Apple Tree Yard - a slow burner

I have to admit that I have strayed from the sequels and series path for the book I have just finished. I purchased it a while ago following an interesting review of it on BBC Radio 4. As a bit of time had passed since then, I embarked upon this book, not quite remembering what it was about, but as it was being narrated by Juliet Stephenson, I knew I couldn't got too far wrong. And I was not disappointed. Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty opens with our central character sitting in the dock, but we don't, as yet, know why. She is being questioned and she seems quietly confident that she will soon be free again until three little words send her into a spin ... and those words are Apple Tree Yard! At which point, we are taken on the journey that got us to this point. The narrator, Yvonne Carmichael, speaks directly to the reader and I don't know whether it was because I was reading the audio edition, but a very intimate atmosphere was created which added hugely to the tale. Yvonne is a geneticist of note, with a beautiful home and a successful marriage. Things are ticking along nicely when she has a chance meeting with a stranger and suddenly finds herself in the midst of a passionate and dangerous affair with a man who is full of mystery. The way he talks, acts and gets her to act, leads Yvonne to believe him to be a spy, which adds to the excitement. She manages to keep her two lives very separate until a work colleague hints that he knows what she is up to and then brutally assaults her. After this, her life slowly unravels and leads her to where we started the book - in the dock. This is a taut thriller, full of surprises, twists and turns. It is refreshing for a book to have a 52-year-old woman take centre stage and while it is not always easy to like her, you cannot help but care about what happens to her. This book pulls no punches in the feelings and actions that can be raised by lust, love and fear. There are adult themes and this is definitely a grown up book. Intriguing and infuriating in equal measure, it is definitely a book I can recommend.

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 448 print pages.
Price I paid: £7.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Sharpe's Honour - utter bliss!

I feel like I am in danger of running out of superlatives regarding the fabulous Mr Bernard Cornwell, particularly with regard to the ever brilliant series featuring Richard Sharpe. Within the first few sentences of Sharpe's Honour, I wanted to sing and dance for joy. This book totally transported me to the time and place of its setting (Spain, 1813). The sights, the smells, the politics, the brutality, even the weather are all beautifully and viscerally portrayed as usual, which is what makes reading such books a totally immersive experience! Our hero, Major Richard Sharpe, has been devastated by the recent murder of his wife and is drifting through life in a fog of guilt, despite him bringing about the demise of her murderer (Obadiah Hakeswill). With Spring around the corner,  the next phase in the military campaign to rid Spain of Napeolon's invading army is about to get underway, and Sharpe is eagerly anticipating some action to take his mind of his personal life. However, he becomes a pawn in a plot to undermine the fragile alliance between Britain and Spain - a plot hatched by Pierre Ducos, the French intelligence officer who has previously crossed swords with Sharpe and been on the losing side. Needless to say, this plot involves a beautiful woman, the French spy, La Marquesa, who Sharpe has more than a soft spot for! Sharpe is falsely accused of murder and sentenced to hang, but he is, instead, sent on a secret mission, to find out what is really going on. With enemies on all sides, can Sharpe stay alive and complete his mission with both his life and his honour intact? You become so familiar with the main characters that they become almost like your friends and family - you kind of love them, no matter what they get up to (and there's much to dislike about our hero). I am having to stop myself diving headlong into the next book of the series, because I just cannot face it ending too soon! It is books like these that are exactly what reading should be about. If you haven't yet read any Sharpe books, please, please do!

My STAR rating: FIVE.

Length: 375 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio CD; ebook. (NB: Unabridged audio download to be released later this month.)

The Rise of Nine - now that's what I call ACTION!

I was simultaneously reading Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan and The Rise of Nine, by Pittacus Lore. Both are fantasy novels - the former based in a completely different land with a shed load of characters and creatures, and the latter based on the earth of today, but with two different alien species fighting for survival and a close knit circle of characters. Maybe you could argue that The Rise of Nine is Science Fiction because it's aliens, but I feel it's feet are definitely in the fantasy world. The books couldn't be more different in style and feel. The Rise of Nine is so much more enjoyable. It positively races along, with virtually non-stop action from the very first sentence. This is the third in the Lorien Legacies - a series about a race of nine alien children who have been shipped to earth from their home planet with just one adult protector each. Their mission is clear - to defeat their arch enemies (the Mogadorians) and then return to their planet of Lorien and reawaken it. Their home planet has had to go into hibernation due to the devastating attack by the Mogadorian's and these youngsters are its only hope for survival. So, that sets the scene. Each child, as they grow up, inherits a set of "legacies" which are amazing powers - which could be the power to heal, to turn invisible, to perform telekinesis, to have amazing strength, etc. Each develops a set of different legacies, and the Mogadorian's have followed them to earth to try to destroy them before their powers come up to full strength. So far, they have killed three of them. The rest have been trying to find each other and in this book, they manage to make this a reality for almost all of these disparate Lorien children who were hidden across the globe for their own safety. During their quest to find each other, they are under constant threat from their mortal enemies and now, also, the US Government who have been taken in by the "Moges" and think that the Lorien children are the real threat. Many skirmishes and action sequences result and the Lorien kids grow up fast, trying to get to grips with their powers as well as get to know their fellow survivors. The book builds and builds and we have a great battle towards the end (going to stop here with no more spoilers!). This is a really great series if you like action, humour, peril and fantasy. There are some cheesy moments it has to be said, but I think that wasn't helped by some of the narration in the audio edition I was reading - where the adult narrators are putting a bit too much "effort" into some of the sequences for my liking. Am already looking forward to the next instalment ...

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 400 print pages.
Price I paid: £5.84.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio; ebook.

Knife of Dreams - The Wheel of Times turns slowly

And so onto book eleven of The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Knife of Dreams picks up from the previous book where virtually NOTHING happened (see earlier blog entry for Crossroads of Twilight). Our main protagonists are still scattered across the land, fighting their own personal battles through political or forceful means. Perrin is on the trail of his wife, Faile, who is being held prisoner by the Shaido clan (have I lost you yet?) - but she is also plotting her own escape and building up a band of followers all set to lay down their lives to make sure she gets away. Mat is trying to get Tuon back to her people - yes, he kidnapped her, and yes, he knows that he is fated to marry her - but he is still not sure that he even likes this Seanchan woman who toys with him constantly. Egwene has been captured by the Aes Sedai still in the White Tower, who are now trying to break her - this involves a lot, and I mean, A LOT, of spanking! But slowly she is planting the seeds of dissent among her fellow sisters, who may be starting to see that she is not the enemy she has been reported to be. Elayne is trying to save her homeland from both civil war and outward forces, and is trying to get enough support for her to be officially named as Queen - oh, and she is pregnant with twins! Rand Al'Thor pokes his head up from time to time and is only just maintaining his sanity when wielding the almighty power that he has. All events are slowly leading up to the Last Battle (Tarmon Gai'don). We hear much about this event, and quite frankly, I wish they'd just get on with it already. There is still way too much time spent on the inanities of their lives - how much Elayne hates goat's milk for one! I am eleven books in and although this one is far superior to the tenth book which was hideously frustrating, I will not be sorry to see the end of this series. I have invested so much time in it that I now feel compelled to get to the end as there are only three more books to go. But it would be great if the action would pick up its pace and the ending fulfil the promise of the first half of the series. It's a fantasy series that is a bit of a curate's egg - great in parts! Whoever Mr Jordan's publishers were, they really should have got him to edit, or take editorial advice for these latter books. Too complex, too many characters, too much inner contemplation and nowhere near enough action.

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length: 783 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio; ebook.

The Chess Men - a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy

In The Chessmen, the concluding part of the Lewis Man Trilogy by Peter May, we catch up with Fin Macleod on the island of Lewis. Fin is now head of security on a privately owned estate, and his first job is to investigate a spate of poaching. This brings him into direct conflict with Whistler, who was one of Fin's best friends in their teenage years. Whistler is a "for the pot" poacher, and also has been working on a large replica set of the Lewis Chessmen for the local laird. Fin gets into serious trouble one stormy night while chasing Whistler, who then rescues him. The following morning, they discover a local loch has drained, and resting in the resultant mud is a light aircraft containing a body. They both recognise the plane as being that of the infamous local musician Roddy MacKenzie, who disappeared 17 years previously. But why does Whistler seem shocked to find his body? This event triggers memories and feelings from the past that have unforeseen consequences and reveal a mystery that has been kept secret for 17 years. While all this is going on, Fin is still trying to build a life with his childhood sweetheart and his newly discovered son. This book is a really good read. Maybe it is because I am now familiar with the main characters, or maybe it as because many of the loose ends were tied up, but it felt like the best of the three. Again we find out more about Fin's back story which helps to round this character out even further, discovering that he used to roady for Roddy's band. The action switches between past and present, and also between the first and third person, but the writing is so good and tight, that this presents no difficulty to the reader. I read the audio edition narrated by the wonderful Peter Forbes whose accents are fabulous ... well, to my ear they are! Highly recommended.

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 400 print pages.
Price I paid: £5.84.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

The Cleaner of Chartres - thoughtful and thought provoking

You have to keep your wits about you a little bit when reading The Cleaner of Chartres, by Sally Vickers, for it jumps between time frames and places on a very frequent basis. We follow the life of Agnes, our eponymous heroine, from her humble beginnings of being found in a basket with nothing to her name but a blue earring, to the present day where she has developed a niche for herself as one of the best cleaners in Chartres - her most prestigious job being that of cleaning the famous Cathedral. The orphaned Agnes was given the name by the bachelor who found her, but he didn't think he could take care of this new born child, so handed her over to the local Convent, where she was raised by the nuns. Not great at schoolwork, she excelled in all things practical, and was meek, quiet and unprepossessing. This gentle soul was raped, but she never told anyone. This resulted in a pregnancy, but Agnes still did not reveal how this could have happened. At just 15, the nuns felt she was too young to become a mother and had her baby boy taken away for adoption. Agnes was devastated and suffered a serious mental collapse, spending time under the care of a psychiatrist. Always wanting to find her baby boy, Agnes got herself into yet more trouble. After a few years, she did find peace of a sort caring for the man who had found her as a baby. Following his death, she ended up in Chartres, and that's where she stayed, making a life for herself by being helpful to everyone. Many years had passed in peace, but current day events contrive to bring much of the past to the fore again, and Agnes finds herself in the middle of a perfect storm of circumstances and gossip which result in her being accused of a violent crime. I read this book in audio, narrated by the fabulous Michael Maloney who brought all the characters to life, particularly the formidable Madame Beck who takes a dim view of Agnes. This really is an excellent read. I thought Agnes was a bit too much of a drip at first, with all the local men having a soft spot for her, but she grew on me as both her past and her backbone was revealed. All the characters are well drawn and the book slowly worms its way into you. Well worth the effort.

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 304 print pages.
Price I paid: £7.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; unabridged audio CD; ebook.

Die Trying - bit of a gun obsession Mr Child?

Die Trying, by Lee Child is the second in the Jack Reacher series, and, much like the first, it's a non-stop action-packed tale of death and destruction, and a soupcon of politics. Reacher - ex-military and currently wandering around America just letting the wind take him where it will - comes across a damsel in distress and goes to her aid, only to be unceremoniously bundled into a car with the self-same damsel and finds himself in the middle of a kidnap. He is amazed at how calm his fellow kidnappee (not a real word, but I like it!) seems to be taking this turn of events, and, it appears, she is thinking the same about Reacher. It is revealed that Holly - for that is her name - is an FBI Agent, and also the daughter of a very high ranking General, oh, and the god-daughter of the President of the USA! The pair have been captured by a militia group based in Montana, who are going to declare their patch of land an independent country. Their charismatic leader is a particularly nasty piece of work - and no-one is safe, particularly anyone he sees as a threat to his authority from within his own ranks. Reacher has several chances to escape but, gallant to the end, he won't do so without being able to take Holly with him. A game of cat and mouse develops with Reacher trying to do stuff from within, and the FBI and the military attempting to stage a rescue. Anytime a gun is mentioned - which is a lot - our author delivers us with an almost loving description of the look, the feel and the capability of that weapon. This is definitely not a book for the faint hearted (much like my last few reads - should I be worried?) and is a full-on thriller with an ever-increasing body count - and not everyone is dispatched as simply as a bullet to the head. It's a book that you almost can't wait to be over, but once it is, you are reaching for the next instalment. You have been warned!

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 560 print pages.
Price I paid: free, borrowed from my library as an ebook.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.