Category: Books

The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (2014): Den Patrick

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★★★

The Erebus Sequence: Book I

I can’t remember exactly where I first came across The Boy with the Porcelain Blade, but I was intrigued enough to buy it without knowing anything about it. Then, shortly before I was due to start it, I spotted a review at the Speculative Scotsman, which made it quite clear that the book was going to have some weaknesses. (I don’t usually read reviews of things that I’m about to read for myself, but I’d only just discovered his blog and was enjoying it too much to stop.) However I went ahead and read it anyway. The title was interesting, the cover enticing and, as we all know, I’m not the kind of girl who can easily resist a fantasy swashbuckler.

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The Eyre Affair (2001): Jasper Fforde

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★★★★

Thursday Next: Book I

For several years my friend Martin has been telling me that I had to read this book. I don’t know why I resisted for so long: stubbornness, probably, more than anything else. But recently another friend, Alex, completely independently recommended the same thing. And so, finding myself once again in an airport lounge with nothing to do, I decided it was time to give Thursday Next a go. My reaction began with wariness, progressed into bafflement and eventually shuffled rather awkwardly into acknowledgement that this was rather good.

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The Gospel of Loki (2014): Joanne M. Harris

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★★★½

I’ve only ever read one book by Joanne Harris and that (predictably) was Chocolat, many moons ago. As a result, I was intrigued when huge posters appeared all over the Underground advertising her most recent novel, her first foray into what the publicists call ‘fantasy’ but which is actually revisionist mythology. Naturally there was no way I could resist it. I’ve always loved clever, creative, not-entirely-trustworthy heroes and it’s a given that the devil always gets the best lines. Moreover, with the Vikings exhibition looming at the British Museum it seemed the perfect moment to brush up on my Norse mythology. And, although Harris would (apparently) prefer us not to mention it / him and simply to judge the book against the myths themselves, there’s always that pop-culture elephant lurking in the corner of the room. Loki is very much the man of the moment.

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The Bull from the Sea (1962): Mary Renault

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★★★★½

Published four years after The King Must Die, this book picks up the thread of Theseus’ story once again. Having brought down the ancient Cretan house of Minos, he comes home to Athens flushed with glory, accompanied by his loyal team of bull-leapers, the Cranes. But the joy fades quickly: Theseus is greeted by news of his father’s premature death; and, for all the Cranes, the Athens they return to seems smaller and more provincial than the city they left.

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Winter Pilgrims (2014): Toby Clements

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★★★★

Kingmaker: Book I

Toby Clements’s novel opens in the bitter cold of the winter of 1460, in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, in a country teetering on the brink of anarchy. In the wake of the battles of St Albans and Ludford Bridge, the weak and unstable King Henry VI and his wife, the virago Margaret of Anjou, cling to the last threads of their power, while the armies of the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick winter for safety in Calais and plot their next move.

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The King Must Die (1958): Mary Renault

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★★★★★

Although I’m only posting about it now, I finished The King Must Die before embarking on Gates of Fire. My planned project this year is a reread of Mary Renault’s classical history novels, which had such a huge impact on me as an impressionable teenager. Two books stood out particularly strongly in my memory: The King Must Die and Fire From Heaven, and I was delighted to hear that Heloise was also keen to read the former. Our very informal joint reading was punctuated by excited whittering about myths (from me) and fascinating comments about narrative patterns and the question of consent in sacrifice (from her). I’m pleased to report that I’ve infected her with my Renault enthusiasm and in fact she’s already finished the sequel, The Bull From The Sea.

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Gates of Fire (1998): Steven Pressfield

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★★★★

Before I begin, a note of warning: this post assumes that you’re familiar with the outcome of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. I’m leaping to the conclusion that, if you haven’t already read this book, you’ll probably have seen the film 300 or come across this stirring story in a history book or documentary. If you don’t know what happened, then my recommendation would be to simply buy this book and plunge in: don’t read any further, and don’t go looking up anything on Wikipedia. It’ll be even more dazzling and gut-wrenching if you don’t know what to expect.

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Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22): Sigrid Undset

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★★★★

This is not the longest book I’ve ever read, though it comes close – trailing just behind World Without End and War and Peace, and probably The Lord of the Rings too, if we count that as a single book – but it certainly feels like the longest. I started it back in October, and since then it’s been flowing quietly along beneath the other books I’ve been reading like some great leviathan. Now and then I’ve put it aside for a bit, but its shadow has always been there, flickering at the corner of my eye. Finishing it feels like a major accomplishment. If I had a spare bottle of champagne, I’d be tempted to open it.

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The Golden City (2013): J. Kathleen Cheney

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★★★

Since entering the Amaral family’s service as companion to their self-willed daughter Isabel, Oriana Paredes has been drawn into more than a few of her employer’s whims. Isabel’s most recent plan, however, casts all the rest into shadow: she has arranged to elope to Paris with Marianus Efisio, her cousin’s fiance. Despite disapproving of the match, Oriana has decided to accompany Isabel, to protect her as far as possible on this threshold of her new life. And yet it transpires that it isn’t social scandal or even Efisio himself that Isabel has to fear.

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The Iron King (1955): Maurice Druon

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★★½

The Accursed Kings: Book I

I imagine many of you will already have tackled this book, which was published in a new edition with much fanfare about a year ago. I’m fully aware that I’m late to the party: I remember that Helen read it, and liked it, in March last year. As Helen mentioned, the quote blazoned on the cover from George R.R. Martin (‘This is the original Game of Thrones‘) has actually worked against the book in some ways: some eager fantasy readers have ended up with rather more medieval intrigue and rather fewer direwolves than they’d counted on, and so some reviews have been critical because people have, fundamentally, just been expecting the wrong kind of book.

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