Tag Archives: 4-stars

Review: John A. Flanagan – The Tournament at Gorlan (Ranger’s Apprentice Early Year)

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The Tournament at Gorlan (Ranger’s Apprentice Early Year)
John A. Flanagan

After being dismissed as a Ranger of the King, Crowley travels with Halt to try to stop the influence of Morgarath spreading. As they discover that the rot is deeper than they thought, they must gather all the Rangers they can to confront the man facing them. As being a Ranger becomes more dangerous and the plots more costly, it’s not obvious if there will be a clear winner.

26701713I’m not sure how I felt about this novel. It had been long enough that I no longer really remembered the original Ranger’s Apprentice story, so I would say that I read this novel as a stand alone. I’m not sure I want to read the sequel to this one – I simply didn’t get vested enough in the characters.

I think something that spoke false to me, but would have been good for other younger readers, was the terminology used. There was too much stating of what the leadership role was, what fishing skills were important, and less on the actual characters’ voices.

It was too simple. I knew what was going to happen, and I never felt a sense of urgency. Everything would turn out fine, regardless of what the characters did! I felt like I didn’t really get to ‘know’ any of the characters. I certainly loved Halt. Which I suppose I was supposed to, but it helped that most of the novel was from his perspective.

For a novel that didn’t seem to have much magic in mind, the epilogue left me feeling somewhat unbalanced. There were barely any hints about it beforehand (just something that seemed like filler to expand the character).

So with that in mind, I’m giving it 3-4 stars. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly outstanding either. I’ve lent this to my partner’s brother to find out what he thinks of it as a younger reader and having read all of the other books in the series. I’ll keep my twitter updated with the results!

3star

I received a complimentary copy from the wonder folks at Penguin Random House Australia.

Review: Seth Dickinson – The Traitor

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The Traitor
Seth Dickinson

The Empire of Masks has come to conquer Baru’s home. Baru is collected into the Empire’s new school while her old life crumbles – same sex relationships are now cause for torture and death. Baru wants to save her homeland and is driven to do anything to save it – even when it looks like it will be too late.

26055193Baru, Baru, Baru. I don’t understand you. I found it really difficult to connect to any of the characters, and at one point I asked my partner why on earth I kept reading! But there must have been something there, because I lost the two afternoons to reading it after it arrived in my inbox as an ebook (and I don’t even like reading ebooks, because they dry out my eyes!).

Baru’s bird counting was supposed to tip me off that she was a savant, but I didn’t get it. Only after reading the novel and the last couple of notes did I really understand what that really meant for her. Perhaps they should have said autistic savant. According to my good friend the online dictionary a savant is: ‘a person who knows a lot about a particular subject’ or ‘a person who does not have normal intelligence but who has very unusual mental abilities that other people do not have’.

 

The beginning caught me. I didn’t understand why the first couple of ‘chapters’ were written differently from the others, and in fact, I don’t think they were necessary. I guessed that they were supposed to tell me how important Baru’s family was to her, but this isn’t repeated throughout the novel. Instead, it turns to the drama and suspense of winning over a war-torn country using the financial system.

What I missed was the subtext that should have warned me about the ending. How will she save her own people? How does she know who is still alive? How do I know that she cares about them? I had left the novel with 9 pages remaining overnight, and I wanted to know how it ended. Yet I don’t know how I really feel about the ending.

My question is whether there is going to be as second novel. Or perhaps Dickinson feels like he has done enough to expose how empires can be made to crumble or how a single person can mean the difference between a ‘democracy’ or a ‘sovereignty’. Or whether he has sufficiently taught us how monsters are created.

I simply can’t give this 5 stars like some other reviewers. Yes, it’s good, yes, you’ll feel things, but I’m not sure I can accept it as a reread for me. In the end, my emotions had been so wrung out that I couldn’t care about any of them. I remain confused about it, which is perhaps a good sign. Go and read it for yourself, but be prepared for the unexpected.

4star

 

Review: Cassandra Clare & Holly Black – The Copper Gauntlet

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The Copper Gauntlet
Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

Call never seems to find any rest – unless he’s at school. When he has to return home for the holidays, he finds his father more set against school than ever, and a set of chains in the basement. Trust is something that seems to be fluid and bought and sold to the highest bidder. Call thinks he knows what he’s doing – everyone else thinks he is mad!

25613630Call and the other characters still didn’t seem to progress much. Aaron does grow a little, in that he wants to protect others not just have them protect him. But he doesn’t seem as smart as he does in the first novel. Not to mention poor Tamara gets sidelined.

There’s some underhand backbiting, and some potential treachery, but for me, these didn’t ring true. Surely they are old enough not to fight like 5-year-olds over a broken toy?

The ending was a little bit of a surprise, I really didn’t expect what happened! The Magisterium seemed a bit like a dumb hulking beast though, with more secrets than anyone could ever have. Hoping for a happy ending seems impossible.

This sort of feels like a ‘questing’ novel. All Call ever seems to do is head to the Magisterium, then immediately go back out again! There wasn’t any of the learning/teaching that went on in the first book to make me super interested and happy.

I’m not saying give this novel a miss by any means. In fact, I think you should get out there and read it for yourself. Once again though, I found myself waiting desperately for the next novel – I don’t want to wait a whole year!

Did this novel take me as strongly as the first one, The Iron Trial? No, sadly it didn’t. It simply didn’t have the same personality when I read it myself, rather than being read to by a talented voice-over. But I kept reading it. I don’t know why, but I did. That’s what makes it 4 stars not 3.

UPDATE: August 2020. I listened to The Iron Trial again, and then The Copper Gauntlet. I had pretty much completely forgotten everything about this second book, but the reader/voice actor kept me far more entertained with his narration. I’m now onto reading The Bronze Key, and I’m feeling pretty excited about it.

4star

Review: Kate Swann and Kristina Mamrot – Do You Really Want to Lose Weight?

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Do You Really Want to Lose Weight?
Kate Swann and Kristina Mamrot

This book is a new guide to losing weight – mainly without massive immediate diet changes and unrealistic goals. Instead, it looks at the psychological side of losing weight. I’d actually highly recommend it as a good book of its type, and in combination with another healthy eating guide, I think it could be a step in the right direction for people with weight-loss problems.

22696682You might be thinking to yourself ‘Why is Rose reviewing diet books?”. Well, I don’t need to lose weight. But I do enjoy the stories of other people being successful in their weight loss goals, and when I was approached to read this novel, it’s the only reason I agreed.

I really liked this book. It has some sound practical advice, and some powerful messages that readers may or may not be able to apply by themselves. There is certainly a link between psychology and weight gain/loss. Go out there, buy it, and share it with a friend. Take notes on the things that resonate with you, and pass on the ones that don’t.

This is a short review – mainly because I want you to go read it for yourself. It’s well written, I enjoyed the stories and I could tell that there were real people behind those anonymous fronts. What more can I say?

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Review: Tracy Alexander – Hacked

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Hacked
Tracy Alexander

Dan is a hacker. When he drifts from one side of the law to another in order to get justice for his friend, he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the law – with no-one listening to what he can do to help.

22678001Ok, first off. It’s a plot driven novel. That basically means you can kiss goodbye to character development. In fact, if you ignore character development all together, you would be better off. I found the characterisation of the main character patchy, and I never really got into the motivations of the other characters.

The premise of this novel is that it is easy to cross a line with hacking on the internet. There’s a couple of different terms I could use, but the easiest is ‘White Hat’ and ‘Black Hat’. Basically, the Black Hats are the guys with a malignant intent – they want to destroy things just to prove they can. Then there are White Hats, those who find the holes in security and help out the ‘good guys’.

The ending was particularly unsatisfying. Yay, happy for everyone. But not really… I wanted more meaty bits of details! How many other people were scammed? The second half of the book was far weaker than the first.

Dan didn’t seem like he was 16 years old. He could have been younger. In fact, his friends also acted very young, with the exception of the girl he liked – who seemed a bit up herself to be honest. She saw only black and white, no grey.

I didn’t like the explanation of ADHD being the reason Dan wasn’t to blame for anything. it’s a diagnosis. It’s the first line of the blurb. But it doesn’t do anything for the story. It’s about the computers, and I don’t think the author should be trying to sell anything else with it.

Other reviewers have given this one star. I don’t think it’s that bad, honestly, provided you read it for what it is, and you hit the target market just right. It’s not going to appeal to everyone, that’s for sure.

I put off reading this novel because I was warned it wasn’t very good. I actually enjoyed it, and read it in one sitting. Granted, I had nothing else to do, but I just couldn’t seem to put it down. The more I think about it, the more holes I want to poke in it though. My initial assessment was 4 stars, and I’m going to leave it at that (err on the side of nice). It’s a driving plot that should keep people enthralled – even those people who ‘hate’ reading.

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Review: Li Cunxin – Mao’s Last Dancer

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Mao’s Last Dancer
Li Cunxin

A poor Chinese boy, one of seven brothers, is the favourite of his mother and family. With little food and littler hope for the future, Li is determined to make something different of his life. This chance comes for him when he is selected to become a ballet dancer for Madam Mao. Li’s determination to make his family proud means that he rises through the ranks, and eventually sees outside of China.

298137It’s interesting to see within the head of someone raised during the time of Communist Mao. Such brainwashing seems absurd now, but it happened not that long ago. Goes to show that corrupt politics can have a huge impact with brainwashing, and the people within it don’t even question it. Perhaps that explains some of the religious stuff that people can get away with now…

There’s not actually very much I can tell you about how this novel was written. As a non-native English speaker, Li does an excellent job of communicating. His written English (with considerable editing support I admit), flows more naturally than his spoken word. The ‘episodes’ or ‘chapters’ of Li’s life fitted in well, and I didn’t feel like I had missed out on anything important in his life.

I listened to this novel as a talking book. The reader of Mao’s Last Dancer was amazing. His voice was just how I wanted it to be told, soft in the places it needed to be, and louder when it was more important. I felt like I was really experiencing the things that happened. I’ve never tried searching for audiobooks using the reader’s name, not the author’s, but this reader makes me want to do it.

I had the privilege of speaking to Li in person, and hear him give an interview about leadership. Some of the little things he told us about in the interview were covered again in the novel, and it made a huge impact on what came out as the most important point of the narrative. The thing I took out of it was the savour the process, not just the endpoint, and that just because things have always been that way, doesn’t mean they will be that way forever.

Would I have been so interested in the story if I hadn’t met Li? Possibly, but perhaps it never would have gotten off my never-ending reading stack. I’ll give this one 4.5 stars, because it is a brilliant and well-told story, but I wouldn’t re-read it. I really want to watch the movie and see if it is as wonderful as the novel. Inspiring, and you should go read it, but it might not be for everyone.

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Review: Ann Brashares – The Here and Now

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The Here and Now
Ann Brashares

Prenna has come from the future to prevent that future taking place. In that future, a blood borne disease has killed the entire world, and left everyone fearing the outside world. Prenna doesn’t know when or how the world will be stopped from doing that, but it seems like the rest of her community couldn’t care less. Ethan, a boy she wants to love but can’t, has more to offer her than she will ever imagine.

18242896Prenna can’t seem to help getting into trouble. And the catch-cry of her elders is ‘Stop looking so stupid Prenna’, which at some points was so true! Arg! Prenna! Grow a spine! You have a good chance of dying anyway, so you might as well try and escape or be different, or something!

Sometimes I thought Prenna was completely ignorant and hopeless. I thought that the author was having time-outs in her characterisation! But then I remembered that someone from the future would have had that sort of thing, and in fact it was a deliberate device used by the author to remind the reader that she was no ordinary person. I hope.

I have to admit, the reader did some parts brilliantly, and others in a bit of a fluffy way. Sometimes the characters blended together in a soft, floating cloud of breathy speech. It felt like the reader didn’t know how to make voices other than ‘quiet’ and ‘very quiet with air’. That being said, I didn’t care, and it was far better than the reader having a very strong accent of anything. This fault was easy to live with and didn’t kill my enjoyment of the novel.

The author seems to have really considered how best to drag her readers forwards mainly by the second third of the novel. The suspense was killing me towards the end. I wanted to read faster! But of course, it was a talking book, and I couldn’t do it. The ending was a satisfying yet saddening conclusion. I felt frustrated at the same time as feeling sadly expectant. I do so wish things could have turned out differently, but it was obvious why it couldn’t be so simple.

Something that did jibe well with me was the fact that it was a blood borne disease, dengue virus in fact, that caused the plagues of the future. Maybe that confuses other people who don’t understand climate warming or anything else, but given this is a topic close to my research interests, I was fascinated to see how it turned out. Overall, the message about the future being obvious to those that take the time to look forward, even if they weren’t actually time-travellers, and that that world is disintegrating by our actions, gives certainly a bad reflection on common humans.

I am entirely, entirely guilty of listening to this novel without having reviewed the other four novels I had read in the preceding week. Oops? But I thought I had better review this good one before it left my head. If there’re more novels out there by Brashares in the same genre, I’m pretty sure I’ll be sourcing them shortly. 5 stars from me.

NOTE: While I was looking on GoodReads for the book cover, I found that the reviews are really mixed. I possibly wouldn’t have picked it up as a paperback, but as an audiobook I loved it. I certainly wasn’t bored!

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Review: Kerr Thomson – The Sound of Whales

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The Sound of Whales
Kerr Thomson

The summer in Scotland is just as miserable as its winter, at least for its forced inhabitants. With nothing to do, the two Scottish boys hunt down whales, each in their own way, and the Texan girl gets caught up purely by accident. With unknown bad-guys on the loose, the children need to keep their communication open.

25094908I felt like the author was trying to tackle too big an issue with too small a novel. People smuggling is a serious offence, but this novel couldn’t get deep enough into it to even really start a conversation on it. The same thing bothered me about the culture. The dance and the Sunday church could have had so much more emphasis and interest in them.

Should I tick the box for fantasy on this one? Or something else? The whale drawing abilities were something that I could put down to real-life, or augmented reality, I wasn’t really sure where to put it. That being said, it was certainly sensitively done and I felt absolutely certain that there wasn’t anything being made up.

Dunny doesn’t speak. To you or I, or Hayley for that matter, his name sounds like, well, a toilet. I think the author has done that on purpose. On the other hand, I’m certain that Fraser often feels like his brother has his head in the dunny most of the time! Dunny certainly doesn’t make thing straight-forward.

I was grateful for the lack of ‘ikky love stuff’. You know the typical boy meets girl, they fall in love immediately, but neither want to admit it? Yeah, doesn’t happen, instead its more about being friends first, overcoming a lot of cultural boundaries and some language ones as well.

This novel was driven by subterfuge. The ending was not what one might have expected. I came away from reading this novel with mixed feelings. If it was planned to give an overview on how life can be complicated, then yes, it did the job. But if you wanted something more powerful in terms of human feeling, this said it would, but failed to deliver. I didn’t actually care very much whether any of them lived or died.

I’m surprised by the lack of other reviews for this novel. It’s actually pretty good, I tossed up between a 3 stars and a 4 stars, and settled on 4, because I thought about it while I was away from it, and really wanted to finish it. Get on it! Read it! Even if it’s better suited to teenagers, it’s totally a book you want your teenager to read, and it might even appeal to non-readers (provided you sell it to them in the right way).

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4star

Review: Eve Ainsworth – 7 Days

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7 Days
Eve Ainsworth

The fat kid in old clothes is always going to be bullied. Jess doesn’t know how to stand up for herself, and Kez takes advantage of that fact every time. Kez has her own problems, but she refuses to admit anything, or back down.

18679049The world-building in this novel was vivid. I realised that it was based on a real place, but I’d never been to the place in person. But the end of the novel though, I had a really good grasp in my head where everything was, and I could ‘see’ the action happening. The characterisation was ok, but that was sort of secondary to Ainsworth’s bullying agenda.

I have to say that Ainsworth really got her teeth into the subject matter and tried to provide some really decent insight into how a victim and the bully feel. I can’t see this a school reading material – but maybe it should be. With concerns about bullying going rampant across Australia and other places, another expose can’t hurt – particularly if it’s one that teenagers can actually relate to.

Look, the hype about this book simply didn’t live up to my expectations. There are many rave reviews on GoodReads, but honestly I wasn’t left with too much of an ’emotion-hangover’ at the end of reading this, despite feeling somewhat invested in the characters throughout the novel.

I didn’t even really feel tension at the end of the novel. I felt that they were both shallow and weak, and I couldn’t care whether they died or not. I had some sympathy for Jess, but I couldn’t believe that Kez could get away with so many things, even in her household.

If it was read squarely by its target teen audience, I think you’d be looking at 4 stars. But for me, I simply didn’t feel enough compulsion when reading about the characters to give it that. 3 stars from me. Don’t let it be said that I don’t enjoy other teenage novels – I am capable of giving them 5 stars, but it has to be a particularly great novel for me to do so.

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Review: Robyn Schneider – Extraordinary Means

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Extraordinary Means
Robyn Schneider

Lane has been shipped off to boarding school with very little warning. He’s in the middle of preparing for college, and now is stuck in enforced rest – for who knows how long? When he runs into an old acquaintance, who knows what the future will hold for them?

25443389You don’t immediately realise what is wrong with Lane, and I felt myself impatiently waiting for the reveal. The interaction between what I consider the two main characters was shy and tentative, just how I like my romance to be in a young adult novel.

The two perspectives of the novel didn’t feel clearly defined. Most of the time I could tell who was narrating, but at some points I would have been confused if not for the signposting. It’s something that an author can always improve on, and I think we’re going to see more good things from Schneider.

One of the key points to take away from this novel is that being busy to prove yourself sometimes means that you miss out on the finer points of life. Even if you think you’re doing what you want to do, sometimes it’s just nice to sit down – even if it takes awhile for you to get used to it.

The ending of this was bittersweet. Honestly, I couldn’t have seen it ending any other way, but it was still shocking and painful. I found myself reminiscing about the last chapter for a while after I had read it, which is always a good sign.

This novel made me make a new category of fiction. I wouldn’t consider it ‘Dystopian’ because the entire would hasn’t fallen apart. And equally, it doesn’t contain travel into other worlds with other creatures, so I wouldn’t call it ‘Science Fiction’. Instead, I’m thinking that I’ll call it ‘Future Fiction’.

I was sent this novel for review, which always surprises me when it’s a novel with over 200 reviews already on GoodReads. Is this perhaps a new cover? I’m happy to add some more talk about it to the internet – I think anything bringing highlights to antibiotics and infectious diseases deserves some time in the spotlight.

It’s something a little bit different from other things out there at the moment, and that makes me give it 4 stars. I won’t be rereading it any time soon though – I have way too many books on my plate, and I don’t think this one has enough to offer for a second reading.

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