Books tagged with: loss

Among Others is about as different from any novel I have read than the Moon is from a piece of pie. It's not even a book I thought I would enjoy either, if someone had approached me and asked me to read a novel about a 15 year old girls account of her life in a boarding school - delivered in the for...

Beautiful Dead: Arizona is the second volume in the Beautiful Dead series of novels by Eden Maguire. Following on from the events in "Jonas", Darina has seen no sign of the Beautiful Dead for weeks and is missing Phoenix all over again. With so much still to resolve, surely they will return soon? Ar...

Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling is a unique offering that manages to create a Victorian gothic-esque supernatural adventure that manages to create a tangible feeling of suspense. Set within an ancient, remote manor house, the story begins with the murder of Nanny Prum - carer for James a...

Dead Things was one of the few books I bought with post-christmas vouchers, after first seeing the author on twitter where he regularly trades jokes with Chuck Wendig. It's an urban fantasy adventure that follows the life of Eric Carter. Eric's a necromancer, an angry young necromancer who finds the...

Erekos is a fantasy novel by A M Tuomala. The nations Erekos and Weigenland have fought against each other for over three hundred years, a war that has seen both sides struggle to hold the borderland between them. As the flood season begins the King of the Erekoi thinks he has discovered a powerful...

Another episode is the Mountain Man series always brings a degree of eagerness; not only with knowledge that you just know the dialogue will be entertaining but in the authors wonderfully rewarding tone too; Hellifax is no exception. Gus, the reluctant hero of the previous two Mountain Man novels is...

What can be said about this author that hasn’t been said before? Prolific. Scary. Master of terror. King is all of these and more. King has really grown as not just a writer of horror throughout his career but as a true wordsmith, a master of his art and none more so than with this latest offering....

King Rat is the debut of the award winning British author China Miéville. The novel begins with Saul returning from a camping trip to the top floor flat he shares with his father, deciding not to wake him he goes straight to bed. In the early hours of the following morning he is rudely awakened by t...

Some books arrive in your life at exactly the right moment and lodge there for good, and Konrad is one of those for me. I came to it as a young reader, at a time when the Warhammer world was still new and strange and dangerous in my imagination, and whatever its flaws, and I will be honest about the...

ShadowBreed is the second book of David Ferring's Konrad trilogy, and it picks up the instant the first volume leaves off, ramping the violence and the strangeness up considerably. If you have not read Konrad , start there; this is not a series to come into halfway, whatever the occasional bursts of...

The Bookman is a steampunk-esq novel of victorian adventure meets history, technology and erm... books, written by the talented author Lavie Tidhar. If the British Library was a living entity and, on wanting to write a book was told ‘write what you know’ then this is the book it would write. The her...

I picked up The Ocean at the End of the Lane having already read a few (spoiler free) reviews on-line, so I was pretty thrilled to have finally bought it for myself (hard-cover and all). I'm a long time fan of Neil Gaiman—I discovered him in high school and remained a loyal reader. I'm assuming that...

The latest book in the Harry Potter series is twice as long as the previous one (which was twice as long as the one before it), it darker and somebody actually dies in it. Somebody not evil. That doesn't make it worth reading though. The fact that it's well written and highly entertaining, does make...

The Return man is a post-apocalyptic Zombie novel that manages to offer a few surprises and original ideas in this rapidly expanded sub-genre. The story goes that a mass "outbreak" divides America in two, on the east the untouched survivors remain safe while the west has become truly wild - a ravage...

The Road to Bedlam is the second volume in the The Courts of the Feyre series, which started with the incredible debut novel Sixty One Nails by Angry Robot Author Mike Shevdon. The novel begins shortly after the events in Sixty One Nails with Blackbird expecting the birth of their child any time soo...

The Silent Land concerns the story of Jake and Zoe who find themselves cut off from civilisation after being trapped in an Avalanche while on a skiing holiday. Managing to claw and wriggle her way out of her snowbound tomb Zoe finds Jake has miraculously survived. On return to their hotel they find...

The Vanishing Throne by Elizabeth May is the second in a series of books following the adventures of Lady Aileana Kameron (or Kam) and the action follow on directly from the first book. If you haven’t read The Falconer I suggest you do, as this review definitely contains spoilers for the ending of t...

If you've read any books by Graham Joyce you will feel very much at home with The Year of the Ladybird. Not only does it read very much like his previous stories - complete with the everyday path of the protagonist and minimal use of any genre tropes - but The Year of the Ladybird feels like a very...

Pew! I've been waiting for this book for a looong time, maybe too long. I didn't hesitate one moment when I found the trade paperback, regardless of the fact D.M. Grant mailed the hardcover version to me a month ago (I just haven't received it yet). The book starts of where DT3 ended – on Blain the...

It’s New Year’s Eve when the beloved and popular Olivia goes missing on the Orkney island that was her home. Of all her friends and family, it’s her little sister Alex, who takes it the hardest. Blackbird is the claustrophobic account of Alex’s life immediately following her sister’s disappearance....

On the surface, this post-apocalyptic tale of infection, nuclear fallout and scattered, savage humanity is no different from the many others that have gone before it. But what saves it from being just another drop in the great maelstrom of dystopian novels is the author’s taught and affecting story-...

Post-Katrina New Orleans is haunted by history and destruction. Similar burdens are shouldered by the Street Magician Jude Dubuisson. He's got a gift of finding things people have lost - inherited from an unknown father. His gift has become an almost overwhelming curse following the storm, with so m...

If you have ever been out to sea on a sailing boat, you may have felt that feeling of majesty and awe that the water evokes. This vast expanse that continues as far as the eye can see. Depending on your personality, it can instil a sense of fear or a sense of adventure. I have felt this feeling on l...

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Peter Pan is cheeky, certainly a hero, but he was also annoying and domineering. Did the Lost Boys want to stay on the island, or did Peter force them? On reflection, Peter Pan had some issues, but Disney put an airbrush t...

I've been meaning to read this book for quite some time. It's been staring accusingly across the room. But I'm still trying to find time to read right now and it's not the most sveltely of shapes, coming in at a weighty 730+ pages. I finally gave in, and I'm glad I did. This does invariably mean how...

I have not lived in the village I grew up in over twenty years, but I still talk about going home when I am visiting. Where I live now has been my home for longer, but there is something about those formative years that make a place always feel like home. I return to see family, but for some people,...

Before we get started, given that this book is number 18 in the series, the review inevitably has spoilers for what's happened previously. This is unavoidable, but if you haven't read Battle Ground or indeed the 16 books before that, then this review isn't for you. Still here? Good. If you have been...