Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hunt For The Troll by Mark Richardson

Posted on October 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

Let’s start with getting the soundbite out of the way. Mark Richardson’s Hunt For The Troll is, for me, the most compelling story narrated by a character whose name remains unknown throughout the book since Daphne du Maurier published Rebecca way back in 1938. Most authors wouldn’t get away with such a concept nowadays for fear of being accused of either being weird or offering style over substance. Hunt For The Troll is indeed a very weird book, and stylish as all hell, but there is quite a but of substance here. You could, if you so wish, compare this book to Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero in that much of what takes place in the book is surreal and yet instantly recognisable. It’s a page-turner, but not as you know it.

A novel that mixes genres as adeptly as one of the characters, Priya, mixes cocktails, Hunt For The Troll is a heady concoction of urban fantasy, cyberpunk, industrial espionage, and a missing person’s case. Our unnamed narrator has lived a charmed and affluent lifestyle since he discovered at a very early age that he had a gift for writing code. Already on his way to become one of the youngest Grandmasters in chess, he dispenses with the board and focuses instead on gaming. A close friend, known only as The Captain, convinces him that two minds are better than one and so they find investors for a start-up of their own. A few years later they sell out and move on with their lives, with our narrator enjoying a life of luxury and solitude in Rome.

The story starts proper when The Captain emails the narrator with a proposition: he wants the two of them to get the band back together as he has a great idea for another start-up. The narrator boards a flight back immediately, but he finds The Captain is nowhere to be found. Seeing that he’s back hone in San Francisco, he’s offered a job for an online gaming company Centre Terrain, where he’s implanted with a neural processor which allows him to enter the game as an avatar, Roma, and fix any code in the game that needs fixing. He also has a little fun while he’s there, breaking one or two company rules along the way. He begins a relationship with one of his colleagues, Nika. At the same time, the narrator’s been having some strange dreams involving binary numbers and a being called the Troll, who tells him they’re about to change the world.

The narrator draws the attention of billionaire Larry Gosling, an investor of Centre Terrain, and he’s very interested in what our young talented hero has to offer. Offering tidbits into the Troll’s history, Gosling suggests that the man is interested in taking humanity to the next level: in others words, transhumanism. It’s an intriguing concept that doesn’t quite bear the fruit that it should by the end, but the journey nevertheless is peppered with offbeat characters like Whitfield, a guy that the narrator is close to (they smoke a lot of weed and play copious amounts of chess), and the two main female leads, Nika and Priya. Even if you haven’t the first clue about quantum computing and binary numbers, you won’t feel lost among these pages. There’s plenty of expositional dialogue to help you along the way.

Mark Richardson’s playful style is addictive and surprising. I whizzed through the chapters and found myself caught up in sheer dreaminess of the story. One thing I will say, though: the book was first published in 2015, and now six years later, I think it’s time Richardson came back and let us know what happened next. Beware: there be cliffhangers.

Author Mark Richardson

Leave a comment

Posted in Blogging, Books, Reading, Reviews, science fiction, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,

Five Strangers by E.V. Adamson

Posted on October 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

E.V Adamson is the pseudonym of British writer Andrew Wilson, the bestseller author of four novels which feature Agatha Christie as a detective early in her career as a writer of popular detective fiction. I read the first two and thoroughly enjoyed them. So when I heard he was writing a psychological thriller under a different name, I was excited to get a hold of a copy from NetGalley. Already published in the UK, Five Strangers comes out in the U.S. on 19 October. It’s a book I highly recommend, coming on the heels of such female-led psychological thrillers like The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. In fact, Five Strangers relies quite heavily–and effectively, in my opinion–on the kind of POV writing that made Paula Hawkins’ and Gillian Flynn’s novels so successful: the unreliable narrator.

Jen Hunter is on Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath, waiting for her friend Rebecca (Bex) to arrive for a coffee date. It’s Valentine’s Day and couples are being all smoochy and loved up. Jen is not long out of a five-year relationship with Laurence. To say it ended badly is an understatement. To add to her woes, Jen was once the celebrated author of a popular series of confessional journalistic pieces in a major newspaper, until her boss discovered that she lied about how her parents died in an earlier piece. She was fired on the spot, and now Jen has no job, no Laurence, and nothing to look forward to in life. But at least she has Bex, right?

Things take a horrific and tragic turn on the Hill when Jen and four other people witness a man, Daniel, argue with his girlfriend, Vicky. He breaks a bottle of champagne and shoves it in the poor woman’s face. If that wasn’t violent enough, he then produces a knife and slashes her throat, leaving Vicky to bleed out on the ground. One of the witness, Jamie, attempts to save the girl and is injured in the process. But before the police arrive, Daniel slashes his own throat and dies before another witness, Ayesha, a doctor just out of medical training, can save him. Another witness, Steven, a Black teenager, runs off before he can give a statement to the police. The last witness is Julia Jones, the local Labour MP, is horrified but there’s nothing she can do to save the situation. Bex arrives just in time to help Jen, knowing that her friend is already in a fragile state of mind.

The one other mystery is the jogger who saw what happened but continued their run without lending assistance. The police urge for him or her to come forward. Jen’s journalistic instincts take hold. Urged by Bex and another close friend, her housemate Penelope, Jen wants to find out why Daniel killed Vicky and then himself, and also discover the identity of the unhelpful jogger. She starts getting tweets from a mysterious Twitter account that suggests that all is not what it appears to be. Bex knows that the more Jen delves into the murder suicide, the greater the chance that her friend will spiral into a breakdown she might not come out of.

Five Strangers is told from both Jen and Bex’s point of view, in alternating chapters. In ways similar to Gone Girl, we get both sides of the story–until the midway twist puts a completely different spin on everything we’ve read until then. Even the witnesses have secrets they’d prefer not to see the light of day. Jen interviews each of them in turn, and discovers allies and foes around every corner. But who is telling the truth? And who among them is hiding the deepest secret of all? I read this book at a feverish pace because I was desperate to find out.

Adamson/Wilson has written a compelling tale of murder, deceit, and the ultimate betrayal. It’s not the first book I’ve read this year in which childhood trauma and fears of abandonment have been behind the characters’ heinous actions, but it’s probably the best and hardest-hitting. While at times I struggled to find sympathy with Jen and Bex, I think the author wanted it that way. There is no black and white when it comes to Jen, Bex, Laurence, and the four witnesses, just many shades of grey.

Author Andrew Wilson/E.V. Adamson

Leave a comment

Posted in Blogging, Books, Crime Fiction, Reading, Reviews, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh

Posted on August 4, 2021 | 2 comments

I wonder if readers of this blog will remember a show which premiered in the US in 1974. It was called Petrocelli, and it was about a defence lawyer who lived in a house trailer in San Remo, Arizona. All through the two seasons the show was on, Tony Petrocelli and his wife Maggie toiled away with building a house for themselves near their trailer home. Viewers never got to see the finished product because the show finished airing after these two seasons. When I read an Eddie Flynn novel from Northern Ireland author Steve Cavanagh, I always think of Petrocelli. He took the cases in which his client appeared guilty as sin, looking for holes in the prosecution’s evidence, and upon finding them, exonerate his clients in the eyes of the law. What happened after that was of no concern to Petrocelli. His job was done once his client got released.

I loved Petrocelli and I recently rewatched the pilot episode. It still stands up. Barry Newman is a good actor and the stories were always compelling. I happened upon Steve Cavanagh‘s creation a couple of years ago and found myself reading the first four books in the Eddie Flynn series one after the other. They are tightly plotted novels, with enough twists and turns to make your hair stand on end. Forever getting into scrapes that threaten his life and the lives of those he cares about, Eddie uses his ingenuity and skills as a one-time con-artist to help his clients who would otherwise be incarcerated for life or worse.

The Devil’s Advocate is the sixth book in the series and for my money it’s the best yet. The stakes for Eddie, his team, and his client are high: literally life and death. But Eddie is well out of his comfort zone. Used to the hustle and bustle of New York streets, police stations, and courtrooms, Eddie is in a backwater town of Buckstown, Alabama, a relic of the Confederacy era, where the local District Attorney Randall Korn has sent more convicted murderers to the electric chair than any other DA in US history. Eddie is approached by a ‘frenemy’ from a previous case and asked to take on the defence of Andy Dubois, a young Black man whose been accused of the murder of his colleague and friend, a popular girl called Skylar Edwards. Andy’s previous lawyer, who’s already had dealings with Korn, is missing under suspicious circumstances, and the young man seems destined to be found guilty and sentenced to death. Eddie has never taken on a capital murder case before, but it’s not long before he and his team, Kate, Harry, and Bloch find that all is not what it seems with the prosecution’s case. Plus, if Andy didn’t brutally murder Skylar, the question is: who did?

Steve Cavanagh (photo c/o: Belfast Live)

For fans of Steve Cavanagh and Eddie Flynn, there’s no need for me to tell you to get on out there and buy this book. Chances are you already have it preordered. But for the unconverted, let me tell you that this book, and the others in the series, are a delight to read. What sets The Devil’s Advocate apart from previous novels is not just the change of scenery, but Cavanagh allows the supporting characters to share the spotlight in many sections of the story. I particularly enjoyed learning more about Bloch, Eddie’s investigator: you do not want to mess with this woman. The Rogue Gallery is especially strong, too. Not only does Eddie and his team have to contend with Randall Korn, but the sheriff of Buckstown is a force to be reckoned with, too, despite and because of his own tragic backstory. And then there’s the mysterious Pastor. We don’t find out his identity until the climax of the novel, and what a surprise that turns out to be. So, not only do the good guys have to deal with an insidious district attorney, they also find themselves up against the worst of the worst: domestic terrorists and white supremacists. The Devil’s Advocate will rock your boat. I defy you to finish it in fewer than three or four sittings.

Thanks go to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC of The Devil’s Advocate in exchange for an honest review.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Books, Crime Fiction, Reading, Reviews, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

Scorpion by Christian Cantrell

Posted on June 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

We know what we are, but not yet what we may be. (Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Act 4, scene 5.)

Ophelia is going through a crisis in Shakespeare’s play. Her husband Hamlet has killed her father and she is cracking up. She knows only what she knows and is reacting to that, but she doesn’t know what the future holds for either of them. This is an entirely human feeling. Each of us reacts to events in the here and now; we can’t help it. But we also wonder where these events will eventually take us. This quote from Ophelia forms the basis for the prologue of Scorpion, a mind-bending, jargon-heavy, but superbly entertaining and well written science fiction thriller from Christian Cantrell, a software engineer who lives near Washington, D.C.

Quinn Mitchell is an analyst for the CIA, a desk jockey with little to no experience in the field. She has suffered a profound loss in her past, with the accidental drowning of her young daughter Molly, which resulted in the protracted separation and eventual divorce from her husband James. She is happy enough to stay out of the limelight and is very good at her job. However, her so-called easy life comes to a disturbing end when she is sent out into the field to track down and stop a man dubbed the Elite Assassin. All around the world, bodies are turning up — more than 20 of them, in fact — and there appears to be no apparent motive except that they are almost perfect killings. There is no rhyme to reason, but Al Moretti, Quinn’s boss, knows there’s more to these assassinations so Quinn must follow the trail of bodies that hopefully will lead to an arrest.

Christian Cantrell identifies our assassin almost straight away. He is Ranveer, an Iranian national, with limitless resources and finance, and a steady supply of eccentric individuals who supply him with the knowledge and know-how to complete his killings. He travels first-class and stays at the most luxurious of hotels and resorts. He is a man with a mission, however horrendous it may first appear. He’s also on the clock. Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs only Quinn can find, there is method to his sociopathy. Quinn doesn’t know it yet, but there is a connection between the pair of them. In the mix is Henrietta Yi, a diminutive woman, originally from Korea, where terrorists set off a nuclear bomb that destroyed Seoul and killed millions of people including her parents. She has a visual impairment that causes her to wear special glasses, otherwise she sees afterimages, which she calls ‘ghosts’, all the time. This comes in handy later in the book. She is working on a top-secret project for Moretti based on data from something called The Epoch Index.

Christian Cantrell (imagec/o crowdcast.io)

And that’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot. But there is a connection between all three characters that doesn’t become apparent until the last third of Scorpion, the first two-thirds of which is taken up by a captivating and off-the-wall cat-and-mouse chase between Quinn and Ranveer. The setting is near-futurish, the technology is unique but not far-fetched, and I got particular delight from the author’s description of The Grid, an area of Qatar that is closed off to anyone without influence, money, or a really good reason to hide from the authorities. The climax is straight out of genre favourites like Looper and Minority Report, and while some of the techinical jargon may go over your head from time to time, the characters make the story relatable. You may know what you are, but not yet what you may be.

My thanks go to NetGalley and the publishers of Scorpion for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Leave a comment

Posted in Blogging, Books, Reading, Reviews, science fiction, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,

Books That Shaped Me: The Prince of Tides

Posted on May 7, 2021 | Leave a comment

I’ve sat looking at the title of this blog for the last half an hour or so, wondering if “shape” is the right word to use. I mean, I know what I want to say, but “shape” could be off-putting. But then again, maybe not. I guess what I’m trying to say is, until I picked up a book most of the world was unknown to me, apart from whatever my parents and teachers told me. I had to find a lot out by myself. As much as I loved TV shows growing up (I still do: if you look at my Twitter feed, I’m all about Line of Duty these days), when I opened a book and immersed myself in whatever literary world I decided to inhabit at the time, I learned more about human nature and human relationships that anything I heard in a classroom or a church pulpit. The genre didn’t matter; we humans act the same whatever the setting, wherever we find ourselves. So I think it’s right to say that as I grew into my reading, certain books impacted me in ways that still sit with me years and even decades later. Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides is one of those books.

Published in 1986, The Prince of Tides is the story of former football player and high-school teacher and coach Tom Wingo. Married with three young daughters, he has a twin sister, Savannah, a poet who lives in New York, who has had mental health issues since she was a child. Another suicide attempt uproots Tom from his home and family in South Carolina to his sister’s side. In doing so, he leaves behind his own mess: his wife Sallie is having an affair, and he’s not surprised by this at all. Clearly a number of things aren’t right with the Wingo family.

Tom meets his sister’s psychiatrist, a beautiful Jewish woman called Susan Lowenstein, and she challenges Tom to fill in the blanks in Savannah’s and his family history. It’s a journey down memory lane that is both traumatising and eventually healing. Along the way Tom and Susan form a relationship that is combatative but respectful. They come from very different backgrounds, financially and culturally, but Susan’s husband is indifferent to her and is also having an affair. So they have a lot in common when it comes to intimate relationships. Tom and Susan have an affair of their own, which changes how each of them views life, love, and family by the end.

I wasn’t familiar with Pat Conroy before I picked up this book in the early 1990s. I knew about the movie version, though, but hadn’t at the time seen it. I may have chosen to read the book because of the movie, being a fan of Barbra Streisand’s film and music career, and also who doesn’t love a bit of Nick Nolte. I followed his career from his Rich Man, Poor Man days. Perhaps I may have picked up The Prince of Tides because of its theme of family relationships and how they can, if they’re not nurtured and allowed to grow, mess up even the most steadfast of people. I confess to not being in the best of places in life when reading this book. Outwardly I might have looked like I was doing okay, but inside I was close to being a mess. I flitted between jobs and missed a couple of really good opportunities to do well in life and personal relationships, but I found myself making one bad decision after another, all of which had my family wondering where the hell my common sense had gone. I was also drinking too much (something Mr Nolte can relate to), and it took me another decade to do something about that.

Pat Conroy’s writing, however, sang to me. I don’t think there’s one author out there whose prose style has touched me in the way Conroy’s did. You would be surprised to know, though, that I never read any of his other books; this despite him being the author of recognised classic American novels like The Great Santini, Beach Music, and The Lords of Discipline. I don’t know why this it. It could be that I’m afraid to read an author who, though he came from a completely different background to me, seems to know what I’m about. That is scary.

Pat Conroy (image: The Guardian)

Writers and readers will ask the question of themselves and others: what draws you to a book–is it the plot or is it characters? For me, any writer worth their salt can plot a book until the cows come home. It’s the easiest part, in my opinion: Lord knows I’ve plotted enough books and stories over the last 15 years to fill a dozen trilogies. But characters are the key. Pat Conroy deep-dived into the hearts and souls of every character he put in The Prince of Tides. Only the Master of Horror himself, Stephen King, could consistently do this book after book after book, regardless of the plot. I’m sure Pat Conroy did the same, but I’ve got to pluck up the courage to read another of his works. Maybe soon, who knows.

Leave a comment

Posted in Blogging, Books, Reading, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

The Magdalene Veil by Gary McAvoy

Posted on April 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Easter break is over, and so too is my reading of Gary McAvoy’s hugely entertaining Magdalene trilogy, which started with The Magdalene Deception, continued with The Magdalene Reliquary, and now concludes with The Magdalene Veil. During the course of these three fast-moving and engaging adventures, we follow the same trail of breadcrumbs scattered throughout history that the trilogy’s main characters do. Whether or not they lead you to the same crisis of faith Fr Michael Dominic faces is beside the point; the thrill is in the journey.

In each of the preceding novels I was able to relate them to some other book or movie that had captured my interest in the past. With The Magdalene Veil, my thoughts turned to one of each: Where Eagle’s Dare (1968), the preposterously entertaining WWII romp with Richard Burton and a brilliantly sardonic Clint Eastwood who, if they weren’t killing Nazis, were calling Danny Boy on the radio; and Ira Levin’s conspiracy thriller The Boys From Brazil, also a movie, starring the ultimate in odd couples, Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, Oscar winners both. The Magdalene Veil takes concepts from both movies and books and runs with them in a couple of very surprising ways.

Much has been made of the Third Reich’s interest in the occult. Anyone who has seen Raiders of the Lost Ark might be aware that Hitler was indeed a “nut on the subject”. So much so, he and his evil goons set up an organisation called the Ahnenerbe, tasked with justifying their hatred of the Jewish race by delving deep into Aryan ancestry and uncovering shared DNA with the biblical Jesus. Heinrich Himmler allegedly finds the proof he needs, but before he can escape to Argentina with the relic, he is caught by Allied forces and kills himself. Fast forward to the present day, and Fr Dominic and his friend, journalist Hana Sinclair, are approached by a man who claims he knows, via a diary his father kept, where this relic can be found. Of course the path to glory rarely runs smooth, especially when exiled Nazis are lurking around every corner.

The bulk of the action this time around takes place in Bariloche, a German settlement in the Patagonia region of Argentina. The South American country is also the place where the former Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Dante, has been exiled to. He finds fellow conspirators in the burgeoning neo-Nazi community (as you naturally would if you were fake-Catholic, I guess). Eventually he will have to cross swords with the people who put him there.

All of the elements that made the first two books in the series enjoyable to me are present here. The two Swiss Guards, Karl and Lukas, are in their element, using the skills they inherited from their training to aid in rescue and recovery missions. I’d have these two on my team of bodyguards any day of the week, if such a service was ever needed. Hana’s grandfather always has a private jet lying idle, which comes in handy for fast, frictionless international travel. And there’s always God, who will take the side of the righteous when things don’t go according to human planning. He’s normally reliable that way.

Gary McAvoy utilises his own skill-set perfectly well, too, mixing historical fact with historical fiction. He very helpfully links his research at the end of the novel, and all he wants is for readers to be entertained and to want to read more about the secret history of the Third Reich. When the Nazis get what they deserve, it’s hard not to pump your fist with victory. Because who doesn’t want to see Nazis defeated all day every day?

I enjoyed reading these books and I would recomment them to fans of Robert Ludlum and Dan Brown. My thanks to Gary McAvoy for providing me with a copy of The Magdalene Veil in exchange for an honest review. I loved it. Honestly.

Leave a comment

Posted in Books, Conspiracy Thriller, Reading, Recaps, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Silvers Hollow by Patrick R. Delaney

Posted on March 31, 2021 | 1 comment

Any time I don’t have a watch on my wrist, I am conscious of its absence. It’s a lot simpler to look at my watch than it is to reach for my phone and get the time from there. I’ve always worn a watch and I feel close to naked if I am, for whatever reason, not wearing one. I suppose I’m like most people in that I need to know what time it is, what day it is, and–in these pandemic times–what month it is. So imagine waking up one day with no recollection of any of these mundane facts. That would be scary, right?

The main character in Patrick R. Delaney‘s latest novel, Silvers Hollow, faces such a bizarre and disconcerting situation. She is anonymous to the reader, remaining unnamed throughout the book, and despite having some memories, she is practically anonymous to herself. The premise is a simple one, if deceptively so. A woman wakes up on the platform of a deserted train station, with the train she may or may not have been on pulling away. She has no memory of how she got there, or where she is–or what time it is. Leaving the station she meets the first of the supporting characters that drift in and out of the narrative. The woman finds herself in the back of Officer Smith’s ancient police car, and he takes her on a strange and meandering journey through what seems to be her childhood town of Silvers Hollow.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used it be, the saying goes, and this particular trip down memory lane is anything but comforting. Delaney’s main character is put through the wringer, emotionally and physically. Silvers Hollow itself seems stuck in time, with none of the modern amenities you would see and take for granted today. And it’s always dark. The story, as it unfolds, leaves the reader and the woman without any light at all. There is a reason for this, but you need to stick the course to find out. Meanwhile, the woman has to contend with the mystery of why she is where she is, and what, if anything, her family has to do with her predicament.

The people she meets on her journey are equally as scared, but of what, they can’t or won’t say. This adds to the sense of menace and dread that permeates the book. Delaney’s decision to allow the reader to follow closely beside his main character is an excellent one. All throughout the book I felt the same things the woman felt. It was like being a companion to someone else’s dream, and it wasnt a comfortable experience at all. But I kept reading because, like the woman, I wanted answers.

Patrick Delaney (source: Goodreads)

Silvers Hollow makes full use of its brief running time, coming in a couple of pages shy of 190. But don’t let its brevity fool you: there’s a lot going on here, and nothing is what it seems. Patrick R. Delaney has crafted a well-written, atmospheric, psychological horror story. The end is both dystopian and apocalyptic, and you’ll never ever want to have a dream like it.

NetGalley and the publishers of Silvers Hollow provided me with an ARC in return for an honest review. I thank them for the opportunity. The book will be published June 1, 2021, and is available to pre-order.

1 Comment

Posted in Books, Horror Fiction, Reading, Reviews, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

Passion Play by Claire O’Dell

Posted on March 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Therez Zhalina has lived a very sheltered life in Melnek. She is the daughter of a ambitious merchant who, unfortunately for the 15-year-old girl, has big plans for the family and business, whether Thereze likes it or not. And she doesn’t. Following a formal dinner, where Therez is introduced to Melnek society, the young girl is devastated to find out that her father has arranged her to be married to a cool and cruel man, Theodr Galt. Therez has dreams of her own. She wishes to travel to Duenne and attend university there. Basically, she wants to see the world. Her father’s plans would set her on a path on which she would have no control over her life. So she decides to leave without saying a word.

Taking what money she’s saved, she ends up gaining carriage out of Melnek with a caravan owner and his cohort of unsavoury fellow travellers. This is where things take a dark turn in Thereze’s young life. Most of her possessions have been stolen from her, and in order to stay on her journey she is forced to trade with the only thing she has left: her body. In a series of gruelling scenes, for the reader as well as Therez, the girl makes a choice to give up her body and innocence to her rapists — for that is what they are, regardless of the choice Therez makes. She is but a child, but now she’s little more than a sex slave. I found these sections of the story very hard to read.

When Therez eventually makes her escape, she ends up at a pleasure house run by Lord Raul Kosenmark, a duke who was once an advisor for the king. He, too, ran away from his responsibilities. Therez changes her name to Ilse, and is referred to this new name for the rest of the book. Raul offers her a position in his household once she’s physically well, and Ilse begins to form new friendships in the kitchen. Raul sees potential in her and so takes her on as his secretary. It is from this position that Ilse learns of what is going on in the world around her. There is more than politics at play here. There is magic everywhere, with some people being more gifted than others. There are plots, and there’s a war brewing. In the midst of all this, there is a sacred jewel that has gone missing, one that holds the key to power.

A number of things intrigue me about Passion Play. Author Claire O’Dell, whose work I’ve reviewed here before, has created a world that is not unlike Eastern Europe, with names and a magical language that almost Germanic. If I could posit a theory, the politics at play here are similar to what led to the outbreak of WWI. I could be wrong, but that’s how I read it. The countries that surround Ilse and Raul each have their own border controls and internal politics. Throw a sinister magician into the mix, and you have the spark for major bloodshed. The other volumes in the series will no doubt explore these complexities in greater detail. In Passion Play we’re given what information we need to know at this juncture. The system of magic has at its core, I do believe, a knowledge that one has lived a previous life. Reincarnation rears its head once more. I find this very fascinating.

Claire O’Dell

I was impressed by the level of detail O’Dell put into her world-building. I’m a sucker for detail, and the author does not disappoint. Her supporting characters have good background stories and I have no doubt that characters we see in passing will pop up again in later books. I enjoyed this book, and while some readers will understandably balk at the level of sexual violence at the start, there is a pay-off towards the end. When Passion Play ends, neither Ilse nor Raul are the same people when we first meet them. They’ve both endured tragedy and loss of familial connection. Where this takes them, we will have to find out for ourselves in the next book, Queen’s Hunt.

Leave a comment

Posted in Books, Fantasy, Reading, Reviews, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

The Count of Monte Cristo: Chapters 13-17

Posted on February 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

Read the previous instalment here.

These next four chapters lay the trail for Edmond Dantes eventual escape from the Chateau d’If. This is an important section for the book because, away from the political to-and-fro of early 19th century French history, we get to spend a decent amount of time with Dantes and his new-found friend and spiritual adviser, the Abbe Faria, the ‘Learned Italian’.

Napoleon has been banished once more, and Louis XVIII has been restored to the throne. No better time for the inspector-general of prisons to do his rounds and see how things are with the inmates of the lonely island Dantes calls home. Dantes spies an opportunity to appeal to the man who, in all fairness, sees no reason why Dantes should even be in prison. Having listened to his pleas, the inspector-general promises the innocent man that he will look into his case. Dantes feels hope at last, thinking that de Villefort’s notes will save him. However, the opposite happens. Conspiracy runs deep and the prosecutor’s lies, and his desire to hide his own relationship with Noirtier further damn Dantes’ claim to be released. There is nothing the inspector-general can do.

Nor is there anything he can do with the other prisoner he visits, the seemingly mad Italian Abbe Faria, who promises the inspector-general untold wealth if his release can be secured. Faria has a treasure buried somewhere and he’s willing to part with most of it if his pleas are met. The governor and inspector-general think him mad and leave him to rot away. Prisoners 27 (Faria) and 27 (Dantes) are left to fend for themselves.

Dantes falls into deep despair, at one point threatening to starve himself to death, such is his plight. His prayers to God go unheeded; and he’s oblivious to the fact that other people who were close to him put him where he is now. But when he hears a noise coming from the other side of his cell, he tricks his jailer into leaving his dinner pot behind and starts scratching away at the sound. Then he hears a voice. After some time and much scraping away at the wall, he meets his neighbour, who turns out to be the Abbe Faria, who comes into Dantes’ cell.

Far from being mad, as his jailers deem him to be, Faria is a resourceful man. Imprisoned because of his belief in a unified Italy, Faria is a polymath who becomes Dantes’ tutor in the years they spend together. He teached Dantes other languages and soon enough Dantes, an intelligent if naive man, quickly learns the basics in Italian and English. Faria also proves to Dantes that Caderousse, Fernand, and Danglars were the men behind his captivity. Dantes swears revenge. Together they hatch a plan to escape. Faria, much to his own despair, works out that he’s been digging in the wrong direction. So, between planning another route, and learning mathematics and philosophy, the two men bond over a mutual need for freedom.

Before their plan can come to fruition, though, the abbe has an epileptic fit. The man knows he’s on limited time, with an arm and a leg becoming paralyzed. Dantes swears to not leave his friend while he’s alive.

Leave a comment

Posted in Books, The Count of Monte Cristo, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

Colony by Benjamin Cross

Posted on January 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

I’m a sucker for a monster movie. During these dark winter months, with so much going on in the world, I have found some solace in fictional monsters. One of my all-time favourites is John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), itself a remake of Howard Hawk’s classic from 1951. I love the setting, the isolation, the unknown that’s ‘out there’ and ‘within’. It was the perfect movie for its time, and nearly 40 years later, I wouldn’t change a single frame.

Author Benjamin Cross’ debut novel, Colony, captures a lot of that movie’s effects, especially the sense of dread and aforementioned isolation, but is individual enough to not be a retread. It’s to his credit that he not only brings his own talents to the page, but also his extensive experience in the world of archaeology. A native of South Wales, Mr Cross has travelled all over the world, exploring ancient sites in Cambodia and Peru. A noted environmental consultant, he wears a couple of hats during the course of this book.

Callum Ross is an archaelogy professor based in Scotland, with a particular fondness for skipping stones with his son Jamie along the banks of Loch Ness. He’s trying to build a relationship with Jamie, because his job had him spend far too much time away from home. The softly-softly approach appears to be working, until a colleague appears out of the blue offering Callum a gilt-edged opportunity to travel to the Arctic and help a multinational company explore Harmsworth Island, one of hundred of islands on the Russian archipelago of Franz Josef Land. Explaining to his son that he’ll Facetime once a week doesn’t cut it with Jamie or his ex, but Callum goes anyway.

He’s reunited with an another colleague, Dan Peterson, a Texan who ribs Callum by referring to him as Dr McJones. The rest of the contingent is made up of scientists from Russia mainly, and one Canadian. There is also a suspiciously large number of Spetznaz, soldiers for hire representing the Russian Federation. Things begin intriguingly enough with the discovery of the mummified remains of a man who’s been perfectly preserved for millenia by sub-zero temperatures. Callum’s companion Lungkaju tells of a myth that has been handed down through generations of a hero sent out by his people to kill a monster. Think Beowulf, only in a colder climate. The mummy’s injuries suggest this is the hero, and that the monster got the better of him.

Benjamin Cross

Then we meet the monsters.

Colony is a frenetically paced novel that brings to mind not only The Thing, but also Michael Crichton’s classic techothriller Jurassic Park. (We’ve all seen this movie, right?) The concept that we share our planet with species that we haven’t yet discovered isn’t a new one. Scientists have always supported the theory that in parts of the world that one would deem uninhabitable or unexplored, there must be creatures that have evolved over eons that we’re not aware of. Benjamin Cross takes us to that place, and then runs riot. Callum and his companions not only have to deal with monsters that want to kill them, but there are saboteurs in their midst who for reasons of greed and idealism want to destroy Harsmworth and everyone on it. When monsters aren’t ripping humans apart, the bad guys are setting off explosions and murdering in cold blood. There is a lot going on in this book, and Mr Cross does well to balance the action with some decent characterisations, even if the dialogue contains more expostion than it needs to. But this is only a minor criticism of a book that held my attention from the first page. I really enjoyed it, and I want to see what the author does next.

PS: There’s a clever coda right at the end that’s worth hanging around for. Call it a post-credit scene, perhaps?

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized