Tag archives for book review - Page 21
Book Review – Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish by Andrew Buckley
Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish by Andrew Buckley My rating: 3 of 5 stars A little mixed on this one. on the plus side I enjoyed the inventive nature of the story and it made me laugh in places. So it could have been a four or five star read. The story is engaging and has clearly been crafted. I could go with the necessary suspension of disbelief for the core plot elements of the eponymous Death, the Devil and the Goldfish. These were good as well as the robot elves and the other characters. In fact that whole bit was fab. The bit I had some issues with was an easy fix. Ostensibly the book is mostly set in London, and I live and work in the area covered. However the book uses rather a lot of North…
Book Review – Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch My rating: 5 of 5 stars A change in direction for the Peter Grant series. Peter's out of London and without his mentor Nightingale. As well as this the story is one of two missing children, which adds an urgency to the pace of events. As you'd expect there is a strong supernatural element to the story, with an interesting twist in it. Only Peter and Beverley Brook really feature through the story, Nightingale bookends it and there is minor contact with Dr Walid at one point. All the rest of the characters are locals from West Mercia. Out on his own Peter develops as a character. He's a lot more self-reliant and capable, he doesn't have any magical backup so deals with what he finds himself. The background is also expanded a bit, Peter…
Book Review – Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes by Rayne Hall
Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes by Rayne Hall My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is full of useful tips, and more importantly a broad framework for approaching improving your work as what works is continually evolving. Once enough people find a new technique for improving their book's visibility and sales it becomes less useful. However there are definitely a set of things that will always remain useful. I'm not going to tell you the list, Rayne deserves to profit from her hard work and she's not charging the earth for the book. I got it on pre-order for £, about 99 cents US. That could of course just have been a ploy on her part to catapult it up the sales rankings. However even if it costs you a little more it may still…
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Book Review – Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Stories by Jacob Grimm My rating: 3 of 5 stars Interesting to see the originals that Disney worked their magic on. There's a similarity across some of the stories where you can see that perhaps they are mutated versions of the same original that have morphed as they were told. Also there are a number of fairy stories that I hadn't heard before, them not having quite entered popular consciousness where I grew up. Possibly some of these would be the kernel of some good stories, Grimm's style is very much tell and no show. That suits the sort of morality tales these are, intended for someone to simply recount them at bedtime or round the fire or dinner table. They've come from an oral tradition, and anything taking longer to tell than 10 to 20 minutes would…
Book Review – Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton
Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this story, it was a mix of classic science fiction, ancient history and a modern thriller. I'm not an expert on the Egyptology, but what there was worked very well for me as a story and was plausible. It managed to avoid being too Erich von Däniken in its approach, and the way that the locals never grasped the technology was completely believable. Another aspect that I liked was the interplay between the metal poor and biotech rich Kinley (humans from a planet 8 light years away) and their enemies who used cloned Kinley to spy on them. This provided some of the science fiction backdrop for a modern day thriller, with the two racing to recover the lost secret of faster than light travel (the…