Christine Feehan - Dark Prince

This is first book I’ve finished in 2019 and hopefully the first of many. It took me a while to get through this one mainly because it’s a hard book for me to get into. The text was small and frankly, I found most of the book boring.

As a side note, I was reading through some of my older reviews and it seems that I’ve decided to be more PC of late. I’m not sure why, maybe I’m afraid of offending people by having an extreme opinion that may differ from theirs and on that subject, Dark Prince could be a very dangerous book for me to review, especially with what’s about to follow. So here goes.

Dark Prince is the first in a long series of books about a race of creatures known as Carpathians. These creatures are somewhere between human and vampire and need to from a connection with a life mate in order to not be fully consumed by the beast inside. This story follows the Carpathian male, Mikhail who finds his life mate, Raven and the whole experience is essentially a study on how not to date women.

I won’t go too much into the detail of the story but essentially Raven has psychic abilities and can use these to communicate with Mikhail with just her mind. Upon the first contact with Mikhail, he gets annoyed when she tries to read his mind and in response… he mentally breaks into her bedroom and plays with her vagina. There is a lot of back and forth from then on mostly involving Raven continually claiming that she is going to leave him, is a totally independent woman who doesn’t need Mikhail and can look after herself… but then does the exact opposite of what she says.

The other thing I don’t like about Raven is the fact that she is portrayed as a barbie doll. Blonde hair, massive tits, tiny waist. In a book released in 2006 when I thought we were past objectifying women, even in a book as smutty as this. I also don’t think I’m the intended audience for this book so I find it even more surprising that Raven is portrayed in this way.

Raven appears to be totally submissive towards Mikhail and despite continually saying that she wants to be a strong, confident, independent woman, continually lets him dominate her. There is nothing in narrative that suggests this is a slowly changing character trait and the whole ‘love’ between the two is more of an author’s ‘because I said so’ approach to character development.

In terms of the writing itself, it’s horribly put together. Perspectives change at a whim which makes it hard to tell who’s narrating and from what perspective. This happens all the time and is made worse on page 32 where one of the character names is actually wrong.

The worst thing about the book however is that… nothing really happens. It does that, what I’m finding to be, typical thing of being 308 pages long and only having anything happen in the last ten pages. Okay, I’m overexaggerating here but even if you count the smut as things happening there’s still 150 pages of nothing – just more gesturing by Raven and Mikhail being angry that she was breathing without permission.

The last section of the book sees the arrival of Andre the vampire, a character who has had no visibility in the story whatsoever and shows up as if from nowhere to piss on everyone’s parade. The way he’s dealt with is just terrible too. I cannot believe that there were two run-ins with Andre before the final show down, during both of which he could have been killed… but I’m guessing for plot reasons he wasn’t?

Dark Prince is the first in a very long Carpathian series of which I’ve been informed, they get better. But it’s going to be a while before I test that theory.

Dark Prince by Christine Feehan was published by Piatkus books in 2006. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

David Gibbins - The Last Gospel

The next adventure for Jack and his crew of historical heroes has a lot of different paths but ultimately it boils down to a hunt for a Gospel written by none other than Jesus Christ. The trip takes them all around the world from ancient Rome, to California in search of where it’s been kept. As always with these things though, there are arbitrary dickheads who want to stand in the way of history but this time it’s not for money, but more just to keep the Gospel hidden – because there can be no change to religion.

The book itself is well written but goes a little further with the ongoing dialogue sections that explain the history behind everything that happens. There are a lot more flashbacks in this one which makes me think there isn’t enough modern-day information to keep the story going and we keep needing to dip back into the past to have more explained to us. Again, there is nothing majorly wrong with this, but I did feel like it broke the flow of the story as it always seemed to happen just when the modern-day parts were building up momentum.

Another criticism is that, just like in the last books, Jack’s power to recall knowledge at a moment’s notice to serve the story has gotten even stronger and this takes away a lot from the characters. I see that it serves the purpose of driving the story forward, but it feels too easy as it’s always at the exact moment the information is needed.

I found it a lot harder to keep on reading this one, probably because the continual dialogue explanations slowed down the story a lot more than in previous books. That said, there is a very good, and also historically plausible, story in the background here and it’s very enjoyable to see it unfold over the 542-page extravaganza.

There’s not really a lot else to say to be honest. The stories are written in a consistent and coherent way and stick to an established pattern. While I’ve enjoyed these first three books, it’s time for a break and to read something new, however, I’m sure that the next few books will follow the same blueprint when I do go back to them.

The Last Gospel by David Gibbins was published by Headline Publishing Group in 2008. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Ernest Cline - Ready Player One

I played squash recently with someone when I mentioned that I was reading David Gibbins’ Atlantis and they mentioned that I might enjoy Ready Player One. The movie had just come out and I was also told that it was wildly different from the book and that if I was going to watch the movie, I should read the book first. So I did.

The general premise is, this crazy genius, James Halliday, creates this thing called the Oasis which is a virtual universe that people log in to play games, do jobs, go to school and essentially do anything except for eat and sleep. It’s almost where computer games are heading now we have VR headsets, only expanded to cover more of our general livelihood.

In the book, the real world is going to shit with wars, poverty and famine. This is summed by the cover of the book which shows mobile homes stacked on top of each other to increase the population density and cater for the ever widening rich/poor divide.

Anyway, in terms of the driving force behind the story, Halliday dies and leaves no heirs so he starts a contest to find keys in his game world. Whoever finds all the keys gets full control of the Oasis – so essentially becomes the richest person in the world.

There were a couple things that irritated me about the movie, which I’ll throw in here as it’s relative but first, the book. Now in terms of story, Ready Player One is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It does that thing where it drags you in, gets you invested in the characters and makes it difficult to put down. The arrogance of the antagonist makes you want him to lose and the characters are both engaging and charming in their own ways.

That’s not to say it’s a well written masterpiece though. There are several issues I had which unfortunately broke the flow somewhat. In hindsight, I should have ignored them and carried on, but I can’t do that anymore.

The most glaring of these was the time-continuity throughout the book. At some point, weeks would go by in a sentence without any real clues toward the passage of time. Then time will move back three days, then forward a day to the point where it became impossible to know what day of the week it is. Maybe it’s got something to do with the destructive capability of computer games on our perception of reality, who knows. On the bare face of it though, it looks like bad writing.

Halliday is obsessed with 80s culture and a lot of the references in the book reflect this with games like PacMan, Tempest and Joust making prominent appearances. However, there are certain elements that cross over into the 90s. References to directors on page 62 that only really rose to prominence in the 90s and some didn’t make an impression until the 2000s. It seems like a strange choice when there were a lot of movies released during the 10 years that comprised the 80s. This is a minor point though and it annoyed me more in the movie when it states that James Halliday’s favourite game was Goldeneye, a game released in the mid nineties for a console that didn’t exist in the 80s!

I also found it odd that all Wade can do in the Oasis is go to school because he doesn’t have any money. It’s like EA came in, bought out the Oasis and then monetised the whole thing. I would have thought that especially for a character like Halliday, this would have been the exact opposite of how he wanted the Oasis to work, and it feels like part of the premise of the movie – stopping the evil protagonist from gaining control of the Oasis – is made almost redundant by this fact.

When I thought about it a bit more, it seems that Wade’s inability to go anywhere other than school in a universe of infinite possibilities, it merely a device to drive the story and it’s really weak when you think about it. The movie didn’t create this problem and doesn’t have Wade confined to school so while parts of the movie annoyed me, parts of it are better too.

Another example of things done to drive the story, when you get to page 208, Artefacts are brought up for the first time stating that they’ve been around since the start of the Oasis. This again feels very much like, ‘I need to do something to move the story on… so… Artefacts?’ It could have gone by unnoticed if done differently but it’s at the start of chapter, 208 pages into a 374-page book so feels like an afterthought. Not as bas as some of Stephen King’s Dark Tower decisions though, and there isn’t an author note to justify them either.

One more contrasting point from the movie is the character of Art3mis. A main part of the book is that Wade believes that the Art3mis avatar looks like her real-life counterpart – this is true in the book but in the movie, the avatar is an alien. I can see absolutely no reason for this. The movie also rushes through the premise of the Oasis making it so anyone who hasn’t read the book will struggle to know what’s going on. Lastly, there is no relationship building between Art3mis and Wade in the movie. He just sees her one day and the next thing you know they are best friends. It condenses the story from the book for no real gain or reason.

There – movie whine over.

As I said at the start, Ready Player One is an imaginative story with some great characters. It’s just a little rough around the edges.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was published by Arrow Books in 2012. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

David Gibbins - Crusader Gold

The second book in the Jack Howard series sees Mr Howard and friends on a quest to retrieve the Menorah, a golden Jewish relic lost to the ages. In a short sentence, it’s pretty much a copy of Atlantis in terms of the writing style and structure; there is lot of historic explanation, some crazy action sequences and a lot more plot explanation.

It suffers from the same ‘issues’ as the first book in that Jack is a walking Deus Ex Machina who knows the exact piece of information to continually drive the plot forward. That said, it’s still a good book that’s easy to read and has that ‘this could have happened in real life’ feel to it with its use of historical references.

In this case, it’s the ancient Viking Harald Hardrada who sacked Constantinople, stole the Menorah and sailed to Greenland and then on to America or, in this case, Newfoundland. Jack and company follow this trail while being pursued by some evil doers who are seeking the giant golden candlestick, not for historical purposes, but because it’s made of gold and worth a lot of money.

While telling its own story, Crusader Gold, appears to set the groundwork for some other group of people who will continually cross paths with Jack and try to kill him – adding excitement and exhilaration to their worldly travels.

There are two gripes I had with the story and one of the comes from the first book. Jack has unlimited resources at his disposal and while this is almost necessary for the course, it does feel rather convenient. It does make me wonder if there is going to be a future story where all his resources are stripped away – it might make some of his adventures slightly harder.

My other gripe was with the character Maria. She wasn’t mentioned in the first book at all, but is made out to be so close to Jack she’s practically his sister – which doesn’t make a lot of sense considering she was totally absent from the first book. If they were that close, you would have thought that Jack would have told her about a little thing like discovering Atlantis.

Crusader Gold clocks in at 449 pages but I reckon only 250 of those drive the story – the rest are spent explaining what’s going on and providing backstory to move the plot on to the next bit. There’s nothing wrong with that but at the same time, the balance just doesn’t feel right here.

Crusader Gold by David Gibbins was published by Headline Publishing Group in 2006. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

David Gibbins - Atlantis

My new year’s resolution is to definitely read more and get more book reviews published. The first four reviews of this year date back to my holiday in June last year so it’s high time to crank up the output on book reading. Anyway, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about David Gibbins’ first book, Atlantis.

There’s a semi-interesting story behind this one. I got a book called Gods of Atlantis from a charity book thing at work and after reading the opening and doing some research, I found out that it was the fourth or fifth book in a Jack Howard series. I didn’t like the idea of starting part way through a series, so I got Atlantis and the two follow up books to bridge the gap.

Atlantis follows the story of Jack Howard and his buddy Costas as they go in search of the legendary missing city. What follows is a tale of mystery and intrigue with a beautiful girl thrown into the mix. Naturally Mr Howard beds the girl, as it seems that all these sorts of books have to follow the same pattern of male, physically able protagonist has to bed the girl otherwise it’s not believable? I dunno.

One thing that came through the narrative a lot was Gibbins’ overwhelming need to explain everything. There are pages upon pages of exposition with literally zero urgency as characters will just spontaneously divulge every piece of information they know about the subject in question. Jack is easily the worst at this as he seems to know everything. I get that it’s a device to make the story work but it’s crazy how much he knows about everything and how there is seemingly time for everyone to stand around talking when there is a race against time to stop the bad guys destroying Atlantis.

The writing itself it actually very clean and well done and Gibbins structures his characters well. While I make fun of the fact that Jack Howard gets the girl in typical fashion, it’s at least structured in a way that makes it logical and there is a relationship development piece. This in comparison to Lee Child where the sex happens because the girl is hot.

In terms of things that stood out, there was one on page 352 that got my attention. The sentence talks about how there were low chances against surviving which on a read back, made me think it was saying there was a low chance of death… which I didn’t think was the intention of the sentence.

There was also a reference to ‘one giant step’ which made me cringe as it was a glaring similarity, and probably deliberate one, to the moonwalk. It just felt a bit out of place it a book that wasn’t at all cliché at this point.

There was one minor point when the quest for Atlantis starts by having a camel falling down a hole to uncover an Egyptian tomb. It’s described as a coincidence… I’m not sure how a camel falling in a hole and discovering a tomb is coincidence – more like blind luck. Which is not the same thing.

Atlantis is a solid adventure story and despite what I’ve said about the explaining, it’s necessary and helped me invest more in the story as you join the characters in their excitement of discovery. There is also a lot of action too, but it suffers from the same problem as other books where it’s 480 pages long and the last 40 pages are pretty much where everything happens.

Atlantis by David Gibbins was published by Headline in 2008. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

This one took me a while to get in to after reading loads of fiction and if I’m honest, it hasn’t endeared me to non-fiction writing, even if the subject is borderline interesting. The edition I read was the 10^th anniversary edition featuring a new introduction. The introduction takes the interesting step of answering criticism the book has received, not only from religious people but from the non-religious community as well. The tact taken appears to be any criticism of the book, even when not biased or based on counter beliefs, is wrong. Because science. That’s basically the whole book. But what’s wrong with that you say? Well…

Firstly, the God Delusion is a published book. As it is a book, it is designed to be read by other people. If it were me writing a book with the sole purpose of ‘opening people’s eyes’ I wouldn’t do it using obnoxious language and inaccessible words. I don’t claim to be the smartest guy in the world, but I would like to think that I have some semblance of intelligence and I had no idea what Dawkins is banging on about half the time. But I suppose ‘religion bad, science good’ wouldn’t sell a lot of copies.

The second thing is the way in which the book is written. It clocks in at 426 pages including the afterword by Daniel Dennett – which is yet further posturing over the ideas contained within the book and how they are right and anyone that disagrees with them is wrong. The book could have been closer to 200 pages as Dawkins has an overzealous need to repeat the same point over and over again. On several occasions, I had to check that I hadn’t misplaced where I was in the book and that I wasn’t reading the same thing.

Now on to the subject itself. I did think that the book would be more about why God doesn’t exist and here’s proof looking at history, but I didn’t factor in that Dawkins is a biologlist, not a historian so his argument comes from the biological standpoint. There’s just one massive flaw in his main hypothesis. Using evolution as an argument against the existence of God is weak. God is supposed to have created the universe out of nothing. If he has the power and ability to do such a thing, you would also think he has the ability to create life with the ability to evolve and adapt. Almost in the same way as humans can program AI to react to things.

There were also a few terms I didn’t like and an overall hypothesis that feels very contrary to the point. The first point is one I don’t quite understand and revolves around the ‘ultimate bowing 747.’ Why is has to the be ‘the ultimate’ I have no idea. Anyway, the argument goes that if all the parts of a bowing 747 were in a scrap yard and a hurricane blew through it, what is the chance that the hurricane will put the Bowing 747 together? Essentially this boils down to if the universe was created by something, due to the complexity of said universe, its creator must be at least equally as complex. This isn’t an argument for God’s lack of existence – it’s an, ‘I don’t know but God doesn’t exist.’ It’s not so much the argument I don’t like but the term Ultimate Bowing 747.

The second part is where Dawkins goes on to talk about the ‘Mother of all Burkas,’ The idea being that people are blinded from the realities of science by the belief in God. Telling people that their beliefs are wrong is one thing, if backed with evidence, but telling them they are blind to science because they believe in something is total shit. I know that’s not the science way of saying it but who cares.

The last point I didn’t like was the way Dawkins takes credit for converting people to atheism. Converting is an interesting word, isn’t it? And also there are a few instances where he describes people, mostly Americans, of being afraid of coming out of the closet with their atheist beliefs… that’s an oxymoron in itself but it’s the best way of getting my point across. Writing a book called The God Delusion and trying to convince people to think the same way as you, is acting in the same vein as the thing you are trying to dissuade people from doing. It almost makes atheism seem like its own religion, one that we should all believe in.

Now from the start I haven’t been a believer in God. I believe that we don’t know enough about the universe to understand our own creation and we likely never will – in fact we shouldn’t even be contemplating our own existence – but all this book does is say that God isn’t real because you can’t know that he is. It’s not an argument and any evidence we can fathom from our own planet is not a proof of a lack of God.

Also, telling people that are blind and stupid probably isn’t the best way to get them to buy into what you are selling.

That said, I do agree with the concept even if I think the book goes about it in the wrong way. If there is no religion, there would be no religious wars, there would be less barriers towards social interaction and the world would generally be a better place. At least in theory. Personally, I think the human race is so destructive that even if we didn’t believe in a multitude of different things, we would still find other reasons to kill each other. Isn’t that a sad fact of life? And one that Dawkins doesn’t consider. If you succeed in abolishing religion, wouldn’t you be afraid of what might take its place? Food for thought.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was published by Bantam Books in 2006. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

Steve Alten - The Mayan Prophecy

Firstly I must say that I really enjoyed reading this book. At 629 pages long it’s one of the longest books I’ve read for a while but that’s only because the text is large and well spaced. A testimony to how much I enjoyed it is that it only took me a few days to crank through it and I struggled to put it down most of the time.

The Mayan Prophecy follows the story of Dominique Vasquez and, I can only imagine the symbolically named, Michael Gabriel (yes, not one angel reference but two) as they quest to save humanity from the end of the world. The plot goes into the reasons why the Mayan calendar ends in May 2012 and it’s actually quite well constructed in terms of reasoning. The main plot point focuses around the fact that it wasn’t actually an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. It was actually an alien spaceship that has been lying dormant at the bottom of the ocean. It’s sending out a distress beacon which can only be picked up when the planets line up in a certain way which happens once every several thousand years but is stopped because some other aliens, who helped us build the pyramids and other shit, have prevented them from doing so. Until now.

There are a few popular culture references but because the book was written in 2001 depicting events in 2012, there is some creative license here. For example he writes about a Rolling Stones album called Past Our Prime and Dominique has a car that can test your alcohol level before you drive.

Despite my overall opinion that it’s a good book there were a lot of things that irked me. On page four we kick off with horrendous spelling errors where the non-word ‘qreat’ is used instead of ‘great’. Now, this section of the book is from a journal of one of the characters so it could be argued that this is the portrayal of typed up handwriting. However, even if this is the premise, I don’t agree with it. If you are going to write something for someone else to read, so not a journal, then spell the words right.

On page 56, there is a face scanner which is used to access a health facility as a security precaution. But it’s not referenced again or cleverly bypassed by taking off someone’s face or head to use it so it’s completely redundant in terms of the story. I’m not if this is meant to be another futuristic prediction over security protocols, but I’m sure this could have been less grandiose if so.

Some of the mathematics while fascinating, is not easy on the eyes and at one point, I found myself wondering if what I was reading was actually correct in terms of sentence structure. Unfortunately, Steve Alten doesn’t have a Clive Cussler character around to explain it to the dumbasses like me. One thing I do know though is that light years is a measure of distance, not time. Yet one of the doctor/scientist characters is either making a joke or doesn’t know this when they refer to light years as a measure of time.

There was one more major error I picked up on towards the middle of the book. Michael has magic sneakers that get written off of his feet but then magically get put back on again. And he ends up going barefoot through the alien spaceship. I’m not sure this is the best choice when journeying in to the unknown but to each their own, I guess.

The only other thing I noted was the dialogue kind of falls apart in the second half of the book. It’s almost like the characters stop caring about making sense with their dialogue. That said, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story and I will definitely get the second one to see where it goes.

The Mayan Prophecy by Steve Alten was first published as Domain by Tor in 2001. RRP £6.99  (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

With half the world wondering if they will ever see a sixth instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire it seems like a weird idea for an author to write a historic spin off title set in his captivating world of fantasy and sex. But there you go, we can’t access the mind of George and see what his ultimate plan is. I wasn’t really planning on reading this one either but I found myself short on books when going on holiday last year and it was two for one in the airport bookshop. Again.

Anyway, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the story of Ser Duncan the Tall who isn’t a knight at all. He just lied about it to everyone after the knight he was squiring for dies and didn’t make him a knight. It’s quite hilarious really.

On his way to a tournament to earn some knight points, he comes across a boy at an inn and despite telling him not to, the boy follows him to the tournament. At the tournament, he pisses off one of the Targaryen princes and ends up in a fight for his life which he wins but at the expense of another more favourable Targaryen who fought for Duncan. All the pieces fall quite nicely together as it turns out the little boy from the inn is also a Targaryen; Duncan is tasked with keeping him alive and off they go on an adventure together.

Now, I thought the entire book was going to be short stories about Dunc and Egg as they travel about Westeros as that’s what the blurb led me to believe. As it happens, they go to one keep, Dunc has one fight with a guy and then they go to a tournament and Dunc loses. That’s the entire storyline of the book. It doesn’t have a satisfactory ending and I’m left thinking that dear George simply cannot finish anything. I’m starting to think he watched Lost, saw how that shit ended and thought, ‘fuck this, I’m not ending anything in case in turns out like that.’ It’s the only logical explanation I can think of for writing 355 pages and not reaching a satisfactory conclusion. It’s not even a major cliff-hanger.

After doing a little research, I found out that it’s actually a collection of three short stories written at the same time as George was writing the Song of Ice and Fire series which makes sense in terms of the story breaks.

That’s not to say the content is bad. The book is actually quite funny. Duncan is an endearing character and happens to be one of the worst knights ever. It seems to be pure luck and sheer brute strength that keeps him and egg alive most of the time. Egg is also hilarious whenever he watches Dunc fight, shouting,’ Kill him! Get him! He’s right there! Kill him!’ exactly the kind of things you want to hear a young child shouting.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a very good and enjoyable read, it’s just the lack of any further developments that’s the disappointment. I’ll keep an eye out for other spin offs in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath while the television series is still going strong.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Legends I originally published by Tor Books in 1998.

Legends II originally published by Del Ray in 2004.

Warriors originally published by Tor Books in 2010.

Clive Cussler - Iceberg

After reading The Storm, I really wanted to give another Clive Cussler book a go. Iceberg takes us all the way back to 1976 in terms of publication and based on my experiences with more recent novels the 1970s seemed to be a much richer and exciting time for books.

Iceberg sees us following the trail of enigmatic airman, Dirk Pitt as he goes investigating a strange iceberg with a ship lodged in it. It transpires that the ship in the iceberg is just the start of a conspiracy which threatens to have him killed at every turn. Despite this, he continues his investigations against the wishes of his superiors and nearly gets killed a lot more. It’s fun romp from start to finish as well as being a page turner which I found difficult to put down.

My favourite part of reading this was being able to look back in time at what used to be acceptable language. There is one point in the story where Dirk pretends to be gay in order to throw off the main antagonist. While being ridiculously funny, this part is also very un-PC in that Dirk is referenced as a faggot on more than one occasion. If you try to put that in speech and narrative in this day and age, you’ll be screamed at by everyone.

Also, there appears to be some borderline misogynistic points towards some of the women but there is also a balance between this and the woman in question being strong and able to handle themselves. It’s weirdly ahead of its time in that regard.

It terms of writing errors, they are hard to spot when the writing is enjoyable, but one did stand out quite clearly. On page 308 a character is talking but the narrative says it’s a different character. Once again, I had to read the paragraph several times to work out what was going on which broke flow somewhat.

Dirk as a character is almost overpowered in terms of his abilities. He basically has the conditioning of a rhino and no amount of savage beatings can stop him climbing sheer cliffs and running for miles. Another thing that Dirk Pitt has is a superhuman ability to work stuff out. He’s no Jack Reacher by any means but he still manages to reach correct, and bizarre, conclusions with seemingly very little information. I suppose it’s all part of the allure of America’s answer to James Bond.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Cussler really knows his stuff. He has a clearly advanced knowledge of aircraft, how they work and the art of the possible and has a skill of explaining this to a dumbass like me in a way that makes the writing accessible rather than overloading it with jargon. He also has a knack of not taking shortcuts with his characters in this regard. If a character is very knowledgeable about a subject, there will be a character on hand who isn’t, who then says something like, ‘can you say that again in English please?’ It’s a device that works well throughout the book.

Iceberg is a really enjoyable 394 page read that I managed to smash through in just a couple of hours. I would recommend it to any fans of the action adventure genre.

Iceberg by Clive Cussler was published by Sphere Books in 1976. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Alyson Noël – Blue Moon

I bought this one with the first book in the series, Evermore, which I read several years ago. I didn’t read this second one in the series straight away and after about three pages of Blue Moon, I remembered why.

Before I go on to that though, there is something very puzzling about the start of the book. There’s no catch up on what happened last time at the start of the book – very strange for a second book in a series. This is even more dumbfounding when the book isn’t written in a way that recaps as you go along. I had to spend the first 50 pages of the 362 page book trying to remember who the fuck everyone was. And then I remembered. Twilight.

I was also tempted just to cut and paste my review of Evermore as I really doubt there is anything majorly different to say, but I did find myself laughing at some points simply because of the ridiculous language choices.

The first one I came across was on page 14. I’m not really sure what happens in this universe but apparently a party on a Friday night means the entire weekend is taken over and no other plans can be made. I get that Ever is trying to get out of doing something but she’s supposed to be a teenager with more than one brain cell so making an excuse for one out of three days seems pretty fucking stupid. But also how stupid is her aunt for not questioning it?!

Now I’ll move on to language choice. ‘Telepathically IM’ is phrase I never want to see used in a book again. It’s not just the way it looks on a page that bugs me but it feels like a tact-in attempt at being modern and relevant, however it’s only used once so what’s the point?

Also the word, if you can call it that, ‘omigod’ appears a few times in many different guises throughout. I don’t think I need to say anything more about this. Other than it nearly made me throw up in my mouth when I read it.

There are also several narrative repetitions throughout the book. The most prevalent ones are referring to hairstyles as ‘bangs’ to the point where I wasn’t sure there was another hairstyle in the universe. The other is Ever constantly pressing her lips together. She does it so much, they are probably white from the pressure.

As a side note, Damen is a blatant rip-off of Edward from Twilight. I’m not saying that’s a good thing but what’s most certainly not a good thing is the copying of the exact way in which Edward drives - unnaturally fast with ridiculous reflexes. What I also don’t like about this is the fact that it’s driving. You are limited by the car, you can have all the reflexes in the world but you can’t be psychic and your physical abilities don’t really impact on car brakes, tyre grip and suspension impact so it’s pretty much a load of crap.

Also, by Chapter 19 it seemed pretty obvious what was going to happen and this is probably my biggest criticism of the story itself. The whole thing is driven by Ever’s terrible decisions which, based on what happens, are almost carried out for the sake of creating a story. It feels very forced a lot of time and the way the character has been developed, I don’t believe she would make some of the choices she makes.

There are two other things that pissed me off, the first being Ever’s teachers. There is no way in hell that if teachers caught wind of a student stalking another student to the point where they commit the crime of breaking and entering that they would not call the police or at least call their guardian. This conveniently doesn’t happen for no other reason than to allow the story to continue.

There is a time travel element which had me wetting myself down to the lack of thought that was put into it. In this world, you can travel back in time and change events that happened, as well as carrying notes (this is just fucking stupid because it’s a mental time travel rather than a physical one) and effecting a change in character in a past self for no reason that can be explained in a way that makes sense.

In summary, and this is quite harsh, it feels like the book has been written from a sixteen year old’s perspective almost because it’s the easy option and less thought needs to go in to the writing because a sixteen year old may not necessarily think of certain things. But that’s no excuse for lazy juxtaposition, poor character development and writing about things like time travel without understanding the art of the possible. This last one, I wouldn’t have a problem with if it was explainable in its own context but it isn’t.

Blue Moon by Alyson Noel was published by St Martin’s Press in 2009. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Clive Cussler and Graham Brown - The Storm

After reading Runemarks anything would have been an improvement in terms of reading pleasure. I had read some Clive Cussler before but this one was written a long time after the first book I read; and with a co-author which wasn’t something I’d seen before.

The Storm follows, for the most part, the story of Kurt Austin as he investigates the mysterious death of some of his NUMA colleagues. His search eventually leads him to face off against Jinn al-Khalif, a crazy but somehow intelligent terrorist on a quest to control Asia’s water supply using tiny robots to dictate the sea temperatures and thus the direction of rain clouds. Seriously.

All in all it’s very enjoyable book if not slightly disconnected from the title. There is one storm that takes place during the prologue and the mysterious connection between the prologue and the main story is not revealed until the very of end of the 424 page book.

One thing I spend time fussing over right from the beginning was exactly how old Jinn is. In 1967 he is old or strong enough to be able to shoot a revolver at a man. Later in the book this age is revealed as 4. But what I still don’t get is the point of having these scenes happen this long ago. There is another character, Sabah, who was friends with Jinn’s father. Even assuming that Sabah is 20 in 1967, that makes him 69 in 2012. For me, this felt a little too old for the region and the type of jobs this guy was doing in order to assist Jinn in carrying out his mental plan.

I didn’t have any major issues with the story other than this. My biggest criticism of the book is the use of perspective. A lot of the time, perspectives will shift back and forth over the course of pages, and sometimes even within the same paragraph. This makes it hard to follow what’s going on in places when the story is coming at you from multiple directions.

There was one instance of using a ‘/’ in a character’s dialogue and I couldn’t get on board with this. I mean, how would you say what you were saying with a slash in the middle? If it were me, I would actually say the word ‘slash’ but I’m not particularly normal. The sentence in question would be better suited with a comma.

There’s one other small bit of story that I raised my eyebrows over. At one point, Kurt sneaks on to a plane and hides in the toilet. No one knows he’s on board but he still puts his feet up on the toilet. It doesn’t really make sense. If no one knows he is there, he has no reason to hide. It’s not like someone is going to look under the door to see if the toilet is occupied. Unless these guards check under toilets doors on a plane looking for people that they don’t know are there? But as I said, it’s minor.

I enjoyed The Storm and it will definitely encourage me to pick up a few more Cussler books in the future.

The Storm by Clive Cussler was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Anita Burgh - Exiles

Okay, time for another one I found on a train. I can’t remember which journey it was but I do get itchy fingers when I see people leave paperbacks lying around. It’s a sickness.

Exiles follows the story of Kate Howard, an author who voluntarily moves to France with her asshole partner, Stewart. She is a successful author whose life starts to mildly fall apart when she tries to change genre and her publisher doesn’t like it.

The story follows a small community of expats who have decided that France is a better option than England as they all basically whine, whinge and eat their way through the French countryside. The book is 376 pages long but there isn’t much of a story, where a story is defined as having a beginning, middle and end. I mean, it does go from A to B, but B is so close to A it makes the middle bit look a bit dragged out.

Exiles is a very tricky book for me to review in that it’s not my normal genre – and not one I picked myself. The first thing I commented on was in the first couple of pages where Kate is describing her life with Stewart. She makes him out to be this perfect man who does everything right... then she goes on to have an interaction with him where she makes him look like an ass.

The first example of this is on page 7 where both of them come off looking like dicks. Stewart doesn’t know how Kate likes taking her tea. This seems like a fairly basic thing to get right after a few years of cohabitation and there are two trails of thought here. Either Kate hasn’t told Stewart and after not drinking any of his tea for years, that she doesn’t like it... or Stewart thinks that the way Kate takes her tea is how a man should take it and so he continues to make her tea she doesn’t like because he’s just a dick.

It becomes apparent that it’s the former when on page 9. Kate states that she can’t tell a hairdresser that she doesn’t like what she does to her hair. Even though she is paying her for the service. To me, Kate is not, an engaging or likeable character and this became clear in the first 10 pages of the book. By chapter 4 she establishes herself as a character who orders food she doesn’t want to eat, drinks things that she is not in the mood for, likes people that she doesn’t like and does things she doesn’t want to do.

This behaviour continues over the next few pages. Apparently she doesn’t like arguments but this is followed by massive fallouts with shouting, fits of violence and throwing stuff. Then followed by narrative fits of, ‘what have I become?!’ It’s mental. And that’s without starting on Stewart.

Mr Perfect is a fucking wanker from the get go. And this is what really confuses me about the book as a whole. Normally you get to see an event or cause that drives a character to change but Exiles outlines that these characters are lovely before showing us that they are not.

Some instances of Stewart being a wanker are when he kicks off at the published author for spending money on Pretty Good Solitaire when he is pissing all their money away on wine that he doesn’t drink. This irritated me greatly as I actually bought Pretty Good Solitaire when I didn’t have an income. It costs £9.99 now and probably even less when the book was written in 2001.

There are lots of other little bits like this throughout the book and these are just small examples of Stewart being a cock, but I actually got to the stage where I believed that this was an intentional narrative style that was supposed to funny rather than taken seriously.

The title sums itself is an oxymoron and microcosm of the book’s contents. To be in exile means to be away from ones home while either being explicitly refused permission to return or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. Every English character in the book has chosen to leave England and live in France in a community of ex-pats. So they are exiles by any stretch of the imagination. And some of them haven’t even bothered to learn French! It just sums up the British need to complain while highlighting the majority of British ex-pats have no respect for other countries, even if we chose to live there.

Exiles by Anita Burgh was published by Orion books in 2001. RRP £5.99 (Paperback)

Joanne Harris - Runemarks

Right, I really came unstuck with this one. I started reading it back in August last year and didn’t finish it for a good six months. I had some time off and was reading a lot but when I got home I just couldn’t bring myself to pick it up again.

Runemarks supposedly follows the story of Maddy Smith, a girl with magical powers who lives in a village with normal people. She ends up going on an adventure with some characters based on Norse Gods and ends up saving the world from the evil of Christianity – at least that’s how the story portrays its antagonists.

Now, the first reason I couldn’t keep picking the book up – I didn’t really like any of the characters, even those based on Odin and the like from Norse mythology which is something I normally like as a setting for a story. I understand it’s supposed to be an original take but it come across as Norse history meets the Jungle Book where Maddy is Moglie and the other characters are there to be comedic versions of their real selves.

Because of this I actually did some research to see if it was just me once again reading a book that isn’t intended for my eyes... but then I thought about it. The book is intended for kids and the writing style, story structure and word usage feels slightly too advanced. In my opinion, it’s too advanced for smaller children and condescending for teens.

Moving on to the writing style, I found it very sparse in terms of what’s going on and there is such a lack of description that I couldn’t help but picture the world as a linear path that the characters walk along. In some places, there are jumps in time which make it feel like whole paragraphs are missing. Also, when reading chapters, the perspective changes from one paragraph to the next without warning which makes it hard to keep up with what’s actually going on and who’s perspective the story is being told from.

The last part of the writing that bugged me was the last 40 or so pages of the 504 page offering where the last few scenes whiz by after what a massively dragged out build up. Lots of books seem to do this, like authors are trying to reach a certain length of book and then hammer out the ‘best bits’ in relative seconds. But I found I didn’t care what was happening in Runemarks and was glad to be done with it.

I did make some other observations about certain character actions that I didn’t think were in keeping with their intended behaviour but I don’t think I’m in a position to provide my thoughts on this as I didn’t invest in any of the characters. To me, it was not an engaging read.

Runemakes by Joanne Harris was published by Doubleday in 2007. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

J. V. Jones - A Sword From Red Ice

This series is not something I’ve approached very well. I started reading it some eight years ago when I reviewed A Cavern of Black Ice in 2009. The books are so intimidating in size that I kept putting them off and putting them off but my holiday finally gave me to push I needed to read the third book in the series. Thankfully Jones is kind enough to provide a handy synopsis at the beginning to allow people like me to remind myself of what happened so far.

A Sword from Red Ice comes in at 677 pages and the words are tiny. Despite being called A Sword from Red Ice the sword doesn’t actually appear until the last 20 pages of the book. The same thing happened in the other two so the titles of the books seem to be destinations of the journey of Raif.

Another note on the length is that I actually think it’s too long. There is a lot of stuff that happens to some of the characters than don’t add anything to the story. That said the series isn’t over yet but I would have forgotten some of the smaller things by the time I come to read the next one.

It is still a very enjoyable story with lots of intriguing characters. In fact there are so many characters that Jones forgot how many there were when writing the blurb. The blurb mentions three characters and their stories but the book itself is told from seven different perspectives, told a chapter at a time. I’m not sure why there is the need to tell the story from so many different angles when the three on the back are highlighted as the important ones.

Which brings me on to the biggest fuck ass in the book. Raina. She is such a twat that reading her chapters caused me to have a headache. If it wasn’t whining about what was going on, it was saying she was going to do something about it...and then not.

It’s also a very messily written book. I lost count of the amount of spelling and grammar issues throughout but there are so many chapters and words that it’s probably not that bad in terms of percentage.

Outside of this, there were a few things other than Raina that made me stop and take note, the first being Mal Naysayer and his Deux-Ex Machina ability to show up just as the right time to save Ash’s life. Another one is where Raif’s friend Addie develops an attitude problem for literally no reason, unless Raif didn’t give him a reach around in one of the deleted scenes, and Angus Lok’s 100% unnecessary involvement at the start and end of the book.

Another thing that made me laugh is Raif’s ability to survive his monstrous injuries throughout the entirety of the story. This was the same in the second book too. I mean, this guy is basically physically maimed at the end of the last story and somehow manages to continuously survive against all odds.

Despite the book’s length and what I’ve said above, I did get a lot of enjoyment out of the story and will be finishing the series... though I actually need to buy the next one first and probably arrange another holiday so I will actually invest the time in doing so.

A Sword from Red Ice by J.V. Jones was published by Tor in 2007. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - The Tower

The Tower is the climax of the three-book series that started with Sanctus. Looking back at my review of the first book in the series, it started poorly where the first couple of pages were really hard to get into. The Key was a really good book and The Tower is also very well written but there were a few story choices that made me go ‘oh...’ in a letdown sort of way.

I was immediately worried early on when we are introduced to a new character – FBI Agent Shepherd. It was a little frustrating at first as I was enjoying the characters that had already been built so this new one was just getting in the way. My frustration was short lived however, as Toyne manages to make Shepherd likeable and interesting in a few short chapters.

Another interesting style choice was to write the book from two time periods with parts of the story being told in the past as it catches up to the present. All the story chapters from the past are written in italics which makes it easy to identify what is happening and when.

For all the well written, well paced and well structured writing, there are a few things that I didn’t like but this obviously goes with writing a trilogy where the first two books are set up to answer to a big mystery so when so much effort has been put in, it always feels like an anti-climax when you get to the end.

The following paragraphs contain major spoilers for the ending of the book so if do want to read the trilogy (and if you haven’t already read the first two books, why are you reading this?) stop reading now.

There were two things that I found irritating by the choices made at the end of the book, the first one surrounding the character of Detective Arkadian. We’ve spent the best page of 498 pages, plus the length of the other two books, getting to know the lovable oaf yet our fellow characters don’t seem to feel the same way. When he dies saving the life of others, no one seems to give two shits. Half the reason for my annoyance is because I thought for a lot of the characters that it was massively out of character to not be upset but then again, maybe I got it wrong and he was actually a massive knob?

The other thing that got to me was to do with the big reveal. Apparently the doomsday clock is counting down to the point when the universe reaches maximum expansion and then starts contracting back in on itself so essentially the half way point of existence. And that’s great. But why the fuck does a baby need to be born to commemorate the event? There are similarities with the birth of Jesus and other references in the trilogy point to it being connected to the story of Adam and Eve and the return to the garden of Eden... but none of this is explained and it’s a very flimsy connection to the expansion of the universe. It just didn’t make sense as a whole piece to me so I didn’t get as much enjoyment out of the end as I wanted to.

Despite that, it’s a very good book that’s hard to put down and I hammered through most of it in a few days.

The Tower by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2013. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - The Key

I’ll start with a fairly obvious confession. I have not been giving this blog the time I should have – case in point I actually finished reading this, and several reviews to follow, back in July and August last year. This means I’m relying heavily on my notes to paint the picture of this book and the next one.

The Key is the follow up to The Sanctum, a book that turned out to be really enjoyable despite appearing to shit all over itself in the first few pages. The Key does not make the same mistakes. It’s a thoroughly engaging read from start to finish as are most second books in a three-part series. But more on that later.

The one thing I can’t quite get my head around is the fact that everything is so well logically constructed to make sense in our own world with the exception of the sacrament itself. That’s all I’ll say about that – after all, it’s a book I am recommending!

So with the praise out of the way, I’m only left with more nit-picking through the 437 page offering. I’ll start with the biggest one – mathematical ages of characters. Kathryn is Gabriel’s mother but if I’ve done the maths correctly, this would mean that she was 16 when she gave birth to him. The book makes this really easy to work out as both their ages are depicted on page 49. I suppose it’s feasible but it just doesn’t add up with the character traits – and it’s one of those things that casual observers would comment on – ‘oh, you must have been young when you had him,’ or ‘you look far too young to have a 32 year old son.’ No one says anything though – again, nothing really wrong with it, I just thought it was an odd choice.

Another thing I found surprising was the Vactican City’s approach to Information Security. On page 14 one character’s narrative states that he only has one attempt at entering a password without locking himself out of his entire computer. I get that it’s super-sensitive information but everyone fucks up typing every now and then. I would have thought that sense would have prevailed here and he would have had at least two attempts at entering the password.

The last one worth mentioning is on page 6 where Ghost is interrogating someone called the fat man. The fat man seems to totally forget that he has programmed his Sat-Nav with his home address seconds after being defiant in the face of having his family threatened. I’m all for characterisation but I just don’t get how anyone could be that stupid.

These are three very small observations that are more my personal preference that actual problems. The Key is a solid, enjoyable story with strong characters. Enough said.

The Key by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Ezekiel Boon - The Hatching

You know that feeling when you go on holiday that you haven’t brought enough books with you? Well this was the reason I bought The Hatching. I hadn’t read a decent horror book for a while and this one seemed to promise to fill the gap. However it turned out that The Hatching is closer to Scary Movie than Scream in terms of a horror offering.

The Hatching is a multi-perspective story told from I can’t remember how many viewpoints. It’s about spiders who want to eat everybody and how various parts of the world react to it. In general, it was a quick and relatively enjoyable bubblegum read that was in no way scary but there were several things that screamed at me throughout the story.

The first thing I found striking was that it’s an end of the world survival horror but I found myself not really caring about any of the characters and here’s why. Firstly there are too many viewpoints. The book is only 351 pages long and the words are well spaced out. Due to the vast array of characters, this didn’t give me enough time to emotionally invest in any of them. Sad to say, I didn’t care whether any of them lived or died.

All of the viewpoints have one thing in common. Sex. And Objectivity. All of characters constantly make sexual narrative towards their preferred gender and also objectify everyone. At first I was like, what, but after the third one did it, it started to become hilarious.

In addition to this, a lot of character types are clichéd. There is the scientist, the simple cop (who is also the divorcee with a child to protect), the president, the president’s aide, an author, the soldier. It’s all blah but I understand the purpose they are serving, it’s all just a bit too thin and doesn’t pull it off.

My final point is one that would have me shot in certain circles so I will to do this without attracting too much ire. All of the roles are filled by female protagonists. The scientist is female, the president is female and the solider is female. The solider is even narratively described as being massively superior to the men. Now, I don’t have a problem with this in the slightest. I watched Battlestar Galactica and I thought Mary McDonnell made a cracking president. But in this book, it feels that the women are effectively forced into this roles just because they are opposite typecasts. If more work had been put into the narrative and padded to develop the characters more, I probably would have been able to buy in to the characters and not noticed this at all.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that The Hatching feels very hastily written. The concept is great, don’t get me wrong but I feel that the idea is what drove the novel and the characters are just there to plod until the conclusion. This can sometimes work in movies but not so much in books.

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone was published by Gollancz in 2016. RRP £12.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - Sanctus

With a lot going on finding time to read has become quite difficult. Setting aside an hour at bedtime normally results in about three pages of reading before falling asleep – such is the current slow rate of reviews. That said, the quality of books I’m reading at the moment seems to be going up and Simon Toyne’s first book is no exception.

I must admit that it was another slow starter and I seem to have a developing dislike for books which set the scene for the story without using their central character. Sanctus follows the story of Liv Adamsen and she isn’t introduced until page 20. The first 19 pages outline what happened to Brother Samuel, a monk living at the Citadel in Turkey. While there is nothing really wrong with this approach, it made it harder for me to connect with the main characters.

So yeah, it’s a slow builder that takes a while to get going but the story telling and character development is really good throughout. It is a very slow build up but the last 200 or so pages really pick up the pace as the action builds.

I can’t really say a lot about the story as there are lots of twists and turns and it’s definitely worth reading. However there were a few things that I questioned during the 470 page novel.

The first of these occurred on page 120 where a credit card was used to receive a payment. Now I’m pretty sure that a credit card cannot be used in this way. Mind you, I’ve never had a credit card that’s been in credit before and I don’t even know how I would go about even doing it. It also seems a very strange way of organising a payment considering the many other ways there are to make secretive payments. In fact, I’m not even sure why you would draw attention to the payment method.

Also on the very next page, there is a reference to drinking a, ‘bucket of black coffee.’ I don’t know what it is with Americans being stereotypically portrayed in every single book going as drinking coffee all the time and seeing coffee as way to combat tiredness. This isn’t really a criticism of Toyne but a build up of frustration at many different authors.

Also, this isn’t really a criticism but the narrative style changes towards the end to be more like Lee Child where the use of full sentences is abandoned to build the pace. Like I said, not a criticism but I did notice it even though I was aware of its intention. I also think that narrative styles should remain consistent. I didn’t like the Lee Child style at first but at least the novel stuck to what it was doing throughout. I also think it wouldn’t have had that much of an impact on the pace if it had remained in the same style narrative, as evidenced by other books.

Everything about is really minor and totally subjective. Sanctus is a great read and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to the next two books in the series.

Sanctus by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2011. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Chris Kuznetski - Sword of God

The reason for reading this one was simple. It was on the end of the shelf when I came to picking my next book. In general I know what to expect from a Chris Kuznetski, Payne and Jones (Batman and Robin) novel, so much so that I didn’t actually make that many notes on it.

My biggest criticism of his writing is that he foreshadows events far too much. More or less every chapter ends with a massive hint as to what will happen in the next chapter or the chapter after that and it’s a real shame too as his books and very readable and he is a great storyteller and character builder.

Despite my resounding praise for his work there is always nitpicking to be done. On page 67 (at least I’m lead to believe it is page 67 as it is directly after page 66 but doesn’t feature a page number. This is hardly Chris’s fault though as I’m sure he doesn’t do his own paperback printing) there is the use of the word ‘mum’ which I always find strange when written by an American author even when talking about Koreans.

Page 99 has a rather bizarre paragraph about Muhammed and how Muslims and English speaking Muslims deal with saying his name, which is fine... only it has no bearing on the story at all. Other than maybe highlight that Shari is an English speaking Muslim who doesn’t follow the customs but we knew that anyway and if it was such a big deal, why doesn’t anyone else mention it? The narrative isn’t really required and doesn’t add anything to the story.

I didn’t see anything else even worth mentioning until page 316 where another meaningless paragraph is present. The entire section about the Abraj Al Bait Towers feels tacked in just to tell us about the target for the terrorist attack. We knew about the building before this point so it might have been better to have explained the size of the building earlier. Another way to address it would have been during the mission scoping before Payne and Jones attempt to take down the terrorists – that way it would have fit in to the story properly rather than feeling like a total tack-in before the finale.

The last thing I picked up on was the incorrect spelling of character name on page 414 out of 422 where Henderson is replaced by Harrison which made me reread the chapter over again to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

So in summary, Sword of God is a good read with a few minor quibbles and definitely a good book to pick up if you are going on a long journey. However, I couldn’t help but be disappointed with the lack of an actual ancient sword to find. I do enjoy the epic questing, searching for ancient objects and myths.

Sword of God by Chris Kuznetski was published by Penguin Books in 2007. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)