The Girl Who Fell From the Sky - something and nothing

Hmm ... am feeling ambivalent about The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Simon Mawer, which I read in audio format. It started well ... when Marian Sutro, half French, half British, brought up in Geneva and fluent in French, is recruited by SOE to go undercover in occupied France, she suddenly feels that her life has finally got some purpose. She goes through intense training, learning about sabotage, and how to kill someone up close and personal. She meets fellow recruits Yvette and Benoit - the former, a vulnerable French women who just wants to "go back home"; the latter, a cocky French man, who takes a shine to Marian and with whom she decides to have a one night stand prior to them being shipped out. However, Marian has been holding a candle for an old family friend and scientist, Clement Pelletier, who she fell in love with when she was still at school. Clement, it turns out, is of special interest to the British, who hope to extricate him from France to help the allies create a nuclear bomb in order to "bring the war to an end faster" - and Marian is told that she may well be asked to help with his extraction! Marian is finally parachuted into South West France and settles into her work with the French Resistance, feeling useful and safe, and hooking up with Benoit from time to time. She is then sent to Paris for two reasons ... to make contact with Clement and persuade him to escape to Britain, and also to try and make contact with Yvette, whose own Resistance Group have been uncovered. Paris is a dangerous place and she finds it difficult to be aloof in the presence of Clement, who is now married. Things, inevitably get complicated! I was enjoying this book, the recruitment phase and then the training, but I became a bit disenchanted as it progressed once our heroine actually got to France - which is when I thought the action would really go up a level. However, Marian seemed to become a weaker character from that point on and I stopped warming to her and just wanted to shake her! Don't get me wrong, there ARE patches of real tension, with danger lurking around every corner, and there is a really threatening undertone in Paris, where no one is able to feel safe. But as the threat got bigger, Marian seemed to get smaller ... it was as if all that training was totally wasted! It may be that I was overly influenced by the narration of the audio version I read, but I felt the book kind of fizzled out right at the end, and I was left a bit deflated and disappointed. But as always, that could just be me!

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length: 320 print pages.
Price I paid: £7.00.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio CD; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Towers of Midnight - Trollocs a-plenty!

Towers of Midnight, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson is the penultimate book (and number 13) in The Wheel of Time fantasy series. There is, at long last, real pace and a great sense of urgency running throughout this part, something which had been lacking in books 7-11. Everything and everyone is being pulled together in readiness for The Last Battle ... which will determine the fate of the entire world. The Dragon Reborn - Rand Al'Thor - has finally defeated his inner demons, and has flowered into a calm, but determined, leader. His power is truly awesome, but he is no longer in danger of being distracted or tempted away from his main goal which is to defeat The Dark One, once and for all, and free the world of such evil. Most of the world is barren, food is scarce and mostly rotten, the weather is awful ... except for when Rand appears - then the sun shines and the food tastes good once again, and people start to hope once more. However, the grizzly Trollocs - the endlessly vicious creatures sent to cause suffering and mayhem throughout the land - are more widespread and numerous than ever. Desperate skirmishes are taking place everywhere to try and prevent them from over-running the entire world. And even Rand cannot defeat such hordes by himself. And so, we find that all those companions who were with him at the very beginning - Mattrim, Perrin, Egwene and Elayne - start to gravitate towards the same place, at the same time. And, amazingly, Moraine, the Aes Sedai who first recognised Rand and his friends for what they are, is found alive and is bravely rescued from captivity. She will no doubt have a vital part to play in the denoument. It's not going to be plain sailing, there is still disagreement with Rand about how to tackle The Last Battle, and there are powerful people still determined to try and manipulate him for their own gain. Despite this, nearly all the pieces are in place for what I'm really hoping is going to be a cracking finish to this epic of all epics!

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 861 print pages.
Price I paid: Free, borrowed from local library.
Formats available: print; audio download; audio CD; ebook.

The Last Hundred Days - a curate's egg

I finished The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness, a couple of days ago, and I have to admit, I am struggling a little with what to write about it. It's not that it is a bad book, it's just that I didn't find it particularly memorable ... which I'm not sure whether is a little damning for me or the book! And even now I'm being distracted by the sudden hail storm happening outside my window ... March is definitely going out with a bang in the UK! The story is narrated by a recent university graduate, who finds himself being offered a job at Bucharest University, despite the fact he hasn't actually had an interview. He takes the job and soon finds himself mixed up with the corruption and politics of the last few months of 1989, when communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu was desperately holding onto power within Romania. Very much in the shadow of the previous incumbent of both the job and the flat he is living in, he is befriended by the larger than life Leo, who is a bit of a wheeler-dealer black marketeer, with a hand in many pies, but whose main focus of attention is to try and keep a record of the fantastic buildings in the city which are being systematically destroyed, only to be replaced by grey, miserable and poorly built blocks of concrete. The country is broke, but not according to the propaganda output by  Ceausescu, a communist who would have made Stalin proud! As the weeks go by, the country slowly disintegrates and our narrator is swept up in the chaos and characters. There is brutality, fear, food shortages, back-handers and treachery all around, but never does our narrator want to leave the country, despite everyone telling him he should do so. I think I found the narrator way too passive ... he just seemed to let stuff happen, not initiating nor even having a strong opinion on anything much. Perhaps this way a deliberate ploy to enable the author to paint such vivid characters and action around him, without the narrator getting in the way ... thus he was able to shine a light on the last days of a horrible regime that ruled with an iron fist without the narrator getting in the way. I read the audio book which was ably voiced by Cameron Stewart. Others have given this book 5 star reviews and it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize, but I'm a bit ambivalent towards it, and I feel slightly guilty about that.

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length: 356 print pages.
Price I paid: £3.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.