If this were a film, I'd want Duncan Jones to direct it - The Explorer by James Smythe

If you asked me, and I've no reason to suppose that you wouldn't because I'm fairly anti-social and all your attempts at conversation would meet with bored glances until you got onto the subject of books at which point I would become sufficiently enlivened to answer the questions you would surely be asking if you weren't concentrating quite so hard on backing away slowly, I'd tell you I don't like sci-fi books. I don't know why I think this because I can't think of a sci-fi book I haven't enjoyed. What I can think of are a few dozen books I've read the blurbs of at the library and put down again because I'm prejudiced against books in which the protagonist's name scores more than 38 points in Scrabble.

The Explorer is the story of a journey. Mankind go into space. They will go out, they will turn around, they will come back triumphant. Our protagonist is Cormac Easton, a journalist who's on the crew to provide the people back home with the story. He is the human in a craft staffed by highly trained boffins, one of whom is dead when they wake up after take-off.

The blurb of this one is at once incredibly misleading and incredibly accurate. It suggests you're going to get something action packed with Cormac trying to avoid dying - you're not. This is a tense, tightly plotted novel of the kind which doesn't make you wonder what's going to happen, it makes you watch as it does. I'm not going to tell you anything else about the plot because I think it would spoil it, I will however tell you that the blurb covers the first 20%ish *raises eyebrows in a significant fashion*

I'm not a big reader of sci-fi so I honestly don't know how it stacks up against the rest of the genre, but I would push it on people who like books about humans and their humanity. It's the big empty, close-up view of a person and their head.

If I have a criticism, it's probably with the story. I loved the way it was handled, the way it was written, but it's not terribly original. That said, it avoids feeling derivative and it brings its own identity to the party so I don't have a problem with it. I just like to complain.

I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading the followup, The Echo. Which I actually already have. Spooky.

4 stars.

 (This review was originally posted on my Booklikes blog in April 2014)

I sympathise with your urge to leave Oxford - The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

When it was released, The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, was marketed as being the next big thing; the new Harry Potter, despite being nothing like Harry Potter. The second in the series is freshly available at a bookshop near yourselves, so it seemed like a good time to read it. It was... okay.

Paige Mahony is a clairvoyant in a future alt-England where such powers are illegal. More specifically, she’s a dreamwalker, one of the rarest types of voyant, who can separate her spirit from her body. Paige lives in London where she works for Fagin Jaxon Hall, her Mime Lord (Gangster boss), until she accidentally kills an Underguard. She’s captured, drugged, and sent to a place she and the rest of the populous didn’t know existed: Oxford. Okay, Sheol 1. Formerly Oxford.

There she learns the things which make this book and this review such a challenge: the extensive world building. It is confusing. For a start, there are the various types of voyants. I spent my youth with an orange dot energised by Yuri Geller himself so I came to this knowing terms like ‘cartomancer’ and when I didn’t know I word I could make an educated guess. Then there’s the world of Scion, the government, and its creation in the first place (Edward VII was the first voyant, and also Jack The Ripper, and apparently still Edward VII rather than Prince Albert Edward, despite people knowing this at the time of its occurrence). Then there’s the world of Sheol where the Rephaim – a race of beings from the Netherworld, as scholars of Hebrew mythology will remember – keep voyants as slaves and mobile larders, feeding on their auras. Those who embrace their new overlords can become Red Jackets, a necessary part of the attempt to stop the Emim from overrunning the city and the rest of the world. Then there’s a whole host of other stuff, sometimes with nicknames and a light smattering of Victorian slang in addition to the books own terms, and as a result the book proceeds in fits and starts, bogged down by its own exposition, not really getting into to gear until a good half-way through. It’s intermittently interesting until then but the first 20% is quite a slog requiring more than one consultation of the book’s glossary.

Because this is YA, it’s necessary for the MC to be imprisoned in some fashion. Paige becomes the property of a Rephaim who instructs her to call him Warden, even though that’s not his name, whose job it is to train her to earn her Red Jacket. If she doesn’t [world building stuff] but if she does [world building stuff] but there’s also the fact that [character] wants to [spoiler] because [spoiler]. Did I mention this gets a tad bogged down by itself?

Some aspects of the plotting are bland and predictable – Paige does something for Warden then repeatedly asks herself why she did it. Then it happens again and she repeatedly asks herself why she did it again. Other aspects give a nice spin to that predictability, setting up threads for coming tomes in the 7 book series. Others feel like they’re ripping off another YA series entirely.

The main story is ... merely okay. As is the trend in YA books, we have a female MC who gives the illusion of being active. Paige, like Katniss Everdeen, is at the mercy of her situation and can only act within its restrictions so much of the book involves Paige hoping to get out of her situation but having to go along with it. Your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance for reading about Paige being Paige. I was fairly meh. There are some good scenes – Shannon can write action when she wants to - but the final sequence, like much of the book, could have been a lot tighter.

I read this because it was an offensively low price on Amazon – 51 English pennies if I remember correctly – but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel. I didn’t expect huge amounts from it and it gave me pretty much what I expected. The world building is going to be a huge plus several books down the line and this has got the potential to create internet communities in the way Harry Potter and Game of Thrones has but I, who can barely remember how to spell her own name sometimes, was left unengaged and frustrated. I suspect I may get more out of it on a reread, but right now I feel no compulsion to give it one, nor to continue with the series.

3 stars.

Well, at least I learned something - The Universe Inside You by Brian Clegg

I bought this book in the hope I'd learn something about about biology and the human body; instead I got a book which uses the human body as a jumping off point to talk about other things: atoms and quantum physics and what happens to a helium balloon in a braking car (it heads towards the rear of the car because deceleration is acceleration in the opposite direction, and acceleration is the same as gravity, and the helium is lighter than air so heads away from gravity (or something), hence anybody in the back seat gets smacked in the face with a balloon, which I consider a tremendously useful tip).

It's not that it's bad, it's just not what I was looking for from this book because I've already read a couple of other books which cover some of the same subjects and more (like Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything). I also found this a bit of a trog in places, but as it's split into short sections it's very easy to read a couple of pages, go away and come back.

When it's interesting, it is very interesting, the tone is light and the explanations clear. I certainly learned something, but at other times I would have liked it to be a bit more comprehensive. There are also numerous mentions of experiments etc you can do on the associated website. Although that's a good thing if you're interested, for me I'd rather have a book which isn't constantly telling you to go to a website. If I'm reading a book, I'm reading a book. As I am already familiar with most of the experiments referred to, I didn't have any problems reading the text about them. Even if you weren't familiar with the experiments, I think you'd be okay.

I read this on Kindle and had no problems doing so - there are a few diagrams but they were all clear to me.

So, not really what I was looking for but decent for what it is. If I hadn't already known a good quarter of what was in this book, it may well have been four stars. I'd certainly consider other books by the author.

*insert bad Proclaimers impression* - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Very often, when I'm enjoying a book, I experience a certain amount of trepidation about where it's going to end up. Many a promising book has fallen apart in the last third, usually because a clever premise lacks the necessary legs, or an equally clever conclusion, or the not-clever conclusion doesn't offer anything else to make it worth the journey (like character, or writing, or setting).

This book did not do that.

This is one of the few books I've read where I had total confidence in the author from the off. I loved it even more by the end than I did at the beginning, and that is a rare, rare thing for me. Sure, I could sit here and make pedantic comments about what would actually happen if you tried walking to Berwick in unsuitable shoes, or complain that there are no great surprises plot-wise, but those things didn't matter because this is wonderfully written and has well-drawn characters who are relentlessly human. It's sad, it's funny, it has buckets of charm which never risks becoming saccharine thanks to the emotionally true (and *raw*) undercurrents. I had to stop reading it in the Post Office queue because I was wearing mascara at the time.

So, yes. I loved it utterly. Normal cynical service will be resumed forthwith.

Well, thank God that's over - The Rose Cord by J D Oswald

[The Rose Cord is a direct follow-up to Dreamwalker, so please be aware this review contains spoilers for that book. Also, this is a long book and the beginning was a long time ago and has been wiped from my memory: I appreciate a heads-up on any details I've got wrong]

I reached the end of The Rose Cord earlier than I anticipated due to an extract of the next book being included. I was glad. This is the kind of book which makes me want to shake the author; there is a decent novel in here with some brilliant details and fabulous ideas, but it's been buried in one of the most tedious and repetitive things I've read in ages. You know the second series of Game of Thrones where Rob Stark spent 86 hours looking grumpy in a variety of fields? The Rose Cord is basically that, but without Mike from Casualty.

At the end of Dreamwalker, Benfro, a dragon, watched his mother beheaded by Inquisitor Melyn, head of the warrior priests and all round disliker of things scaly. The Rose Cord picks it up in the next scene: Benfro flees through the woods before returning to the village to find everybody he has ever known slaughtered. On the advice of the memory of his mother, Benfro heads north in search of Corwen, a mage dragon who taught Morgwm, but instead he finds something else: the remains of the great and legendary dragon Magog, and his unreckoned jewel...

Meanwhile, Errol Ramsbottom, Warrior Priest-in-training and (unbeknownst to him) heir to the throne, is trying to learn how to keep Inquisitor Melyn out of his head. As in psychic powers, not trepanning. Melyn, though, has a job Errol is just *perfect* for...

To begin with, The Rose Cord is pretty good despite some minor issues, but unfortunately these are the same issues which will come back to haunt it later: repetition. Rather than having a single scene which achieves all it needs to, Oswald has a habit of having his characters plod through a similar situation multiple times advancing their understanding only a small amount with each.

For instance: Beulah, the young Queen occupying Errol's throne, discovers a plot to kill her, so she deals with it in her own inimitable way: kills her would-be assassin and shouts at everybody for a bit. Naturally, he was not acting alone, so there's another would-be assassin to deal with. And then there's another.

Although each scene is different, and each moves the story forward in it's own vital way, it's a good example (within the first 13%) of how the scenes should be working harder and doing more.

Benfro suffers from this problem the most. In Dreamwalker he was entertaining and tremendously likeable, but with the removal of the villagers he's mostly a dragon wandering through a wood. He occupies the bulk of the book but vast swathes of it involve him being on his own not doing a great deal and it's all the more frustrating because there is gold them thar chapters, it's just not worth the trog to get to. Plus, doing so requires reading about Malkin the squirrel, a character I would happily watch taken out at dawn.

The pacing, too, is wrong. From 70% I was reading believing it would get better - the third in the series is already out in ebook with the paperback happening soon; there is going to be a forth. From 88% I was reading with the glazed determination of somebody who's read that much and is jolly well going to finish just so she can write a fair review of the damn thing. The great dramatic end-scene is crippled by the billion pages of Benfro-is-in-a-cave which precedes it. Throughout, so much space was given to things not happening that when something did, it was ... lost.

Errol has more to do in this book and his is a far stronger story than in the first, but for much of the book - as in Dreamwalker - he is at the mercy of things which happen *to* him, and he's too bland for me to care much. His story is more engaging, but not enough to carry the book.

I liked Dreamwalker a lot - I gave it four stars - but The Rose Cord is weeping for structural edit so hard I do wonder if this is the original self-pubbed text and a new version will get introduced close to its November paperback release date. There are some really great ideas in The Rose Cord, but the last 15% (of this 476 page book) is shear tedium; I won't be continuing with the series: 2 stars.

Why haven't I heard of this before? - Vet on the Loose by Gillian Hick

After the disappointment of Anna Birch's Call The Vet, my appetite was whetted for a good "My First Year As An ..." book. I had a poke around Amazon's "People Who Bought ... " suggesters and found this one, Vet on the Loose by Wicklow vet Gillian Hick. I hadn't previously heard of her, which is either surprising given the size of the place, or perfectly understandable given that I don't actually watch Irish TV, or read Irish newspapers, or interact with anything Irish if I can possibly help it.

I was sold by the end of the prologue. Any story about castrating a horse which includes a young man showing enthusiasm for the testicles with the words "If I put dat in me sister's bed tonight it'll scare de shite ota her!" is going to be for me.

Vet On The Loose treads the expected path of a newly qualified Irish vet, more specifically that of a female vet at a time when women were still rare in the profession: the beginning of the 21st century. There are stories of the everyday sexism she faced (farmers asking when the real vet was going to arrive etc) which, having lived in Ireland for a good while, I buy totally. There are stories of Dublin council estates, posh Equine hospitals and bachelor hill farmers, and unlike Call the Vet, the stories centre on the cases. To a James Herriot devotee such as myself a couple of them tread familiar ground - there's no wine bottle *uncrosses legs* but we have mention of the sugar trick. However, it's done with enough of its own identity to feel fresh and one one them has the best punchline in the whole book.

The writing, in particular, is excellent and Hick's ear for dialogue spot on. She manages with the smallest of details to show us her clients - and herself; I can *hear* the accents. Comic writing is tremendously difficult to do well and Hick is funny, educational and engaging. As it was mentioned in a few of the reviews I read, I'll confirm there is some spoken profanity but it's never the crux on which a joke hinges, merely a nod to an accurate representation of character (although there is not nearly enough to actually *be* accurate).

As I'm me, I'll complain that the funniest stories were all in the first half which led to an uneven experience as a whole, but to be honest there isn't a duff chapter in the thing.

Vet On The Loose deserves to have a wider audience that it does - it's published by The O'Brien Press who are small and Irish so you're unlikely to find this in your local bookshop, but - as I mentioned - it's currently £1.19 on Kindle and more than worth it. Hick has a second book out, Vet Among the Pigeons, (which I have already borrowed from the library), and I really, really hope she finds the time to write a third.

4.5 stars.

Gwlad am byth! - Dreamwalker by J D Oswald

[This book was provided to me gratis by the publisher, Penguin, and for that I thank them. I also thank NetGalley, for existing. Without them, I'd have fewer than 80 books in my Kindle's TBR folder. The paperback edition of Dreamwalker is out August 14th 2014, but the ebooks are available now.]

J D Oswald is the evil doppelgänger of crime writer James Oswald, author of the Inspector Tony McClean novels of which I've read the first and don't rule out continuing with. Dreamwalker is the first of his epic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro; as with his others, Oswald self-published the series and was picked up by a trade publisher following much solo success.

I'm not a big fantasy reader but I've always suspected that's because I haven't been matched with the right author - I don't care for the po-faced pseudo-mythology of Tolkien, and Game of Thrones' endless chair-wrangling didn't capture me enough to have taken the second one for a whirl yet. Dreamwalker, though, is great.

It opens on a dark and stormy night (yes, I know, it doesn't sound great on paper) with a priest, Father Gideon, hustling an unconscious (and fairly pregnant) princess to a trustworthy healing woman. Who is a dragon. With an egg.

A few pages later and we're one fulfilled prophecy closer to a tale of an Heir Who Doesn't Know It. It's okay though, because while we have that, we mainly have the story of Benfro, occupier of the aforementioned egg.

Initially it's a bit confusing - Benfro is a dragon, he lives with his mother close to a dragon village. He learns to hunt, has a bow, and lives in a house. My logistics circuits struggled. It's only when Benfro meets his first human - in what was one of the best bits of the book for me - that we get any idea of how things work. It's not much of an idea, but once I'd got used to Benfro the character I didn't actually care about being pedantic. Next week, tune in for a wolf eating the sun.

I *loved* Benfro. I don't know why, but I found him tremendously endearing. He's 13 years old (which is *nothing* in dragon years), has magical talents he doesn't understand, and is constantly frustrated that his desire to learn is tempered by his mother's (and the other dragon's) caution. Unlike most books with child-age heroes - for instance, Harry Potter - there's no pantomime emotion from the supporting cast.

The narrative also follows Errol, that human heir who doesn't know it, growing up in a small and rural town thinking himself the son of the village healer. He was only intermittently interesting to me as a character, and I didn't care for his friend Martha, the Girl Who Knows More Than You Do And Calls You By Both Names, Jon Snow. However, what happens *to* Errol *is* interesting thanks to the third storyline, that of Inquisitor Melyn and the heir to the throne Errol doesn't know he's entitled to, Princess Beulah

In Gwlad, men have hunted dragons to the point of extinction. Inquisitor Melyn is the head of the High Frydd, an order of warrior priests whose task it once was to complete this mission. Once Beulah reaches the age of majority, she'll stop keeping her father alive and under her authority, the task can be completed. Melyn and Beulah's story is a mix of intrigue and power games, of magic and gods and a hefty dislike of dragons. I *liked* it.

Something else I like is the Welsh flavour. As Tolkien drew on Norse mythology for his world building, Oswald uses Wales - from using place names for his dragon characters (Sir Benfro is the proper name for Pembroke, Ynys Mon is Anglesey, etc) to appropriating legends like those of Gog and Magog. There are lots of things to spot, and it's slyly clever, nudging you in the ribs to see if you get it.

However, Dreamwalker suffers one great weakness: it's not really a book. It's the first 400-odd pages of a book. There's no particular story for any of the characters - they're all just doing their thing to a greater or lesser degree of interesting until the narrative reaches an excellent point for a cliffhanger. Although Books Two and Three in the series are already available (and, like the first, are in the Amazon UK Kindle Summer Sale until September 1st) and I have seen mention of Book Four as being written, it would be tremendously damaging to Dreamwalker if they weren't. Don't let it put you off, but go into it prepared to get the next one immediately.

For me, Dreamwalker worked. Great characters, great world-building, great details in that world building, and some lovely touches of humour. I'm already 20% into the second and will very likely be buying the third before the Kindle sale is over. I'm quite tempted to knock half a star off for that cliffhanger, but I'm also Welsh so am hopelessly biased: 4 stars.

Sometimes sequels are better off not written - Every Seventh Wave by Daniel Glattauer

(Every Seventh Wave is a sequel to Love Virtually, so this review contains spoilers for that book which is incidentally very good and which I'd probably give four stars to).

I've read an email affair. I have what I believe the kids refer to as "Mad Skillz". I was going to explain more about that but I can't do so in a short way, so just take it from me that I know what a casual email which turns into something more reads like in real life. It's quite a lot like Love Virtually, which is really good.

I first heard the radio play version which stars David Tennant and the eminently watchable/listenable to Emilia Fox (although it's also fair to mention I've never seen/heard Tennant in a bad performance either. If you doubt, three words: Kafka the Musical.) (That's not to say Tennant's never *given* a bad performance, it's just that he's hidden it from me, which gets me to wondering what else he's hidden from me. I believe I've already mentioned my Mad Skillz, Tennant: think on.)

If I had a criticism of the radio play, it was that it felt rushed, which the book does not. I've read it twice, and the second time - with the benefit of Meatworld Knowledge - I was especially struck by how well it's done. It's written as a series of email exchanges beginning when Emmi Rothner, attempting to cancel a magazine subscription, mistypes the email address and sends her increasing frustrated missives to Leo Lieke. They strike up a friendship and the title of the book gives a heads up for where it goes after that.

The pacing of Love Virtually is done really well. The characters are well rounded; Emmi in particular is quite unpleasant. She is demanding, self-centred, vain, and spoiled, but, crucially, she is very readable. Then there is the ending: it was perfect. Leo is leaving for Boston and Emmi is supposed to be going round to his flat so they can meet face to face before he goes, just once, only she doesn't and when she writes to Leo to explain why, all she gets is the autoresponder telling her the email address no longer exists.

So I was disappointed to find out there was a sequel. Emmi and Leo were not epic star-crossed lovers. One of the nice things about having a book which is purely email exchanges is that it allows the reader to have their own opinion, and mine is that they were selfish, stupid fantasists who got carried away with themselves and needed to think about the people they were hurting. Every Seventh Wave is a sequel for people who were rooting for Emmi and Leo, and by god is it tedious.

What was well done in Love Virtually is boring, and repetitive here. There is a glimmer of something better at times, but for much of it there are no outside forces, no real life world forcing itself in. This book begins with Emmi's exchanging messages with Leo's autoresponder, months after he's left for Boston, but what's missing is the hole in Emmi's life which leads her to still sit there sending messages to this guy 9 months after he left. The hole was there in Love Virtually, she could be frivolous Emmi, saying what she thought without worrying about it, but here it feels convenient, and that's a good summation of the book. Stuff happens, but it's not compelling and it's reported by the characters, rather than the more natural exchanges of Love Virtually.

Crucially, I don't know what Emmi and Leo see in each other. More than once I found myself wondering why one or the other of them didn't tell the other to take a running jump. I could forgive if it was entertainingly bitchy, or even just human, but it's dull and it's boring, and in the end I just didn't care.

In brief, it feels like it was written because the first was such a big success, and that's a shame.

If you were the type of person desperate to find out what happened next with Leo and Emmi, you'd probably like it, but otherwise let Love Virtually stand alone. I found the story a great disappointment, so I'm going to give it one and a half stars.

I feel increasingly bad for posting this review in multiple places - Tollesbury Time Forever by Stuart Ayris

In Tollesbury, psychiatric nurse "Stuart Ayris" accompanies the police to the home of one of his patients who has not been seen for over two weeks. Inside, they find no trace of Simon Anthony, only words crawling across the walls, the words you, oh reader, are about to sit through.

For the most part, this is not a terrible book, it's more... not very good, and that's a shame because Stuart Ayris is clearly a man who can write. The problems I feel there are with the writing could be overlooked but unfortunately there is no story here and the ideas are neither profound, original, nor expressed well enough to make the trudge through the text worth it. The last 30% is actively terrible. It was always going to struggle with the banal path it gave its protagonist, but I found it shallow to the point of offensive in the way it offloads the conflicts. The female character of the second half is particularly poorly drawn and I was given no sense she's lived the life the book tells us she has.

From the beginning, the structure didn't work for me. It's a nice idea, a "found document" text, and something of which I am particularly fond - except, if it's going to be a found document text, then it has to read like one. There needs to be a narrator who has written this and a present for them doing that. If they are writing it from a position of knowing the whole story, that is likely to be reflected in the text. It isn't. There is also the matter of the transcription; "Stuart Ayris", rather surprisingly, has nothing to say about some of the content.

The narrative is further weakened by being written more as a standard 1st person past tense. The prose is overly descriptive with Simon persistently giving descriptions of places he should - as a character - already familiar with, eg "The trees that lined the track upon which I walked gave way to a neat field on the left but held up on the right.". There are moments when the language becomes disjointed, reflecting the narrator's state of mind - except it isn't the state of mind because this is being written up afterwards. I don't want to go into it too much because of spoilers, but little or no consideration has been given to the Simon who is writing this story on the walls.

Then there is the language. I'm not a fan of the self-concious olde worlde syntax especially in this found document context (if you're writing on the wall, surely more likely to use abbreviations). It's also repetitive. The sky is always the firmament, every time Simon reacts to something we get to find out he breathes, holes in doorways are always apertures, "literally" - also once misused. Many times it feels like the author is just not paying enough attention to what he's written: we are told Simon's clothes don't look out of place in 1836 - yet he's wearing jeans. There is one moment where we are told what another character thought. The less said about the phrase "pulsating penumbra" the better.

Then there are the similes, not all of which work and not all of which hold up to applied logic: "the torch beams picked out [the words] as if they were groups of well-ordered flies" - which is a nice image until you wonder why nobody had bothered to try the light switch, or why they were there late enough to need torches. I'm also the kind of person who works out how much wallspace you need for 100K words (writing floor to ceiling, about 25ft) - I didn't get the sense the author did.

At times the book is trying far too desperately to be profound. Unfortunately the fail state of profound is #pippatips: "When the only way a man can deal with another man is to kill him, then that man will be a friend to no-one for as long as he lives [...]"

Then - the poetry. It's not good. There are exclamation marks, and it's been made to rhyme. And one of those rhymes is "ring a ding ding!". Again, it's pushing to these big ideas but there is not enough substance in them and there's no awareness there.

Although it is very well written (and published) for a self-pubbed work - there are some errors, mainly in punctuation and I'm not sure you can imbibe a view - but it isn't, in my opinion, good enough to be published. While perfectly readable if not very good for the first 70%, it is totally derailed by the rest. It's a shame because, as I began by saying, Stuart Ayris can write, but he would also benefit from a ruthless Beta or two. Pass on this one, but I'll have my fingers crossed for something better from Mr Ayris in the future.

One last thing - I'm unamused by the copyright violations. It is right and fair that people are paid for their work; plus quoting "I am the Walrus" tends to make it look as though ones grammar has gone totally awry.

If You're Going to make a comparison to Downton, actually *watch* it first - Habits of the House by Fay Weldon

You know when you get a book and because it's by somebody whose work you like, or somebody who's written many, many books, you trust it's going to get better?

Meet Habits of The House. It's not entirely its fault; it's been given a stupid cover (
I'm not sure who that girlie is supposed to be), and it's being pitched to Downton fans despite the fact it's a comedy of manners.

However, everything else is its fault.

Especially the ending.

The storyline is to do with the son of the family trying to marry an American heiress because the family have significant money troubles.

In the end (highlight to read the spoilers):

The Earl wins a cumulative bet on the races which solves all the money problems, *and* the son marries the heiress, *and* the wife of the Jewish financier gets to meet the Prince of Wales.

"Hey Garth, let's do the super happy ending!"

doo doo do doo, doo doo do doo, doo doo do doo ...

I suspect it's supposed to be a punchline, but it just left me wondering what the point of reading the sodding book was.


I like Fay Weldon's style of writing, so I'm giving it 2 stars, but everybody else should probably give it a miss.

I'm pretty sure "Lady Sex Adventurer" wasn't an option on my careers advice form - How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran

[My copy of this book was an uncorrected proof, provided to me gratis by the publisher, HarperColins, facilitated in this act of goodness by Edelweiss. I think this makes me a pawn of Murdoch now.]

From the outside, Caitlin Moran can look a bit like a one-trick pony. Although she's been a journalist and Times columnist for many years, she had massive success a couple of years ago with her memoir/feminist treatise How To Be A Woman which contained many amusing tales about her poor Wolverhampton childhood. She, with her sister, has written a sitcom, Raised By Wolves, about a teenager growing up in poor Wolverhampton. Now there's this.

Despite the authorial introduction in which we are assured How To Build A Girl is not based on truth, one could be forgiven for fearing, as I did, a thinly fictionalised re-tread of the stuff which made Moran a household name. It isn't. Far from it. Although there are clear parallels - and some commercially cynical titling and structure going on - it all read new to me.

Opening in 1990, 14-year-old Johanna Morrigan lives in Wolverhampton. She wonders when she's going to get to finally have sex. She spends much time wanking. The book is hilariously instructional on this point if initially a little ... uncomfortable. The opening scene is of Johanna doing what she enjoys while her 6-year-old brother is asleep next to her. That it manages to get away with this is entirely due to Moran's cheerfully honest narrator, and later, to the other characters.

The book follows Johanna from awkward 14-year-old to 16-year-old music reviewer "Dolly Wilde" to vaguely "built" girl of 18. It is that rare thing, a female narrative untempered by usual sub-plots which so often tacitly reinforce the idea that to be female is not enough on its own. The prose even points it out: there is very little female narrative of what it's like to fuck and be fucked. This is a coming-of-age story. It is about Johanna figuring out who she is. It's not about the mistakes she makes while she does it, and it's not about them *being* mistakes, and it doesn't shame her for anything she does. It just ... is.

Johanna is going to make or break this novel for the reader: she's frank and honest, she doesn't know what she's doing and she's not what she wants to be but she's going to try. She is all feigned confidence and internal doubt, but ultimately just a person who is doing what people do, in a top hat. I loved her utterly and not just for the word "swashfuckler".

There is a section near the end about cynicism, about what it does, and it brought me to tears (and I am not generally a weeper) because it's so utterly true and it made me swear to be a better person for the rest of my days. In an earlier draft of this review, I went on to say the feeling wore off after an hour or two, thank god, but I've read the bit I'm talking about several times and it made me weep again. I'm weeping now. I went away, ate muesli, came back and started up again within seconds.

[...] it is a million times easier to be cynical and wield a sword, than it is to be open-hearted and stand there, holding a balloon and a birthday cake, with the infinite potential to look foolish.

I don't have it in me to stand with balloons. Sometimes I try; invariably nothing happens but it's that nothing which destroys me. I once killed every conversation on a table of 12 people by being enthusiastic about Marina Lewycka's A Short History Of Tractors In The Ukraine, so I went back to what I learned to do at school: not show enthusiasm about things. I play down my love of everything, or I turn it into joke: the crazy cat lady, the foreigner, the girl who waits for somebody else to do maths. I play down the things I am good at because it's easy to deal with that nothing if nothing is what I've given. But I want balloons. I want to have balloons and be proud of them and when that nothing happens, I want it to not matter because balloons.

And this is why I love this book and why you need to read it. Moran's finger is so on the money in so many respects. I don't think there's a person alive who doesn't feel like a fraud at some point, and How To Build A Girl is about a character who is pushing against that as she tries to ... build who she is. Good books are about tension and this one considers the place where enthusiasm and ego meet. It is brilliant, and hilarious, and at times like reading something you knew but have forgotten; we've all been there.

It misses out on 5 stars very narrowly - it lacks an overall cohesion. With something like Catcher In The Rye, there is a reason for the particular section of story we are told - HTBAG, while thoroughly entertaining lacks that and, as a consequence, sputters to an ending rather than giving that satisfying over-ness. There are some other minor nitpicks, a couple of things which - again - lack that wholeness and which dangle annoyingly. My uncorrected proof had some modern slang terms in it which I hope were removed.

It's also worth briefly touching upon the Twitterstorm of #CaitlinMoranShouldRead. That was a nonsense; this is not YA. This is coming-of-age. It's looking back from the vantage point of adulthood. It has far more in common with Moran's invoked Jilly Cooper than any YA I've ever read (but I'm not a big YA reader). By all means give it to your 14-year-old, but the prime audience are more likely to be me: 30-somethings who know who The Smashing Pumpkins are.

How To Build a Girl is a first-rate read which I thoroughly recommend - it's sweary and graphic and surprisingly educational. Even before the bits which had me weeping over my Kindle it was pretty fabulous, and those bits by no means made the book for me. If we're going to complain about Moran's equine fidelity, we can make sure to note she perfecting it with every offering: 4.5 stars.

I wasn't expecting to like this, but I did - Pantomime by Laura Lam

I'm not entirely sure why I'm now pretending I write reviews because I don't write reviews; I prefer to just complain at length about the bits which disappointed me. However, me giving out about Pantomime would be like taking Jonathan Franzen to to task for the epic lack of velociraptors in Freedom. At least, I assume there aren't any velociraptors in Freedom; I only got to page 8 or so before I realised I wasn't going to get through another 604 pages. That's probably a little unkind, but as Mr Franzen is famous for regarding the internet as a blight upon humanity (that and writing books which don't have any velociraptors in them), I think I'll get away with it. If I don't, congratulations Jon! You were right about this place or all along. You're welcome. And don't worry about it, I may not even have been reading Freedom, I may have been reading The Corrections. Whichever one *doesn't* have the velociraptors in it, that's what I read 8 pages of. Try and hook me earlier next time.


Anyway.

I'm not Pantomime's audience. I'm in my thirties. That's so old, the closest things we had to YA as teenagers were Sweet Valley High and the Point Horror books. So, I expected to read a book which was slightly annoying because all YA is to some degree. If it wasn't annoying, it wouldn't be about an authentic 16-18 year-old. Yes, this is my backhanded compliment, YA fans. I wanted to read Pantomime though because Laura is a vague internet friend via AbsoluteWrite (and if she's reading this and wondering which one I am over there: naff off Lam, reviews are not for authors), but also because the main character is intersex.

Raised as a girl, Iphigenia Laurus joins the circus as the male Micah Gray. The narrative is split between Summer (as Micah at the circus) and Spring (as Iphigenia, struggling with being a noble's daughter). Not a great deal happens, but the tension in Iphigenia's sections as she prepares for her Débutante ball is well done, and Micah's parts are studded with the colour of the circus. I'd have criticisms of the language and the lightness (and convenience) with which some of the more logistical aspects are dealt with, but I feel they are down to the genre rather than the writing. I really liked how Micah's gender impacts the obligatory YA love triangle. My biggest criticism is for the plot which I felt lacked any real direction or urgency until the last 20% or so when the pace really picked up.

It's an interesting book, but it reads more like a prequel than the first of a series, especially as it's not as standalone as something like The Hunger Games is. Book 2 - Shadowplay - was out in January.

I am also incredibly frustrated with that blurb. It has virtually nothing to do with the plot and has very little to do with the book. Imagine the back cover of Harry Potter failing to mention [SPOILER ALERT] Harry is a wizard. That's how annoying this book's blurb is. Add to the fact it's a pretty unique topic and I do start wondering if somebody somewhere thought it would be off-putting. Maybe it will be for some because it's new and different, but I identified a heck of a lot more with Gene than I do with most female characters. I may be possessed of 100% ladybits, but I often feel I am failing at being a girl.


I'm giving this one three stars (with a mental 3.5 stars for that last 20%). It says a lot about that last 20% that I would have gone to check out the sequel straight away if it was already out. There aren't any velociraptors though, dammit.