elementarymydear's Reviews (967)

 This was a book with an identity crisis. At the start, we’re presented with an enigmatic, charismatic woman, the widow of a communist dictator, who is standing trial for crimes she claimed her husband committed without her knowledge. At the end, we’re presented with a Handmaid’s-Tale-style commentary on state control of women’s reproduction. Did we successfully get from A to Z? I’m not sure.

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The opening of the book was really strong. Laura, the main character, is a young lawyer in the UK who grew up in the fictional country of Yanussia. When the former First Lady of said country, Marija Popa, is put on trial, and Laura’s company is hired to defend her, she is put on the case purely because her citizenship means they won’t have to wait for a Visa. As she meets Marija we begin to see that things are not all as they seem, and that Laura’s past is more intertwined with the Popa regime than she realised.

So the first third of the book? Brilliant. Due to the framing device we already know (or can guess) how the trial will end, but there’s plenty of intrigue, plenty of mystery, and I am stoked and ready for a legal battle for the ages. Except we never got to the legal battle. All of that happened off-screen, and instead we went through a meandering look through Laura’s past until the final twist came.

I have very strong opinions about what makes a good twist. The perfect plot twist in my eyes is the end of season 1 of The Good Place, and it’s a great comparison for other thriller-style twists. My rule is that for a plot twist like this to be convincing, then a) we must have enough information that retrospectively it’s the only thing that makes sense and b) it has to be a surprise. Too often the first part of my rule is ignored, and that was the case here. Without spoiling the ending, while there were a couple of bread crumbs, it didn’t really match either plotwise or tonally with the rest of the book. In fact, it felt like the start of a whole other book.

This book was a mixed bag for me. There was the start of two great books in there, but ultimately they didn’t combine to make an even better one.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 

I was so excited by the premise of this book, and the historical setting it explored. It was great to see the world of cultural resistance in war-time Berlin, the underground swing movement, and the people who participated.

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Unfortunately, the book itself was a bit of a disappointment. The main character, Charlie, didn’t have any strong motivations or a compelling character arc. The book spanned nearly seven years but there wasn’t even much of a sense that she had aged, let alone any other indication that she had any sort of emotional journey. There was no emotional connection to the main romance, which sort of came out of nowhere, and was undermined by the fact it was clear Charlie felt she was with her second choice (which is a shame, as Renate – the love interest she ends up with – was the most compelling character in the whole book and should have had more airtime).

While the setting was an interesting one, and the main draw of the book, it ultimately didn’t have much emotional or dramatic impact on the characters until the final chapters. At the start of the book Charlie is relatively oblivious to world around her, but the closest we got to any actual reconciliation with that was when she first realised that Jewish people were being targeted, and then we were told she was sad when her Jewish friends moved away. It would almost have been more compelling if she had started from a place of agreeing with the “values” (Kinde, Küche, Kirche) drilled into her, and started to question them. Instead she had a very vague understanding of Nazis-are-bad the whole way through.

In our modern minds, the figures and symbols of the Third Reich have (quite rightfully so) become synonymous with evil and villainy, and it felt like the author took that for granted rather than show the characters having that understanding or epiphany. I desperately wanted Charlie to have at least a small moment of righteous anger, if not actively trying to do something about the world she was in, even on a tiny scale. At best the setting felt divorced from the characters, but at worst it made the characters almost unrealistically oblivious.

This was a book with a lot of potential, but ultimately it didn’t hold any emotional or dramatic impact for me.

Thank you to the publishers for sending me a copy for review. All opinions are my own.

 

 This book had me gripped from the very first page! It was completely engrossing, and I couldn’t put it down.

The story is based on one of the lesser known Grimm’s fairytales, and it manages to keep that whimsical feel the whole way through. It can be hard to weave the weirder aspects of a fairytale into a modern novel, but Briar did a fantastic job. It was weird and wonderful and a bit over the top, but it all worked brilliantly together.

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The characters were all fantastic. First we have Ingrid, a young princess who is cunning, headstrong, and always manages to get her way. Then there is her girlfriend, former priestess Lilura, who has secrets of her own but is quietly determined to protect those dearest to her. Our final protagonist is Soren, a prince who finds himself fighting for Ingrid’s hand in marriage but has his own anxiety to battle with. They made a great trio of main characters, and the relationships between them evolved very naturally over the course of the book.

The plot takes all sorts of twists and turns, and is always the perfect balance of predictable and surprising. There were some reveals I had started to suspect, but wasn’t 100% sure about, and there were a couple that took me completely by surprise. Exactly as I like it! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, but I never felt like I was lost in the story.

Some of the writing took a little while to get used to – it was a bit jarring to have what we think of as modern romantic terminology in a high fantasy book – but it suits the tone of the story and before long you stop noticing it. The perspective switches between the three main characters, but it was always clearly marked and even if it hadn’t been they have three very distinct voices which I really appreciated.

I had a brilliant time reading this book, and I can’t wait to read more from the author!

I received a free copy of this book to read for the WriteHive Indie Ink awards. This review is written separately to my feedback as a judge, which is based on different criteria. 

 In ALGO, Casey Milone imagines a future where every aspect of life is dictated by artificial intelligence. The main character, Hanna, strikes up a romance with a co-worker, who introduces her to an underworld of rebellion.

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Milone has done a brilliant job of creating a full-realised future, with the perfect balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar. As with the best speculative fiction, there were enough similarities with present-day society to give a very real sense of dread. All of the things that were different made complete sense, and spoke to many of the cultural shifts we’re seeing today. I found the themes of how artificial intelligence stifles creativity to be particularly interesting, as it’s an aspect of AI that rarely gets discussed.

The writing and characters were very compelling, particularly Hanna and her main love interest Xin-Lao. You couldn’t help but root for them, and the story was incredibly engaging from the first page to the last. It’s quite a short book and I just wished there was more of it! It would have been great to flesh out the world and the characters even more.

Thank you to the author for providing me with a copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 Alison Weir is fast becoming an auto-buy author for me, and this is another excellent entry in her string of recent historical fictions.

Elizabeth of York is a fascinating and often overlooked figure who was central to the end of the Wars of the Roses. As older sister of the Princes in the Tower, niece of Richard III, husband of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII, her life ties together some of the most enduring figures in British history but its rare that her perspective is given.

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This is where Alison Weir really comes into her own. As a historian she draws on every source we have, creating a fully-fledged picture of Elizabeth. Every aspect of her was brought to life, from the fear and terror of her childhood, her strength and conviction as she became her father’s heir, and her leadership as queen. I hadn’t appreciated until this book quite how vital her marriage to Henry VII was to ending the Wars of the Roses, and by putting her at the centre, Weir has given a more complete version of this story than is usually told.

One of the pitfalls of this particular subgenre – fictionalised versions of a historical figures life – is that it can be hard to create a satisfying character arc and strong character motivations, but that wasn’t a problem here. I could root for Elizabeth from the very start, and her motivations were always clear which I really appreciated.

On top of that, Nicky Diss provides truly excellent narration, creating an immersive listening experience and a story that you can’t stop listening to. It’s a very long audiobook, much longer than I would usually go for, but it was a joy to listen to the whole time, never dragging or feeling too long.

Alison Weir continues to write the best of historical fiction, and I can’t wait to see who’s story she tells next.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.

 

 A Marvellous Light was one of the best books I read last year, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel!

One of my favourite things about the first book is how Marske has built this fantasy world, and she continues this in A Restless Truth. As different aspects of the magical world are revealed to the characters they are revealed to us too, and she expanded on what we saw in the first book brilliantly. While the story is relatively ‘small’ – all of the action takes place on one ship’s voyage – we still get a sense of the wider world the characters are a part of. The middle book of a trilogy is often the weakest one, having the primary job of connecting the strong opening and the epic finale, but in this case we never lost the sense of the book having its own story that slots into the wider arc.

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Perhaps the most talked-about aspect of this book is that we have different main characters from the first one. In my upcoming video review (shameless plug!) I’m going to talk a bit more about how the shift from an M/M couple to an F/F couple has changed people’s perspective. While it may be frustrating for some people to no longer have their favourite characters as the protagonists, Robin and Edwin are very much still a part of the world, constantly being referred to.

The main character in this book is Robin’s sister Maud, and as she is a character we’re already familiar with, the transition is not as jarring as might be expected. It’s a very natural continuation, shifting perspectives slightly as more characters get their own adventures and romances. Maud is a brilliant main character, with a fresh voice, fresh problems, and a very compelling love interest. As the book is set in the early 20th Century, switching from a male to female perspective also helps us to see and meet more people in this world. In Edwardian England, men and women moved in very different circles and had very different careers and daily routines, so this switch introduces us to a whole new host of characters and friendships. It’s also in keeping with what I think is one of the strongest aspects of this series. One of the things I loved in the first book was the idea that there are a plethora of ways to cast magic, but most are cast aside in favour of the methods deemed best by upper-class English men. Through Maud’s eyes we get to see a little bit more of what’s out there, and I can’t wait to read even more next time!

This is a really fantastic series, with lots of exciting things happening in this book! I can’t wait for the final instalment, and to find out how it’s all going to end.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 It’s rare that a short story collection contains hit after hit, but every single story in this book was a brilliant read. This is the sort of book where you can tell every single sentence has been carefully crafted for maximum effect. The writing is beautiful and immersive, without ever being overwhelming.

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My stand-out favourites were ‘Peach Cobbler’ and ‘How to Make Love to a Physicist’, closely followed by ‘Instructions for Married Christian Husbands’. They each had different writing styles, suited to the story they were telling, and created a story not just in what was said but also what was unsaid. Although the characters themselves may not be honest with us as the reader, we can still see the depths and nuances of everyone in this book.

While the stories may not be explicitly interconnected, and they each stand out distinctively from each other, there is still a strong sense of cohesion across the whole book. There isn’t one story that stands out as ‘different’ from the others; they all fit together without any Love Actually-style cross-pollination.

I had heard only good things about this collection prior to reading it, and I can confirm that everything I’ve heard is true. This is one of the best short story collections out there, and is a must-read.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a copy for review. All opinions are my own.