Tag: book reviews

A Cat’s Cradle, by Carly Rheilan: A Review

A Cat’s Cradle is not a book for everyone. It is certainly not a book for those who rush to judgement, either of the author or her characters, nor is it a book for those who see the world in black and white, or who turn away from the realities of sexual abuse. (And yet, those things are exactly what the book is about.) It must have been a difficult book to write; it is a difficult book to read.

Mary, seven, lives in a small village where she is viewed suspiciously as an incomer, warned against being  ‘forward’ by her new teacher, and discouraged from making friends by her mother, who considers herself superior to the local people. Mary has no one to play with but her older brothers, who, in the way of older brothers, both torment and ignore her, using any excuse to leave her on her own. Her father has left the family, something her mother is trying to hide while also desperately attempting to keep up appearances.

Fourteen years earlier, Ralph Snedden abused and murdered a girl he was babysitting. He has served his time and been released. On a rare visit to his ailing mother, he encounters Mary. They are drawn to each other: Mary thinks she has found a special, secret playmate; Ralph convinces himself he can control his urges and be the friend Mary craves.

All villages have their secrets, their dark sides which are never spoken of, whether they are rural villages or urban ones. This one is no different. Families have them too, and when everyone is related to almost everyone else, much that is known is never spoken of, never explained. What happened fourteen years earlier is never discussed, but Ralph’s mother is a pariah, abandoned in her failing health by all but the district nurse and an exploitative carer. So many silences, so much shunning, so many layers of judgement and pride – and pain hidden under those layers. Would anything have changed, if honesty and openness had prevailed?

Author Carly Rheilan allows the characters’ words and thoughts and action to tell the story without judgement. Both Mary and Ralph’s decisions and motives are dispassionately shown in the context of their troubled lives, the elements that draw the two together. We are observers of Mary’s loneliness, of the inklings of danger she suppresses in the name of good behavior and politeness, but also of Ralph’s rationalization and self-deception, and his ultimate and inevitable lack of self-control.

Even after the climax of the novel – an ending I won’t spoil – secrets and self-deception remain, and it is up to the reader to interpret  the actions of characters, their compulsion to hurt and exploit or ignore the pain of others, the loss of many sorts of innocence, the desire to not admit to wrongs done or wrongs imposed; the desire not to see. A powerful, searing book for a mature, thoughtful reader.

Purchase link: https://mybook.to/CatsCradle

About the Author

Carly Rheilan was born in Malta and lives in the UK. She was educated in Oxford University (which she hated and left) and then at Brunel (a small-town technological university where she stayed for a PhD). As an academic and a psychiatric nurse she has done research into criminal justice, taught in universities and worked for many years in the NHS. She has children of her own and has also fostered two children with mental health problems.

Her novels address issues at the edges of psychiatry, crime and personal trauma.

A Memory of Murder

Book 5 in the Jan Christopher Series by Helen Hollick

A Memory of Murder is the fifth in Helen Hollick’s Jan Christopher series, set in a less complicated time (at least as far as electronic communication is concerned!). It’s 1973, and Jan (January) Christopher’s work as a library assistant is disrupted by the decorating of the library, and by one particularly annoying workman who won’t take Jan’s engaged status as a deterrent to his attentions. Her Easter holiday plans with her fiancé, DS Laurie Walker, are disrupted too: a young girl has gone missing, and odd-but-significant objects are appearing at Jan’s family home. At least the circus arrives on its annual circuit to provide some distraction!

The details of life in a London suburb in the 1970s (Hollick draws on aspects of her own life in recreating this world) bring a comfortable sense of nostalgia to A Memory of Murder. The pace is in keeping with the time and place, and while the book fits into the ‘cosy’ subgenre, with a limited number of suspects, an amateur sleuth, and minimal on-page violence, the story does have a darker edge. Hollick writes with both humour and a keen sense of human nature; she is a talented writer whose books in any genre don’t disappoint. I look forward to what comes next!

THE JAN CHRISTOPHER MYSTERIES by Helen Hollick

A Memory of Murder – a new  cosy murder mystery to solve –  along with library assistant Jan Christopher, her fiancé, Detective Sergeant Laurie Walker and her uncle, Detective Chief Inspector Toby Christopher.

Set in the 1970s this easy-read cosy mystery series is based around the years when Helen was a north-east London library assistant, using many of her remembered anecdotes, some hilarious – like the boy who wanted a book on Copper Knickers. (You’ll have to read the first book, A Mirror Murder to find our more!)

The mysteries alternate between Jan’s home town, and where Laurie’s parents live – North Devon, (where Helen now lives.)

In this fifth episode, there’s a missing girl, annoying decorators, circus performers, and a wanna-be rock star to deal with. But who remembers the brutal, cold case murder of a policeman?

Buy Link:

Amazon universal: https://mybook.to/AMemoryOfMurder

(e-book available for pre-order: published on 18th May –  paperback release to follow)

Or order from any bookstore(cheaper on Amazon)

Reader’s comments:

“Can I say this is the best one (of the series) yet? YES! For the depth of the writing, the maturity of the main character, and the complexity of the premise. It’s cosy…with a few chills for good measure!” Elizabeth St John, author

“I sank into this gentle cosy mystery story with the same enthusiasm and relish as I approach a hot bubble bath, (in fact this would be a great book to relax in the bath with!), and really enjoyed getting to know the central character…” Debbie Young bestselling cosy mystery author

“Jan is a charming heroine. You feel you get to know her and her love of books and her interest in the people in the library where she works. She’s also funny, and her Aunt Madge bursts with character – the sort of aunt I would love to have had. I remember the 70s very well and Ms Hollick certainly gives a good flavour of the period.” Denise Barnes (bestselling romance author Molly Green)

“A delightful read about an unexpected murder in North East London. Told from the viewpoint of a young library assistant, the author draws on her own experience to weave an intriguing tale” Richard Ashen (South Chingford Community Library)

“Every sentence pulls you back into the early 1970s… The Darling Buds of May, but Devon not Kent. The countryside itself is a character and Hollick imbues it with plenty of emotion” Alison Morton, author

“An enjoyable novella with a twist in who done it. I spent the entire read trying to decide what was a clue and what wasn’t … Kept me thinking the entire time. I call that a success.” Reader’s Review

ABOUT HELEN

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/supernatural series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, ‘Cosy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Mysteries, set in the 1970s.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. She is currently writing about the ghosts of North Devon for Amberley Press, and another, Jamaica Gold for her Sea Witch Voyages.

She lives with her family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon with their dogs and cats, while on the farm there are showjumper horses, fat Exmoor ponies, an elderly Welsh pony, geese, ducks and  hens. And several resident ghosts.

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helen.hollick

Blog: promoting good authors & good reads: https://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com/

Try the Leopard’s Mouth, by Charles Moberly: A Review

Try the Leopard’s Mouth is the story of a man with two dangerous obsessions: one with a country, and one with a woman. Tom Etheridge is a young man who takes a job in Rhodesia towards the end of Ian Smith’s government, at first working as a salaried farm manager but quickly wanting to become his own man and farm his own land. He lacks the capital to do so, but through the intervention of a friend is introduced to the daughter of the owner of the local hotel, the informal club of the white population of the area. Rapidly becoming obsessed with Briony, he trusts her when she tells him she can, through family connections, arrange financing for his farm.

While Tom falls in love with both the land and the woman, both are becoming increasingly dangerous. Briony has her secrets, and between his obsession with her and his desire to farm, he ignores the inconsistencies and nagging doubts, and becomes the owner—perhaps—of Chingwele.

Among the more typical crops of a Rhodesian farm, Tom and Briony are also growing tancava, a (fictional) local plant known as goat’s ear which, when ingested, allows people to function without food or drink for many days. Locally used during illnesses to mitigate dehydration, its use by military or para-military organizations means a potentially large market, one Briony appears eager to pursue.

As the battle for what will become Zimbabwe heightens, Tom is caught in the middle. Slowly he realizes Briony is not who she seems to be, nor is his friend Jamie, not entirely. But just who, exactly, are they?

Moberly neatly parallels Tom’s two obsessions. The white population of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia were said to be ‘more English than the English”, clinging to ideas and behaviours already disappearing in the ‘mother country’. Briony is fixated on her dead mother, wanting to emulate her and her relationship with Briony’s godfather, a man slowly revealed to be both controlling and corrupt. Like the beautifully described Zimbabwean landscape, Tom can wish to be fully a part of her life, but neither she nor the land can truly belong to him.

Sympathetic to the injustices of colonialism but acknowledging the problems and divisions of establishing self-government, Charles Moberly creates a fairly balanced view of a country in a time of reluctant and sometimes violent transition. Tom is both a perpetrator and a victim, a man caught in events and in relationships more complex than he can navigate. Fans of Wilbur Smith are likely to enjoy Try the Leopard’s Mouth.

About the author

Charles Moberly’s novels are different from one another in style and genre. He likes to push boundaries, and to address subjects rarely covered by other writers. If there is a common theme, it is tension arising from misunderstandings.

His blog is https://charlesmoberlyauthor.blogspot.com.

Moberly has written three novels to date: The Scrotum Toad, a satirical comedy (Winner of A Chill with a Book Reader Award); The Corncrake, a historical novel set in 1909-10 and 1914-15, (Winner of a Chill with a Book Premier Award); and Try the Leopard’s Mouth, a romantic thriller with a firm historical base (Winner of a Highly Recommended Award by The Historical Fiction Company).

Exiles, by Miles Watson: A Review

One man: an unwanted, abused orphan who found an escape in books, and in a moment of danger decides to model himself on a fictional character.

One woman: sold to a whorehouse as a child who has found her escape in the discipline and ruthlessness needed to become a captain of a smuggling ship.

A second man: convinced of his superiority, admitting no morality or laws but his own, who has sworn to destroy the despotic government known as The Order.

Eniton Champoleon, Marguerite Bain, Magnus.

Marguerite Bain, Captain of the Sea Dragon, is hired by The Order to take food and water to a tiny island on which a man is exiled. She is to make no contact with them. But Marguerite is not of a mind to do as she is told, and she leaves writing materials in one shipment. The story she is given in return tells of the unwanted orphan who becomes a wanderer and a conman, a tramp – until the day he accepts a free meal in exchange for listening to a political speaker. Caught up in the movement against The Order, he invents a history for himself and a future for the revolutionaries: one that has no basis in reality. But his lies will have a price, when a rising revolutionary called Magnus reveals his hand.

Marguerite, her own past too painful to dwell on, finds herself questioning her own choices as she reads Champoleon’s autobiography. Drawn to him, her interest in his story becomes compulsive, and dangerous.

Written in the style of a political thriller, set in an alternative future Europe, Exiles is also a psychological study of exile both voluntary and involuntary. Champoleon and Marguerite are both set apart from others by the circumstances of their childhoods and the paths taken as adults, whether by choice or by fate. Neither have anyone to trust, or love. Magnus, who believes himself an Übermensch, to use Nietzsche’s term, has no use for humanity except as tools for his vow to overturn The Order. All three have fictionalized their own lives, shaping them into an image individual to each character, but separate, alone, untouchable.

Dante in Exile by Domenico Petarlini
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The novella, while capable of being read as a standalone, is also backstory for Watson’s earlier book Deus Ex. Much of it is told in great detail through Champoleon’s biographical writing – a technique I found palled after a while. But it does have the effect of distancing the reader from Champoleon, leading to the question of whether or not any of what he writes is true, or simply another story.  

Exiles has many twists and reversals, in good thriller style, and the tension and action builds throughout. Character voices are distinct. Watson is a writer of talent and imagination, with deeper themes beyond the surface stories of his books.

Miles Watson holds undergraduate degrees in Criminal Justice and History and a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, and served in law enforcement for nearly ten years before moving to Los Angeles, where he has worked on over 200 episodes of television and half a dozen feature films. But his first and last passion is writing.

Dying for Work

Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl, by Samantha Wilcoxson.

Imagine you are a young working-class woman in 1920s USA. Imagine you have elderly relatives to help support, and are offered a well-paying job in your home town. You would, of course, take it.

Imagine that job will kill you. Not just you, but many of your friends. And the company will deny the dangers, smear your name, conduct false medical tests, and conceal others, while all the time ensuring that their lab personnel have all the protected equipment available at the time.

You and your friends were disposable.

This piece of history, played out in Illinois and New Jersey, is the focus of Samantha Wilcoxson’s Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl: a fictionalized biography of Catherine Wolfe Donohue, a worker at the Ottawa, Illinois Radium Dial factory. Catherine and her coworkers, all young women, were hired to paint watch dials with radium paint, so that the numbers would glow in the dark. To create the fine point needed on the brush for the exacting, precise work, they were told to run the brush point, loaded with paint, between their lips. One by one, they began to sicken and die.

Wilcoxson begins Catherine’s story in the late summer of 1921, when she is nineteen. Fall is in the air, garden produce is being harvested, and the slow rhythms of small town life are evoked in a few brief, effective paragraphs. An advertisement for girls to work at Radium Dial is advertised in the local paper; Catherine applies and is hired.

https://www.xlsemanal.com/conocer/historia/20190131/envenenamiento-radiactivo-radio-mujeres-guerra-mundial.htmlEsther MateoKate Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For a while, the job seems wonderful. The pay is good and the camaraderie with other girls creates close friendships. But then the illnesses start, and the deaths: horrible deaths, in many cases.

Catherine is not one to rock the boat, but she begins to ask questions. The management of Radium Dial deny any relationship with the paint; a fact claimed in Ross Mulner’s book Deadly Glow but not mentioned in Wilcoxson’s is that in some cases the women’s symptoms were blamed on syphilis, effectively destroying both their credibility and their reputations.

When her friends continue to sicken and die, painfully and gruesomely, Catherine—now married—has also fallen ill. Wilcoxson does not shy away from the details of the illnesses, primarily bone cancers, that these women contracted. With the support of her husband, eventually she and others sue the company, a nearly hopeless cause.

The devastation that radium poisoning caused to women and their families is clearly told, and the ground-breaking fight for compensation that Donohue helped win with her deathbed testimony is an important part of the history of workers’ rights. But perhaps because the dialogue often didn’t quite ring true to me, or perhaps because the story is told over twenty years, and is therefore necessarily episodic, while I felt for the destruction of lives and the injustice of their treatment intellectually, I never quite connected emotionally with the character: I was observing Catherine’s life, not immersed in it.

Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl is a solid work, historically accurate and a window into a terrible exploitation of workers in the name of profits and a fight for workers’ rights—rights which are under siege in many places today as profit, not people, remains the focus of too many companies. Could this happen again? Under a slightly different guise, I am afraid so.

Samantha Wilcoxson

At the End of All Things

Wolf Weather, by Miles Watson: A Review

Imagine if you had lived a life of cruel discipline from the time you were a child, and were constantly called upon to do battle for an emperor you had never seen. Now imagine that emperor orders you far off the map, into a frozen land where the sun never shines and the only light comes from the grinning moon. Imagine that once there, hundreds of miles from the warmth of civilization and the sun, you encounter supernatural beasts somewhere between wolf and man; cunning creatures who slaughter your comrades and lay siege to the fort you have built with your own hands. Imagine that one by one, your fellow legionnaires are torn to bits and consumed, or worse yet, turned into beasts themselves…until at last, only you remain. The sole survivor and inhabitant of Fort Luna. Now imagine that’s where the story begins.

I read most of Wolf Weather with a smile of appreciation on my face, and that is rare. Author Miles Watson’s ability to create a setting and a structured world in the first few pages of a very short novella was the start of that appreciation; he takes the familiar and modifies it just a bit, enough for you to know this is a fantasy world, but not so much you need pages of exposition or explanation to understand it. The character of Crowning, the narrator, is equally well-drawn: again, he is both familiar and unique.

But beyond my admiration for Watson’s deft, spare creation of another world was also respect for his ability to ask hard questions about what a man at the edge of existence might do, facing something unimaginable that his mind cannot fully realize. Crowning is a man defined by discipline; the tenets of the military to which he belongs are literally written on his skin: by discipline we live, by discipline we die. Even when he is the only soldier left alive, in a fortress under perpetual night at the arctic edge of the world, he maintains the discipline by which he lives. Even though a horror lives in the darkness, a horror that has taken all his companions. Some are dead. Some are not, but neither are they living men any longer.

But Crowning is only human, and when in exhaustion he forgets part of his routine in his endless battle against that horror,  that breach of discipline has consequences—and the central question of the novella is made clear: when we let go of the expectations of civilization, of the disciplines required by communal life, by society; when we embrace ‘at the end of all things’ the darkness and the desires that run in the tracings of our blood—what might happen? Unbridled passion can destroy, but it can also engender.

Deceptively simple, Wolf Weather is a story I won’t soon forget.

Miles Watson

An Imagined History

The Scots of Dalriada: Fergus Mór by Rowena Kinread

Feargus Mòr Mac Earca may have been a 5th century ruler of Dál Riata, the Gaelic kingdom that encompassed parts of modern-day Scotland and Ireland. While there are doubts about his historical authenticity – think of him as somewhat more historical than Arthur and at about the same level as Ragnar Lodbrok—the kings of Scotland from Kenneth MacAlpin onward claim descent. With few contemporary records to go by—most of what is written about Fergus Mòr is from many generations later—author Rowena Kinread is free to imagine and enlarge his story.

The jealousies and conflicts among the rulers and potential heirs to various 5th century kingdoms are believable, a portrait of the complex and shifting loyalties among the boys of one family, when any one of them could be determined to inherit the kingdom: it went to the most worthy, not the oldest, by the decision of a council. Brother could turn against brother—or stand by his side in support. Nor does Kinread shy away from the violence and brutality of the time, whether in war or in casual violence against both men and women—and from both men and women.

The book’s style is unusual, passages of present-tense, omniscient narration interspersed with scenes that are largely dialogue. (I did wonder if Kinread was attempting to echo the way some English translations of the Ulster cycle are presented, the way Dorothy Dunnett echoed first the sagas and then ecclesiastic writings in King Hereafter, her imagined history of Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney.) Within the narration are some lovely descriptions: ‘the leather bridles…polished until they shine like dogs’ noses.’ While most of the book’s action unfolds in a linear timeline, the first eight chapters do not follow this pattern—pay attention to the chapter headings! 

The Scots of Dalriada: Fergus Mór is published by Vanguard Press, one of the imprints of Pegasus, a hybrid publisher in the UK. Their editorial team has done the author no favours. Typographical errors are too frequent – I counted six within seventeen pages. The use of modern or otherwise anachronistic terms—a pregnant character refers to ‘the first trimester’—jolted me out of the story many times, as did inaccuracies in the setting: ‘vultures circling’. (Ravens, yes. Vultures in the northern UK, no.)  

Kinread’s imagined history of Fergus Mòr’s rise to power and the eventual kingship of Dalriada has a good story at its heart, in places effectively told. A better editor could have made it shine.

Myths in the Making: The Winter Knight by Jes Battis

Myths are mutable things, changing, overlapping, blurring—but persistent. They shape tropes and memes, underlie both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we are told, and may create, at a level we may only barely understand,  our expectations of the world.

But what if you are a myth?

In a Vancouver where not all places (or inhabitants) belong to the world-as-we-know-it, myths live. Valkyries, Norns, the men and women of Arthurian legend. They are college students, translators, administrators, musicians, living, on the surface, apparently normal 21st century lives. But they have not forgotten who they are, their past lives recalled in snatches of memory and dream and stories told, and their power remains.

A series of grisly murders leads Wayne and Hilde deeper into their family stories, the repeating patterns that have shaped each iteration of their lives. Not every recurring story is the familiar one—Vancouver is not Camelot, but something closer to the castles and forest and lakes of medieval poems like Gawain and the Green Knight, with their potent, obscure symbols, multiple interpretations, and characters largely forgotten in recent retellings. And like those medieval stories, The Winter Knight is both a story of a surface quest, a tangible challenge, and a story we’d now call ‘coming of age’, of internal battles and internal change.

There’s always someone who goes after the beast and tries to tame it. Some knight who thinks they’ll turn it into a trophy. But you can’t. It’s as old as shadows, as old as flickers on the cave wall, as old as graves. You can’t bind that. Only live with it.

Battis creates moods and settings with a light touch, using a few words masterfully – and creates both a contemporary and a timeless sense to the story. Battles are fought with both the tools of the past and the tools of the present, and the two are sometimes melded into one. Ultimately, The Winter Knight is a hopeful story, for all its deep understanding of the difficulties and compromises of accepting the expectations of family, the stories that shape us and the pieces of each we keep and discard. Myths are mutable: perhaps, even when we are the myth, fate is not all.

The Winter Knight is published by ECW Press: https://ecwpress.com/products/the-winter-knight

Water and Blood, by Rik Lonsdale

A Review

When disaster strikes, you want your family around you—don’t you?

When the collapse of an Antarctic ice sheet causes catastrophic, world-wide flooding and the disintegration of society, Lucy Marchand thinks she’s safe on her family’s smallholding in the west of England. But family tensions that could be ignored when they were buffered by a larger society begin to become evident when her older brother Ben flexes his way to a position of power within the family.

Set against a dystopic world all too easy to imagine—and already real in parts of the globe—Water and Blood is a psychological study of narcissism, manipulation, and the responses of a family trying to survive, and trying too to believe that one of their own has their best interests in heart.

The choices made by each individual in on the smallholding are distinct, and the reasons behind their decisions believable and layered. Each person has a point at which they either say ‘no more’ or embrace the philosophy of the leader. Many things influence that choice, especially when it becomes a question of your own life or death. As winter deepens and starvation threatens, does morality matter at all?  

I read Water and Blood in two days, and found it hard to put down. Well-paced, it asks some probing questions about how societies, even in microcosm, work. A solid debut novel, Water and Blood is out March 22. My thanks to the author for an advance review copy.

All purchase links at https://linktr.ee/riklonsdale

The Silver Crystal, by Ryan Lanz


The Silver Crystal is the first of The Red Kingdom trilogy, introducing the three major characters of the series: Rhael, a bounty hunter; Phessipi, the leader of a hated and persecuted minority, and Levas, a high-ranking officer of The Order. In a medieval world, the ‘Corrupted’ – men and women with abilities that go beyond those common to all people—are hunted down and mutilated in a way that destroys their extra powers. Hunting ‘Corrupted’ for The Order is Rhael’s job, when we meet him at the beginning of the story.

The Silver Crystal is more character-focused than action-focused, although it has its share of action too. In this first book, the usual hero’s journey of fantasy is given a twist, and the other main characters grapple with the decisions and consequences of leadership and rebellion – costs both personal and professional. Heavy on dialogue, including some passages of banter that are meant to lighten the mood but to this reader stood out as devices designed to do exactly that, not integral to the story – the story still moves along at a good pace, the point of view alternating between Rhael and Phessipi, until fairly far into the book, when Levas is introduced.

This late introduction of the third main character felt a little off-balance, but as this is the first book of a trilogy, in the context of the full story it makes sense. The world-building is sketched lightly but sufficiently, and characters fit their roles. Rhael’s sidekick, Gobo, might provide light relief for some readers, but I found him annoying, like an Ewok in Star Wars. (But then, other people love Ewoks.) Overall, an intriguing fantasy suitable in my judgement for readers twelve and above, with themes of discovery, acceptance, and understanding of differences running through the story.