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 Justin de Quincey has received an excellent education for 12th century England, despite the fact that he’s never known either of his parents. Finally at an age to set off on his own, Justin discovers that his father is actually the benefactor he’d already been familiar with, Aubrey de Quincey, nothing less than the Bishop of Coventry. When leaving, his thoughts clouded with anger and betrayal, he stumbles upon a murder scene, and receives a letter meant for Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Angevin Empire is in a bad place, as King Richard has gone missing on his return from the Crusades. Justin’s successful delivery of the letter to the queen leads to his assignment – discovering who had this man killed, why, and who might know what’s happened to King Richard.
Despite having read and adored most of Sharon Kay Penman’s books, I’d never actually read any of her medieval mysteries before this one. I bought all four – because, of course, I knew I would probably enjoy them once I read them – but I’ve had this one sitting on the shelf for almost four years. Historical mysteries have been keeping my interest in the overall historical fiction genre keen, so I decided at long last to see what one of my favourite authors had in store.
The Queen’s Man combines Penman’s exceptional talent for evoking the medieval atmosphere with a mystery that was satisfactory. While I’d never really put this on par with one of her epics, not least for the fact that it doesn’t contain the huge range of pure human emotion and historical detail as those do, her skills are still very obvious in this shorter, faster paced format. The main character, Justin, is sometimes a little bit too obtuse, even for a reader that is as bad at guessing mysteries as I am. He’s obviously inexperienced, but he doesn’t always draw conclusions as quickly as I felt he should. The mystery itself isn’t really one that had my heart racing, but it was interesting enough to keep me reading.
I suppose that “satisfactory” really is the best word for the book; it was a nice way to spend the afternoon, a quick read that sent me back to medieval England which is something I always enjoy. If I’d started here with Penman’s works, I’m not sure I’d have fallen in love with her writing as much as I did with The Sunne in Splendour or Here Be Dragons, but as a fan already, I can tell you that I’ll finish the next three, and I expect I will like them as much as I liked this book. Don’t go in expecting another breathtaking historical epic and you’ll enjoy The Queen’s Man - although it looks like the only place you can currently buy the book is used or on Kindle in the US.
 Miss Serena Barton demands justice. She demands it by standing outside the home of the Duke of Clermont in London through all the vagaries of English weather, attracting the attention of Hugo Marshall. As the duke’s secretary, Hugo plans to restore his riches and thus earn his own, fulfilling his ambition to make it in the world. But Serena’s plight attracts his attention and he quickly grows fond of this fierce, determined, protective woman.
Courtney Milan has fast become one of my very favourite romance authors. Her books are consistently beautifully written, with characters that truly tug at the heart and add in just that emotional intensity that sometimes lacks in other romances. This novella starts off another series of hers, and while it’s not as amazing as Unlocked was, it’s still a really wonderful read and a fantastic way to spend an hour or two. Also, it still only costs 99 cents, so it’s impossible to resist.
It is in part because this novella sets up a new series that it lacks a little bit. This is a bit more clearly a background story, and while Hugo and Serena are both wonderful characters as usual, there isn’t quite the same self-contained feel, particularly because of how the ending actually introduces the characters which will continue on the series. But this was still delightful; in particular, I loved the way the hero and heroine flirted with each other through little notes, as they started to get to know each other in their rather peculiar circumstances.
Even though this was a novella, and necessarily short, I again didn’t feel the story was particularly rushed, but rather enjoyed the way it played out. Serena was a wonderful woman who did clearly have a few things to learn, but whose determination was admirable to behold, and who deserved a better lot in life than she starts out with. Hugo’s own justification for his behaviour made perfect sense. I still felt like I got to know these two characters, although the rest of them remain as necessary shadows, and to get behind their happy ending.
The Governess Affair is another great novella for romance readers and I for once can’t wait for the rest of this series to come out!
 William Blacker spent years of his life in Romania from the early 90’s onwards. Longing for a simpler life, like that he’d experienced during his idyllic rural English childhood, he found the perfect match in rural Romania. People there still seldom watched TV and spent most of their lives at work in the countryside, harvesting and living off the land as their ancestors had done for generation after generation. It’s an image of not only the Romanians themselves, but the gypsies that live with them, and the disappearing other segments of the population as the steady march of modernisation takes yet another corner of the unspoiled world.
I bought this book on a whim over a year ago and finally got around to reading it – I’ve recently become interested in the little pockets of Europe outside of my own knowledge, generally sticking to eastern Europe, and so this seemed like a perfect match. I found it even more interesting than I’d suspected, not only for Blacker’s experience, but for the comparisons he makes with medieval Europe, a topic with which I am very well acquainted.
First of all, the Romania he portrays is very much a rural idyll, so much so that I couldn’t help but feel some of the rougher areas were a little bit glossed over. It calls to the ideal of the rural peasant, happy to work, happy with life in general, free of superficial trappings of modern life like telephones, televisions, possessions, and so on. He also quotes from Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, which is an old piece of scholarship that has been discredited in many ways by current medieval historians, a lot of which I read, and which put me on edge. I couldn’t help but feel that some of the problems of rural life, like bad harvests and lack of leisure time, were glossed over. Maybe the people did seem happier and more welcoming to him, and maybe they were, but he focused on other problems instead. It made for a very engaging read, and certainly I’d love to visit Romania now, but I questioned a lot of this as I read.
Blacker also spends a considerable amount of time with the gypsies, as the “love” in the subtitle alludes to, somewhat flabbergasted by their complete lack of preparation for life. The women, for instance, exist to do seemingly nothing but dance and charm foreign men, as Blacker discovers, and the gypsies almost always found themselves begging over the course of the winter as they failed to preserve enough food to last the whole season. Contrasted with the rural farmers, their lives seem confusing. He also meets some Germans, who even speak German, but return to the motherland over the course of the novel and find city life a difficult adjustment.
I think this review has already made it sound like I didn’t enjoy the book, which just isn’t true; I loved the descriptions of Romanian culture and people and Blacker’s experiences integrating into their society and trying to understand how things might have been. The book also has pictures in the middle, which helped, and I was outright fascinated by the idea that these people have been living the same way for centuries. They might have paved roads now, but the “good old days” such as they were do make for an excellent book.
I’d recommend Along the Enchanted Way if you, too, are interested in how life might be in the corners of forgotten Europe, but I’d take it with a little pinch of salt.
 One of the richest heiresses in eighteenth century Georgian Britain, Mary Eleanor Bowes had every reason to expect a glowing future. Educated beyond her female peers, indulged by her father, and pampered with every possible luxury, the young heiress satisfied her taste for literary and botanical endeavours, but at the same time was a very poor judge of men. When Andrew Robinson Stoney, a handsome Irish soldier, was gravely injured in a duel for her honour, she married him almost immediately, told that he had only days to live. To her surprise, he recovered within hours of their marriage and proceeded to wreak a brutal reign of terror on her life, beating, kidnapping, and imprisoning her and any other females who fell too closely within his grasp.
But Mary Eleanor wouldn’t endure his tyranny forever, and her fight back, for herself and her children, resulted in hope for all abused wives throughout Britain.
What a fascinating book. This popular history, which reads almost like a novel at times, traces the fall of an incredibly rich and privileged woman due to a couple of bad, life-changing decisions, and is a fascinating look at how a single man could ruin the lives of everyone around him. Stoney wasn’t even born particularly highly, but by simply using his attractiveness and ability to lie guilelessly, he managed to bag himself not one but two heiresses. By the standards of their day, his treatment was judged out of the ordinary, but both of his wives had very little power to free themselves from his clutches.
Mary Eleanor Bowes herself was a very compelling character and I felt for her very strongly throughout the course of the book. She was spoiled when young, and did obviously have bad judgement and suffered from a lack of maturity despite her rather more advanced book learning, but none of that meant that she deserved to be so ill-treated. I found all of the struggles she went through to finally free herself to be enlightening – married women under 18th century law genuinely had zero rights. She no longer owned any of the property her father had bestowed on her, as her new husband forced her to renounce her prenuptial contract keeping her own income and properties, and was kept a virtual prisoner by servants hired by her husband. She had nothing, not even her children most of the time.
Her fight to regain those rights is engaging and heartening, as it must have been for any of the women of her time following the case. It made me very glad that I wasn’t born in the eighteenth century, and that so many women before me fought for our gender, as I hope we continue to do so. Indeed, Moore lists when women gained some of the rights Mary Eleanor deserves, and some of them are depressingly recent, which only underscores the fact that there is still so much ground we need to gain.
A peek into the real-life trauma of a disastrous eighteenth century marriage, Mary Eleanor’s fight for her life and family in Wedlock makes for fascinating reading, even as it reminds us of how much women have fought for their rights over the past couple of hundred years.
 Verity Price is a cryptozoologist and a competitive ballroom dancer. Living in a world full of cryptids, or species that aren’t humans or animals as we know them, it’s her job discover those which aren’t harmful and the protect them against the Covenant, a group whose aim is to eliminate as many of them as possible. Her family, the Prices, were formerly members of the Covenant, and as such any Covenant member is not likely to view her favourably. When one of them invades on her territory in New York City, she immediately feels threatened, and launches into action to protect her city and the cryptids from any potential threat. But, as always, it’s not the handsome by-the-book Covenanter who threatens New York; it’s a much greater danger that could place both of them at risk.
A new urban fantasy series by Seanan McGuire? Wild bears couldn’t keep me away. She’s authored one of my two favourites, the October Daye series, and has also written the Newflesh trilogy (my review of Feed) under the name of Mira Grant. I completely trust her talent at this point and I simply can’t resist the prospect of more of her writing. I immediately bought this book on release day, and savoured it once I’d read it. Here once again, McGuire proves her talents by creating a book that is fun, different, and very much worth your time.
Like most urban fantasy series, a kickass heroine lies at the heart of this book in Verity Price. She’s not exactly your average kickass heroine though; her hobby is ballroom dancing, and she competes professionally alongside her job at a waitress at “Fish and Strips”. Her family is absolutely laugh-out-loud ridiculous, trained as they all are to combat standards; as an example, her grandfather disappeared years ago, and her grandma still trawls alternate dimensions with grenades trying to find him. The funniest part for me, though, has to be the Aeslin mice, a sentient breed of mouse that lives with the Price family and concoct festivals for every mundane event that happens in Verity’s life. It did at times feel that McGuire was intent on fitting every humorous line she’d come up with into the book, and not all of them resonate perfectly, but for the most part, I was far too busy laughing to mind.
As the first novel in a series, the world has to be set up, but the way this is done is overall so creative that I barely noticed. There is no learning curve; the book is simply fun and enjoyable from cover to cover. I loved the fact that Verity actually had a family who loved her; that she did something completely different and feminine alongside her fighting skills; and that the romance was subtle and woven into the overall context of the story, rather than the other way around.
Sure, Discount Armageddon is still a little bit shallow in parts, especially regarding the love interest, but I felt like this was a fantastic start to something that is yet again that much different from McGuire. Definitely recommended, and I will most certainly keep reading anything Ms McGuire writes.
 Everything bad that’s happened in Briony Larkin’s life is all her fault, for one simple fact; she is a witch. It is she who burned down the library, who caused illness in her family, who must then protect her sister Rose from all harm. As such, she is no longer going to the swamp, where she might ask the fae to do harm for her by accident, and instead stays close by the parsonage to protect her sister and keep to the right path. But when a young man, Eldric, comes to live with them, and worms his way into her family, Briony’s life and assumptions are turned upside down.
I loved this book. I read several excellent reviews from a number of other trusted bloggers, enough to make me buy it, but I didn’t actually understand how much I’d love it until I began reading it. Billingsley uses one of my very favourite devices, the unreliable narrator whose worldview changes radically as he or she realises some important truths, and combines that with a delightful mix of fantasy, romance, and elegant writing to make a truly outstanding novel.
The book starts out slightly confusing. Briony is a narrator that lives very much inside her own head, and as a result the story is told fractiously; it takes a while for us to work out exactly what she is talking about, why she feels threatened by Eldric and his family, and about Rose’s peculiar behaviour. But once hooked, I couldn’t stop reading, and devoured the entire book in a single evening. I loved the atmosphere, which was very much like England a hundred years ago and with more magic. The swamp reminded me of the way the fens were in Lady of the Butterflies by Fiona Mountain, although the books themselves are wildly different; a magical and mysterious place that no longer exists in the modern world, long past drained to produce more land for houses, farms, and monetary gain in general.
It was the relationships and how they grew that really affected me, though; I absolutely adored Eldric and the way he bonded with each of the characters, especially Briony and Rose. He really causes her to question all of the assumptions she’s built up over the years. Backing him up is Rose, who seems to understand more about everything that’s happened despite her own peculiarities. I loved how Eldric and Briony so clearly made one another happy, too, and the completely organic way their relationship grew over the course of the narrative. It’s completely in contrast to the other young male character, Cecil, who attempts to bully Briony into marrying him.
In fact, just talking about Chime makes me want to read it again, which for me is a sure sign of an incredible read. It immediately secured its place on my new “to be re-read” shelves, and as such I completely recommend you make space for it on yours, too.
 One for the Money, Janet Evanovich
My mom recently started reading this series on the recommendation of some of her friends, and when I was visiting she lent me this one to give the series a try. Not wanting to disappoint, I did so, and I could pretty easily see why this has become so popular.
Stephanie Plum is a young woman who has got herself into a tough spot. She needs money to pay her rent and bills in her apartment in Trenton, New Jersey, and soon, so when her family tells her that her cousin has a job up for grabs, she goes for it. That job is for a bounty hunter, but the inexperienced Stephanie, lured by the promise of $10,000, decides to go after the most dangerous criminal of them all. He is a man with whom she has a past, and a man she’d very much like to get revenge on.
For me, this had a very typical mystery feel to it – if it had had magic, it could have been the start to an urban fantasy series, which usually starts out with some sort of mystery at the core. It was certainly fun, albeit a bit gory at times, a book I didn’t mind reading and sped through very quickly. My favourite parts were probably Stephanie’s interaction with her oddball family; I think I can see where the series is going with the two potential love interests, too.
I am not really dying to read the second book, but I wouldn’t turn it away if my mom put it in my hands again, either. Like most series, I suspect it gets better as you go along and get more acquainted with the characters and the history of the books, but it’s down to preference; I prefer the variety of mystery that involves either fantasy or history.
 Web of Lies, Jennifer Estep
Having read and enjoyed the first in this series, I figured I might as well buy the second and keep on going. Urban fantasy is definitely becoming my stress relief reading; whenever I’m not sure what I want to read, one of them jumps out at me with the promise of ever-more-epic storylines, consistently developing characters, and usually a fair bit of romance, too. In short – all of my favourite things, and this series isn’t an exception to the rule. In fact, I found the second one improved on the first as I fell deeper into Gin’s world.
Ostensibly retired from her job as an assassin, Gin Blanco has settled into running her murdered benefactor’s restaurant, the Pork Pit. But trouble won’t leave her alone, and it walks into her restaurant in the shape of two people; Jake McAllister, who attempts to rob her, and Violet Fox, who knows that benefactor and who is in danger. Gin’s own personal lust interest, Donovan Caine, is back, but thrown into the mix is another potential partner this time, as the stakes for Gin are as high as ever.
I liked this book a lot; it was a fast and easy read and I found myself liking Gin a lot better than I did in the first book. I liked that she was a devil-may-care contented assassin before, but I think her heart is coming out a lot here, and she needs to figure out how to operate without Fletcher around at the same time. Probably the only part that I didn’t like was Donovan Caine, the cop who simply won’t let his morals go enough to be with Gin. He doesn’t even seem that interested in knowing her – there is plenty of lust between them, but for him, he’s not curious about her and simply shuts off when he realises she’s going to kill someone else. I much preferred Owen Grayson, the new guy, and I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes next.
 Roald Dahl wrote some of my favorite childhood books. I’ll never forget James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, or any of the other amazing books that he wrote for children, and I fully intend to share them with my own children someday. But a couple of the ones I found most interesting were the memoirs he wrote about himself, Boy and Going Solo. I was naturally very eager to learn more about his life, and Sturrock’s biography was a brilliant choice for doing exactly that.
Charting Roald’s life, from his immediate ancestry to his death, Sturrock does an amazing job communicating what sort of man Dahl was. He doesn’t shy away from some of the more difficult aspects of his life, or the way that he manipulated his own past when it suited him – mainly, it becomes clear that Dahl was a storyteller in all respects, and if he thought he could make his life more interesting by telling tales about it, he was happy to do so. While I wasn’t thrilled to discover that both Boy and Going Solo had a large degree of fictionalization, I was still eager to discover the actual, documented truth, and indeed there is a considerable amount of that here thanks to archives, research, and interviews consulted and conducted by Sturrock. Sturrock had also met Dahl before his passing, and so shares personal knowledge of him with us.
There is so much here that I’d never really guessed at it; I knew he’d written darker stories for adults, but I had never really known about his many love affairs, the true misery of his childhood, the losses he suffered in his own life both as a child and an adult, nor his crotchety and sometimes difficult personality. Sturrock liberally quotes from the author’s letters and documents, and I felt like I was genuinely getting to know him and connect him with the author I knew. His writing style is distinctive, and the picture Sturrock tells is cohesive. It’s in no way idealized; it makes him into a fully rounded person, which I think is the best possible result of a biography such as this one. Sturrock is equally praising of the author’s merits, especially his unflagging commitment to children’s literature and charitable work, as he is critical of other aspects of his life.
Naturally, I also found the circumstances around Dahl’s life to be fascinating. An attendee at a British boarding school, a pilot during World War II, and then an up-and-coming writer with a Hollywood star as his wife, Dahl lived through a considerable amount of exciting twentieth century history. I enjoyed Sturrock’s distillation of the facts and the way he built the background around Dahl’s life; it helped ground me and made the rest of the book wonderful reading.
A detailed and intensely appealing biography about one of the world’s best known children’s writers, Storyteller is worthy of a place in the library of any Roald Dahl fan.
 Adoulla Makhslood is the last real ghul hunter in the city of Dhamsawaat. All he wants is to retire, but protecting the city is a job that one cannot retire from. The threat is worse than ever, and Adoulla and his partner Raseed, a god-fearing young warrior, have their hands full. These two ghul hunters, plus a young girl who has lost her Bedouin-like tribe and has the ability to turn into a lion, and Adoulla’s friends, are soon swept up with preventing a devious plot to take the throne from its rightful heir.
I’m going to admit something completely, 100% shallow; I became interested in Saladin Ahmed because of his name. The Saladin who fought against the crusaders in the Middle Ages has long been one of the people in history who fascinates me, and so this author’s name stuck in my head far easier than others had been able to. I listened to a couple of his stories which were available for free online, enjoyed them, and pre-ordered this book. As you may be expecting, I was rewarded.
Far from the typical pseudo-European fantasies (which I’m not disparaging, as I love them very much), this one is set in the middle of a desert, in a pseudo-Middle East, although still at the same time period as most fantasies. This makes the book feel very distinctive immediately; and so does the fact that the main hero is over 60, approaching retirement, but still spry and brave, determined to fight. He is balanced out nicely by his younger partner, Raseed, who is so religious that it stifles his emotional life. Together, they make a formidable team, but potentially not formidable enough for the enemy they face.
Despite the very short length of the book for a fantasy novel, each character is distinctive and well-drawn, and reading about them and their world is a pleasure. The plot is not particularly complex but it does draw the reader in, as it is certainly life-threatening and suspenseful for the characters, and they are the stars of the show here. Raseed wrestling with his religion and his desires, Zamia’s quest to avenge her tribe, Adoulla’s longing for a rest and for the love of his life, and almost all of the characters’ love for their city and homeland – this is what makes the novel a worthy read.
An adventure fantasy novel that seems to delight in turning some of the conventions of the genre on their heads, Throne of the Crescent Moon is a worthwhile read, and Saladin Ahmed is an author to watch for a lot more than his name.
 It’s been twenty-five years since the Kellis-Amberlee virus hit the world population. When the virus that finally cured cancer, in a young girl called Amberlee, and the virus that cured the common cold, created by Dr Kellis, combined, disastrous consequences ensued. The virus wound up living inside ordinary people and reanimating them once they died; these zombies are a constant threat, hungry for flesh that they, too, can infect, a neverending supply of horror. The world has changed drastically in the face of the virus, and Georgia and Shaun Mason, brother and sister, are part of the new wave of media – bloggers who report from the edge . Together with the third member of their team, tech whiz and writer Buffy, and a crew supporting them, they’ve just won the biggest contract of their career; the position of press team on Senator Ryman’s quest to become President of the United States.
I let Feed languish on my shelves for a number of months before I finally persuaded myself to pick it up. Although I adored Warm Bodies a year and a half ago, zombies have never really been my favorite member of the horror brigade. What did draw me to this book were the spectacular reviews and the simple fact that Mira Grant is a pen name for Seanan MacGuire, the author of one of my top two favorite urban fantasy series. In search of something I could love as much as I love October Daye, I finally picked this book up. And I was rewarded far more than I’d expected to be, because this is a truly fantastic book, and not really about zombies at all.
There is some background to be learned in the first part of the book; we need to know about this world, and this particular author happens to be an incredible world builder. It takes a little longer to get started than other books, with all the time spent learning about Kellis-Amberlee, about the characters and their lives, and about the new way that people get their news in this post-apocalyptic world. By about halfway, however, the book is constantly exciting and suspenseful, building up a mystery that had me turning the pages faster and faster, both dreading and anticipating what would come next.
As with many books I adore, the main character, Georgia Mason, generally known as “George” to the people who love her, is a fantastic, gutsy, brave, smart woman. She’s not afraid to love, with her brother the primary example, but she’s ferociously loyal to her ideals and sticks by her mantra of always delivering the news. She’ll do what’s right for journalism and for the world. She loves her brother Shaun above all others, including the rest of her family, and together, they make an incredible team that has resulted in the success of their news site. She is the narrator of this book, but each chapter has snippets of blog posts and news stories from each character, so we do hear all of their voices.
This is an excellent way to tell the story, because in truth all three of the main crew, Georgia, Shaun, and Buffy, alongside some side characters, are very well fleshed out. I cared what happened to all of them, especially as things started to heat up, and parts of the book very nearly had me in tears.
This isn’t just about zombies, truly; and in fact, there really aren’t that many zombies in it, which makes their appearances all the more suspenseful. No – it’s about the barriers set up against the truth, about how ordinary people can be more threatening than our worst nightmares, and very much about what journalism should be at its best. It’s also very political; Georgia is right inside a presidential campaign, and imagining how politicians might cope when the very fabric of their world and morals is constantly fraying makes for further amazing characterization.
Is this a book you should read? Yes – I was completely swept along for the ride and left with my jaw on the floor at the end of it, longing to find out what this author could possibly do next. The book doesn’t end in a cliffhanger, but it was so good that I was eager for more. Very highly recommended.
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