It seems though that Grey can’t stay away from Ana, despite what he told her, and it isn’t long before Ana finds herself getting very close to the sexy man. But while Ana is new to love affairs and sex, Grey is a very troubled man who claims to be incapable of having normal relationships, hates being touched and demands to be in full control of both Ana and their relationship. What Grey wants is a relationship where he will be the Dominant to her role as a Submissive and he’s drawn up the contract to control how that should work. Ana finds herself very confused. While she is extremely attracted to Grey and experiencing great pleasure every time they get together, the idea of being dominated and having to endure pain scares her and makes her want to run away. At the same time another part of her thinks that she might be able to safe this man from the demons that haunt him.
Both Ana and Christian will find themselves experiencing a lot of firsts during their time together, but is their obvious attraction to each other enough to overcome the huge differences between them?

Phew, what to say about this book? From all the attention this author and her books have been receiving lately, I had a pretty good idea what to expect and it is safe to say I got just that. Yes, this is one very steamy story with lots of rather graphic descriptions of far from ordinary sexual relations. Yes, the similarities between Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and this book are clear. Both books deal with an innocent young girl falling for a man with a very obvious dark-side who she should probably stay well away from but is incapable of ignoring. And yes, this book is unlikely to ever win a literary prize.

However, I also found this to be an entertaining story that kept me turning the pages. If you read beyond the sex scenes this is basically a love story about two people who desperately want and need to be together but are being kept apart by differences in their backgrounds and expectations, that they may or may not be able to overcome. I guess E.L. James just uses a different, and rather more graphic than usual, device to point those differences out. While I’m sure there would have been a lot of other ways in which Christian’s need to control Ana could have been depicted, the author has chosen one which, while graphic, also makes quite clear how deep-seated his issues are.

I have to admit that there were a few things in this book that had me exasperated. The references to Ana’s “Inner Goddess” and “Sub-conscious” got old very fast after the first few mentions. Yes, the girl is having a rather lively debate going on inside herself about the sense in having a relationship with this obviously very complicated and damaged man, but do the two sides of that argument really have to have separate identities as if they are extra characters in the story?

I guess there comes a time in any book reviewer’s life when they have to reflect on the standards by which they actually judge a book. Is it literary merit? Is it the quality of words and sentences used? Is it just a question of whether or not the book delivers a good and/or captivating story? Is it a little bit of all of those or does even that depend on the book they happen to be reading? I decided that for me, with this book, judging was to take place purely on whether or not I enjoyed the reading experience. And I did.

Readers can be divided into a whole host of categories. For the purpose of this review I’d like to highlight two; those who enjoy (explicit) sex-scenes and those who don’t. Any reader falling into the later category would do well to steer clear of this book since there are at least as many descriptions of, rather unorthodox, sex as there is overall story. Anybody who enjoys reading such scenes, for whatever reason, will get more than their fill in this story.

This is probably the first time ever that I almost feel the need to apologise for enjoying a book. Objectively there is so much wrong with this book while subjectively, I found myself unable to stop turning the pages and forced to buy the two sequels. I guess this book should be filed under the label: guilty pleasures.

Nabokov’s style is the primary reason to read any of his works, but the concept of Pale Fire is witty and erudite. Nabokov states it clearly at one point: “Man’s life as commentary to abstruse unfinished poem.” The novel revolves around a long poem in rhyming couplets by the deceased (fictional) poet John Shade. There is a foreword by an eccentric editor, Charles Kinbote, then the poem itself, followed by a long commentary on the poem. Kinbote, however, like a lovelorn teenager listening to a song about heartbreak, is convinced the poem is about him and fills the commentary with his outrageous life history. A single word in the poem, such as ‘often’, can be the starting point for one of Kinbote’s memories: “Often, almost nightly, throughout the spring of 1959, I had feared for my life. Solitude is the playfield of Satan.”

Kinbote is an excellent comic creation. He is an eccentric, volatile egotist with no self-awareness and an abundance of indiscreet homosexual lusts. It will come as no surprise that he is a European aristocrat in exile. A skit by the university’s drama students portrays him as “a pompous woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Housman and nibbling raw carrots.” Upon discovering that he is nicknamed the Great Beaver, Kinbote remarks: “Of course, I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald’s bowtie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers.” In Kinbote’s world, insults are an excuse for self-regard and childish behaviour is worldly and sophisticated. In another age, he could have had a lucrative career as a merchant banker in the City of London.

His complex past and dramatic escape from the fictional country of Zembla are made ridiculous through his camp, melodramatic behaviour. To aggrandise his adventures, he befriends John Shade in the hope his life will inspire an epic poem. When the poem emerges, Kinbote is shocked to find it has nothing to do with him. Undeterred, he steals the poem and reveals his life history in the commentary. The way he bends Shade’s lines to reflect himself is a continual source of amusement.

Of course, the danger with such a plot is that it has no narrative drive. Nabokov deals with this by punctuating the commentary with news of the approaching assassin, who is coming to kill Kinbote but will somehow kill Shade instead on the day he finishes the poem. This supplies some narrative tension and as the commentary is broken into short sections it’s easy for the reader to read just another little bit, and then another. The writing isn’t as lyrical as in Lolita, but the poem by Shade is excellent and demonstrates Nabokov’s astonishing felicity with language.

Overall, Pale Fire’s playful approach raises interesting questions about narrative meaning and the role of the reader. Kinbote abuses the intention of Shade’s poem, but then perhaps I have misrepresented Nabokov’s intentions in Pale Fire? No matter – as Kinbote reminds us, “for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”

In Griffin’s first, Swift is brought back from the dead. In the second, he must take on the Death of Cities and he becomes the Midnight Mayor. The third sees him battling various sects and orders in the city. The Minority Council sees him taking on the very people he works for. It also sees the introduction of that clichéd fantasy trope: the addiction to a magical drug. In this case, the drug is dust, and the kingpin is the fairy godmother.

So what of the plot? Something is killing trouble-making kids. The homeless are disappearing and it’s not the usual pattern. And that is upsetting the Beggar King. The Aldermen, Swift’s employees, are proving less than trust-worthy. Penny, Swift’s apprentice, is trying to go on a date. What Griffin does deftly is bring these different plot strands together. The story is full of ideas we’ve seen before, and characters come and go, and yet you don’t mind.

hen we’re introduced to a powerful teenage magician mid way through, it strikes me that the Midnight Mayor should have had some inkling that he existed. However, it is the ride that is the key in this series, not so much the literary technique. The characters are interesting and varied, but they rarely, if ever, do anything that surprises the reader. It doesn’t take away from the enjoyment. You know Swift is going to get through to the end after some violence and some improvised conjuring and some less than charitable behaviour to his colleagues. You know he’ll end up crossing London, seeing its sights, and musing on its history and its magics. You know he’ll end up licking his wounds and despite it all, emerging victorious; hollow, Pyrrhic or otherwise. The book is still a great read.

Griffin knows London and feels its power. She understands what people who have lived there feel when they walk down a street or ride the tube or sit in a park. I would image that translates well to other cities. I doubt, however, that someone of a more rural persuasion would necessarily get it. Although I could be wrong.

Unlike the books 2 and 3 in this series, there is a lot less back story the reader needs to be aware of. The gangs and orders and Swift’s history are only mentioned in passing and so you don’t need to have read the previous efforts in order to enjoy this. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could read The Minority Council as a standalone novel, to a point. Whether you chose that option, or have read the others in the series, there’s enough in this to make it an enjoyable romp with a little bit to say about city life too.

If that sounds like a load of alphabet soup, don’t be discouraged – in the highly complex environment of post-invasion Italy (occupied by the Germans in the North, with a Fascist puppet government nominally headed by Mussolini, and run by a regime in the south that was distrusted by many Italians due to the taint of Fascist collaboration), SOE had to do its best to encourage and arm the nascent Italian resistance movement, as well as channel its actions in to the areas most useful to the Allied war effort. This was complicated further by the slow and bloody progress of the main Allied armies (the invasion, expected to be easy with Italian surrender, quickly bogged down in the face of stiff German resistance) and the deeply politicised nature of the Italian resistance, many of whose leaders had at least one eye on the post-war shape of Italian government, and many of who were ardent Communists.

Faced with such challenges it’s remarkable that SOE achieved so much: they got off to a slow start but from the off were training wireless operators to report back from behind enemy lines and making covert boat landings of operatives and materiel. Later, the focus was on sending British Liaison Officers (BLOs) to work with the numerous partisan bands working in the North, and these hardy souls achieved wonders, stiffening the resolve of their charges, channeling their energies and sourcing arms and supplies for them (though the woeful shortage of Allied airdrop capacity until late on in the war was a major problem). In the face of brutal German anti-partisan trawls and vicious reprisals against civilians who assisted the partisans in any way, they managed to engineer a situation where, by the time of the German surrender, it was impossible for the Wehrmacht to go anywhere except in major force due to the threat of partisan activity, and where communications with German through Austria were severely hampered by persistent sabotage. The BLOs also managed to ‘win the peace’ in the sense that they ensured balance between Communist and anti-Communist bands and prevented open civil war breaking out in some cases.

Mission Accomplished is a fine and enjoyable account of a complex subject that does justice to the achievements of the many brave souls who were involved without glossing over the failures and missed opportunities that are inevitable in any undertaking on this scale and with such high stakes. Both enjoyable and authoritative.

In his previous work, McGilloway has proven himself to be a bold and uncompromising chronicler of the new Northern Ireland, and The Nameless Dead is no different.  To we outsiders on the mainland, the Good Friday Agreement can sometimes be seen as a line drawn neatly under a black period in history.  As McGilloway so adeptly points out, this is a ludicrous notion.  There can no more be real closure for an entire province than there can be for individuals, and in The Nameless Dead, the psychological scars of the Troubles are still fully visible.  An ex-Provo lives a hollow existence, having dedicated his life to a cause that ceased to be; the loved ones of the Disappeared remain enveloped in melancholy, and certain sections of the community still long to pick at the scabs of the past.  The Nameless Dead is not cynical, but studiously realistic.  Peace in Northern Ireland is a great deal more complex than signatures on a page.

Key to the book is the concept of limbo.  McGilloway references the practice of burying deceased, un-baptised babies in unconsecrated ground, with their souls being excluded from Heaven.  It is a powerful image, and can be found not just in the fates of departed infants, but in the lives for those the Disappeared left behind, and in the geographic location of the dig for remains, caught a no-mans-land between North and South.

While McGilloway’s greatest strength is in his political and social frankness, he is also no slouch in terms of plotting.  The investigation is well paced, and with enough mystery to it to keep the reader guessing.  Beyond that, McGilloway also allows us time with the Devlin family, showing Devlin wrestling with the difficulties of parenthood and work/life balance.  This is a refreshing approach, making Devlin more three-dimensional than many of his whisky-swilling, marriage-wrecking counterparts.

Overall then, The Nameless Dead is another triumph from the master chronicler of modern Northern Ireland.  Brooding and poignant, it is a reminder, were one needed, of exactly why McGilloway has been so liberally showered with plaudits in his career so far.

Maxine’s life changes the day she meets Sam. At first she finds him repulsive. A small, uncharismatic man who her gut instinct tells her she wants nothing more to do with. However, she soon becomes fascinated by him. As Sam creeps further into her life she comes to rely on his approval and fall in love with his company, until her happiness is dependent on being with him. Maxine’s change in her opinion of Sam from disgust to devotion is cleverly and believably written. He becomes a charming, manipulative character, unidentifiable from the person she believed him to be upon their initial meeting. Maxine is convinced of her attraction to him.

Sam’s life is consumed with chaos. His present and his past are a whirlwind of tragedy and misfortune. Having recently relocated to start afresh after his last girlfriend’s death, he now continues to battle with cancer. While Maxine sympathises with him, her friends and family do not entirely trust him. The plot is clever; as Sam’s behaviour becomes increasingly manipulative, the reader may be drawn to side with Maxine, unwilling to doubt Sam’s honesty. Maxine believes him to be misunderstood, a long-suffering man who just needs the support of others around him. However, as the novel progresses, Charbit’s development of Sam’s character then allows an inclination to suspect that he is hiding something.

Lies, manipulation and the difference between reality, truth and pretence are prominent issues throughout the novel. Charbit also covers the idea of clouded judgement and unrequited love. Charbit’s background in neuroscience provides her with the ability to write with knowledge regarding the behaviour of sociopaths and those who suffer from OCD. This novel is insightful, providing the reader with unusual characters, some of which have a combination of quirky behaviours, others which are more sinister, whose lives are woven together through their meeting. Combined with Charbit’s natural storytelling ability, this becomes an engaging read from beginning to end. A Life Lived Ridiculously has a dramatic plotline and unconventional characters that are both dynamic and comic.

Secrets of the Tides

Chapter one moves to the present day. The character of Dora Tide is introduced, a young woman living in a flat in Hackney with her boyfriend Dan, an artist. The couple have recently found out that she is expecting a baby, a fact which Dora is increasingly unsure about. She feels incredibly guilty about the way in which her family has been ‘torn apart so completely’, a foreshadowing of a pivotal event in the lives of the Tides which the reader knows nothing about at first.

Chapter two then goes back sixteen years in time and focuses on Helen, Dora’s mother. Her sister Cassie, eleven years old when she is first introduced, is concentrated upon before Richell presents Richard, the father of the Tide girls. This past perspective sees Helen and Richard taking the girls to Clifftops to spend Easter with Richard’s parents, a family tradition.

Richard’s parents, Alfred and Daphne, reside at the romantically named Clifftops, a sprawling house set in the Dorset countryside. Clifftops was Richard’s own childhood home and he and his daughters adore spending time there. In comparison, Helen has a rather tempestuous relationship with Richard’s mother, a difficult woman who overrules the decisions which Helen makes regarding her children. Daphne seems to delight in undermining her daughter-in-law, causing Helen to feel like an insignificant cog in the wheel of the Tide family.

When Daphne and Alfred are killed in a car accident, the Tide family is prompted to move down to Dorset and call Clifftops their new home. Among other things, this move causes Cassie and Dora to grow closer together in some ways and further apart in others. Once they are settled in their new lives, one late summer day tears their entire world apart, fracturing the Tides irreversibly. Loss, grief and sadness are then woven throughout the book.

Richell portrays the family dynamic incredibly well. Flashbacks to earlier periods are woven throughout the story. The use of different time frames captured in the narrative adds another dimension to the story, allowing the reader to understand the complexities of the characters. As the title suggests, the Tide family is fraught with a wealth of secrets, all of which become apparent as the storyline unfolds.

A third person narrative perspective is used throughout, allowing Richell to focus on each character in turn. As their lives are all intrinsically linked, both by familial ties and events which occur throughout the book, this is a technique which works very well. Richell’s dialogue is a definite strength in the novel, and exchanges between her characters are reminiscent of real-life conversations.

The absorbing prose really helps the reader to understand the characters from the outset. So many details have been used to build up realistic personalities, particularly where Dora is concerned. Richell’s descriptions work well. They are informative and written ably, but in no way do they seem overdone.

Secrets of the Tides is an impressive debut and an engrossing novel. It is a sensitively written account which portrays the sheer complexities of one family as they grow and develop. The story itself is sad and unsettling in places. The characters grow, both physically and emotionally, both towards one another and apart. The unexpected twists and turns throughout make Secrets of the Tides one of the must-read debut novels of 2012.

Jake is now in late middle-age, with a tenuous existence in the middle-layers of the Han Chinese supercity that now dominates the globe – as best we can tell the Megacity of Chung Kuo encompasses every landmass in the world, with the campaigns that brought it in to being having eradicated a number of the world’s races as well as all of its old political and economic entities. When Han scientists for one of the mega-research companies that compete for political favours decides to try to recreate the datascape that was Jake’s calling as a young man, he gets an opportunity to progress in a society where the tier on which you live is a clear indication of your political and economic status – but he also becomes more clearly tied in to the political power games of the Han elite. So when the increasingly erratic behaviour of the dictator Tsao Ch’un brings him in to conflict with the Council of Seven, his closest advisers, and a civil war is in the offing, Jake sees first-hand what the risks are for those associated with the Seven.

The action in Daylight on the Iron Mountain is spread across the globe and encompasses several distinct time periods so any meaningful precis of the plot would be difficult and laden with spoilers – however thematically, there are some fascinating ideas at play. The natures of both empire and dictatorship are explored, and Wingrove shows how Chung Kuo is not exempt from the same stresses and strains that have beset great empires in the past. He successfully presents the different natures of Western and Chinese thought – and depicts a plausible assimilation of the former by the latter. He also manages to create a genuinely black-hearted villain surrounded by a cast of characters whose motivations are often far more ambiguous.

Readers of the series the first time around may well read this with a view to what plot elements and characters this prequel is designed to explain or foreshadow – but as a newbie to the world of Chung Kuo, I enjoyed it as an instalment of dystopian science fiction in its own right, one which continues the objective of avoiding the Caucasian-dominated tropes of most modern science fiction. Bring on The Middle Kingdom.

Hanging Hill, her 8th novel is suitably intense, dark and chilling, with some gritty, gruesome scenes.

‘All like her’  is the fragmented message left on the body of Lorne Wood, a school girl brutally murdered on her way home from school. Finding leads for detecting her murderer doesn’t prove easy. Lorne’s school friends are reluctant to talk. But the case does draw two sisters together that haven’t communicated in years.

Zoe Benedict is a head strong detective, that has the looks and the ambition. She has good instincts but she also has a bit of a temper and some hidden demons she wrestles with. usurped by a new team member, she finds her ideas sidelined and ends up following up her own leads independent of the investigation team.

In the unfortunate position of being almost penniless after her marriage split, Sally is striving to bring up her spirited teenage daughter, and taking menial work just to try to make ends meet. But it transpires her daughter, Millie, has made a few significant bad decisions and mixed with the wrong type of people. Fiercely independent yet desperate Sally takes a job she knows she shouldn’t with dire consequences.

Millie was friends with the murdered girl Lorne and so it’s only a matter of time before Sally’s and Zoe’s paths cross. Not everybody is as innocent as they should be. Moreover Zoe has a hidden traumatized past, which she is required to face yet keep hidden from her police colleagues.

The story moves between Zoe and Sally focusing on their lives, their romantic interests and proximity to the murder victim and possible murderer. There are a number of unscrupulous characters interwoven in the story that could be in the frame. Unexpected circumstances and trying times also brings out a side in a couple of people not normally imaginable. But human nature makes some actions, perhaps not palatable, but possible.

I have to remain suitably vague in my description, so as not to spoil the read. Often as you think a part of the story is beginning to wrap up there are some great twists and turns. With plenty of interweaving  of the characters and storyline, the plot sustains its pace and momentum. The characters are highly multidimensional, and you learn more from the differing perspectives Hayder approaches them from. With strengths and flaws, the main characters remain likeable and relatable throughout. There are some controversial actions, with plenty to chew over and consider what if? I found it plausible in its extremeness. The unexpected continues to occur right through to the end. interestingly, there is sufficient meat on the bones within this novel to possibly extend the story into a second book, or even a series. It will be intriguing to see if anything further transpires.

Hume once again does not disappoint. The strength of her narrative, as well as the obvious time and research poured into her characters and setting, continue to ensure that the reader is ever enthralled by Merlin’s tale. This novel takes our noble healer through into the upper echelons of the age, soon becoming a man of great standing and reputation due to his skills with the tools of his trade. And it during this journey that the strength of Hume’s writing comes to the fore.

The friends and enemies attracted along the way are superbly drawn and have a depth of affection, or malicious intent, that makes them as believable as any you will see frequenting the genre. We soon have good reason to hate those who conspire against Merlin, as well as genuinely becoming concerned for those of his entourage through the perils of their quest.

The book contains several poignant moments between Merlin and his apprentices, and sees these relationships especially develop into the unbreakable bonds that, given the narrative flow of the work, will doubtless be tested as the trilogy comes to a close in the sequel. We also see Merlin wrestle with the first love of his life, and the emotional and physical tests this inevitably provides. All this ensures that the carefully painted world of Hume’s Merlin contains all the depth and authenticity that we have come to expect from this author.

That said, in this reviewer’s opinion this is not the strongest of Hume’s works. Whilst it continues the tale of Merlin skilfully and to a satisfying conclusion (or series of them, in fact), it does not quite have the bite of the previous novels. The Arthur series was superb, and the beginnings of Merlin’s trilogy similarly full of passion and momentum. There is just the feeling of a slight lull in the impetus of the overall plot. Though this is a criticism that can only be levelled against someone who has achieved such a high level of writing – it is somewhat inescapable that having heaped praise on the previous novels a reviewer is going to expect a work as close to perfection as possible.

So by no means take this as a significant critique of Death of an Empire. It is well written, tightly plotted, and continues to follow the characters that we know and love (or hate) from the previous novel. It may not be the best Hume has ever committed to the page, but it is certainly an excellent addition to the genre. As ever my litmus test remains the same – I am looking forward with baited breath to the final novel, and how Merlin’s journey concludes.