Review
-
Book Review: Phoenix Rising by Bryony Pearce
Phoenix Rising is the first novel in a brand new dystopian YA series about Pirates. The main character is Toby, chief engineer aboard the Phoenix. The novel is very fast paced. The main character,Toby, moves from saving the ship’s engines to discovering a stowaway. The action never stops, it is a very wild ride, with the enemy ship the Banshee captained by Nell and her daughter Ayla as well as prison breaks, epic battles and explosions. I love that the world is well realised, an environmental calamity has changed the world and governments have collapsed new states have sprung up with pirates scavenging resources from the floating junkyards that the…
-
Jane's Great Re-read: Witches Abroad – Review
Witches abroad is the third in Granny Weatherwax sequence and one of my personal favourites in a strong field. Terry Pratchett’s books are like onions there are layers. The basic plot is Magrat is left a Magic wand by one of the ramptops witches who also happens to be a fairy godmother. There is a girl in Genua who is going to a marry a prince and this being Discworld it needs to be stopped. Let me take a minute there with my proud feminist hat on and punch the air. Women fighting against the established narrative that a young girl must be wanting to marry the prince. Anyhoo, something…
-
Jane's Great Re-Read: Equal Rites – Review
Another old friend to back and visit. My relationship with the Discworld novels is avid reader but not necessarily a re-reader They are novels to be inhaled and enjoyed and to laugh out loud and make others want to know just what has made you guffaw. Most folks will not send you to Equal Rites as a first port of call. The Discworld novels have various streams you can follow based on various characters. Rincewind, Death and Susan, Sam Vimes, Granny WEatherwax, Moist Von Lipwig, Tiffany Aching and there are a few true stand alones. Equal Rites is the first novel to contain Granny Weatherwax, but at this point she’s…
-
Jane's Great Re-read: The Time Traveler's Wife – Review
*Wipes eyes and blows nose* Hello gang, well yes just finished the Time Traveler’s Wife again and I can report it still shreds me into tiny pieces. When I was 25 this book meant everything I was in a very volatile stage of my life and it gave me comfort and helped me come to terms with lots of life stuff and help me cry. I have not and will not see the film because I am not prepared to tarnish my vision of the novel. For those reasons it was a very important book and has been a permanent addition to my list of favourites. Coming back to it,…
-
Jane's Great Re-Read: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Review
The final book in such an epic series always had such a lot of hype to live up to. I read it on the day it was published in two sittings and I had not read it since. Until now. What struck me the first time and was reinforced the second was just how much death there was and how much J K Rowling took from Harry. It still feels brutal the way that Hedwig is disposed of and it doesn’t get any easier as the read goes on. I do think that the book is flawed in some ways. The seemingly endless scenes in the woods camping got rather…
-
Jane's Great Re-Read: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Review
I always felt smug about this book, mainly because I worked out who the Half-Blood Prince was prior to it being published. I also guessed that Dumbledore would not make it to the final book. Although that was rather more obvious. This is a wild ride of a book, I loved all the sequences between Harry and Dumbledore. Dumbledore diminishing, though having learnt important lessons in the Order of the Phoenix. Also Snape you can’t talk about this book without thinking deeply about Snape stuck between a rock and a hard place and with no choice to his actions. And the questions about who is he actually loyal to? And…
-
Jane's Great Re-read: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – Review
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was with no small amount of trepidation that I approached this one. Because dear me CAPSLOCK!Harry really is a sulky pain in the you-know-where. That said my memory did lie to me because I found the novel far more compelling and satisfying than I remember. It is such a dark novel, so many themes which are disturbing. Umbridge being as vile as I remembered if not more so. Her quill and the fact she’s willing to use physical force against students. There is a scene in which Dumbledore calls her on it which made me cheer. Of course Dumbledore’s Army is…
-
Jane's Great Re-read: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – Review
Goblet of Fire is such a long book after Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s like a Peter Jackson adapted Hobbit version of the earlier Harry Potter books. I am torn because whilst I love all the detail of the world, some of the subplots are weak and don’t seem to go anywhere. There is just so much stuff to plough through. Revisiting it does feel more of a chore than it did the first time. That said the level of information and detail is where a lot of the humour lies and I really enjoy absorbing it all and giggling when I notice something new. The good thing is that I’m…
-
Jane's Great Re-Read: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Aw yeah. Re-reading Prisoner of Azkaban was a complete joy. This really is J K Rowling writing at her best here. No extraneous bits, the plots moves at a thundering pace and it is fantastic. Even the time travelling which is notorious to pull off well is competently done. The character development really starts here, we start to learn more about Snape and some of the reasons why he hated James Potter so much. Oh Severus, so much disappointment for you in this novel. So without further ado five things from Prisoner Minerva Mcgonagall being disrespectful and passive aggressive towards Professor Trelawney and barely even managing to conceal it from…
-
Jane's Great ReRead: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
I’m tackling this in two parts: the first general experience of re-reading for the millionth time and secondly five things that made me tingly warm in a fangirl sense. I have tried to count up how many times I’ve read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, definitely more than seven, I’m guessing maybe as many as ten I discovered Harry Potter in my final year of University and I was going to be an English Teacher so I made a point of reading ‘kids books’ so that I would have a wealth of recommendations for students (I was exceedingly idealistic even if it didn’t work out for me). I fell…