitation to spend Christmas with Professor Sally McCluskey, his old Cambridge history teacher at Trinity college in Cambridge.  His enthusiasm for doing anything at all is so low that he hopes he will have a fatal accident on his motor bike on the way – he could never kill himself, but if there was an accident, he would welcome it.  Sadly, he survives the journey.  And finds that Christmas without his beloved family, whilst full of grief, is survivable, because Professor McCluskey has a mission for him, asking the big question:  ‘If you had one chance to change history ….?’

The Companions of Chronos (the God of Time), a closed society of retired university Dons wish him to journey back to 1914 to alter history, thus preventing the Great War.  They have a set of equations from the great Physicist Sir Isaac Newton proving that time alters its axis by a fraction every 111 years, making it possible for a person to travel back in time, enabling him to alter whatever major world event had influenced the world for the bad:  the Companions have decided in advance that ‘The Shots Heard Around the World’, fired by Serbian Gavrilo Princip, killing ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Grand Duchess Sophie, must be prevented.  If Princip were killed instead, there would be no excuse for war to be declared.

BUT.

As insurance, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany should be dispatched, too, simply because he wanted war.  He had been building up his army and navy for years, and would eventually find a reason to start the conflict.  So Stanton is tasked with a double murder to change the course of 20^th century history, to save the lives of millions of young men in the flower of their youth, and to bring peace and plenty to those countries who would have been ruined and obliterated by war.

What an enterprise!  What a task!  Stanton is thrilled with his world-altering mission – until he finds that the New World springing from his actions is even worse than the Old:  can he change destiny again so that the old order prevails?

As always, Mr Elton rockets the reader through the pages of his alternative history at a frantic pace.  His prose, whilst not exactly purple, is very often highly coloured, but did I care?  Of course not.  No-one (with the exception of Stephen King and his ‘11.22.63’) could make time travel through turbulent historic events more gripping than Ben Elton;  and no-one can make the reader agonise more about what we are doing to our planet than he.  FOUR STARS.    

  LAST GREAT READS FOR AUGUST, 2015

Starlight Peninsula, by Charlotte Grimshaw

This story is the latest in Charlotte Grimshaw’s collection of connected short stories and two novels, ‘The Night Book’ and ‘Soon’ featuring some of the same characters.  I haven’t been able to track down ‘The Night Book’ in our library system but read ‘Soon’ (see January 2013 review below) and was mightily impressed;  few other New Zealand authors can emulate her shrewd observance of the strata of Auckland society;  of those who live on the hallowed slopes of the Eastern Suburbs, and those who aspire to – and the various attempts they make to get there.

            Ms Grimshaw has  plenty of fun with New Zealand politics both national and local, and ruthlessly satirizes the back-room deals, the Old-Boy networks and the donorships, both corporate and private that keep the conservative government afloat, and for most kiwis, some of her characters in ‘Starlight Peninsula’ are easily recognisable;  the fat German internet mogul wanted for internet piracy by the United States;  the TV current affairs host, ablaze with sincerity and expensive suits;  a gaggle of cabinet ministers involved in suspicious activities, not to mention the Prime Minister, forced to state repeatedly that he knew nothing about illegal spying on said German internet pirate. 

Ms Grimshaw’s wit and talent to expose hypocrisy is as sharp as ever;  sadly, her story loses merit because her key character, Eloise Hay, is a dingbat of the first order.  Sorry, Eloise, but it’s true:  you are too unfocussed and wimpy to give credibility to the plot, so there.

Eloise is a research assistant for the aforementioned TV current affairs host.  She is also awash with grief and Chardonnay because her husband has just left her for ‘a bullshit New Age actress’.  She sits alone in the marital home on the Starlight Peninsula which will be sold from under her soon:  ex-hubby is a big-time lawyer, immensely rich thanks to his parents, Sir Jarrod and Lady Cheryl Rodd (what fun Ms Grimshaw has with names!) and they all want the property gone – along with her – so that they can make a killing.  Because that’s what they always do.

Eloise loves Starlight Peninsula.  She doesn’t want to live anywhere else, but instead of reaching for solutions she just reaches for the bottle;  even an interesting new neighbour can’t keep her away from the demon drink and her family are even less effective – which is not surprising.  Eloise’s loving sister Carina and her daughter are towers of strength, but their mother Demelza (!) is poisonous enough to have frolicked with Gorgons as a child:  she offers Eloise ‘another brandy for the road’ when her drunken daughter comes to visit.  Ee, Chuck, she’s a right one, her! (Demelza is from Manchester).

Eloise consults Klaudia, a formidably logical German Psychotherapist in an effort to sort out her troubled thoughts and realises after much analysis that ‘a layer of the world has been hidden from me’ – which causes her to delve past her broken marriage into the grief she suffered from the mysterious death of her boyfriend Arthur many years ago, a death that she has refused to acknowledge had many suspicious elements to it.  ‘He was the love of my life!’ she declares to various people, but seems to have no trouble feeling emotional attachments to those very people.  (It’s the booze talking, love.)

In her bumbling, stumbling winey way, Eloise is starting to unravel the secrets surrounding Arthur’s death:  her seemingly random, haphazard lurching from one potential guilty party to the next uncovers some surprising and shocking truths:  she attributes her acumen to ESP; the fat internet pirate calls it ‘collective consciousness’ –  call good luck whatever you like, but by the end of the novel, Eloise has ferreted out enough secrets and lies to achieve her dream:  to remain in the house on the Starlight Peninsula.  As she states to Klaudia (don’t look at your watch, Klaudia!) ‘The house is a mind.  If I lose my house I will lose my mind.’

Well done.  I applaud the fact that she grew enough cojones to blackmail the big baddies to hang on to her beloved house;  it was a mighty achievement, but please, Ms Grimshaw, could she NOT be a continuing character in your next novel?

 Ms Grimshaw’s other characterisations are, as always, beautifully and finely drawn, and her depiction of Auckland, that chaotic, teeming, vital city is as superb and truthful as ever.  Highly recommended, except for You-Know-Who.       

Soon, by Charlotte Grimshaw

Simon Lampton and his family enjoy a privileged and enviable position:  a close friendship with the current Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Hallwright, enabling them to be honoured houseguests at his palatial holiday home north of Auckland for the summer.  For Simon and Karen his wife, it is a very satisfying time;  they have reached social heights envied by their contemporaries and never dreamed of by themselves.  Simon is a wealthy and successful obstetrician and gynaecologist but came from the very lowest of backgrounds;  Karen is his trophy wife, another goal to be ticked off his list of  life aspirations, along with the respect of his medical peers, beautiful home, BMW and children – whom he loves utterly:  they are his reward, his bonus for the hard years of his childhood with an alcoholic father and the hard work of studying and establishing himself in a demanding medical field.

Life can’t get any better – can it?

Unfortunately, all that glitters is not gold:  the longer the Lamptons stay with the Hallrights, the more hidden agendas reveal themselves:  the friendship with David on which Simon prides himself – ‘I never kowtow to him;  I’m apolitical and always give him my honest opinion.  That’s why we get on so well together’ – goes through subtle changes, partly caused by David’s glamorous second wife Roza, who holds all the males of the holiday household in thrall, including Simon.  As the holiday progresses it becomes increasingly obvious that Roza doesn’t regard Simon and Karen as bosom buddies;  she tolerates them charmingly for one reason:  she wants their adopted daughter, Elke – because Roza is Elke’s natural mother:  she couldn’t look after her when she was born, but she can now and begins an insidious campaign to win over the affections of the beautiful 18 year old.

Ms Grimshaw describes this tug of love so articulately that the reader feels palpably the steely determination of one character to possess, and the heartbreak and anguish of others finally aware of what they stand to lose.  As they find themselves trapped in the cleverly-woven web of privilege and ambition, all masked by the paper-thin veneer of best-mateship, Simon and Karen have to decide which hard decisions to make, and how to keep that which they love most – as well as retaining their self-respect.

And this is not Simon’s only crisis:  a shameful memory from the past rears its ugly head, threatening not just him and his cushy life but scandalous enough to cause big problems for his ‘best friend’ the Prime Minister.  Simon Lampton’s envied existence is fast becoming intolerable.

Ms Grimshaw has given us a wonderful story, written with great pace and clarity.  Her characters are a delight, each captured with elegant and astute observation – David Hallwright bears a striking resemblance to our own Dear Leader, John Key, and his party and policies are mercilessly dissected.

In my reading experience, no author can evoke mood, atmosphere and landscape more strongly than she, and it is a pleasure to read such a fine book.  Highly recommended.

The Slaughter Man, by Tony Parsons.

Detective Constable Max Wolfe is sent to the scene of a gruesome murder in one of the most affluent gated communities in London – so exclusive there are only six houses in the enclave.  An entire family, the parents and two teenagers, have been dispatched execution-style by a cattle bolt, a weapon used to stun cattle before they are slaughtered at the freezing works:  the only other family member, a four year old boy, is missing.  As they begin their investigation, the police can only hope that he will be found in the first twenty four hours:  chances of survival traditionally fade from then on.

            Max and his superiors are reminded of another similar crime committed more than thirty years ago:  a farmer and his three sons were killed by the same means by one of the Travellers (they aren’t called Gypsies any more) – but the Traveller has done his time;  he is old and dying and his family are fiercely protective of him.  He can’t have done it – can he?

            As the investigators wade through mountains of evidence, the façade presenting the dead family as idyllically happy and functional starts to crumble:  Mum and Dad, former Olympic athletes, were having marital problems that resulted in Dad keeping an apartment solely for the use of meetings with prostitutes;  it is unclear if Mum was aware of his infidelity, or if she cared:  the question is academic, but Max still requires answers of his own and as always he’s very good at playing hunches, and turning over stones to see what’s underneath.  And as always, it is nothing good.

            Mr Parsons has once again written a very efficient thriller.  Characters from the first book return as strong as ever, and he writes with great warmth and humour of Max’s relationship with his little daughter, and the pitfalls of sole parenthood – and the great rewards.  His careful attention to detail again lifts his story above the hackneyed, and while I had to suspend disbelief when the bastardly baddies bury Max alive (in a coffin already occupied by a mouldering pile of bones and other nasty bits and pieces), his escape was still just this side of credulity.  Well, he had to get out, didn’t he?  He has to be in the next book!

            This is a bone-rattlingly good sequel to ‘The Murder Bag’.  Highly recommended.

 

             

The Murder Bag, by Tony Parsons.

This is the first thriller that Tony Parsons has written, and what a good time he has had with the genre:  all the boxes are ticked;  there are plenty of corpses;  the suspense builds with each murder;  there are heaps of suspects, and it is almost guaranteed that no-one, and I mean no-one will know whodunit until the very last pages.  What more could a dedicated thriller reader ask for?  Mr Parsons fills every requirement.

            Detective Constable Max Wolfe has just received a promotion and a pay rise, thanks to his disobedience – not because he meant to be insubordinate, but he acted spontaneously on a hunch that proved to be right, saving a lot of lives after he was ordered to cease and desist.

            Now he has been seconded to the investigation into the murder of a prosperous London banker who has been dispatched in a very novel fashion:  his throat was not merely slit, but excavated – gouged out with a weapon that was usually used by wartime commando troops.  To complicate matters further, no fingerprints or indeed any trace of the killer is found at the murder scene, and were it not for a school photo of seven teenage boys found in his office, the police would not even have a starting point.  Until Max, with the enthusiasm of the new recruit pursues the old school connection between the boys, most of whom attend their banker friend’s funeral.  Several of them have become very successful, including an aspiring politician and a prosperous lawyer;  one has become a warrior captain serving in Afghanistan – but one has committed suicide, and another is a heroin addict.

            Despite the horrible loss of one of their little band, the remaining friends are reluctant to speak of their school days with any clarity and remain committed to the same story:  they could not understand how anyone could do such a thing – the banker was a fine fellow, beloved by all – until Max uncovers evidence of cruelty and sadism, particularly towards the banker’s wife.  Things, as usual, are never what they seem and the situation only gets worse when the heroin addict is found dead, also with his throat gouged out.  As more of the original seven are picked off by the same method the remaining potential victims are eventually only too happy to unburden themselves of their dark teenage secrets, but to no avail:  they still continue to die, and the police always seem to be just a day late and a dollar short.

            Mr Parson has constructed a very busy, convoluted plot;  there are a lot of subsidiary characters and subplots that require the reader’s concentration, but the pace rattles along at a very satisfying speed, as do the pages.  In fact, this is a page-turner so good that Detective Constable Max Wolfe (who manages to get himself suspended twice for not following orders) should not be confined to one book only:  I hope this will be the start of a series.   

MORE GREAT READS FOR AUGUST, 2015

After the Crash, by Michel Bussi

On December 23^rd, 1980, an Airbus 5403 flying from Istanbul to Paris crashes during a terrible storm in the Jura mountains bordering Switzerland and France.  All are killed, except for a three-month-old girl, found half-frozen in the snow but otherwise unharmed – a miracle baby, a child who survived impossible odds, and the precious darling of her surviving family in France.

            But which family?

            According to the passenger list, two baby girls were travelling with their parents;  Lyse-Rose, 3 month old daughter of the son of a fabulously rich family, the de Carvilles, returning from running subsidiaries of the family business in Turkey, and Emilie, a baby of the same age whose parents, Pascal and Stephanie Vitral had been given a trip to Turkey by Pascal’s parents who had won it themselves but couldn’t make the trip;  instead they looked after Marc, Emilie’s elder brother aged two, so that his parents could have a lovely holiday.

            The Vitral grandparents are unashamedly working class people who make ends meet by running a food van in Dieppe and the surrounding area.  They are salt-of-the-earth good citizens with sound principles – and a strong conviction that the surviving miracle baby is their granddaughter, and they are willing to fight to the end of their slim resources to prove it.  Léonce de Carville, grandfather of Lyse-Rose, is also as convinced that the little girl belongs to his family, the difference being that he has enormous wealth and power at his disposal, not to mention the services of Crédule Grand-Duc, a private detective in his employ charged with investigating fully the origins of the surviving child, and establishing beyond doubt that she is a de Carville –  for Léonce is so used to controlling the lives and fates of others that he cannot bear to have uncertainties in his own life, let alone lose a fight.

            So begins one of the most compulsive page-turners I have read this year.  French author Mr Bussi gathers up readers and flings them forward on a truly thrilling, mysterious ride spanning eighteen years, and not once (and I’m usually very good at figuring out whodunit well before the book’s end) was I able to see who resorted to murder, and why:  each chapter was never what it seemed!

            Mr Bussi’s style is competent and workmanlike;  no pretty word pictures here except for the character of Lyse-Rose’s emotionally damaged elder sister Malvina:  his prose turns purple and melodramatic to the point of turning her into a Witchy-poo from a fairy tale, but this does little to detract from the overall impact of this high-octane thriller.  I hope he is hard at work on another one.  Most highly recommended.

              

Balm, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Ms Perkins-Valdez’s debut novel, ‘Wench’ established her credentials as an important new writer of contemporary American fiction (see 2010 review below);  now she cements her reputation with ‘Balm’, her exploration of America after the Civil War;  of the effects of emancipation and the efforts of former slaves to make a new life for themselves in a world as frightening for its new experiences as the old order they have just survived.

Madge has never been a slave;  she is known as a ‘Root woman’, a woman who heals illnesses – and heartaches – with her hands and the herbal balms and potions she has learnt to make from her aunts, hard and taciturn women whose mother gained their freedom by curing their master from a grievous illness.  In return, he gave them a little house to live in as well as their papers:  their reputation ensured their continued free status in Tennessee, and Madge should be more than satisfied with her lot.  But she is not.  She journeys to Chicago, a huge adventure for someone such as she, and eventually finds work as a maid – for which she is paid! – with Mrs Sadie Walker, a well-to-do white widow.

Sadie has her own cross to bear:  she has come to Chicago to claim the house and income of her late husband Samuel, a man she knows next-to-nothing about, for Sadie’s father arranged her marriage to the strapping soldier, so much older than she, for a cash payment to save his dying business.  After less than two months of marriage, most of it spent apart, Samuel is killed in battle – and Sadie is free.  Free to eventually follow her real calling, which is to be a medium, to commune with the spirits, and there are as many of them as there are people crushed by grief, longing for a message or any kind of contact with their dead loved ones.

Sadie is not a charlatan;  she genuinely hears the calls of those who have passed over, and gains a reputation for her sincerity and the accuracy of her information – sadly, she finds that her father who sold her to save his business is horrified by her ‘godless’ milking of peoples’ suffering, and the advantage she takes of their grief – even though she communes with his wife, her dead mother, who sends him a message.  He is unmoved and considers Sadie evil, an opinion causing her enormous heartache, for she longs for his approval – but not enough to turn her from her chosen path.

Sadie has a sometime carriage driver, a freed slave called Hemp Harrison;  ‘Hemp’ for the crop that he harvested on his master’s farm, and Harrison for his master’s name.  Hemp has come to Chicago in a vain search for his wife, sold with her daughter elsewhere two years before.  He is desperate to find her, but literally does not know where to look after all his enquiries draw a blank:  his heart is heavy, for he loves his wife dearly but his peace of mind becomes non-existent when he and Madge start to form a growing attachment, a fact that horrifies them both for vastly different reasons.

Ms Perkins-Valdez weaves the lives and fortunes of this unlikely trio irrevocably together with her beautiful language and imagery.  My only criticism (and it is a small one) is that the conclusion is a little rushed.  It poses more questions than answers, but the overall message is clear:  ‘In a land so devastated by death, the best healing balm was hope.’  Highly recommended.   

WENCH, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Despite its Bodice-Ripper title, Ms Perkins-Valdez’s debut novel is anything but – rather, it is the second damning account of slavery that I have read this year;  more subtle, perhaps, than Andrea Levy’s ‘The Long Song’ (recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) but having the same horrific impact:  how can people who purport to be civilized visit so much inhumanity on their fellow men?

‘Wench’ is first set in 1852 at Tawawa House, a fashionable resort in Ohio, popular with Southern gentlemen who take the waters every year, go hunting and fishing – but leave their wives behind, bringing instead female slaves who service their every need.  Four of these women become friends and look forward to the annual renewal of contact;  their individual histories  graphically demonstrate blatant cruelty or the same evil disguised as kind and loving treatment:  Lizzie’s master professes to love her;  she is his ‘true wife’ and has given him two children of whom he is particularly proud, especially as his white wife is barren, but he refuses her only wish that he give the children their freedom:  they are his lawful property, and as such he is entitled to sell them if he wishes.  Mawu belongs to Mr. Tip, whom she hates and bravely stands up to at every opportunity – she even makes an escape attempt, only to be brought back by the slavecatchers, stripped naked and whipped by Mr. Tip while the other slaves are forced to watch ‘as a warning’.  He then sodomises her and her humiliation is complete.  Reenie is owned by ‘Sir’, her late father - and Master’s son:  he uses her whenever he pleases, then ‘loans’ her to the resort manager.  Each woman must deal with her own tragedies as best they can;  sometimes they make the right choices but for all but one of these good women, slavery is the only option:  they dare not leave their children.  Their only hope that life may someday be different is that the first rumours of Abolition have started to surface;  indeed, Ohio, where they ‘vacation’ every year with their masters is a Free State – could this mean that more and more people are willing to protest against the appalling outrage of slavery?  Emancipation does not come until the South has fought a bloody and unsuccessful Civil War in defense of its slave-based economy;  meantime, the ‘wenches’ must remain strong in the face of their thralldom, and resolute in the hope that the next generation will know a better life.  Ms. Perkins-Valdez has produced a superb story, moving and beautifully written.  

GREAT READS FOR AUGUST, 2015

The Dust That Falls From Dreams, by Louis de Bernières

            It is August, 1902, and loyal Britons are holding Coronation parties throughout the land, for the dear old Queen has died after ruling for 63 years and her elderly and high-living son Edward the Seventh has ascended the throne.  The Victorian era has ended and the Edwardian age has begun, those sunlit years that reinforced – for the last time – the rigidity of class and certainty of one’s station in life:  everyone knows where they stand, and all is right with the world.

            Three prosperous neighbouring families meet on this beautiful summer day to celebrate the King’s ascension;  Mr and Mrs Pendennis, lately come from Baltimore, U.S.A. with their three fine sons;  Mr and Mrs Hamilton McCosh and their four vivacious daughters, and Mr and Mrs Pitt, parents of four strapping sons, two of whom are already fighting in the Boer War.  They are all fast friends and the children call themselves The Pals, certain that they will be friends always – in fact Rosie, the oldest McCosh girl has already accepted an offer of marriage (when they are old enough) from Ashbridge Pendennis, formalised by the gift of a brass curtain ring.  She will be his forever.

            It transpires that several of the other boys have crushes on Rosie, for she is the prettiest, and because she has eyes for no-one but Ash, the most unattainable, despite great feats of courage and daring performed by the Pitt boys, Archie and Daniel in an effort to impress.  And Rosie IS impressed, but not long enough to alter her unswerving devotion to her beloved.

Mr de Berniéres, author of the wonderful ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ is a master at setting the scene for this lovely story of the War to End all Wars and the  death of an Empire;  his characters beautifully personify the times, especially when ‘that dreadful Kaiser’ starts the war and the flower of England’s youth rush to enlist – after all, ‘it will be all over by Christmas’ and no young man wants to miss out on the excitement and the opportunity to ‘do his bit’, including Ashbridge Pendennis and Daniel Pitt, leaving their loved ones at home to fret and marvel at their bravery.

And the worst happens:  Ash dies of his wounds in France, leaving Rosie with a yawning hole in her life which she tries to fill with religion.  She and her sisters attempt to give meaning to their lives by volunteering at the hospitals to look after the wounded and are horrified and chastened by the suffering they see and try to alleviate.  Daniel Pitt’s two brothers did not return from South Africa and his widowed mother fears for her remaining two sons, for Daniel has become an Air Ace, and Archie is fighting on the NorthWest Frontier.  Life will never be the same again.  They will never return to the halcyon days of Coronation parties and certainty of place and Empire, and Mrs. McCosh, a gentlewoman who corresponds upon occasion with the King – and his secretary always replies – is horrified at the breakdown of manners and mores which now allow common people to Actually Come to the Front Door.  It’s entirely too awful to think about!

This is a story that is not finished in this book;  there are many characters (some extremely irritating, Rosie’s twitty sister Sophie being a prime example) that still have parts to play and the pace is so leisurely (except for the superb, brutal battle scenes) and the ending so inconclusive that Mr de Bernières MUST be planning a sequel.  I live in hope!

Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews

Red Sparrow is not new;  it was published in 2013, but what impresses me about it enough to write a review is that a sequel has been written, ‘Palace of Treason’, and if it is anything like Red Sparrow’ then we are all in for a fabulous treat.

            Russian Dominika Egarova is a privileged, ambitious and enormously talented young woman who adores her country and believes unquestioningly in its leadership under Mr Putin.  Her parents, a respected university professor and a prodigiously talented concert violinist are more circumspect, having felt and suffered enormous discrimination from lesser talents, purely because the lesser talents had ‘connections’ which would always put them in front.

            Dominika aspires to be a ballerina but eventually is sabotaged, just like her parents by a staged accident that ends her career permanently;  enter her influential uncle, who decides that she could be useful as an intelligence officer/honey trap;  a ‘sparrow’ to lure with her great beauty various victims into impossible and irreversible situations.  Dominika gradually realises that she herself has been coerced and blackmailed into an irreversible situation, but because she is a person of intelligence with an exceptional gift – not to mention a huge thirst for revenge,  she decides to play the long game:  after all, ‘Revenge is a Dish that People of Taste Prefer to Eat Cold’.  Yes indeed.

            Dominika’s masters have no idea what hit them when their instructions for her to lure an American CIA agent into her embrace go horribly awry – for them, and  hapless CIA agent Nathaniel Nash:  he has found that his life has changed forever, whether he wanted it to or not!

            Mr Matthews is well qualified to write a spy novel;  he was a CIA officer for more than 30 years and knows the Spook business from every angle, and what a bonus it is for the reader that he is a smart, witty writer who can generate huge suspense, then relieve the tension with much-needed humour.  His characters are (in the main) very believable – except that the villains are more evil than usual, and definitely uglier (!) and I have to say that there were so many abbreviations, acronyms and cryptonyms that I felt battered about the head – oh, and at the end of every chapter was the recipe for a meal that the characters consumed as part of the action:  nothing wrong with that, except that each recipe had enough cream, butter, oil etc to send us all to an early grave.  Did I mind, though?  Of course not.  I am impatiently awaiting ‘Palace of Treason’ which I trust will be full to bursting with more vengeance, corpses and lethal recipes.  Highly recommended.     

MORE GREAT READS FOR JULY, 2015

Finders Keepers, by Stephen King

                I was enormously disappointed in this book.  Me, a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool, forever fan of Stephen King! I feel as though I have just blasphemed, uttering such an opinion, but it is true:  in ‘Finders Keepers’ the essential, vital element of dread and nail-biting suspense so effortlessly produced in all his novels is initially missing.  The story doesn’t gain impetus or pace until at least halfway through, when the great trio of characters from the brilliant ‘Mr. Mercedes’ (see July, 2014 review below) are reintroduced, for this is part two of a trilogy.   That I am glad to hear, for part three may yet fulfil the promise not realised in Finders Keepers;  then Mr King will be back to his usual superb standard.

            Morris Bellamy fancies himself an intellectual.  He is well-read enough to know that John Rothstein, reclusive writer of some of the greatest contemporary American literature, lives miles away from the nearest neighbour;  has few visitors;  the cleaning lady visits just once a week, making him a prime candidate for an easy break-in and robbery.  Morris and his two bumbling sidekicks don’t take long to rouse Rothstein from his sleep, force from him his safe combination, and rifle its contents.  The only deviation from the original plan being that Rothstein is mouthy:  he dares Morris to use his gun.  So he does.  Morris never could resist a dare, for Morris has a mouth of his own that has dropped him in the brown stuff more than once;  however, he does feel a fleeting regret for he admires Rothstein for the great writer he was (even though it was Morris who sent him into the past tense) – but what a bonus!  In the safe, along with a good chunk of money, are more than a hundred Moleskine notebooks, containing not one but two sequels to Rothstein’s master work.  Morris is well pleased with the night’s events but is starting to be irked by his colleagues, both of whom object strongly to the murder of the old man – so he despatches them, too.  Killing people is as easy as falling off a log, especially if one is a psychopath.

            Morris is lucky to avoid suspicion when the murder victims are eventually discovered – not all in the same place:  he isn’t STUPID.  Instead, he goes to jail for a very long time for another crime entirely, committed when he gets roaring drunk in a bar:  alcohol and Morris are enemies and should stay away from each other at all costs. Fortunately, Morris hides his stash of money and the notebooks (which he can hardly wait to read) before he is sent away for more than thirty years, the thought of the treasure awaiting him sustaining him as he grows into an old man.

            Enter the new tenants of Morris’s old house:  a good family fallen on hard times, for the father was horribly injured by the rampaging Mercedes driver while he stood in line at the Job Fair. The family is at a low financial and emotional ebb – until son Peter finds by accident a mysterious trunk containing money (praise be!) and notebooks filled with writings by one of America’s classic novelists.

            The family is saved from penury and certain breakup by this wonderful windfall – until Morris is released from jail and comes looking for his stash, only to find it gone.  His rage is Olympian, and when he finds the culprit, that sorry sinner will die.

FINALLY, suspense starts to build.  Pete knows he is in trouble and his sister worries about him so much she enlists the services of her friend Barbara, who calls in Finders Keepers, an investigative agency run by K. William Hodges, Det.ret., and Holly Gibney, computer supremo and Aspergers sufferer.  Barbara’s brother, Jerome, has gone to Harvard but he appears during the holidays to lend his particular talents to the investigation, which is just as well;  these three characters carry the story now, and should have appeared much sooner, for they are absolute stars.

And we haven’t heard the last from Brady Hartfield, the infamous Mr Mercedes of Book One:  he lies in hospital with irreparable brain damage, thanks to Holly’s brave intervention.  He is not expected to regain any motor skills, or any faculties at all, really, and Bill Hodges visits him on a regular basis, taking absolute delight at this murderer’s incapacity.  He cannot resist taunting his dull-eyed nemesis, secure in the knowledge that this beast will never kill again.  Or will he?  Roll on Book Three - and goodbye to Morris Bellamy, who just wasn’t up to snuff, but I look forward as always to meeting Jerome, Holly and Det.Ret. K. William Hodges once more for what I hope will be a stunning showdown with resurrected evil.

Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King

Former Detective K. William Hodges is nearing the end of his tether.  Since he retired from the city Police Force, life has lost its edge;  there is nothing meaningful to relieve the boredom of his days, most of which are spent watching inane TV shows, eating junk food and drinking too much. 

Some days are worse than others:  on those days he contemplates suicide and sits in front of his TV with his father’s gun by his side – until the day he gets a letter, purportedly from a man who mowed down a line of jobseekers in a stolen Mercedes, a case that was still unsolved when he retired.

The letter writer seems to know a lot about Bill Hodges, including details of his first name (Kermit); information about his farewell bash (it was a drunken riot of fun!); and even more chilling:  insider knowledge of Bill’s suicidal thoughts.  Is this monster a mind-reader?  How does he know so much? 

The general tenor of the letter is designed to increase Bill’s feelings of worthlessness, to push him into that last act with his father’s gun:  ‘it would be too bad if you started thinking your whole career had been a waste of time because the fellow who killed all those Innocent People ‘slipped through your fingers’.

But you are thinking of it, aren’t you?  I would like to close with one final thought from ‘the one that got away’.  That thought is:

F--- YOU, LOSER.

Just kidding!

Very truly yours,

THE MERCEDES KILLER.’

Once again, Mr King takes the reader into the dark places of minds and hearts with his usual effortless skill.  In this latest opus there is nary a hint of the supernatural for which he is so famous; not a spectre in sight:  instead he writes of the monsters that contemporary society creates who walk among their unsuspecting victims disguised by spurious normality -  as here, where the Mercedes killer is revealed early in the plot as Brady Hartfield, dutiful son of an alcoholic mother and hard worker at two jobs, one as a computer technician, the other driving an ice cream van.  What could be more normal; (even a little sad – the sacrifices that boy makes for his mother!) he works super hard at blending in with everything and everyone – why, he’s practically invisible!

But not infallible.  Contrary to his expectations, his letter has given K. William Hodges (Det.Ret.) a huge boost;  the depressive clouds have parted – his mind, always keen, has something to grapple with again:  start playing the game, Mr Mercedes.  Let’s see who wins!

As always, Mr King provides his main protagonists with great supporting characters, in this case Jerome, Bill’s 17 year old lawn and odd job boy – who just happens to be black, highly intelligent and a computer whizz – but not half as whizzy as Holly, a true PC Maestro who unfortunately is plagued with ‘issues’.  They are Bill’s doughty assistants.  Their dialogue is perfect, crackling and comic (how I wish I could remember some of those one liners!) but it never distracts us from the horror and creeping suspense of a great story.  Mr Mercedes is going to strike again.  But where?  When?  And can they stop him?

Stephen King has once again held a mirror up to contemporary society, and it shows a chilling image, one that is very hard to look at.  Highly recommended.

GREAT READS FOR JULY, 2015

Chappy, by Patricia Grace

It is ten years since Patricia Grace’s last novel, ‘Tu’ was published but her new novel ‘Chappy’ is worth the wait, for Ms Grace thrills her dedicated readers yet again with the beauty of her story, and will doubtless gain thousands more new converts to her unique and loving view of life in New Zealand, then and now, for the Tangata whenua (People of the Land).

            Daniel Knudsen is the son of a Maori mother and a Danish father – the great Dane, his mother’s family call him, because he is a prosperous banker based in Switzerland, where Daniel was born.  Twenty one year-old Daniel is a malcontent;  can’t really settle to anything;  doesn’t know why he is enrolled (at his parent’s suggestion) in a prestigious German university reading German literature – where will that lead him in life?  Until a car accident convinces his exasperated mother to send him back to his Maori kin in New Zealand:  if they can’t whip him into shape, then no-one can.

            As a treat for his sister and mother, Daniel, who is staying with his grandmother Oriwia, makes a written record of the family’s oral history, particularly that of the mysterious Japanese grandfather who died before he was born.  He is fascinated with the diversity of his lineage, and means to unearth as much as possible during his stay, particularly from his ‘double-adopted’ great-uncle Aki who lives alone (‘in the bush, the fool’ says Oriwia).  And Aki is ready to talk into Daniel’s little tape-recorder;  he is ready to unburden himself of the weight of history and family connections:  it is time to speak.

            Aki is a boy of fifteen when he is taken on as a seaman on a ship in the port of Wellington.  He considers himself lucky for these are the Depression years, years of terrible hardship for everybody, and Aki’s family is depending on him to help them when he can – which he does, and he finds the seagoing life and working his way round the world an admirable fit;  it also eases his aching heart, for Aki and his family are no strangers to sorrow, and it is a relief to be away from the ghosts – until he sees one on a corner of the deck one night.

            The ‘ghost’ turns out to be a sick, starving Japanese stowaway, so ill that Aki doesn’t know if he will survive the journey to Wellington, but Aki’s gifts of food and kindness make enough difference to ensure survival and the smuggling of the ‘Chappy’ off the ship, onto a train and up the coast to Aki’s family, an exotic extra gift on top of everything else:  ‘A little Hapanihi, from Chapan.’ 

            All branches of the family take Chappy to their hearts, particularly Oriwia, (even though she and Aki had an agreement to marry made during arithmetic at school) and she decides that it would be an excellent idea for she and Chappy to marry – it’s all very well having an ‘understanding’ with Aki (who already has met the love of his life in Hawaii) but what use is muscle and hard work if it’s always somewhere else?

            Oriwia knows she has found the right man and she and Chappy know great happiness – until Japan bombs Pearl Harbour on December 7^th, 1941, and Chappy is now an enemy alien.

            Ms Grace’s research of this terrible time is exact and sure, conveying with elegant clarity the grief and lasting sorrow of absence and loss;  the mystery of a loving, staunchly loyal man’s motives for staying separated from his family for decades until found, once again, by Aki;  and the endless understanding and forgiveness from a huge family;  huge in number and huge in heart:  Daniel’s trip home to Aotearoa has whipped him into shape, and it didn’t hurt a bit.

  This is a great story:  it was worth waiting for.  Highly recommended.

The Liar’s Key, by Mark Lawrence.

Prince Jalan Kendeth of Red March returns to entertain and delight readers yet again with his utter lack of scruples, eye for the main chance and a remarkable propensity for attracting enemies by the shipload.  His reprehensible behaviour has not improved since Book One ‘The Prince of Fools’ (see 2014 review below);  he still lies, cheats and tries to flee at the first sign of danger to himself (too bad about anyone else!) and the only reason he leaves the comforts of the snowbound inn he and Snori ver Snagason have been wintering in is the usual pursuit by various cuckolded husbands and outraged women who considered themselves his only true love.  Yes, it is time to leave before his enviable looks are spoiled and he has been made to eat certain essential parts of his anatomy, and Snori, an honourable man who still (despite so much proof to the contrary) considers Jalan his friend, is the perfect bodyguard.

            But Snori is on a seemingly hopeless quest, and will not be dissuaded:  he has possession of Loki’s Key – Loki, the trickster God of Norse mythology, Loki the Liar, Loki the Cheat who fashioned a key that can open any door, including that of the Underworld.  Snori means to find that door, open it, and search for his dead family.  He will bring them back, or die in the attempt, for his life is meaningless without them. 

            Needless to say Jalan (right up there with Loki at lying and cheating) is horrified at Snori’s reckless pursuit of a sticky end, but will travel with him (the Norseman might be mad but he’s superb insurance against the dangers on the road) as far as Vermillion.  Even though Jalan is only a minor princeling it will be wonderful to return home, where he can embellish shamelessly the stories of his exploits – and where he will at last be warm.  He thinks.

            Jalan is indeed warm, but the welcome from his family is not;   yet again he is forced to flee from creditors who are tiresomely demanding their money  and he finds to his horror that he misses his travelling companions – Christ on a bike – he must be ill!

            True to form, our cowardly hero undergoes much privation (usually his own fault), battles disturbing visions from mages, necromancers et al as they try to find out what he knows about Loki’s Key and its whereabouts – ‘A key?  What key?  I am a prince of Red March.  What use have I for keys!’  Yeah, right.  Those sorcerers aren’t fooled for a second.  Jalan is the conduit:  when he reunites with Snori, the Key will be theirs.

            It is not easy to create sequels that are successively better with each volume but Mr Lawrence is one great storyteller who seems to manage this feat effortlessly;  he leaves the reader always wanting more, hanging out impatiently for the next episode – which will see Snori and craven companion Jalan exactly where he does not want to be:  in Hel, searching for Snori’s beloved family.  My only complaint about this book is that I shall have to wait at least another year for Mr Lawrence to enlighten me.  I’ll be doing it hard!  Highly recommended. 

Prince of Fools, by Mark Lawrence

Jalan Kendeth is a prince of Red March, a southern kingdom blessed with bountiful harvests and buxom wenches.  He is young, handsome and filled with boundless energy – but not for anything constructive.  He freely admits to being irresponsible, (he is hugely in debt to a sadistic moneylender) feckless, (no woman is safe from his doubtful charms) and famously disinterested in the affairs and business of ruling his country – which is fortunate;  he is tenth in line to his grandmother the Red Queen’s throne and as such would never be considered for the crown.  Also, he is considered the runt of the litter of his family of older brothers, for despite his fine height and good build he is ‘The Little One’.  They dwarf him, every one.

Well, who cares?  Not him:  he’s quite happy to remain one step ahead of the moneylender (and he’s a damn fine runner!), and to worry about consequences for any of his actions after he has acted – until he becomes involved with a huge Norseman, a captive of his grandmother who has been freed because he gave her vital information about a huge and frightening army preparing to attack from the frozen Northern wastes of the Bitter Ice.  Through a dreadful twist of fate – and a ghastly spell concocted by a witch (truly!) – they are bound together by the good and bad strands of the spell and compelled to journey North to try to stop the advance of the Dead King and his ghastly army of corpses.  Snorri ver Snagason, the Norseman, is happy to begin the journey:  his wife and children are captives in the North and he means to rescue them.  Jalan, needless to say, feels exactly the opposite.  Heading purposely towards certain death is not on his agenda, but such is the power of the spell that he has no choice and begins the journey with a quaking heart and loud protestations.

And, regardless of his fears, he and Snorri travel inexorably northwards, most of the time with little food and no money, and depending more than once on ‘the kindness of strangers’, until they reach Ancrath, home of Jorg, Prince of Thorns, who is back in favour – however temporarily -  with his father, King Olidan.  Jalan makes much of his princely status while he can, until Olidan’s Queen tries to bribe him to kill Jorg, but Jalan has no stomach for such a task, especially when he sees the Prince of Thorns and is victim of his thousand yard stare.  No:  it’s time he and the Norseman resumed their journey – fast!

Once again, we are off on a marvellous adventure through Mark Lawrence’s great fantasy of Europe after The Big Bang, the Explosion of a Thousand Suns,  the setting of  his superb ‘Prince of Thorns’ trilogy. 

Jalan Kendeth’s story runs parallel to the action in the first trilogy so he is bound to cross paths again with the deadly Honorous Jorg Ancrath;  it will be fascinating to see if his and Norri’s travails have given him an injection of the courage he honestly acknowledges he lacks, but by the end of Book One our expectations are not high – instead, what is certain is that Mark Lawrence has produced once again a fantasy of the highest order, with characters that readers truly care about, and more action than you can shake a stick at.  There are Unborn, Undead and Unnaturals littering every chapter, not to mention witches, bitches and seers by the score:  what more could a dedicated fantasy reader ask for, except top quality writing and plotting.  Mark Lawrence does it all.  Highly recommended.