Booking in Heels ~ Page 2 of 131 ~ Devouring books whilst looking fabulous.

The Tower of Babel Series Review (Senlin Ascends, The Arm of the Sphinx, The Hod King)

December 23, 2019 | fantasy, Reviews, sci-fi

Prepare yourself for approximately eight days of frantically written out reviews. I’m senlin ascends book cover josiah bancroft desperately attempting to get all the ‘best’ books reviewed, just so I can something to link to in my eventual Top Ten Books of 2019 list. That should probably give you a pretty good indication of how I felt about Senlin Ascends. Well, that and the fact that I managed to read three whole books in the same series, in one year. That never happens.

Plot summary for Senlin Ascends:

The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of airships and steam engines, of unusual animals and mysterious machines.

Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants. Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he’ll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the long guns of a flying fortress. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure.

This quiet man of letters must become a man of action.

Star rating for Senlin Ascends: * * * * (5 stars)*

I was really taken aback by how much I ended up loving the first book in the Tower of Babel series, Senlin Ascends. That may be partially because I find the cover really misleading. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and I’m pleased that they all match and look lovely on my shelf. But I can’t help feeling that it gives off slightly Communist, red, vibes, and I suppose I was sort of expecting some dry, political, ranty tome. Luckily, this book is distinctly Not That and instead I ended up enjoying this sort-of fantasy, unique, fascinating story with incredible world-building.

The whole story takes place inside ‘The Tower.’ Picture a giant building that goes up into the clouds; so huge that nobody is really sure how many levels it has. Each floor (each ‘Ringdom) is essentially a country in its own right – the second floor is a giant theatre where tourists are forced into acting out roles within a macabre psuedo-play, and the third floor is vaguely reminiscent of a seaside resort in the Victorian era. It’s so creative and unique. In addition to this, there is the innermost workings of the Tower – the machinations of the behind-the-scenes players form the majority of the over-arching plot. Because, whilst Thomas Senlin is looking for his wife, that quickly becomes overshadowed by the political maneuverings of the Sphinx, the shadowy puppeteer master of the Tower.

Essentially, as Senlin works his way up the Tower, he manages to anger an awful lot of important people and becomes drawn in to all sorts of shady deals. I’ve genuinely never read anything like this series. The tone is relatively formal but still accessible, and the pages just fly by. It’s sort of like a half-steam punk, half-sci-fi voyage… with a smidge of romance.

There’s a whole range of characters with backstories, hopes, dreams and flaws. I won’t spoil the surprise by detailing every member of the motley crew that Senlin ends up travelling with, but I’d be hard pressed to choose a favourite. They’re all unique and believable, and I would travel with them any day.

Book Two, The Arm of the Sphinx, and Book Three, The Hod King, also do not disappoint. They do sort of meld into one for me because I read them so close together, but that’s not a criticism. There is no Second Book Syndrome – I was just as interested in The Arm of the Sphinx as I had been in the first book. Whilst I will say that The Hod King was the weakest of the three, that’s possibly just because I was expecting the series to conclude and… it didn’t.

That’s my only criticism really. Going in, I’d thought that this series was a trilogy that had now been completed. I was approaching the end of The Hod King in a slightly skeptical fashion, wondering how everything was going to be wrapped up in an even vaguely acceptable ending. Well, I guess one way around that is to… not end it. I am disappointed. Not just because I was so proud of reading a whole trilogy in a year, but because Josiah Bancroft’s website says that the final installment isn’t due out until 2021. It was supposed to be 2020, but he says there has been a delay. I mean, of course, these things happen. I just wish I’d known going in that the story wasn’t yet finished.

Still, that should absolutely not stop you picking up Senlin Ascends, and then cracking right on to The Arm of the Sphinx and The Hod King. I keep using the word ‘unique,’ but that’s because there is genuinely nothing to compare these books to. Despite whining about the delay before the fourth book, I will definitely be pre-ordering it and then reading it immediately. I love this series and I just can’t wait to read more of it.

Visit Josiah Bancroft’s website (where there is merch!).

Picking back up The Wheel of Time series… after a loooooong time away (The Fires of Heaven)

December 22, 2019 | fantasy, Reviews

It has been two years and three months since I read The Shadow Rising, the fourth book in the fires of heaven wheel of time five robert jordan Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. And yet somehow I thought that perhaps now would be a good time to read the fifth, The Fires of Heaven. Ha. Well, let’s just see how that went…

Plot summary for The Fires of Heaven: The bonds and wards that hold the Great Lord of the Dark are slowly failing, but still his fragile prison holds. The Forsaken, immortal servants of the shadow, weave their snares and tighten their grip upon the realms of men, sure in the knowledge that their master will soon break free…

Rand al’ Thor, the Dragon Reborn, knows that he must strike at the Enemy, but his forces are divided by treachery and by ambition. Even the Aes Sedai, ancient guardians of the Light, are riven by civil war. Betrayed by his allies, pursued by his enemies and beset by the madness that comes to the male wielders of the One Power, Rand rides out to meet the foe.

This only very loosely a review of The Fires of Heaven, and there are no spoilers. It’s more of a general rambling about The Wheel of Time series, really.

For those that aren’t aware, The Wheel of Time series is notorious for being lengthy, thorough, dry, full-on fantasy. It has a massive following (and for good reason) and a currently being made TV adaptation, but there’s no getting around the fact that it can be a bit of a struggle. There are fourteen books in this series (the last three were written by Brandon Sanderson, after Robert Jordan passed away) and they tend to fall around the 900 page mark. They could, arguably, be much shorter as each one tends to involve a lot of discussion, a lot of walking and a lot of backstory. They are heavy – both due to the sheer amount of discussion and also because you could literally use each one as a doorstop.

With that said, I really wasn’t sold on the idea of jumping back into this series after more than two years away. I’d read the first four books almost consecutively (reviews of the first book, The Eye of the World, and the second, The Great Hunt) after a Summer away from work, so really immersed myself in the world. Then I went back to work and needed something lighter whilst I got my head back into legal drafting… and never went back. After a while it seemed like too much effort… and here we are, two years and three months later.

It actually wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’d been expecting, you know. I spent the first few pages googling pretty much everybody whose name flitted past (and there are a lot of characters), but after that it just sort of… clicked. I hadn’t noticed this before, but I think Robert Jordan is actually very good at subtly reminding you of previous books, without needing to revert to an outright recap or an information dump. It’s really subtly done, but I didn’t struggle at all after that. Keep in mind, we’re talking about four previous books of a combined page count of just under 4,000 that I read 27 months ago… and I just flew back into it. I’m honestly impressed.

I also found that I cared slightly more about the plot than I was doing by the end of my four chunky book stint. Perhaps I burned out on Wheel of Time. 4,000 pages is clearly just too much Wheel of Time in one go! I still maintain, and will always maintain, that there is no way it needs to be fourteen books long. It just doesn’t. Less walking, less discussion and less backstory would go a long way towards making the Wheel of Time series an awful lot more accessible. Still, it has to be said that my interest did last the whole way through this book, all 900 pages. Maybe it’s the break I gave myself or maybe it’s finally starting to pick up – either way, whilst I wouldn’t say it flew by, I also didn’t mind that I was still reading it either.

The one thing that did not change for me, however – I still loathe all the characters. The only difference is who I hate slightly more than the others. In The Fires of Heaven, we switched from Nynaeve to Egwene. I really, genuinely, literally hope that she dies, although I doubt it. She’ll be Queen of the World Egwene before that happens. It’s a slightly moot point anyway – literally woman in this series is shrill, possessive, naggy and judgemental, and every man is sulky, childish and whiny. It don’t suppose it really matters who is technically owning the top spot – they’re all awful.

I do intend to keep reading this series. It’s very, very immersive and the detail provided within the world is nothing short of incredible. I understand where its superb reputation comes from, despite the flaws with this series. Perhaps I might give myself more of a break between books, however!

Read my review of the first book in the Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, here.

Darkdawn (Nevernight #3) by Jay Kristoff

September 15, 2019 | fantasy, Reviews

Ah, Darkdawn. This has been one of my most anticipated sequels ever since I read darkdawn uk book cover jay kristoff Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight in December 2017 (click for review). I whipped through both that and Godsgrave in a matter of days (once I’d gotten through Nevernight’s incomprehensible start, that is) and I was absolutely dying for Darkdawn to be released. And did it live up to my expectations? Uhhh… mostly, I think? Hard to say, really.

Plot summary: The greatest games in Godsgrave’s history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic.

Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run. Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.

But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.

Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?

Star rating for Darkdawn: * * * *

Meeting Mr. Kristoff

My friend and I went went to a talk and a book signing with Jay Kristoff the day Darkdawn was released. He seems like a very pleasant, funny, down-to-earth author who reallys care about the work he’s putting out into the public. I didn’t get any photos because I was too busy muttering under my breath about Waterstones’ shoddy management of the event, but I enjoyed the talk and got my books signed.

During the talk, he was very clear that this book was going to be dark (the clue is in the name, really) and that the ending was going to be brutal, and therefore probably very divisive amongst readers. The inference was definitely that Darkdawn was going to be the darkest of the three books, by far.

For the record, I liked this book a lot. But I actually found it to be annoyingly fluffy; quite the opposite of what we’d been promised.

Plot

The plot itself does not disappoint. It fits in perfectly with what has happened to all the characters in the previous two books, complete with twists and turns, and Mia generally being pretty badass. I struggled a bit with the point of the over-arching plot – why they were actually trying to achieve what they were – but I was able to get on board with it for the majority of the time.

Part of the plot involves a sort of breaking of the fourth wall; it goes down a slightly meta path. I LOVED THAT. It was genuinely my favourite thing of the whole book as it was just so clever. Jay Kristoff did reference it during his talk so it’s probably not too spoilery, but I won’t go into too much detail here anyway. Suffice it to say that you find out the reason for the footnotes and the slightly sarcastic tone, and it’s wonderful.

It uses this device to poke fun at the earlier books a bit – ‘what sort of wanker uses footnotes in a novel, anyway?’ and so on. It’s hilarious, and echoes what the author was saying during the event – that he gets tons of complaints from readers who don’t see the point of the footnotes. Other raised points about Nevernight are also included in the plot, and it’s really quite clever and amusing.

However, one of my favourite aspects of the previous books was all-but written out, which I didn’t appreciate. It comes back, but only at the very end and even then in very confusing circumstances. I know that’s vague, but I had to mention it because it was A Big Deal.

And there are a few parts which just don’t really make sense, but I can’t talk about because, hey, spoilers.

Mia

I struggled with Mia a bit in this book. It never seemed quite clear exactly who she was supposed to be. On one hand, she was this takes-no-prisoners badass, although at one point she makes a decision that I hated and made no sense, almost going too far with the supposed badassery. But then, on the other, she’s so emotional and fluffy in this one that it just didn’t gel with her character. Singing to people in storms and suchlike.

The romance is a much bigger deal in this one as well, and part of what I appreciated about the other books is that it was a sub-sub-plot, at best. I mean, it was fine, as far as it goes. I didn’t have any issue with the direction in which it went, but it added to the general fluffiness. I will say that it’s a bizarre feeling reading the sex scenes of a man you’ve actually met…

The Ending

Yeah, alright. Let’s do this. It may be that my expectations were shaped by what Jay Kristoff had said at the event – how brutal it was going to be, please forgive him, etc etc – and so I had anticipated just that. Which is very much not what I found. The ending was absolutely fine, not particularly dark, but it was fitting and it was acceptable, whatever. But the Ending ending (there’s a sort of epilogue) is absolutely terrible. It’s so fluffy and icky that I wanted to throw the book across the room.

I won’t do spoilers, but I will say that it has exactly the same issue as Illuminae. If you’re going to make a stark, brave plot choice, fucking stick to it. You don’t get points for making a badass decision and then pulling it back. No. Commit to what you have written. This is what I said about Illuminae, and I stand by this in relation to Darkdawn:

The twist was great and it completely threw me. It was so brave, and such a surprise. I definitely wouldn’t have seen it coming. BUT THEN THEY REELED IT BACK. Any impressment (shut up, that’s a word) I had was just yanked away. You don’t get to have a plot twist that mind-blowing and have them wake up ‘and it was all a dream.’ That’s not what happened, obviously, but it may as well have. It just cheapens what could have saved this book.

Clearly Jay Kristoff has a theme. So no, I didn’t like the ending. But for the opposite reason that I was told I wouldn’t like it!

Conclusion – a mixed review?

I did like Darkdawn overall, most definitely. I enjoyed reading it and for the most part it was a fitting end to the trilogy. Unfortunately I can’t quite separate it from the flaws I’ve listed above, the most significant of which is the fluffy, de-clawed ending. Everything else I could probably get past, but not that.

That said, I LOVED the breaking of the fourth wall and the meta-ish-ness of the whole thing.

It just seems a bit more YA than both Nevernight and Godsgrave. There’s a love triangle, Mia has some unreasonable temper tantrums and the characters are a bit, well, teenage-ish. Which is fine, but the other has emphatically said that this is most certainly not for younger readers. I agree with that assessment, but the tone is definitely somewhat younger in this one.

There are positives and negatives of Darkdawn, as with any other book, but I’d say, I suppose, that it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the series and, for new readers (not that you would have clicked on to read a review of a third book of an unknown series anyway), I would still definitely recommend going back, reading Nevernight and proceeding onwards.

**Read my review of Nevernight or read a further review of Darkdawn over at Novel Knight.**

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Books Released in the Last Ten Years

May 28, 2019 | best of, top ten tuesday

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday, but this is a fun prompt that allowed me to look fondly over the last ten years and figure out which I really need to reread. Not that I could, considering that they’re mostly still in bags from when we moved. But hey, the theoretical option is there.

I’m forever grateful that I started recording my reading way back in 2006. It gives me so much data to work from 🙂

Click on the title for the review.

2009

HHhH by Laurent Binet

UK book cover of HHHH by Laurent Binet

This one is pretty special. It talks about the process of researching and writing the book as it discusses the topic which, by the way, is WWII Czechoslovakia. It really brings to life the impact that the War had on the little people and the sheer bloody mindedness required of the common people to power through and fight back.

It’s written in a very informal, chatty, style that really brings the topic home. So it’s historical non-fiction, but in a sort of… meta way?

I’m pretty sure I cried, but then I’ve cried at every book on this list so far.

It’s almost as though Laurent Binet wrote the book without going back to edit. For example, he’ll state that he doesn’t know a certain fact…, but a few chapters later he’ll pop up and go “Oh, I’ve checked it now – it’s this…!” At one point he refuses to buy a certain reference book about Reinhard Heydrich but then ends up buying it a little later.

2010

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This was a tough choice, but in the end I had to go for another non-fiction. This book is the reason I went off and did a whole Masters in Biotechnology Law. I even quoted this book in my essay application, which admittedly makes me cringe a rather large amount now.

It’s a surprisingly accessible book about how the cells removed from a particular woman without her consent went on to form the basis of the cancer treatment we use today… and how her life and that of her family was spent in poverty.

You know a book is written very well indeed when the issues it raises makes you so angry you get that tight feeling in the pit of your stomach. I haven’t quite decided how I feel about my tissues being used for research without my consent, but the millions of dollars made in profit by the medical companies was clearly immoral, especially when the Lacks family can’t even afford medical insurance.

2011

11.22.63 by Stephen King

UK book cover of 11.22.63 by Stephen King

Urgh, this was hard. A lot of amazing books were published in 2011 – Ready Player One, Song of Achilles, The Night Circus, How to Be a Woman…

Still though, I couldn’t not use 11.22.63. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a book blow me away as much as this one. It’s been on every list of my ‘best’ books, as well as the most moving, heart-wrenching, character-driven… the list goes on. I haven’t even dared reread it due to just how haunting it is. It’s definitely the best book published in 2011, no question.

This book is amazing, and it broke me. There may as well be no other books. It’s long and occasionally heavy, but it genuinely stopped being just a story for me. I cared more than was reasonable about all the characters and felt so tense over certain plot twists I could have been sick. This is a story about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But not really. It’s also a story of time travel, morality, romance, science fiction and friendship, with a little bit of creepiness thrown in for good measure. This is Stephen King, after all.

2012

The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder by J.W. Ironmonger

Sigh. Making this list is more difficult than I’d expected. I’m ignoring so many brilliant books here.

That said, I can hardly leave this book out. It follows a man attempting to catalogue the entire content of his brain in preparation for it to be dissected upon his death. It’s philosophical but accessible, methodical but fascinating… I read it the same year as 11.22.63 and therefore spent the majority of the year as a broken, weeping husk.

The ending is one of the best I’ve read, ever. I wasn’t sure whether to cry or throw up or what, but my heart was hammering and my fingers were gripping the sides of the book so hard I left permanent indentations. It’s just perfect. It’s a slow build-up, but it makes so much sense and left me absolutely desperate to know what happened. It almost, almost matches 11.22.63 and we all know how much I loved that one.

2013

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

UK book cover of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

This is the only book I’ve read even relatively recently that has made it onto this list so far. All the others I haven’t picked up in several years, although I am making mental notes of the books I want to reread as I go.

This book is the start to the Lady Isabella Trent series, and it somehow manages to be charming and action-packed all at the same time. I’ve already finished the whole series, although a half-written review is sort of languishing in my draft rolder, and has been for about six months. I wouldn’t hold your breath, essentially.

If you’re even vaguely interested in dragons and fantasy, you need to read this series.

Lady Trent writes her memoirs from several decades in the future, when she’s clearly an accomplished scholarly adventurer of some renown. In her twilight years, she has taken some leisure time to finally write an honest account in response to the hundreds of letters she receives from young fans, clamouring for details on her exploits. This results in a charming first person narrative that has the benefit of hindsight – the elderly Lady Trent looks back on her younger self with some fondness (and occasionally frustration) and muses on how the world has changed.

2014

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty

Oh look, another non-fiction. That really wasn’t expected.

Admittedly this seems to be a sort of strange choice for the best book I’ve read that was published in 2014, but it’s true. It’s a casual, funny memoir of Caitlin’s time working in a crematorium, but it’s also a more in-depth look at how our modern society deals with death and if that’s really the best way. It’s never hard going or too emotional, and she really made me think about several larger issues. As well as making me cry with laughter, obviously.

This is not a book for those of a sensitive disposition. We read about decay, leaking and mechanisms for keeping the eyes of the deceased firmly closed (spoiler alert: they use caps with spikes on). I like that about this book though. I like that it goes slightly beyond the realms of propriety to explain the details that I had never considered were an issue. For me, the most interesting chapter dealt with the bodies of babies, both pre- and post-term, and the associated problems. It wasn’t exactly pleasant reading, but it was fascinating and I have respect for the author for discussing what most people would rather brush under the carpet.

She writes that there is a culture of death denial prevalent in the modern world. Where death was previously accepted as a natural fact of life, attempts are now made to hide ourselves away from the very existence of death, as evidenced by the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry, the rise of embalming and the ability to cremate your loved ones via the Internet.

2015

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

I wasn’t all that enthused about reading this book or the sequel, Crooked Kingdom, as I really hadn’t got along with the author’s earlier Grisha series. I was really surprised to realise that they don’t even seem like they were written by the same person.

This series is amazing. It’s fantasy, but sort of like a heist-fantasy. As if you got Ocean’s Eleven and added some magic and secret towers. It’s dark and unique, and it’s written so, so well. That said, easily my favourite thing was the characters which are just amazing.

I’m a sucker for books about close knit groups of wildly different people, all working towards a shared objective, bonding and bickering along the way. Six Crows and Crooked Kingdom do that perfectly. The way the relationships develop and change is so perfect and so subtle – I’m not sure I’ve ever seen characterisation performed so beautifully. The characters are so different, but the way their personalities interweave is wonderfully crafted.

2016

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Scythe Neal Shusterman UK paperback book cover

Scythe is very much at the forefront at my mind at the moment, given that the third and final book in the series, The Toll, has just been given a release date of September 2019. Needless to say, I’m very excited.

There were a lot of options for books published in 2016, but Scythe stuck out (just) as the one I’m most likely to reread over and over. I only read it last year, and I’m already toying with the idea of rereading it. It’s just the perfect Hanna book – I love books where people fulfil the role of Death, or Santa Claus, etc.

What I particularly appreciate about Scythe is that the world-building is properly and 100% established before the overarching plot gets going. I loved knowing about the details of Citra and Rowan’s apprenticeships, the gleanings that they experienced and the minutiae of how the system worked. It really established the system as a whole, and it’s so inventive and well thought out. I kept trying to poke holes to find one thing that didn’t make perfect sense, and there just wasn’t one.

2017

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

This choice, however, was not spectacularly difficult. If it didn’t have to complete with The Radium Girls, perhaps The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. would have won, as I adored that book.

But it’s not, it’s The Radium Girls, and so there’s no doubt of its rightful place in this list. It’s a hefty non-fiction book about the women who worked in the factories in the 1920s, painting dials on watches with radioactive paint. They were encouraged to put this paint in their mouths… cue a huge range of terrifying ailments and a ridiculously protracted Court battle.

This book is wonderful. It’s informal and accessible, but so hard-hitting that I couldn’t get it out of my head for months afterwards. I actually sobbed whilst reading this book. I’m not talking about a solitary tear wending its way down my cheek – I full on bawled.

I’m desperate to talk about this book so hurry up and read it! I want to talk about the women, the people and especially how radium affected the whole town. The factory was eventually used as a meat locker – so naturally everybody who ate the meat became severely ill. After that the factory was knocked down… and the rubble was deposited around town. Dogs died prematurely, citizens developed an inordinate amount of tumours… you get the idea. I want to talk about it.

2018

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

It was only ever going to be this book. It is a masterpiece of fiction. Seven Deaths of Eveleyn Hardcastle Stuart Turton book cover UK hardback

Essentially, you have a 1920s, Agatha Christie-type feel, but with a healthy dose of twisty mindfuckery. The protagonist has seven days to solve a murder, and each day he wakes up in the body of another witness. Except it’s so, so much darker and twisted and… mental, than that.

It’s one of those books where you’re best of not knowing too much before you go into it, but if you only read one book from this list, it should probably be this one.

There are so many dark twists and turns, and ingenious plot points, that I genuinely gasped out loud on more than one occasion. It’s brutal and fascinating and does not go where you think it’s going to.

Have you read any of these books? Which books are your favourites?

The Incarnations of Immortality (Series Review) by Piers Anthony

May 26, 2019 | fantasy, mythology, Reviews, time travel

More accurately, this is a review of the first and second books in the Incarnations of on a pale horse book cover piers anthony Immortality series, On A Pale Horse and Bearing an Hourglass, by Piers Anthony. Why is it only the first two books? Because I haven’t read the latest three and I want to write a review, that’s why.

It’s also weirdly hard to find an image of the whole cover of On A Pale Horse. I know it looks stupid but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.

Plot summary for On A Pale Horse: When Zane shoots Death, he has to take the job, speeding over the world riding Mortis, his pale horse/limo, measuring souls for the exact balance of Good and Evil, sending each to Heaven or Hell instead of Purgatory. The new Thanatos is superbly competent, ends pain when he ends lives. But Satan is forging a trap for Luna, the woman Death loves.

Plot summary for Bearing An Hourglass: When life seemed pointless to Norton, he accepted the position as the Incarnation of Time, even though it meant living backward from present to past. The other seemingly all-powerful incantations of Immortality–Death, Fate, War, and Nature–made him welcome. Even Satan greeted him with gifts. But he soon discovered that the gifts were cunning traps and he had become enmeshed in a complex scheme of the Evil One to destroy all that was good….

Star Rating for The Incarnations of Immortality series (thus far): * * * *

So, essentially, The Incarnations of Immortality five-book series follows different individuals who have recently assumed the offices of Death, Father Time, the Fates and Mother Nature – one book per role. The fifth book, I think, deals mostly with the over-arching plot of Satan attempting to thwart all these different immortal figures to tip the moral balance of the world into evil once and for all.

I’m a total sucker for books where natural processes (or time travel) are institutionalised, which you could probably over-analyse into evidencing my adoration for pointless policies and regulations… but hey ho. Scythe is an excellent example of this, which was one of my Best Books of 2018, or The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. – which received the same accolade in 2017. Oh, and The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, and any of his books in which Death features.

I’d actually posted on a Reddit forum looking for suggestions for similar books and received an outpouring of shock that I professed to love such books but hadn’t read Piers Anthony. Enter On A Pale Horse, which was swiftly followed by Bearing An Hourglass.

My instincts had told me that I’d be significantly more interested in Death than Father Time, and I was right. Zane’s job is to attend the scene of a death, collect the soul and assess it as being Heaven or Hell-bound. So far, so Hanna. Norton’s job in the second book is to… umm… sort out bumps in time when the Fates tell him something has gone wrong? It’s not 100% clear. I liked it, but it was occasionally a bit hard to follow, despite my love of time travel. He lives his life backwards and has an hourglass that lets him alter time in different ways so he can talk to people in a comprehensible way, but at times I just had to accept what was happening and not try to actually understand the how.

The Incarnations of Immortality series is just fun. Don’t get me wrong, it reads entirely like 1980s fantasy fiction, so you probably shouldn’t expect a masterpiece of scholarly fiction. The prose can be a bit clunky, the dialogue is occasionally slightly stilted and characters often come to accurate, far-reaching conclusions based on precisely zero evidence or common sense. But hey ho. You know what to expect when you pick it up and it’s worth it for the generally interesting plots. It’s far from unreadable in any event.

I did note that the attitude towards women isn’t exactly amazing. These were written in 1983 and 1984, so I’m not going to get massively uppity about it but you should be aware of it if that sort of thing bothers you. Things like ‘she did not seem to be unusually intelligent, but her beauty made up for that,’ and ‘”Have you ever tried to reason with a woman?” she demanded challengingly.’ Oh, and my personal favourite – where Norton can see up her skirt as she attempts to ride a giant snake and then becomes disappointed when she manages to cover herself, despite noting how embarrassed she had been. It doesn’t form a huge part of the plot, but minor instances are fairly common.

I do recommend this series, at least so far. I’ve already ordered the third book, With A Tangled Skein, which follows the Fates. It seems that the main character is a woman, which might help with my complaint immediately above. It’s an enjoyable, light series that’s right up my alley as far as theme goes – perfect for a rainy Bank Holiday weekend.

It’s apparently super difficult to find online reviews of this series, but Goodreads have a plethora of reviews, as always.

The Corset (Review) by Laura Purcell

May 5, 2019 | historical fiction, Reviews

It’s not that I wasn’t looking forward to The Corset – I’d really enjoyed reading The Silent the corset book cover laura purcell Companions, the author’s best-selling novel of the previous year. But it has taken me a while to get round to picking it up. I’ve been in a six month reading slump (that naturally coincides with us purchasing/moving into/decorating/maintaining a new and larger house) so I’ve generally been getting through a lot fewer books than normal, and also The Corset was one of the vast majority of my books that remains packed away in boxes. The only thing that led to it being read in May 2019 was the fact that its box happened to be in a room from which I was too lazy to move in order to obtain reading material. I’m glad it was though – I ended up enjoying The Corset possibly even more than The Silent Companions.

Plot summary: Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain?

Dorothea and Ruth. Prison visitor and prisoner. Powerful and powerless. Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder.

When Dorothea’s charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted with the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person’s skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets teenage seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another theory: that it is possible to kill with a needle and thread. For Ruth attributes her crimes to a supernatural power inherent in her stitches.

The story Ruth has to tell of her deadly creations – of bitterness and betrayal, of death and dresses – will shake Dorothea’s belief in rationality and the power of redemption.

Star Rating for The Corset: * * * *

On the face of it, the plot for The Corset appears very similar to The Silent Companions, to the extent that I actually rolled my eyes when I read it for the first time. Oh look, there’s an incarcerated Victorian woman telling her story, and you don’t know whether she’s mad or not. And there’s an object that may or not have supernatural, creepy powers. I didn’t blame Laura Purcell – it was a format that worked well in her previous book, so why wouldn’t she repeat it? Except, she didn’t.

Yes, we’re set in the same era and there’s a woman in prison whom nobody believes when she talks about her experiences. And it features the same pervading, mysterious gothic tone that I loved about The Silent Companions… but otherwise, it’s actually pretty different.

In The Corset, it’s not an object that is the focus of supernatural suspicion – it’s Ruth herself. She believes that she has the power to imbue her threads with whatever emotion she happens to be experiencing at the time; which isn’t ideal considering she’s a seamstress. That’s where the ‘is she mad or is she manipulative?’ aspect comes in – Ruth is passing on this story a few days before she is due to be hanged for murder, and her charitable companion is obviously skeptical about Ruth’s claims.

Speaking of the charitable companion… alongside Ruth’s story runs that of Dorothea, a middle class young lady whose interest in phrenology and prison reform have so far put off all eligible suitors, much to her father’s irritation. I did enjoy Dorothea’s story, although it’s fair to say that Ruth’s held me a little more tightly. Having said that, I think Dotty as a person was quite cleverly done – she had modern ideas of independence without it being cliched or sledge-hammery.

The Corset isn’t as creepy as The Silent Companions. There are no figures that move when you aren’t looking, and the setting is rather more mundane. It didn’t keep me awake of night with fears of being watched. However, that’s offset by there being slightly more in the way of character development and plot – it’s a meatier book, somehow, with more substance. And it’s much more fast-paced – there’s less sitting around waiting for statues to move.

I think the ending was cleverly done. It didn’t have the ‘oomph’ that The Silent Companions did, but it was so cleverly written that I actually had to go back and reread it a second time with a nod of appreciation. It was satisfying – the right ending, even if a slightly predictable one.

Apparently Laura Purcell has a new book coming out in September 2019, called Bone China. It looks slightly different to both The Corset and The Silent Companions, which do run along a similar theme. This one has controversial medical trials (which I love), but also fairies (which I do not). We’ll see. I’m clearly going to buy it anyway, given how much I loved this book, but I’m not totally on board with it thus far.

Anyway, third book aside, I really do recommend the author’s second novel, The Corset. It takes the creepy, quasi-madness of The Silent Companions, but adds some excellent character development and a faster moving plot. All in all, an excellent evolution of the original.

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