Book Confession: Re-Reading the Book

Any true reader knows that books are our friends. They distract us from our everyday life and transport to fantastical worlds where the perfect guy is a gallops ride away, great mystical powers rely on one person fighting the odds and vampires stalk the night. Reading is a joy and sometimes there’s nothing better than diving into a world so different from our own to pass a few hours. Even better when that book is part of a series where we can get to know the characters over several adventures, or if it’s an old favourite that you’ve read numerous times. Re-reading favourite books can be a balm – a comfort to catch up with old friends. Recharge the reading batteries. 

However. I haven’t re-read a single book since I started this book blog 18 months ago. It’s not that I haven’t wanted too, but my TBR pile has grown so much that I keep wanting to get that under some sort of control before picking up a book I’ve read many times before. So all those books I used to read once a year or so, with their spines cracked and corners slightly ruffled are sitting feeling neglected. Not one single re-read have I done in the last 18 months and I miss it. These are old friends like The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice, Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong, Watership Down by Richard Adams, the Obernewtyn series by Isobelle Carmody, Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders. These are all books I kept because I enjoy the story, love the world and they moved me in some way. I miss them. Like old friends who’s new address and phone number I’ve misplaced.

So I am thinking I will try to re-read some of these books throughout the year – and I will even review them on here. The reviews may be slightly different than normal purely because I have read these books many times and would automatically be giving them 10 out of 10 – but necessarily because they are the best books in the world but because I love so much.

I have to ask other book bloggers out there if they re-read books often? Do you review them, if you do? What’s your opinion on re-reading? I know many bloggers are fast readers (I used to think I was fast until I discovered people who could read 6 books a week easily!) – does that help squeeze in re-reads? Or have you never read a book twice? I want to know what people think! J

The Last Four Things

The Last Four Things (The Left Hand of God 2)

-          Paul Hoffman

Publisher: UK - Penguin

Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. These are the Last Four Things. Now there are Five. Meet Thomas Cale. Returning to the Sanctuary of the Redeemers, Thomas Cale is told by the Lord Militant that the destruction of mankind is necessary; the only way to undo God's greatest mistake. Cale seemingly accepts his role in the ending of the world: fate has painted him as the Left Hand of God, the Angel of Death. Absolute power is within his grasp, the terrifying zeal and military might of the Redeemers a weapon for him to handle as simply as he once used a knife. But perhaps not even the grim power that the Redeemers hold over Cale is enough - the boy who turns from love to poisonous hatred in a heartbeat, the boy who switches between kindness and sheer violence in the blink of an eye. The annihilation that the Redeemers seek may well be in Cale's hands - but his soul is far stranger than they could ever know.

It’s been a while since I read any fantasy books so when this dropped through my door, I figured it was the gods of reading telling it was time I returned to it. The Last Four Things is actually the second book in a series (trilogy?) and luckily I had read the first book, The Left Hand of God some time ago, but I have to confess I didn’t remember much of it. Luckily there is a quick recap in the beginning to get you up to speed.

The whole novel follows Thomas Cale, and to a less extent his friends Vague Henri and Kleist as they alternatively fight for and against the extreme religious order, the Redeemers, that brought them up to be its soldiers. Much of this story follows Cale as his slowly takes control of the Redeemer army and starts winning their wars (yes, wars – they are fighting on many fronts). In this way, Cale reminds me much of Ender from Ender’s Game – a young genius with a talent for warfare given free reign over battle. However, Cale is also broken hearted and as such seeks to isolate himself as much as possible. Unfortunately, this means I never really connected with him – or any character really. Most seemed very emotionless and even the friendship between Cale and Vague Henri never rang true for me – I never really felt why Henri was with Cale.

However, despite this there are some great battle scenes with some detailed descriptive passages. And this is dirty warfare where mistakes are made on both sides. In fact one element I did enjoy about the whole story was the impact of chance seemed to have – it felt chaotic rather than orchestrated and that meant it felt realistic – after all no one person has complete control over everything in reality. The style of writing as well was unique, feeling more like a story told by the campfire with personality and asides injected which made it stand out from other fantasy.

While I enjoyed the style of writing and the action scenes, I did miss out on any emotional resonance. However, I would be curious to see where the story goes next!

Recommended for fans of Robert Jordan and Tad Williams. 7 out of 10     

My Book Haul/In My Mailbox

The Story Siren hosts a weekly meme where bloggers can share what goodies they've purchased/received this week. If you get a chance head over to The Story Siren and check out what everyone is up to!
I've had a very good week - and once again managed not to spend any money - my bank manager will wonder if I'm feeling ok! :)

Unclean Spirits - M.L.N. Hanover
Publisher: UK - Orbit

Jayné Heller thinks of herself as a realist, until she discovers reality isn't quite what she thought it was. When her uncle Eric is murdered, Jayné travels to Denver to settle his estate, only to learn that it's all hers -- and vaster than she ever imagined. And along with properties across the world and an inexhaustible fortune, Eric left her a legacy of a different kind: his unfinished business with a cabal of wizards known as the Invisible College.
Led by the ruthless Randolph Coin, the Invisible College harnesses demon spirits for their own ends of power and domination. Jayné finds it difficult to believe magic and demons can even exist, let alone be responsible for the death of her uncle. But Coin sees Eric's heir as a threat to be eliminated by any means -- magical or mundane -- so Jayné had better start believing in something to save her own life.
Aided in her mission by a group of unlikely companions -- Aubrey, Eric's devastatingly attractive assistant; Ex, a former Jesuit with a lethal agenda; Midian, a two-hundred-year-old man who claims to be under a curse from Randolph Coin himself; and Chogyi Jake, a self-styled Buddhist with mystical abilities -- Jayné finds that her new reality is not only unexpected, but often unexplainable. And if she hopes to survive, she'll have to learn the new rules fast -- or break them completely...

I got a bit of a random email last week from Orbit UK, telling me that although I hadn't the newsletter subscription giveaway, they were going to send me a copy of the book anyway! Either way, I'm happy I've got a copy of Unclean Spirits as I've want to read it for a while and in fact have already finished it - expect a review during the week!

The Watcher - Charles Maclean
Publisher: UK - Penguin

Friday rush-hour. Martin Gregory, laden with packages, just manages to catch the 4.48 train. Tomorrow is his wife's birthday - he has a surprise in store - and he plans to devote the weekend to her and their beloved dogs. But Saturday morning, Martin rises early and does something so horrific, so inexplicable and so out of character his only option is to run . . .And from this shocking incident the journey begins. With the help of a therapist he can't trust, and friends who no longer trust him, Martin's quest for meaning takes him down shifting realities and twisted corridors of time into the deepest recesses of the human mind. It is a world of menace and obsession from which neither he - nor the reader - can escape, for Martin Gregory is either lost in a dark maze of madness and horror, or frighteningly sane.

This came through in the post from Penguin last Saturday but I didn't get a chance to add it to last weeks IMM. I haven't read any true horror for a while so this will be a little different for me!

Home Improvement: Undead Edition - Edited by Charlaine Harris & Toni L.P.Kelner
Publisher: Ace

There's nothing like home renovation for finding skeletons in the closet or otherwordly portals in the attic. Now, for any homeowner who's ever wondered, "What's that creaking sound?" or fans of "how to" television who'd like a little unreality mixed in with their reality shows, editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner return with an all-new collection of the paranormal perils of Do-It-Yourself.

This was a swap and I like the occasional anthology - it makes a nice break from some heavy reading!

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Publisher: UK - Quirk

A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

This looks particularly spooky - and I'm overjoyed to have won a hardback copy from Kay at Dead Book Darling and Quirk!

Hell Train - Christopher Fowler

Publisher: Solaris

Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:

What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of?

What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them?

Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men?

And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself?

The cover of this is just soo spooky. I won this from the wonderful Suzanne Johnson - blogger at Preternatura and debut author come April. She has a great blog and I can't wait until Royal Streets comes out!

The Accidental Vampire - Lynsay Sands
Publisher:UK - Gollancz

Ever since an accident turned her into a knockout vamp, Elvi Black's been catching her z's in a coffin, staying out of the sun, and giving up garlic. She knows there's more to being undead than what she saw in Dracula, but she can't very well ask her mortal friends about proper biting etiquette. But when her neighbors placed a personal ad for her in the local paper, she never imagined she'd meet Victor Argeneau, a vampire who could have his pick of any woman; dead or alive.
Rich, powerful, and dropdead gorgeous, Victor's the perfect man for a novice neck-biter like Elvi. He's willing to teach her everything he knows, but he'll have to do it fast. Someone's out to put a stake through her new vamp life, and only Victor can keep her safe - and satisfied; for all eternity.

I won this from the lovely ladies, Jess and Donna at Book Passion For Life - it looks like quite a yummy romance!

Quite a good week for me! What did you pick it up this week?

On My Wishlist #75

This is a meme from Book Chick City. There are so many books out there that I want to read that this is the only way I can keep track! This week there are some books I've had my eye on for a while - hopefully I can pick them up soon! :)
Can you guess what the theme is week? :)

Grave Memory (Alex Craft 3) - Kalayna Price

Publisher: UK - Berkley (July 2012)

As a Grave Witch, Alex solves murders by raising the dead. While she’s always been on friendly terms with Death himself, lately things have become a lot more personal. But the personal takes a backseat to the professional when a string of suicides occur in Nekros City. The shades have no memory of the days leading up to their brutal endings, so despite the very apparent suicides, this is murder. And searching for the answers might mean Alex won’t have a life to remember at all...

Having loved the ALex Craft book, Grave Witch and about to start on the second, I want the third book lined up and ready to read! Alas it's not out until July...

Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin 1) - Robin LaFevers

Publisher: Anderson (June 2012)

 Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.
Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

I have to admit the cover attracted me to this - at first it seems like a period romance but then you notice the cross-bow (and who doesn't look cool with a cross-bow?). The story sounds like a cool assassin, politics and god blessed mix which I personal think sounds great!

Graveminder - Melissa Marr

Publisher: HarperCollins

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."
Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker—in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past—can set things right once the dead begin to walk. Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that what awaits her may be far worse: dark secrets, a centuries-old bargain, a romance that still haunts her, and a frightening new responsibility—to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.

This sounds like a really creepy story - plus the author has one of the best names in world! :-)

What are you wishing for this week?

Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth Review

Tales of Terror From The Tunnel’s Mouth

-          Chris Priestley

Publisher: UK – Bloomsbury

Robert Harper is going back to school, and it is the first railway journey he has ever made alone. And it is not a very usual sort of railway journey. The train stops at the mouth of a tunnel and in order to help while away the time a strange woman dressed in white tells Robert stories. But these are not the kind of stories normally told to a child. soon Robert is both entranced and terrified by the strange woman and the macabre stories.

Once again Chris Priestley has managed to create an enthralling collection of tales that feels both fresh and inherited from the Victorian era. Every story feels like a ghost tale you used to tell at sleepovers to scare your friends with each one attempting to top the last. At the same time each story feels unique and original, painting some truly macabre images in your mind. At least one will have you wondering about some of the everyday elements in your life and giving them a second glance...the crack in my ceiling has suddenly turned menacing rather than another DIY chore...

The thread pulling these stories together this time is a boys train journey and the mysterious woman in white who entertains him while they are held up at the entrance to the tunnel. Once again the teller of tales feels just as intimidating as the tales themselves which I enjoy as it makes me not only anxious to see what the next story is about but wanting to know what the point of the stories is.

There is a strong moral core to these stories with the wicked, impatient or lazy punished – adults and children alike this time. Firmly set in the Victorain era, the morals can still be relevant today – tell the truth, respect the dead, don’t steal, be good to your parents.  Having read two other tales of terror I also enjoyed the subtle nod to the other books in the epilogue and suggested that perhaps there is a link between them all.

In all this was a fun read for the dark evenings and cold weather, which make an excellent background to these spooky stories. Extra marks for some beautifully spooky covers in this reprinted selection!

Recommended for fans of Christopher Pike and LJ Smith. 7.5 out of 10

Throwback Thursday #42 - Nightfall

This is a great feature that Melissa at My World...in words and pictures has been doing for a while and I wanted to jump on board! There are plenty of books out there I desperately want...

But what about all those wonderful books that are ALREADY on my shelves?

 

Nightfall - Ellen Connor

Growing up with an unstable, often absent father who preached about the end of the world, Jenna never thought in her wildest nightmares that his predictions would come true. Or that he would have a plan in place to save her-one that includes the strong, stoic man who kidnaps and takes her to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest.
The mysterious ex-Marine named Mason owes a life-debt to Jenna's father. Skilled and steadfast, he's ready for the prophesied Change, but Jenna proves tough to convince. Until the power grid collapses and mutant dogs attack-vicious things that reek of nature gone wrong. When five strangers appear, desperate to escape the bloodthirsty packs, Jenna defies her protector and rescues them. As technology fails and the old world falls away, Jenna changes too, forever altered by supernatural forces. To fight for their future, she and Mason must learn to trust their instinctive passion-a flame that will see them through the bitter winter, the endless nights, and the violence of a new Dark Age.

 

This book is co-written by one of my new favourite authors (New as in I've only discovered her in the last year and haven't read everything she's written yet!) - Ann Aguirre. Along with Carrie Lofty, Ann has written this post-apocalyptic series that I want to start reading as I like action films and can't help feeling this is an action blockbuster in book form! But alas, other books have come between me and the end of the world...

 

Has anyone read it? Am I correctly in my blockbuster assumption? :)

 

PS - Ann and Carrie's author name was named after two kick-ass Sci-fi heroines - Ellen Ripley from the Alien films and Sarah Connor from the Terminator films

Guest Review: Wither

Once again Sarah's here to share her latest read...

Wither
- Lauren DeStefano

Publisher: Simon & Schusters Children's Publishing

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children. When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Wither is a dystopian YA book, set in a post-apocalyptic world where only North America has survived (guess the nationality of the author!).  The human race is left battling against a terrible, genetically created virus that kills every man at the age of 25, and every woman at the age of 20.  In order to keep humanity alive teenage girls are often captured from their homes, and married off to become, essentially, baby-making machines. 

One of these abducted teens is Rhine, a 16-year-old feisty blonde, who is torn away from her male twin and married, with two other abductees, to Linden – a sweet, deluded, rich 21-year-old, who is grieving the death of his first wife, and true love.  Battling to hold on to the memory of who she is and where she came from, Rhine refuses to accept her virtual imprisonment, especially as Linden’s father Vaughan (one of the only older people left alive)is a shadowy, secretive scientist seeking a cure for the virus by any means necessary.

Rhine forms a strong, wonderfully believable bond with her ‘sister wives’ despite her refusal to accept their situation, and her interactions with Vaughan inject a strong sense of peril into the novel.  The world that has survived is familiar enough to sit easy within the story, yet wonderous enough for us to share in Rhine’s awe at the life the remaining rich people live.

It’s not all perfect though – a lot of questions are left unanswered, and not always in a good way!  Why Rhine never chooses to enlighten Linden as to his father’s true nature is beyond me, as is the murder of unwanted brides.  The love triangle that develops is totally believable for once branch, but perplexing for the other.  I also have to admit, I really don’t like, or get, the cover-art. All in all though an excellent start to The Chemical Garden trilogy, and one I shall be continuing with. 

One for fans of Divergent and The Forest of Hands and Teeth, 8 out of 10.