The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

This voyage is special. It will change everything…
One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on… and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This chance meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course, a journey on which they will learn that priceless things come at the greatest cost…

What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the destructive power mermaids are said to possess?

In this spell-binding story of curiosity and obsession, Imogen Hermes Gowar has created an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit. 

I put off reading this behemoth of a novel because of how long it was, and the fact that the reviews weren't as good as I expected them to be. Finishing it, I can say, yeah, the reviews are right.

Ignoring the Georgian time frame (the main appealing factor) and the shipping company, this is a regency romance novel without the moors. I do not like regency romance novels. Not to mention, the two main characters had so little driving each other that getting through the book got impossibly hard at some points, where I was just flicking through pages wishing it was over. It wasn't that I didn't like them, it was that I found very little compelling about them and didn't really find their story arcs all that fascinating. And it wasn't just them, it was all the main characters. Jonah's niece was your typical historical fiction heroine, one with little interest in romance and lots of interest in reading and running a business, which is a boring played out trope, and everyone felt very wooden like they knew and understood that they were nothing more than characters in a book.

I also didn't really get much of a feel for late 18th century Great Britain. The characters were curiously free of the biases and opinions that would have been period-appropriate, and the dresses and descriptions made me thing more of both the 1810s and the 1600s, confusingly. It felt like a sanitized view of the late 1700s, and at times I wondered if the book was written for the sole purpose of being made into a BBC miniseries. Honestly though, if it was a BBC costume drama I probably would have liked it a lot more, and I'm not one for television serials. 

This is a short review for a too long, forgettable novel. This is my least favorite new release of the year, and while I didn't outright hate it, there's not much about it to really like unless you like romance novels.

4 out of 10

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Strange, isn't it? To have dedicated one's life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one's life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one's labors ultimately forgotten?”- Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders

In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

Is anyone else tired of hearing glowing review after glowing review of this novel? Indeed, when I picked up Lincoln in the Bardo, after I had been resisting it for so long, my expectations were actually lowered, an attempt to prevent what I figured would be inevitable disappointment. But if you expected a trashing of an overrated novel, turn back now because this is not it.

Honestly, the whole reason I even picked up Lincoln in the Bardo in the first place was because of peer pressure. As much as I love ghosts, the American Civil War and the life of Lincoln has ever interested me. I was always annoyed when my American history classes in elementary, middle, and high school would get stuck in the middle of the 1800s, because we would usually spend two months on the Antebellum, Civil War, and Restoration and I just wanted to get to the 20th century, already. I mean, I don't blame authors and schools for fixating on that time, especially in today's society with race relations being what they are, but all it did was encourage my interest in the Turn of the Century and both WWs, because of how little I was taught about them in a public school setting. And when I read historical fiction for fun, I have a tendency to gravitate towards times that either interest me or I know little about, that basically means that anything that has to do with the Civil War I stay away from.

But Lincoln in the Bardo is a novel that I was completely blown away by. While gimmicky novels have never been my favorite, this one is told in a way that makes its unconventional, even avant-garde, style fun and refreshing instead of bogged down by quirkiness. In fact, I am a little surprised it reached and was liked by such a mainstream audience, or that I see it in places like airport or train station bookstores since it's hard for me to imagine the pop fiction crowd liking such a heavy, strange book.

And I loved the ghosts. I mean, I love ghosts in general, but these ghosts were particularly endearing to me. Their stories were the right amount of sad without feeling overindulgent, and each of their personalities shone through well in their writing. And the humor of the novel perfectly counter-balanced the sadness. And it certainly struck the right note for me. I like absurdist humor, almost as much as I like dark humor, and I could have read ten novels written by Saunders about the antics of various ghosts in many graveyards.

I was also interested in the parts away from the graveyard, with the various quotes from sources (real or fake, I have no idea) discussing Lincoln and Willie. I liked the contradiction in many of them and that not all of them were glowing. It reminded me how much I like oral histories, and was a fascinating mosaic of the time period. 

My only complaint, and it's a relatively minor one, is that I don't really like books written from the point of view of someone who was actually alive. It makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. I don't know why these stories bother me so much, but they do.

So yes, Lincoln in the Bardo. I give it my whole-hearted thumbs up, and I think this is the most I've enjoyed reading a novel this year so far. What else can I say except that I loved it and that Mr Vollman, Mr Bevins (the third) and the Good Reverend will stick around in my head for a long time. Bittersweet perfection.

9 out of 10

The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people, including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.

In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.

The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.

This novel is about a little known time in Icelandic history, and I love little known times in history so I was excited to pick it up, and I admit, I am not disappointed by it at all.

That being said, The Sealwoman's Gift is very hard to read at times, dealing as it does with things like mothers being separated from their children, or being forced to watch them grow up with values they did not ever want their children to espouse. I read it all in one sitting, and even though I'm not a mother nor have any desire to be a mother, I still couldn't get through some parts like the fate of the eldest son. It reminded me of Hassan's son from The Kite Runner.

The writing in The Sealwoman's Gift is very good, but not unique. It's very much your typical Hannah Kent atmospheric historical mystery style that you'd expect from an atmospheric historical fiction novel. It's easy to read, almost too easy in fact.

It's a very easy book to get slipped into and leave loving, almost to a fault. Because there are flaws about the novel, and there is one trope that I really cannot stand in it, but the characters and scenes and, again, writing are all so well done. This is an expertly crafted novel, with no technical flaws to it. In fact, this is probably the technically best new release I've encountered thus far.

However, I wasn't crazy about the characters themselves. They are very well done and three dimensional, but I didn't like Asta at all, nor any of the characters really. I pitied their situation, but had a hard time emphasizing with them.

And of course, the presence of my least favorite trope did not endear Asta to me. I despise the trope of a slave master and his slave falling in love, and this has one. I'm not talking about Stockholm Syndrome, which I think can work really well in the right situation, I'm talking about actual romantic love between the two. While this type of romance clearly does it for someone given the amount of slave master romance novels I've encountered over the years and it probably did happen in real life, I still don't like it personally.

And, while I found this novel to be extremely well-researched, I found the gender inequality in the Ottoman Empire to be very downplayed, as well as the Christian oppression understated. 

So thumbs up on The Sealwoman's Gift as a whole, especially if you want something that's interesting and very well done technically. I still found it an enlightening read despite my problems with it. Definitely worth checking out when it comes to America in October.

8-8.5 out of 10

In the Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekback Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“June is a good month to purge. It's a time to flush things out, to eliminate, to seek liberation. It's a month of light. The month of the midnight sun.”- In the Month of the Midnight Sun, Cecilia Ekback

An orphaned boy brought up to serve the state as a man. A rich young woman incapable of living by the conventions of society. Neither is prepared for the journey into the heat, mystery, violence and disorienting perpetual daylight of the far North.

Stockholm 1856.

Magnus is a geologist. When the Minister sends him to survey the distant but strategically vital Lapland region around Blackasen Mountain, it is a perfect cover for another mission: Magnus must investigate why one of the nomadic Sami people, native to the region, has apparently slaughtered in cold blood a priest, a law officer and a settler in their rectory.

Is there some bigger threat afoot? Blackasen seems to be a place of many secrets.
But the Minister has more than a professional tie to Magnus, and at the last moment, he adds another responsibility. Disgusted by the wayward behaviour of his daughter Lovisa - Magnus's sister-in law - the Minister demands that Magnus take her with him on his arduous journey.

Thus the two unlikely companions must venture out of the sophisticated city, up the coast and across country, to the rough-hewn religion and politics of the settler communities, the mystical, pre-Christian ways of the people who have always lived on this land, and the strange, compelling light of the midnight sun.
For Lovisa and Magnus, nothing can ever be the same again.

Last year, Wolf Winter was one of my favorite reads, to the point where I was annoyed that this novel never made it over to the States so I could read it. That was of course before I discovered alternative vendors on Amazon and Book Depository. 

What's funny now is that I kind of regret that decision. Because, while I did enjoy this novel, I didn't love it. There was something lacking about it, it just didn't do it for me the way that Wolf Winter did. I thought about Wolf Winter for months after I read it, the characters and the story stuck with me in ways that this novel just didn't.

I think a lot of that has to do with the characters. The Wolf Winter characters- Maija, Frederika, and the Priest were interesting, compelling characters that drew me more and more into their stories the more the book progressed. In this case, I couldn't connect with the characters nearly as well, and on the surface they had intriguing story arcs but there wasn't as much underneath the surface. I pretty much figured out where Lovisa's and Magnus' respective story arcs and the mystery itself didn't grip me the way that Wolf Winter's did. I had a hard time figuring out why I should care about the murders of these three men. I mean, the murder in Wolf Winter didn't seem to have anything to do with the main plot line, but the story came together in an admirable way in the end.

I mean, there are positives to In the Month of the Midnight Sun. The writing style is different- wordier, more purple- than it is in Wolf Winter, but still good. My biggest complaint with the writing is that is just isn't that original. The writing in Wolf Winter is unique and the cold, minimalist style fits the atmosphere of the novel extremely well. In the Month of the Midnight Sun has more of a Hannah Kent-esque style, which isn't a bad thing- Hannah Kent is one of my favorite historical fiction writers- and it does work well with the story, but it's just not nearly as original.

I do like that In the Month of the Midnight Sun isn't a sequel, and there is no sign of the characters from the first novel- probably because it was set 100 years after. While maybe some of the characters are descendants of the characters in the first novel, there's no definite proof of that. It makes it easy for me to separate both books from each other.

My biggest problem with the story itself is one of the twists towards the end, centering around one of the Lapp women. I dislike Baija's remorse towards that situation since it shows some pretty hardcore double standards on Ekback's part especially given the resolution of the mystery in Wolf Winter. But that's just me.

While I've made my "meh" feelings about In the Month of the Midnight Sun clear, I would like to reiterate that this hasn't changed my opinions towards either Wolf Winter or Cecilia Ekback in general. In fact, I respect her as an author more, as she's good at crafting two very similar yet different novels. In the Month of the Midnight Sun could have been just a rehash of Wolf Winter (and I would probably still like it) but instead Ekback tried something different. I'm eager to see what she'll do next.

7 out of 10

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.”- Next Year in Havana, Chanel Cleeton

After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution...

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary...

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. 

Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

I wanted to read Next Year in Havana because it was about something I know very little about- the political history of Cuba. I mean, sure, I'm familiar with the story of Cuban refugees in America, but most of what I know about Cuba begins in the 50s, as a glamorous movie star location (and Ricky Ricardo), and ends in the 60s, with the missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, although my American history classes have touched upon the Spanish American War. I also always liked the stories of people who flee their home country and have to make do in a foreign place. 

I was, however, less enthused by the fact that it was a dual perspective, with one taking place in the past and the other in the present. I was also not crazy about a romance with a revolutionary involved. But sometimes, you just gotta gamble. 

And I am happy I took that gamble. Because Chanel Cleeton's writing style is just lovely. If she doesn't have a pedigree in travel writing, I will be surprised. The way she describes the food and the Havana setting is just divine. I felt like I was there. Especially the food. God, the next time I'm in the City I should find a Cuban place instead of the usual Irish pubs I frequent. Really, you can't go wrong with any type of Latin cuisine. 

I think Cleeton was smart with Next Year in Havana, and chose a story that would play to her strengths as a writer. This isn't really a serious story, it's definitely a fluffy women's historical fiction with some edge. The travel and historical bits are great- I especially liked the descriptions of the pretty dresses- and I suppose the romance parts were fine too and probably did it for someone. I dislike romance fairly intensely, and I hate revolutionary type characters. Moody, judgmental, tortured rebels... why do writers like these types so much? They're my least favorite type of love interest.

I mean, the story was on the predictable side, with me guessing everything that happened before it actually happened in the book. I personally didn't have a problem with it, because it was fluffy, and it was fun to read and I wasn't looking for fine literature so that helped.

I recommend Next Year in Havana for a good women's historical fiction novel, especially if you like a bit of fluff. In fact, I wonder what her publisher was thinking by giving her a February publication date, since this is a beach read if there ever was one.

8 out of 10

The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

Beautifully observed, seductive, and laced with dark humor, a gripping historical thriller — set in 1840s Dublin — about a man who betrays his family, his friends, his society and, ultimately, himself.

Dublin, 1841. On a cold December morning, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. This could be just one more small, sad death in a city riven by poverty, inequality and political unrest, but this murder causes a public outcry. For it appears the culprit - a feckless student named John Delahunt - is also an informant in the pay of the authorities at Dublin Castle. And strangely, this young man seems neither to regret what he did, nor fear his punishment. Indeed, as he awaits the hangman in his cell in Kilmainham Gaol, John Delahunt decides to tell his story in this, his final, deeply unsettling statement...

Based on true events that convulsed Victorian Ireland, The Convictions of John Delahunt is the tragic tale of a man who betrays his family, his friends, his society and, ultimately, himself. Set amidst Dublin's taverns, tenements, courtrooms, and alleyways and with a rich, Dickensian cast of characters, this enthralling, at times darkly humorous novel brilliantly evokes a time and a place, and introduces a remarkable new literary voice.

One of the genres I've come around to lately are historical mysteries. Not necessarily those cheesy detective mysteries, but the atmospheric, dark historical thrillers, usually based on a true story, and following condemned men and women. I love reading them in the winter, and two of my favorite books from the last two years have been them- 2016's Burial Rites and last year's Wolf Winter.

I was recommended The Convictions of John Delahunt through Goodreads because I liked Wolf Winter, actually, and liked the summary. I figured I'd be getting a dark, atmospheric novel about Dublin in the 1840s and, of course, the murder of a young child. That's not really want I got. 

When I first started reading, I figured my inability to focus on it would go away soon, as I got more and more into the novel. In fact, I knew it would take me a little time to get acquainted with these books, as my experiences with Wolf Winter and Burial Rites attested to- Wolf Winter's writing style didn't immediately click with me and Burial Rites was just too slow for my tastes at the beginning. But as I got further and further along in The Convictions of John Delahunt, I found myself just taping the screen on my iPad listlessly, uninterested in anything that was going on. Even the sizable body count the characters in this book were racking up made it hard to care, because the writing style and the lack of depth behind the characters made it hard for me to care.

Not only that, there was none of that atmosphere I love in these types of historical mysteries. Hughes didn't take full advantage of the creepiness his chosen setting of Dublin in the 1840s could have provided us. In fact, Dublin felt like another generic Victorian city, like it could have been Edinburgh or London or any of the other major cities in that part of the world. One of the biggest things I look for in any of the books I read, but especially historical fiction, is strength of setting. I like feeling like I'm right there with the protagonists, like I can practically taste the whiskey or smell the smog. The Dublin Murder Squad series isn't a historical fiction series, but one of the biggest draws those books have is their Irishness. I was hoping for something along the same lines as those books in a Victorian-era setting and I was disappointing.

Which is a shame, because The Convictions of John Delahunt is a good story, but Hughes just didn't do a very good job at executing it. I understand that he was trying to go for a Crime and Punishment feel to it, with Delahunt acting as Raskolnikov, and Hughes is trying to show us how poverty drove him to committing the crimes he did. In that case, I wish the book opened up with the murder and followed Delahunt as he covered up the crime, and slowly goes more and more crazy due to hiding it, and also due to the horrific nature of the crime. That is, after all, the main appeal to Crime and Punishment, the psychological aspects. Perhaps if Hughes had amped up the psychological distress he would have created a more engrossing novel.

Andrew Hughes had a great idea with The Convictions of John Delahunt and a lackluster execution. This isn't the worst novel I've read this month, but it is one I was underwhelmed and disinterested by, and I don't really think I'd recommend it out much.

5 out of 10

Beautiful Star & Other Stories by Andrew Swanston Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

History is brought alive by the people it affects, rather than those who created it.

This is a moving and affecting journey through time, bringing a new perspective to the defence of Corfe Castle, the battle of Waterloo, the siege of Toulon and, in the title story, the devastating dangers of the life of the sea in 1875.

January has become the month of short stories for me, and Beautiful Star is one of them. This is another January 2018 want to read novel, and one of the ones I knew very little about prior to reading. 

I admit, I was a tad disappointed when I started reading because I still had The Maze at Windermere stuck in my head. This is more, shall we say simplistically written than the above work. That is not say that this is a poorly written novel, but that the writing style is not what I expected and it took some time to get used to. 

One of the best things about Beautiful Star is that each short story is based on a true, under-known historical event and it's apparent through his writing that Swanston wants to do them justice. Even The Flying Monk is treated with a certain respect as opposed to someone who might in today's society be considered a laughingstock.

My favorite short stories in this collection were Beautiful Star- the titular story-, The Tree, and The Castle. The other stories, like HMS Association and The Button Seller and the Drummer Boy, were good technically but couldn't hold my interest, and A Witch and a Bitch could have been better than it actually was, though it did hold my attention. I also found The Flying Monk to be interesting but not as memorable as my favorites.

Something I noticed about two of my favorite short stories, The Tree and The Castle, is that both of them take place during a time I personally have little interest in and, judging by the lack of historical fiction novels or even historical nonfiction works about it, it would appear that I'm not alone in that opinion. That time period is the English Civil War, which took up most of the 1600s. But I really liked the little boy character in The Tree, and the dame in The Castle is one of history's forgotten bad asses. 

So Beautiful Star & Other Stories is solid collection of historical fiction short stories, one I would definitely recommend to any history lover. My only reservation about recommending it out is that I don't think it would appeal as much to an average reader just looking for a quick read.

8 out of 10

The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

A richly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, set against the storied seascape of Newport, Rhode Island

A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest--the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress's diamond necklace--launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; a young writer soon to make his mark turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport's earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited.

In The Maze at Windermere Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a brilliant tapestry, charting a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.

It was a year ago yesterday that I posted my first review. Huh.

There's nothing more satisfying than having your expectations met (except having them exceeded) and this is one of those times. If you'll recall, last year the majority of the books I actually planned on reading were not good, to say the least, with two even making my worst list. So the fact that the first of my most anticipated 2018 releases was actually very, very good is a huge relief and, closing The Maze at Windermere, I had a really good feeling about this year.

That is not to say The Maze at Windermere is perfect, or that it lived entirely up to my sky-high expectations. I mean, I went into this novel expecting a collection of short stories, and ended up getting a legitimate full length story with 5 separate narratives running at once. Of narratives, I liked 3 of them- 2011, 1869, and 1692- which is better than most stories with as many separate story arcs as this one. The two I didn't like- 1863 and 1778- didn't offend me in any way, I just found them on the boring side. Henry James is one of those Victorian authors I probably should read but I don't, and the one from 1778 just could not hold my interest at all. 

But of the ones that I liked, 2011 had the best story-line. It was interesting, had characters that were fun to follow, and had a lot of diversity, as well as fascinating insight into the world of the obscenely wealthy. 1896 was also good in that respect, and Drexel was an interesting character to follow around. His parts were the most under-baked though, which was sad since the Gilded Age is one of my favorite settings for stories. My liking of 1692 surprised me, since normally I wouldn't go for Puritan-era stories but I just liked Prudence as a character, not to mention that she stood out as the only girl MC. Also, she had the only narrative with an actual end, so I gave her points for that.

But even if I hadn't liked this novel as much as I did, I would still have to give Smith serious props for how talented he is at mimicking writing styles from different times, and each story was different from the other and, to the right person, each had interesting story lines that could hold their own, though I liked how Smith combined them all in the end.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Smith writes next. Both the writing and story building in this novel are distinct and feel unique, and The Maze at Windermere was overall, a fun novel to read for any history lover. It's not perfect, but I highly recommend it.

8.5 out of 10

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Two ships lie in the harbour ... One of the two ships has just returned from a long voyage, the other is just preparing for a long voyage ... Jubilation and blessings accompany the ship as it sails off – while the arriving ship goes unremarked. But is it not this ship that deserves jubilation?
... The newly arrived ship lies safely in the harbour. But nothing is known of the one setting sail. What will be its fate? Who knows whether it will successfully withstand the storms awaiting it?”- The End of Days, Jenny Erpenbeck

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Hans Fallada Prize, The End of Days, by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,” each leading to a different death of the same unnamed female protagonist. How could it all have gone differently?—the narrator asks in the intermezzos. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early twentieth-century Hapsburg Empire. In the next chapter, the same girl grows up in Vienna after World War I, but a pact she makes with a young man leads to a second death. In the next scenario, she survives adolescence and moves to Russia with her husband. Both are dedicated Communists, yet our heroine ends up in a labor camp. But her fate does not end there….

A novel of incredible breadth and amazing concision, The End of Days offers a unique overview of the twentieth century.

The End of Days is a novel I really, really wanted to like. It seemed smart and interesting and history-filled and just right up my alley as a whole, and I was excited to dive in.

The biggest problem The End of Days has is that the main character does not have a name. I do not have a problem with nameless main characters, in fact I usually end up liking stories with that trope, like The Road or most of Truman Capote's short stories. But in those books, it works because of either how few characters there are, or how little importance the narrator is to the story. In The Road, the man and his son are, for the most part, the only characters, so there's no risk of confusing them. In Breakfast at Tiffany's, the narrator is both unimportant to the story and also speaking in the first person, so his name never has any reason to come up. But in this, it is third person, there's a million characters, and many of them are women. For more than three quarters of this novel, I had no idea as to who was talking at any given moment, and the only character I could actually keep straight in my head was Sasha, because he had a name. The third book was what completely lost me; I don't even think the translator had any idea as to what in the hell was going on during that scene.

The writing was also very repetitive and not all that great, and it did have a very distinctive translated feel to it, thought I can't help but feel a little bad for the translator. If some scenes in this novel are half as confusing as they are in German, than she had her work cut out for her. I can tell that Erpenbeck was trying to go for a minimalist, Scandinavian style, as seen in books like Wolf Winter, but it doesn't really work because, again, of the constant and annoying repetition, which ruins actually quite good scenes, like in the first book, after the mother has lost her baby girl, and something along the same lines as this sentence pops up "...back when the girl was still a mother..." This is a poignant remark when it first appears, but it is repeated so many times through the story and is tailored to so many other characters it loses its poignancy and becomes grating instead.

That being said, I do love the idea of this novel. I love the idea of travelling a girl through time, through her many deaths, but the confusingness of the novel makes it hard to follow and even harder to like. And yet, despite my many complaints about the writing, I still want to read Visitation, because I love the idea behind that novel, too. I think I just really, really want to like this author even after this book being a complete miss.

 4.5 out of 10

The Lightkeeper's Daughters by Jean Pendziwol Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“War and death can silence the strongest of men.”- The Lightkeeper's Daughters, Jean Pendziwol

Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family—a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.

With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own—to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.

As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is.

This was kind of an impulse purchase, fueled by a Barnes and Noble gift card and an absolutely glowing Goodreads review. Well, I'm happy I didn't actually pay any money for it.

First things first, this book is not well written. It feels like a self-published novel, mostly due to how amateur the language was. Both Morgan and Elizabeth felt like cliches- the rebellious teenager and the wise old woman who sees the good in her, along with their strange connection. I was also annoyed by the extremely amateurish way Pendziwol added suspense to the novel, with every chapter ending with something like "but there was more to come" or something else along the same mystery-baiting lines. The writing isn't straight-up bad or comedy-bad, it's just amateurish and feels more like a first draft than the finished novel.

The characters are stunted by the writing. Morgan and Elizabeth could have been interesting characters, key word could have been, if it wasn't for the flat writing. Although, I'm not entirely sure that the characters biggest problem was the writing. I've seen many variates on both characters, mostly on writing websites like Wattpad. They're very one note, and not realistic at all.

One of the comparisons I saw that worked in this novel's favor was its comparison to a Jodi Picoult novel. I am not a big Picoult fan, but her books are easy to read and also you know what you're getting when you read one of her books. She's not a great technical writer, but she knows how to entertain you. These two do not compare well at all. If Picoult wrote this book, it wouldn't be the best book in the world, but it would be a solid 7 out of 10 or 3 stars. 

The best part of the book is the story, and also the fact that it's about lighthouses. I love lighthouses. But again, the story got bogged down by the writing. The manufactured suspense did not work in the story's favor. That and the fact that all the twists were absolutely inane. 

So basically, skip this one. The writing isn't even worth the price of your library card. I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoy it at all.

4.5 out of 10

The Revolution of Marina M by Janet Fitch Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Petrograd. The sound is bronze, and this is a story of bronze.”- The Revolution of Marina M, Janet Fitch 

St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn.

As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times. This is the epic, mesmerizing story of one indomitable woman's journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century.

This has been a good year for spectacularly underwhelming historical fiction and The Revolution of Marina M is no exception. 

First, I want to talk about the prose. I'm sure some would love the way this book was written, but I come from the less is more school of thought and, well, Fitch's writing style is not that at all. The word overwrought comes to mind a lot. It's so purple, so simile-stuffed that reading it makes me tired. Sometimes, I just wanted to rip that laptop away from her and do some hard backspacing. Purple is beautiful in small doses, but when your 800 page novel is written like that it's going to feel a lot longer than 800 pages. 

And no where is that purple prose more obvious than in the goddamn sex scenes. My God. Fitch writes sex scenes like something right out of a dime store romance novel.

Also, the main character got on my nerves constantly. As some other reviews pointed out, she has no thoughts or opinions of her own and constantly parrots others. She's always on the side of the morally good and just, and when others aren't as perfect as she is, they immediately get dropped by her. She can't see the forest for the trees. And for God's sake, does Janet Fitch think we care at all about Genya vs Koyla when there's a fucking revolution going on??

The only real way to enjoy The Revolution of Marina M is to only care about the plot and not try and figure out any of the characters. Why are they acting like that? Because the plot demands them to. Why is this happening now? Because the plot demands it. Why is Marina acting like this and this never happened? Because the plot demands it. The best example I can think of is when Varvara shows up drunk and tells Marina's father that she (Marina) helped the Bolsheviks overthrow the Provincial Government, causing Marina to get thrown out of her house. Why Varvara does this is never actually explained, and, bafflingly, Marina is still friends with the bitch. With friends like that...

But then again, Fitch's characters aren't really the best. They're very one-note, and any attempts at devolpment are usually heavy-handed and transparently point to whether or not Fitch wants us to find them sympathetic or not. If she wants us to like them, they become saintly, and if she wants us to dislike them they become a devil. 

I once read a review on Goodreads describing a book as being tragedy porn (I believe it was an Ellen Hopkins novel which, yeah, makes sense) and that phrase is perfect for this book. Marina is this beautiful woman whom everyone falls in love with and whom goes through so many hardships, most of which have some kind of sexual component. She's such a lovely victim one can't help but fall in love with her struggle. And so much of her struggle is unnecessary and takes away from the main Russian Revolution story-line- I mean, what does her kidnapping by the Baron in the middle or the cult at the end have to do with anything? It's just filler to endear us to Marina.

I mean, I did really like the Russian history parts. Those were very well done and well researched and were also engaging. I think the fault, though, entirely rests on the character of Marina, even though she doesn't have enough personality to carry a book. 

Unless you really love books that put their characters through unnecessary hardships, I wouldn't recommend this book. I'm not even sure who this novel is meant to appeal to- this isn't women's historical fiction a la Kristin Hannah, a Russian historical fiction lover would be bored by it. The only people I could see really getting into it would be the Oprah Book Club types who love this kind of Mary-Sue level tragedy. 

4 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Your Mouth Is Lovely by Nancy Richler
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simon

A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

Otto Pohl, an engineer overseeing construction of a German road in Ukraine, awakens to the unexpected sight of SS men herding hundreds of Jews into an old brick factory . . . 

Inside the factory, Ephraim anxiously scans the growing crowd, looking for his two sons. As anxious questions swirl around him "Where are they taking us? How long will we be gone?" he can't quell the suspicion that it would be just like his oldest son to hole up somewhere instead of lining up for the Germans, and just like his youngest to follow . . .

Yasia, a farmer's daughter who has come into town to sell produce, sees two young boys slinking through the shadows of the deserted streets and decides to offer them shelter . . . 


As these lives become more and more intertwined Rachel Seiffert's prose rich with a rare compassion, courage, and emotional depth, an unflinching story is told: of survival, of conflicting senses of duty, of the oppressive power of fear and the possibility of courage in the face of terror.

As proof of everything coming full circle, this is the kind of book I would have reviewed back in January or February. And I admit, that’s part of the reason why A Boy in Winter intrigued me. Also, we’ve been getting super cold weather lately, and we got our first snow of the year a few days ago, another reason why I felt compelled to pick this book up.

There's not much that’s particularly special or unique at A Boy in Winter. While I can’t specifically point to any books that have this exact or a similar story-line and characters, it’s more the feeling I got while reading. I didn’t really feel anything about any of the characters, because I felt like there wasn’t much they could do that would surprise me or make me actually feel something.

That being said, I did like the setting. As I’ve said before, I like books that take place in the Eastern Bloc because I find the history of those countries fascinating. It was interesting to read about the Ukraine countryside, even if I think Seiffert could have explained some things more, like what marsh people are and things like that.

And I also just like stories like this. While I am not necessarily a multi-perspective kind of person, I still like stories that follow multiple people and how they all interconnect, some of my favorite books ever do that.

And while I do think the historical parts were good, if I were Seiffert's editor I would have maybe cautioned her about the ending. It didn't bother me, personally, but I can see some of the more... sensitive mindset take issue with it.

This is a perfectly fine novel. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t particularly special and it’s definitely not a future favorite. But it’s no secret that I’ve been feeling a kind of ennui about recent releases in historical fiction, mostly of the WWII variety, but this was a perfectly passable one. It’s the kind of book that’s probably best read on a snow day, the best time to read historical fiction-y books.

8 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

City of Thieves by David Beniov

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon

The Royal Circle Series by Katherine Longshore- Series Thoughts

The Royal Circle series is collection of companion novels each about a different girl in the Tudor age- a YA version of Phillipa Gregory's work if you will. Each main character is a real person- if fact, everyone's a real historical figure with the biggest connection between the each book being that they all follow Howards- Catherine Howard in the first book (though her rather dull servant girl Kitty narrates), Anne Boleyn in the second book, and Mary Fitzroy nee Howard in the third.

This series is very overwrought, and I can see why it's mostly out of print in America- though maybe not in the UK? I see a lot of British reviewers of this series on Goodreads. Really, the only book of this series that's all you need to read to get a feel of Katherine Longshore's writing is Gilt, as neither her characters nor her writing really progress the way you'd expect it to. Her character are all interchangeable and her writing is this bizarre mix of Old English and modern slang. 

Do I have a favorite character? Nope. I mean, in real life I'm kind of partial to Anne Boleyn, but in this series she wasn't really Anne Boleyn so I didn't really care about her.

What about favorite book? I suppose I like both Tarnish and Brazen better than Gilt at any rate, but I can't really pick a favorite. I guess I'll go with Brazen since it was the best written and most political of all her books.

I have kind of a nostalgic attachment to Gilt, though. It was, after all, the second book I reviewed on this blog and that means something to me. All in all though, I doubt I'll recommend these books to anyone, unless a person I know really loved The Luxe and is all about the Tudors. I will probably never reread any of these books. 

Gilt: 4.5-5 out of 10
Tarnish: 5 out of 10
Brazen: 5 out of 10

Overall Series Rating: 5 out of 10