Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina is a book about a young woman with a big secret. The story begins with a funeral for a murdered prince. Seraphina works at the castle, teaching one of the princesses music, and as a result gets involved in trying to work out who killed Prince Rufus. The world she lives in is one where humans and dragons live side by side. There is currently peace between the two species although there are those on both sides that do not approve. In this world dragons have the ability to change in to human form in order to communicate with us. With some people convinced that a dragon must have killed the prince, Seraphina and her friends must find out the truth. Can they do this without her having to reveal her secret?

The world that Hartman has created is your traditional medieval castle town with ranging mountains and countryside around it. There are other areas in the world that are mentioned but there is no real description of those. There is a possibility that we may learn more about them in the next book so the author may be saving it. There is no map in this book so it’s not clear how far away the other places are. The city itself is really well described and you can picture the characters walking down the streets and the people and creatures they encounter. The castle is a bit confusing, with hidden corridors, but it doesn’t really matter because you just let the characters take you along.

Seraphina is a really likeable character. She’s not too annoying and just takes things in her stride and isn’t always looking to others to do things for her. Most of the female characters in this book are strong and know what they want. There is a queen on the throne and there are only females in line to the throne. The male characters are just as good. Prince Lucien is smart and kind and eager to help Princess Glisselda and Seraphina if they need him. Seraphina is a bit of a recluse but she does try to get along with everyone. Of course, she ends up making some enemies. They didn’t feel particularly frightening to me and they maybe could have been a bit more intimidating. Overall, the characters were excellent.

The book is told entirely from Seraphina’s point of view, which is good because you really need to see what goes on in her head. There are some flashbacks, but it’s obvious when you are reading one as it is italicised. I found the writing to be exactly as it needed to be. Being a fantasy book, there are some made up words. Most were easy to pronounce but there were one or two that weren’t. That’s normal so I don’t count that against the book. There aren’t too many characters to keep track of but there are family trees in the back. There are also definitions of words that the author has made up. I didn’t realise it was there until I’d finished the book but had managed to grasp what she meant from the context.

I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be reading the next when that comes out. I want to see what happens to Seraphina and the others. The book wasn’t left on a cliff hanger but it left it open for their next adventure and some hints as to what it will involve. Seraphina grows so much in this book that it will be good to see her with her new found confidence in the next. There is a bit of everything in this book. It starts off kind of slow as you learn her background and the world. It then picks up and the second half of the book is filled with action. There’s a bit of romance too, but not too much, so there’s something for everyone.

Overall rating 5 out of 5.

Game of Thrones by George R R Martin

Game of Thrones is the first book in an epic fantasy series. It is about families feuding over who has the right to the throne of the Kingdom. There are two children who have had to flee the country as they are the rightful heirs to the throne but, being children, have no way to get it back. The rest of their family, including their parents and siblings were massacred at their home. The family who have taken the throne are not a stable family. They did not wed for love and do not see eye to eye on anything. There is a lot of tension going on in that family. Our final family live in the north of the country and were happy to keep themselves to themselves until the head of the family was asked to work for the king. We also follow a group of guards who patrol the Wall at the far north of the country against savages and a new unknown but terrifying foe. There is lots of action, sex and backstabbing in this book. What more could you want?

At first it is a bit tricky to get into because there are so many characters. Throughout the story we see things from, I think, nine different character’s points of view. It doesn’t keep to the same order of rotation between characters and there are no consecutive chapters with the same character. Once you get your head round who everyone is and which family they belong to, it’s pretty easy to figure out. And if you get stuck there are family trees in the back of the book. And if you get stuck there are family trees in the back of the book. Each character has their own problems and morals so you can tell which person you are with by how they behave. Although most of the perspectives are form one family, there is a good mix of ages and genders. We have points of view of both adults and children / young adults which I think is really good as it gives it that something extra.

Fantasy is always a tricky genre because there are often made up words that you have no idea how to pronounce. There is a little bit of this in the book but mostly it’s fine and the names are just variations on ones we know. Such as Eddard instead of Edward. I think this was a wise choice on the author’s part as there are currently seven book planned for the series and none of them are short and some have even been turned into two books. So having easy to pronounce names is important as you don’t want to put your reader off. The rest of the writing is good. It has a good pace to it and certainly doesn’t feel like a long book. It is nicely frustrating when Martin ends a chapter on a cliff hanger and you’re not sure when you’ll be with that character again. It all adds to the drama and mystery of it.

The world that the author has created is easy to imagine. It’s your traditional fantasy setting, a world reminiscent of the Middle Ages where people travel by horse and cart and live in castles. You get a summary of the history of the world throughout the book and Martin doesn’t try to give you too much information at once. It’s usually in a speech when a character is defending their family’s honour. Obviously, with all the books, there is plenty of time to learn how the world got to the situation it is in now. There are also plenty of places left to explore and maps to look at. The one thing the book didn’t have was a timeline. I think it would have been really useful to know when things were happening and over how long. Switching between characters means you don’t know whether you are going backwards or forwards in time.

I enjoyed this book and will be reading the other books at some point. My main concern is what will happen to some of the characters. There are some I really love. And there are some I really hate. I hope I won’t have to spend much time in the heads of those I don’t like. The ones in this book were all good or at least tolerable, which is how you want to start a series, really.  The author has already killed some characters I liked so hopefully there will be new ones to like in future books. The first book eases you in to the fantasy. It’s just a world without oil or electricity, but it does hint there may be more fantasy-ness as the series goes on. I think it deserves recognition. Although I will read the others, I’m not going to start straight away. Don’t go into it with really high expectations because it does take a while to get used to the world but it is definitely worth a read if you like epic adventure stories.

Overall rating 5 out of 5.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

High Fidelity is about a man called Rob who has just split up with his long time girlfriends. She’s not the first person who’s broken up with him and she certainly hasn’t broken his heart the most. He has a top five list of the girls who have done that. Rob runs a record shop and has two assistants who help him in the shop. They are all obsessed with music and heaven forbid if you have the wrong records in your collection. Rob is very self-centred and childish. Even when a situation is obviously about someone else, if he isn’t paid enough attention he throws a strop and storms out. He obsesses about all the wrong things and just hasn’t got a clue. High Fidelity tells the story of how Rob copes after Laura leaves him and he has to do everything for himself again.

Nick Hornby has a good writing style. It’s easy to read and you just get taken along on the journey without too much effort on your part. He really gets inside the mind of his character. The book is written from Rob’s point of view, so we have no idea how the other characters feel, only what Rob thinks they feel. Hornby builds a complete picture of Rob and you feel like you know him inside and out which is good, to be able to know a character that well. I think the way it is written would appeal to a male audience as there are lists and nerdy music information that I think would appeal to the male brain.

I really did not like Rob is a character. If it wasn’t about him he didn’t care. He didn’t think before he spoke and, most of the time, regretted it immediately after he’d said it. I just wanted to punch him in the face for 95% of the book. I persevered and to be fair, he did grow up a bit by the end of the book and got a bit more likeable. He wasn’t mature enough to do it on his own though. If it weren’t for some of the female characters he would have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I think to a certain extent he is stuck in a rut and doesn’t know how to get out but that isn’t an excuse for some of his actions. He doesn’t really know what he wants so can’t be happy with what he’s got. I kept reading because I did like some of the other characters in the book. Unfortunately, being from Rob’s perspective you don’t get to learn an awful lot about anyone else, except Laura. Mainly because he isn’t interested in anyone except himself.

I think I would give another Nick Hornby book a go. His writing is engaging and he certainly knows how to write a full character. The main reason I read this book was because I wanted to see the film so I’m interested to see how that goes. I hope that what goes on in Rob’s head is what goes on in the heads of all men or we should probably be a bit worried. I have a feeling that some men have more self-control than Rob though. At least I hope so. I’m not entirely sure where the funny bits were in the book, all the quotes on the front said it was really funny. It mostly just made me really really angry. I would not want to spend any time with Rob at all. The book might be worth a read to encourage you that even the most immature people have the potential to grow up at some point. Given the right encouragement and pushing of course.

Overall rating 2 out of 5.

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Sabriel is a coming of age story about an eighteen year old girl called Sabriel. She has grown up at a boarding school in the safety of a non-magical town but has been taught some magic as she has the ability. She often speaks to her father who is a kind of necromancer across The Wall where magic is everywhere. Instead of raising the dead, he father helps people pass through who are having difficulty and are stuck between the living and the dead. When Sabriel’s father goes missing, presumed dead, she must cross The Wall in order to save him so he can defeat the darkness that is falling over the world now that he isn’t there to keep it at bay.

I quite liked Sabriel as a character but she was a little bit annoying at times and I just wanted to slap her and tell her to get on with it. She seemed to hesitate quite a lot when told to do something when she was in danger. Thankfully she acquires some companions along the way who help her and take some of the focus off her. If it had been her doing this by herself it would have been a struggle to get through it. Really it was only the middle that annoyed me, but I suppose getting used to a lot of magic bombarding you and being able to feel people die can’t be all that nice.

The world that Garth Nix has created is intriguing in that a Wall is all that separates two very different places. On the predominately non-magic side the Wall is guarded in case anything dead that has been resurrected tries to come through. Only those who live near to the Wall realise how dangerous it can be for the people living on the other side. The non-magic side is essentially early 20^th century with cars and electricity, but the magic side has none of that. The people on the magic side have magic to get light and can make their own machines to move around. Each side knows the other is there but has no desire to communicate with each other because they have no need to.

The story draws you in and makes you want to keep reading. However, for me, I would have liked a bit more description of the places they visit. It seemed a bit action sequence after action sequence with very little respite in between. The ending dragged on a bit as well, I realise that the author wanted to build up plenty of suspense but getting chased by the living dead is scary enough. He does leave plenty of questions to be answered in the next two books which is good. It isn’t on a proper cliffhanger or anything but enough to leave you curious as to how everyone recovers from the events in Sabriel.

I enjoyed this book and it’s a good start for getting in to fantasy novels and novels about magic that aren’t Harry Potter. I like the way magic works in this world. It’s not about waving a wand and saying some words, it’s about creating what you need with your thoughts. It is a book for young people but the main character is slightly older than your average book, being late teens rather than middle teens. This didn’t always come across but you did feel Sabriel had a bit more maturity, which was required of her. Like a lot of fantasy books, it had a map of the land in the front but I would have liked a bit more detail as the scale didn’t quite fit in my mind with how far they’d gone and how long it had taken. I will be reading the others in the series to find out what happens.

Overall rating 3 out of 5.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The Name of the Wind is the first in a trilogy of epic fantasy books. It starts in an inn in the middle of nowhere. The world’s getting more dangerous and not many strangers come to the inn any more. A Chronicler arrives and agrees to write the memoir of the innkeeper as he dictates it. The innkeeper grew up on the road with a travelling theatre company that his parents run. One member of their troupe knows magic and begins to teach the boy, who is a very quick learner. His father writes a song about some extremely powerful wizards and a couple of days after performing it, the whole theatre company is dead, save our hero. He ends up living on the streets of a city for a few years before leaving to get himself an education at the University. There he makes friends, enemies and has adventures. While doing so he gets himself a reputation. Stories are still told about Kvothe over ten years later. His customers in the inn have no idea who he is.

Obviously, this is a very basic summary of what happens in the book. To say Kvothe had an eventful first fifteen years of his life would be an understatement. Young Kvothe is on a mission to find the people who killed his family and get his revenge. The problem is that most people don’t believe this group of magicians exist. This really is a properly epic adventure story. He never seems to get a break, it’s one thing after another. Sometimes trouble finds him and sometimes he goes looking for it. However, in the present day he is a completely different person and seems to have almost given up on life.

Kvothe is an interesting character. I’m a bit concerned that he is slightly too perfect as he has an incredible memory, and is witty and lucky. But I got caught up in the story so didn’t mind too much. In a way he sort of reminded me of Harry Potter as well, being an orphan with scary people as the killer of their parents. The reckless attitude to danger is also similar. I think I’m being unfair though and this is better than that. There are just the right amount of characters and locations that you know who everyone is while he’s in one location and that you can probably forget them when you move on to the next location to meet the next set of people.

This isn’t really a hard core fantasy book but some of the names are a bit tricky to work out how to pronounce. There are also occasionally different languages spoken that are even worse to try and work out so in some cases you just have to skip ahead to either the translation or the reply and figure out what has been said. Being new to the fantasy genre I found this world easy to get in to as people are essentially the same in whatever universe they’re in. It’s just the technology they have available to them that varies. This world is a nice one with big cities, small villages and rolling countryside. Although, there is a darkness on the horizon.

I enjoyed this book and it didn’t take me long to read once I got going as it was easy to read. It didn’t require any thought on my part, I was just carried along on the journey. The story was broken up by interludes back to the present. This helps absorb the story in smaller chunks but also reminds you that this is being told to you by an older Kvothe. Having people telling stories about Kvothe but not  knowing the man himself is a nice twist in the story and I look forward to seeing how the rest of his life pans out and if it is as action-packed as the first part!

Overall rating 5 out of 5.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is about sixteen year old Jacob finding out about his grandfather’s past after he dies. Jacob is a pretty solitary teenager; he has one friend and a job he hates. The one person who gets him and understands him is his grandfather, Abe. Abe is a bit eccentric and often tells Jacob embellished stories from when he was a boy. He has photos of children doing strange things such as levitating and lifting boulders with one hand. When he is small Jacob loves listening to Abe and takes every story as if it were true. As he grows to a teenager he thinks the stories are stupid and the photos have obviously been doctored to make them look peculiar. He carries on thinking this until his grandfather dies. Jacob travels to a remote Welsh island, where his grandfather spent his childhood, and his world is turned upside down.

The story is slow to start off with and takes a good fifty pages to get going but once you get through that it gets a lot better. The story is told in first person which I usually don’t like but I didn’t even notice it when I was reading. I think the start felt so slow because I was expecting it to be one thing but it didn’t seem to be any genre in particular. It’s classed as a fantasy book but it’s not really fantasy as I would define it. To me it felt more like an adventure book, with Jacob discovering things about his grandfather and himself. It also felt like it was sort of trying to be a horror book but if it was it didn’t succeed. But that may be the cover deceiving me.

Jacob as the main character was fine. He started off a bit irritating, being angry at everything but then he is sixteen. Once he gets to Wales he gets less annoying and you just go along with him on his journey. The children he meets in Wales are all fun and interesting. There are a lot of them though so you don’t feel you get to know some characters as well as you’d like. Most would have a fascinating story to tell of how they ended up on a remote island off the coast of Britain. They are from all over Europe, gathering together to escape their plight. I felt sorry for Jacob’s father, Franklin, who travels from America to Wales with Jacob. He didn’t really get to know his dad as he would have liked as he was away a lot and emotionally distant. He is then going through the same thing with his son, who he doesn’t understand either. It can’t be easy for him and are not surprised he takes himself off bird-watching as they are more easily understood.

The book is unusual as it has photos interspersed with the chapters. When Abe is telling Jacob about the children he grew up with he has photos of them and the reader can see them too. At first glance the photos look normal, but then you realise that none of the children in the photos is normal. I think having the photos in is a good idea as it really adds to the story when you can see what is being described to you. When some were described I couldn’t really think what it would look like so seeing the picture helped understand the peculiar children.

I really enjoyed this book and once it got going I couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be but I still liked it. I will be reading the sequel when it gets written, although it was quite a nice standalone story. The ending was a bit rushed and didn’t really end properly so hopefully the sequel will deal with that. It is difficult to define the genre of this book but that’s not important. It’s marketed as a young adult book and I think they would enjoy it but I think adults can enjoy it too. It’s a fun, unusual read.

Overall rating 4 out of 5.

Reading Wrap Up April 2013

These are the books that I read in April.

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan   5 / 5

The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White   2 / 5

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie   4 / 5

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith   4 / 5

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson   4 / 5

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver   5 / 5