The Scroll by K.B. Hoyle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

THE SCROLL is the penultimate book in THE GATEWAY series by K.B. Hoyle.

What can I say? This is the best book yet.

Ms Hoyle has built a fascinating world full of rich characters and an exciting adventure tale full of mystery, hope, despair, complicated relationships and terror.

Seventeen year old Darcy returns to Alitheia with her five companions Sam, Amelia, Perry, Lewis and Dean, each Sunday afternoon during their shared annual family holiday. This year is no exception.

In Alitheia we meet old friends and new and Darcy and her crew face dangers both foretold and un-looked-for

I won't offer any spoilers, but I will say this is a hair-raising, rollicking tale. It has none of the slight pacing problems of some of its prequels, nor are there too many literary devices delivering unexpected outcomes.

My favourite of the series so far and I cannot wait for the finale. .

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Some things matter ...

Too Much Dark Matter, Too Little Gray by Mike Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As daunting as it is to be the first reviewer on Goodreads, I shall try to do this justice!


Thank you Curiosity Quills Publishing for the opportunity to read an eARC of this book, in return for an honest review. In all honesty, I really enjoyed this collection.

Mike Robinson has drawn together a crisp little collection of short stories, all with a slightly unsettling theme. Thanks to this book, I don't think I will be able to walk through night-darkened city streets, or smugly take my solipsism for granted, for a while. This compendium contains 19 delicious offerings, each serving up a slice of a universe where things are just a little bit ... wrong. I love a good collection of short stories, and generally find a few favourites and at least one dud per collection - but not this time. Some were admittedly stronger than others, but, all in all, Mr Robinson has put together a sound collection of really top-notch stories, without any drag. I would recommend this collection to fans of the Twilight Zone, or anyone who suspects, deep down, that the world is not really exactly what they tell you it is - whoever "they" are.

Bring me more Mike Robinson, please.

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Women in spaaaaaace ....

Dream of Time by Nancy J. Price
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am always interested in a time travel novel - perhaps I still hold out hope that a lonely alien in a blue telephone box will appear in my garden and sweep me away to a life of grand adventure, then bring me back home in time for tea. Or not. I digress.

I enjoyed this story, despite the fairly substantial plot holes and occasionally turgid pace. Robin, a thirty-something single mother with two young daughters awakens one day to find herself living in Victorian-era San Francisco as a 20 year old immigrant girl (Jennie) with a comfortable fortune. The victim of 'a nasty fall', she is confined to a hospital until she makes a fairly astounding recovery, and returns 'home'. During her recovery she alternates between her sick bed by day, and her 'real life' by night. In essence, she dream her alternate realities.

The story revolves around Jennie/Robin's journey to right some wrongs, most of which are wrought by Jennie's ex-Fiancé and regular con-man Walter. In this quest she is aided by a young policeman Travis, with whom Jennie develops a mutual case of insta-love. Travis' ex-Fiancée Maggie (who has conveniently taken up with Walter) provides some essential plot devices (spurring jealous, wearing bonnets, allowing her hair to be brushed by lonely charges to win their love) as well.

The characters are a bit thin (viz Jennie's sister who rocks up, hands over some jewels and departs) and the circumstances a little implausible (a 20 year old woman in Victorian society who lives unchaparoned, has no household servants and shacks up with a policeman with whom she has at least daily unprotected sex but manages not to become pregnant, yet still gets invited over to tea by the neighbourhood ladies' whist club??), but somehow, the story draws you in.

A good solid three stars, but no more. Sharpened up a little and a few plot and character developments, and it might merit more. The premise is sound and the writing (where it doesn't lapse into historical or pedestrian narrative) is interesting enough to keep you interested. There isn't too much cloying prose, and the plot has sufficient mystery to keep you interested.

As an aside, I would DEFINITELY recommend some psychiatric support for a robin - there are a range of issues she needs to sort out for her own sanity - and she should take a bit more notice of her children from time to time.

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Don't drink the water ...

The Scourge by A.G. Henley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started this book mid-evening and struggled a bit with the first chapter or so - almost giving up and drifting off to sleep. Next minute it is 0130 am and I need to get to sleep or I'm never going to get up for work in the morning! This is just one of those stories that creeps up on you, knocks you on the head and ties you up so you never want to leave

The Scourge is a very character-driven tale. Certainly, there's plenty of action but the real depth comes from some well-crafted characterisation. I was also happy with the wordsmithing (is that a word?). I was impressed by The way AG Henley was able to describe a technicolour world through the blinded eyes of a sightless central protagonist (Fenn). The attention to detail was lovely - including the use of auditory and olfactory clues, as well as visual to describe the world around Fenn. You get a full detail of every little thing Fenn encounters, not only through her sharp senses but also through the eyes of those around her.

Oh, there are also zombies. Not always a selling point for me- I have a very low horror threshold, as a rule. However, the zombie hordes pretty much worked for me in this one!

What is also impressive is the professionalism of the galley. For a self-published novel, a debut at that, this book is not only beautifully written but also very well edited. I didn't find a single error to distract me from my reading experience.

I have a few issues with the pacing of the book, and I am dubious about the ending - I won't spoil it, but am unsure how to reconcile a few things there (the water, the water!!). I felt there were a couple of thin spots in the plot where it could have maybe benefitted from some patchwork, but, all in all, it is a solid novel and I will look for the sequel.

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Time tangle

Dream of Time by Nancy J. Price
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am always interested in a time travel novel - perhaps I still hold out hope that a lonely alien in a blue telephone box will appear in my garden and sweep me away to a life of grand adventure, then bring me back home in time for tea. Or not. I digress.

I enjoyed this story, despite the fairly substantial plot holes and occasionally turgid pace. Robin, a thirty-something single mother with two young daughters awakens one day to find herself living in Victorian-era San Francisco as a 20 year old immigrant girl (Jennie) with a comfortable fortune. The victim of 'a nasty fall', she is confined to a hospital until she makes a fairly astounding recovery, and returns 'home'. During her recovery she alternates between her sick bed by day, and her 'real life' by night. In essence, she dream her alternate realities.

The story revolves around Jennie/Robin's journey to right some wrongs, most of which are wrought by Jennie's ex-Fiancé and regular con-man Walter. In this quest she is aided by a young policeman Travis, with whom Jennie develops a mutual case of insta-love. Travis' ex-Fiancée Maggie (who has conveniently taken up with Walter) provides some essential plot devices (spurring jealous, wearing bonnets, allowing her hair to be brushed by lonely charges to win their love) as well.

The characters are a bit thin (viz Jennie's sister who rocks up, hands over some jewels and departs) and the circumstances a little implausible (a 20 year old woman in Victorian society who lives unchaparoned, has no household servants and shacks up with a policeman with whom she has at least daily unprotected sex but manages not to become pregnant, yet still gets invited over to tea by the neighbourhood ladies' whist club??), but somehow, the story draws you in.

A good solid three stars, but no more. Sharpened up a little and a few plot and character developments, and it might merit more. The premise is sound and the writing (where it doesn't lapse into historical or pedestrian narrative) is interesting enough to keep you interested. There isn't too much cloying prose, and the plot has sufficient mystery to keep you interested.

As an aside, I would DEFINITELY recommend some psychiatric support for a robin - there are a range of issues she needs to sort out for her own sanity - and she should take a bit more notice of her children from time to time.

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Mortal?

Mortality by Kellie Sheridan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK, so it's official ... I am no longer a Zombie-fiction virgin.

MORTALITY was my first, and it may not be my last. I don't usually go for tales of the disintegrating undead - vampires possibly, at a pinch ... but I've not before felt the compulsion to wander into stagger-and-lurch-ville.

I think I followed a 'read now' link from a NetGalley e-mail extolling the virtues of newly available eARCS ... yes, I am that easily led!

Enough about me, and more about the novel!

Pleasantly surprised.

This is a solid little read. We have an alternating First Person POV and the separate stories come together in a fairly satisfying way. Both our heroines are interesting, flawed (but working on it), and they each have a voice so don't suffer the fate of similar protagonists in other novels who can't seem to decide what voice to speak with when they're on centre stage. There's enough men around to make life interesting, the love triangle (while inexplicable) isn't too egregious or long-lived, the parents aren't insufferable (although they're all very absent) and the pace is okay -a little patchy, but that's okay ...

I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it.

I was a little bit worried the story would focus on the Herculean feats of a small über-mädchen combatting the shuffling hordes. I mean, how much depth can you get in a novel about kill-or-be-killed when your enemy is icky and slow and stupid and trying to eat you? There isn't much honour in slaughtering such a foe, is there. However, there is a little twist where one of the characters turns that premise on its ear. I really enjoyed Ms Sheridan's fresh perspective on this. Very inventive.

All in all, I'd be interested to read more in this series. Well done.

I doubt I'll convert to becoming a born again zombie book reader, but this one was with the risk of trying something new. Thank you NetGalley and Kellie Sheridan for letting me read so successfully outside my comfort zone.

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Family matters.

Matters Familiar by E.G. Fabricant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love me a good collection of short stories, and that is what E.G. Fabricant has given us in MATTERS FAMILIAR.

A collection of 12 contemporary stories, each exploring an aspect of family relationships. This anthology gives us glimpses of the different ways we parent - Fabricant dishes up, in one tale a helicopter parent whose very attention threatens to stifle her child's development, in another he gives us a mother too paralysed by loss and fear to provide any meaningful emotional structure to her son. We explore the relationships between siblings and cousins, between friends and team-mates.

This is an anthology dedicated to the ties that bind, holding a mirror up to the way we live our lives and the people with whom we populate them - some by choice, others through the obligations of blood.

I enjoyed this collection very much. Thank you.

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Fabulous.

The Enchanted by K.B. Hoyle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The fourth instalment of the fabulous gateway series. Roll on number 5!

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Another cracker!

The White Thread by K.B. Hoyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Part three of the Gateway series, THE WHITE THREAD continues the story of Darcy and her 5 companions in their alternate world Alitheia. Well structured, the novel provides a solid next instalment to the series. There is a large amount of character development in this tranche, particularly for Darcy and Tellius. Primarily a quest novel, the book encompasses a number of themes, and delivers developments in the characters' understanding of love (both platonic and romantic) as well as respect. The moral of this one could be encapsulated in the old axiom "be careful what you wish for".

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The Oracle by K.B. Hoyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second novel in the Gateway Chronicles, THE ORACLE continues to lay the foundations for the story-arc. In the first book (THE SIX), we met Darcy, Sam, Amelia, Perry, Lewis and Dean - six humans prophesied to save Alitheia, a land with parallels to a Earth, from the evil Tselloch and his minions.

In THE ORACLE, Darcy continues to struggle with her role in Alitheia's emancipation. Following a year spent in their normal lives, the six companions embark again into their other world and resume their adventures in magic and swordsmanship. Relationship are cemented and prophesies followed. Darcy, in railing against her fate, compels a journey for half her companions, the end result of which only serves to deepen the mysteries of her fate.

I had a little trouble with the pacing of this novel. Second books are hard, particularly where the arc encompasses six sections. In THE ORACLE all the tenets of a second book are covered - the scene is being fleshed out, the world building continues, the characters develop, there is a journey, questions are answered, yet more are uncovered, characters come, others go. There is sorrow, pain, joy and laughter. However, I felt there were certain sections of the novel where time, because of a literary device, simply moved too rapidly. Without wanting to give away spoilers, at one point in the novel a significant amount of time passes, and the only indicators for one of the characters that this time has passed are a few physical cues - long fingernails, a bit of peach fuzz on a teenaged cheek ... But not ENOUGH to cement the new reality. Granted the action moves very rapidly in the period following the temporal glitch, and there are references later to further time passing to allow for additional adjustments, but all in all I was dissatisfied with how this part of the book played out. There were so many other parts where time felt adequately spent, yet this period was empty, both in substance and in later impact to some major characters - a lot happened, it should have resonated more.

That said, a good solid second novel. I think it could have been longer.

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Love her and hate her - introducing Darcy.

The Six by K.B. Hoyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

THE SIX tells us the story of Darcy, a self-absorbed, hormonal brat of a thirteen year old (whose solipsism is her greatest defining feature) and her five companions - Sam, Amelia, Perry, Lewis and Dean. In a tale with parallels to the Narnia Adventures, the six find themselves crossing a magic portal to a parallel land in which magic abounds. Populated by fairy folk and mythological beings, Alitheia is a land of extraordinary beauty, clarity and magic. However, as with all good stories, Alitheia also harbours a Shadow - the Tselloch, an archetypal evil being which had entered Alitheia through the vanity and foolish greed of a human and was bent on destroying the world. In true fantasy novel style, the Six have been prophesied to save the world, but only after mastering their own magical talents.

So, the tale is not new and the characters not unsighted - how is this different from an attempt to recreate the Famous Five in Narnia?

Darcy.

She is extremely unpleasant, mightily moody and just plain thirteen. This girl represents all of the worst traits of your adolescent - a sense of entitled victim hood. Seriously, I wanted to lock her in her bedroom and tell her not to come out until she had grown a conscience and a rational mind!

Loved her. Can relate (I'm trying to grow one of those in my house right now, so I feel I know her well).

I think this is one of the first novels where I have disliked the central protagonist immensely, and still wanted to come back for more.

As the first in a penta-panoply of novels, THE SIX did everything it was supposed to. We discovered our band of merry travellers. We identified our leader (albeit reluctantly - from both perspectives (the reader and the character)) and we exposed the evil threatening the world. We even set up an opportunity to face the evil, a flaw and tempered the close of the chapter with the promise of more engagement to come.

Top notch. No real plot holes, no flat characters, enough drama to keep the pages turning, and heaps of room for development - particularly in the characters as they grow up, presumably to return and save the day once more.

Top effort. Now, do I start the next one, or try to get some sleep before work in the morning?

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Chick-Litter

I'll Take What She Has: A Novel by Samantha Wilde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book from NetGalley and Bantam Books, in return for an honest review.

I picked this up, as a change of pace, for a foray into Chic-Lit. I'm not really sure why I bothered. The story is told as a dual first-person narrative. We hear the voices of long-time friends Annie and Nora, across a year of their lives at Dixbie, a fictional Boarding School in the United States. Each woman alternates ownership of subsequent chapters, with often overlapping or intersecting time frames.

What cruelled this novel, for me at least, was the inability of the writing to absorb me, allow me to fully inhabit its world. I couldn't connect with the central protagonists, I didn't like them, but I didn't despise them either - they simply failed to engage my interest. It's funny, really, they should have. Both a little bit messed up, as we all are, by the traumas of growing up, they have relied on each other for support and validation for over twenty five years. They seek to balance life and expectations and family scenarios in a way that should have hoovered me right in.

But it didn't.

I think the work was just a little bit too preachy for me (no pun intended, given the author's stated occupation). There is no, one, right answer on how to be a mother or how to navigate the high and low points of marriage and love and the mundane dramas of everyday living. Choices, regrets, success, failure and simply treading water are all acceptable parts of the adult arsenal of coping with life. The repeated diatribe directed against working mothers just set my teeth on edge. We're not all cut out for nuclear parenting and not all non-parental child care is evil.

As chick-lit, this failed.

I kept reading it, I kept hoping. The writing style is easy, at times lyrical. Samantha Wilde can string words together in complex and interesting ways, but I think she could pay more attention to building up the layers of her characters - both male and female.



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Somebody's Truth

The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I would like to thank Little, Brown, and Company as well as NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The Liars' Gospel is a retelling of the story of Yehoshuah (Jesus) through four characters: Miryam (Mary), Iehuda of Qeriot (Judas Iscariot), Caiaphas, and Bar-Avo (Barabbas). Naomi Alderman places her story in the first century - a time of Roman occupation and Jewish rebellion. We see, from several perspectives, the harsh reality of life under Rome in the slide towards the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Each person remembers Yehoshuah, some with intimacy and pain, others as an irritation, a fragment of memory. This produces a strange portrait of Yehoshuah, like a shadow viewed through carnival glass. He is there, but fragmented, never really clear and far from whole.

This is less of a story about Jesus, the Man, and more an exploration of Jesus the Mystery. In some ways it is more about the evolution of belief, rather than an exploration of character or truth. The Liar's Gospel provides a tale of how stories are written, of how and why untruths form, particularly in the search for truth itself.

Don't read this if you are looking for answers to a divine mystery. Read it if you want to search your own soul for answers to questions of mortality and how we strive for something more.

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Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Peggy Riley has gifted us with a superb debut novel. I read it in two greedy gulps - it would have been one if I had timed my entrance better.

Amaranth has fled with her daughters Amity and Sorrow. As the novel opens, we find the girls sitting in the back seat of a car, bound at the wrists, as their mother drives them further and further away from home.

The cloth binding their bodies together is far from the only tie that binds them. Raised in a cult, the girls are bound by the constraints of their reality - they can't read, they must unquestioningly obey unfathomable rules and they know nothing of the strange and inconceivable world through which they are being dragged. Their bodies too are bound - constrained by layers of fabric, wrapped and sewn into their millefeuille habits, heads bowed and covered, hair braided, everything shut down. Tangled and enmeshed, the three are flung outside - two unwilling, one desperate, but undeniably connected.

They have little money, no support, little comprehension of the world as it exists outside their compound, and nowhere to go. Amaranth is desperate to flee, the girls to return home.

This is not a novel for the faint hearted. How Peggy Riley crafted this novel without having personally escaped from a polygamous cult speaks volumes for her ability to create and populate a world with realism and depth. Some of the concepts raised in this piece are confronting and ugly; yet others, compellingly beautiful. Power, sacrifice, perception and truth all vie for ascendency - but so does hope.

This is one of the best novels I have read in a very long time.

Thank you NetGally and the publisher (Little, Brown and Cmpany) for the opportunity to obtain an ARC of this thought-provoking, unsettling and ultimately satisfying book. This one will remain with me for a long while.




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Driving the Bus, Daisy?

Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Daisy, in typical teenage fashion, thinks it is all about her. Cursed by an ability to fry anything electrical, she has to ride the bus everywhere, which is apparently quite humiliating, until a,cute boy turns out to be a bus-taker as well.

Maybe I have been reading too much teen fiction lately, but Daisy bugged me. The story had an interesting premise and could have gone a number of ways ... Actually, it did, possibly too many!

I don't want to be too harsh, because GIFT is an entertaining read - I just think it was a little clunky and unfocused.

Not the best example of the genre, but definitely not the worst.

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Protocol 7 by Armen Gharabegian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2039 and the world is running on empty. Resources are scarce, but the human race has adapted and we still live in cities, drive motorised vehicles and eat out in nice restaurants. Teetering on the brink, the seas continue to rise and world weather patterns have changed.

Enter our hero, an Oxford Don, broken by the news of his father's untimely death, Simon Fitzpatrick is drawn into a race against hope by the news his father is still alive. Joined by a group of unlikely companions, Simon sets off to Antarctica to rescue his father, Oliver - despite the embargo on travel to the Pole.

The Premise is exciting, most of,the characters are drawn well enough, the adventure burbles along ... But there is just too much STUFF in the novel.

I will read the second instalment when that is released, but I hope Mr Gharabegian tightens up his arc for Part 2. This is a rollicking series, hiding amongst the superfluity. I really want someone to have a good solid whack at editing this book, and the next one. There really is scope to pull off a good Tom Clancy-esque series here.

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Shades of Darkness

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this novel as an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin, in return for an honest review.

Honestly, I loved this book.

It is not difficult to see elements of other works in this novel. Like The Hunger Games and Divergent, The Testing is a post-apocalyptic dystopia - the world is rehabilitating, several generations after the bombs were dropped. Food is growing again; the water is being slowly cleaned and the badlands are being reclaimed from the radiation and mutations. Things are tough, but it is much better than it was.

Cia lives with her family in a small outpost, isolated from other communities. She lives in a large, apparently happy family invested in re-engineering order from the chaos. We pick up Cia's personal narrative at the point where she is about to graduate from high school. Bright, plucky and full of promise, Cia has hopes of following her father to University to continue and build on his legacy of research and service. However, places at the University are limited, and to gain entrance, suitable candidates are recruited from the various settlements to undergo the Testing - a series of entrance exams. Few from Cia's home community have been favoured with selection in recent years, and she is determined to break back amongst the chosen.

The novel follows Cia and three schoolmates chosen to represent their colony in the Testing. However, all is not as it seems. Cia's father, a graduate of the University, warns her on the eve of her departure, to trust no-one. Haunted still by nightmares, he shares with Cia what knowledge he retains of his own testing - including a warning that each successful candidate's memory is wiped at the end of their Testing. His fear is not of what he remembers, rather the nightmare of what he cannot. Like 1984's behindthink, it isn't what your conscious mind remembers that is the problem - it is the messages from the shadows that haunt your dreams.

Cia departs, and the Testing begins.

The story, while slow to start, gathers pace during the Testing. Like the candidates, I, as the reader, was shocked by the brutality of the Testing - not so much by the graphic descriptions of the challenges, but more the underlying horror of the choices and the realities experienced by the candidates. It isn't what Charbonneau draws for us with her words, rather what is left unspoken, unlit and subverted that speaks the loudest.

I found the novel compelling. The characters are finely drawn and complex. The world-building is achieved early and well, without superfluity. Cia is perhaps the only truly honest person in the book. Everyone else has something to hide. Cia's challenge is to learn to limit her trust in others, while remaining true to her own ideals, and staying alive. Without introducing too many spoilers, I really enjoyed the ending of the book. I think the unmasking of the final subterfuge is masterfully done and I can't wait to read the next instalment.

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Cinque or Swim

Five Days by Douglas Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Be careful what you wish for. FIVE DAYS ia a beautifully crafted contemporary tale of love forsaken and redeemed.

Laura's life is defined by sacrifice. Unhappily married to Dan, who was recently laid off from LL Bean, she holds her family together emotionally as well as,financially. A practicing X-Ray technologist, she is competent beyond her pay grade. With aspirations to be a doctor, she sacrificed both these hopes and her youth to do the right thing. Laura's life is about making do, and putting everyone else's needs before her own.

Attending a work conference in Boston one weekend she meets unhappily married Richard Copeland. Despite a shaky start, they click and Laura chooses to follow her feelings, allowing Richard into her life. begins the long-overdue process of detangling herself from her stifling domestic routine. Over the course of five days, Laura and Richard tumble into love, making plans to disentangle themselves from their equally unfulfilling lives and marriages and to start again, with each other. However, one of them isn't as brave as they want to be.

The story explores the disintegration of a long marriage and the sweep of new romance. It also captures beautifull the rebuilding of Laura's sense of self. For a male writer, Kennedy speaks eloquently in Laura's skin.

This was a lovely book. I was lucky to receive an advance reading copy through NetGalley and Atria Books. I can recommend this one for a solid holiday or bedtime reader.

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Mercy!

The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This seems to be my year for reading dystopian fiction. Having commenced 2013 with THE HUNGER GAMES Trilogy; moving on to 25 PERFECT DAYS,;NEVER LET ME GO, and the terminally disappointing AVALON: THE RETREAT, I was ripe and ready for THE OFFICE OF MERCY. Truth be told, I loved it.

The OFFICE OF MERCY is set in the future. The majority of the population has been wiped out by an act of planned mass genocide some 300 years before the opening scenes of the novel. Following the failure of a group known as the Yangs to create their dreamed-of self sustaining utopia, a Storm of planned mass mercy killings depopulates the world, putting the seething, starving masses 'out of their misery'. The Alphas, successors to the Yangs, perpetrate the human extinction event, preserving their coterie of true believers in a collection of un-linked, bunkered domes, and begin to rebuild humanity in a more ordered way. The Alpha's new world order is based on a set of ethics that abhors suffering and seeks to eliminate all forms of it. Technology and psychological training has removed the baser elements of the human condition, including love and physical attachment. Generations of humans are grown and harvested en masse when the community has sufficient resources to support expansion, and each individual has a bank of spare parts to replace those organs worn out by age. There is no disease, pain or extremes of emotion. Life is calm, rational and ethical.

Unfortunately, not all of the great unwashed are euthanised successfully in the Storm. mIsolated pockets of humanity survive, outside the domes - reduced to a nomadic stone-age state. The inhabitants of the domes refer to these unfortunates as the 'Tribes'.

The central protagonist - Natasha - works in the Office of Mercy in the bunker known as America 5. The work of her office is to track the tribes who come within America 5's perimeter and sweep (euthanise) them. Since the tribes live uncontrolled lives and are subject to hunger, disease and eventually death, the Ethical Code of the Alphas (and their descendants) requires the Office to reduce the suffering of the afflicted tribes through mercy killings and includes guarding their empathy with metaphorical Walls.

Natasha struggles. She is not as adept as others at maintaining the Wall, which barricades emotion away allowing decisions to be made on a completely rational level. She begins to question the doctrine of the Alphas, and is torn by her feelings for Jeremy - an older inhabitant of America 5, to whom she has always felt inappropriately drawn.

As with all dystopian novels, our protagonist Natasha starts to question her world. She allows her Wall to fall down, experiencing Misplaced Empathy for a tribe Swept by the Office of Mercy. We follow Natasha as she learns about and questions the settlement. We share her struggle against the doctrine of the Ethical Code as snippets of America 5's history is revealed and as Natasha's innocence is stripped away.

While this novel has many tenets of a dystopian story, the twists will keep you guessing. I found myself questioning my own perceptions and values at various points of the book. Just when I thought I had made up my mind on who the good guys were, something changed, causing me to again question my assumptions. The ending won't satisfy everyone - and, if you're like me, it will leave you wanting to know what comes 'after'.

I really liked where this novel took me. A really good novel for inspiring discussions in a book club.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Viking for letting me have an advance copy.




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Liberal Nightmare

Avalon: The Retreat by L. Michael Rusin
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I couldn't make up my mind if this was written by a young man with no life/relationship experience, or an older man with some very straightened views on women. Whichever it was, there isn't a lot going on in the 'understanding women' part of L. Michael Rusin's brain. The male characters were wooden enough, but the women were very crudely drawn. I think my favourite line was She was suddenly tired, and it wasn't because of her period ... ...seriously?

This novel needs a very serious edit. I was really looking forward to reading it - post-apocalyptic adventures are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine - all that room for character development and world-building. This just disappointed me. It reads like a survivalist shopping list. Never let it be said that Mr Rusin's didn't thoroughly research his topic, but please, someone tell him that subtlety in drawing that knowledge to the reader's attention would serve him well in the next iteration of this trilogy. He might also wish to check his anti-Liberal tendencies at the door to the cabin - the only emotion in the whole book seemed to be reserved to be directed against the 'effete' liberals and the Canadians - all deserving of the author's wrath due to their anti-guns policies.

I appreciate the advance copy - thank you NetGalley and KamelPress, but I think a bit more work needs to be done on this one, before it is published. While there may be a market in the survivalist camps, and this novel may find its way onto the shelves of the odd bunkered settlement in the mid-West, it requires a lot of 2b pencil markings to guarantee readership (and sales) to a wider audience.



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