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book reviews
Some recent reads:
'Black Hearts in Battersea' by Joan Aiken 4/5
This is a cheerful romp of a book!
Set in the fictitious reign of James III, it has pretty much everything a young reader could wish for (my 11 year old granddaughter loved it!): adventure, kidnapping, hot air balloons, shipwreck, an eccentric Duke, an attempt to murder the king, lots of fun characters and the lost heir to a Dukedom.
Fast paced and laced with humorous situations.
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We have a deal going on. I read a book my granddaughter recommends and she reads one I rec. So I've just finished Black Hearts in Battersea, and she enjoyed Heinlen's 'Rolling Stones'.
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Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel 2/5
I really wanted to like this, as I enjoyed the TV series.
Unfortunately, I dislike most books written in the first person, and most books written in the present tense - this book is both.
I couldn't get though many pages before giving up.
Hopefully, most other readers won't find this an issue, but for me personally, I can only give it two stars.
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Bookshops and Bonedust - Travis Baldree 3/5
This one disappointed me.
Surely a writer as popular as Travis Baldree can get decent beta-readers/editors who actually have some decent general knowledge?
Fantasy requires 'suspension of disbelief'. I can believe in a lesbian, dwarf baker falling for an orc twice her size. I can happily buy an evil necromancer, an ailing bookshop, etc.
But I cannot buy a character being stabbed twice rapidly in her leg by a pike. I'm a re-enactor. A pike is an 18ft long weapon, cumbersome, and used as part of a pike block.
If you want to stab someone close up, use a spear!
Happened again right at the end. A warrior sat rosining his bowstring.
Even my 11-year-old granddaughter spotted what was wrong with that...
You rosin a violin bow. (It makes the horsehair sticker so it has more friction with the violin strings)
Rosining an archer's bowstring (which is definitely not made of horsehair) is complete nonsense.
Without those gaffes, I'd probably have given it a rating of 4, although there was a geological error as well...
It may sound nit-picky, but if I'm absorbed in a story, something that is clearly wrong jerks me out of my belief in that story.
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I remember stopping reading a fantasy in disgust when a traveller stumbled across an abandoned fireplace and lit the ashes. Honestly it's the things you don't know you don't know that trips an author up. And as you say that's why having someone else read it before you put it out really helps.
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I saw your rec for Blackhearts on Battersea on my post--thanks!--I've requested the first book in the series from the library.