The Magicians
Incredibly well done adult fantasy that subverts the tropes of Magic School and Magical Fantasy Lands.
Really nicely hit a spot.
Category: A
teapot?
The Fuller Memorandum
Third Laundry novel. Bloody good
gates?
The Atrocity Archives
blood?
Last Argument of Kings
Final book of the First Law Trilogy sees everything work out for the best in a most unsatisfactory way. People receive undeserved awards and undeserved punishments and the puppet masters are revealed.
eider?
Before They Are Hanged
Second of the First Law trilogy takes a group of heroes on a typical fantasy quest through the West in an atypyical way. Meanwhile in the North and South battles and sieges take place and we learn a wee bit more about the strings being pulled behind the scenes.
gorst?
The Blade Itself
Solidly entertaining debut fantasy novel, first in what promises to be a rather good trilogy
sopors?
Mockingbird
Intriguing science fiction from the author of The Hustler and The Color Of Money.
It’s a few hundred years in the future and a mankind coddled by robots and lulled into drugged sterility – both mental and physical is dwindling to it’s last generation until a man in Ohio learns to read..
Raising so many ideas about the nature of humanity and the burdens of artificial intelligence this is really a very good bit of science fiction.
sap?
Boneshaker
It’s got everything you’d ever want – a steampunk setting in Seattle, with zombies and airship pirates, oh and a kickass female protagonist who’s handy with a shotgun…
egg?
The Magician’s Assistant
One of the quirks of Fife libraries is that books are often assigned to genres they plain don’t belong to. I’m guessing it’s because the people involved have to make snap decisions based on the title, cover and blurb.
This book was sporting a fantasy sticker when I borrowed it and the blurb on the back was vague enough to suggest that it could well have been a subtle fantasy novel.
In fact this a very good mainstream fiction novel about a stage magician’s assistant.
She was his wife and inherits his fortune when he dies. While they were very close, the marriage was one of convenience because he was gay.
In the course of going through his estate she discovers that, after all these years of thinking he was an orphan, he has family back home in the midwest.
I really enjoyed this book and plan to read more by this author.
bruno?
The History Of Love
Leo Gursky is a Polish Jew who arrived in America after surviving the horrors of World War 2. A writer by nature he wrote a book about the only girl he ever loved – the girl who left for the USA before German onslaught could begin.
Alma Singer is nearly fifteen, a Jewish girl growing up in New York, her family traumatised by the loss of her father. She is named after every girl in a book called A History Of Love.
After Alma’s mother is asked to translate A History Of Love from the Spanish into English events begin intertwine and histories unravel as Krauss spins the story’s threads.
This a lovely, surprisingly moving, little book about the nature of love, human connection and the power of lies and self-deception to alter lives.
I’d definitely recommend it as a read if you’re not in a particularly cynical frame of mind.