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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