R. L. Stedman

Writer

Literature

Enjoyed Ready Player One? Here’s Four Retro Books You’ll Love

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Have you seen Ready Player One?

In case you’ve not watched it, nor read the book, here’s a quick summary: 16-year-old poverty-stricken Wade Watts is searching for a prize hidden inside the Oasis, the world’s online forum/trading place/gaming place/school venue. It’s where most people spend their days, hidden behind virtual headsets.

The year is 2040; the Oasis’s reclusive developer, James Halliday, has just died, leaving his fortune and control of the Oasis to the person who can find the three keys that unlock the prize, or ‘easter egg’, hidden within the Oasis. But an evil corporation is also seeking the egg. Can Wade save the Oasis (and the world) before it’s too late?

Ready Player One

The story takes place in both the virtual and the real, and through the story Wade meets the fetching Art3mis (pronounced Artemis, how clever), faces his fears, learns about friendship and loyalty.

Watching the movie felt weirdly familiar, partly because the story references the 80s like they were the coolest time ever, and partly because I’ve read a heck of a lot of books similar to RP1.

There ain’t nothing like Spielberg for storytelling, plus you gotta love the meta-ness of Spielberg making a nostalgia-fest of the 80s when he was responsible for much of its pop-culture. And of course, the special effects are great. There’s a few logistical/plot hole questions but hey, it’s a movie, right?

However, the book troubles me. Ready Player One was a best seller, but I have no idea why. I thought it was slow, badly written and full of formulaic tropes. But the thing that annoyed me the most was that there are way, way better books around, but they’re not as famous, and so have gradually dwindled into undeserved obscurity.

If you loved Ready Player One – great! I’m glad it worked for you. Not every book speaks to every reader; that’s cool.

But if you enjoyed RP1, then you’re in luck, because the world is full of books that are EVEN BETTER. Try these stories below. They’re all science fiction, dealing with the intersection between the virtual the real (also known as cyberpunk) but I think they’re more innovative, creative and way more entertaining.

Are you ready?

Only You Can Save Mankind – Terry Pratchett

Only You Can Save Mankind

Johnny Maxwell has a new video game – defeat the alien ScreeWee. But if the ScreeWee refuse to fight? Worse, what if they surrender? Then the aliens disappear from the game, only to begin invading his dreams. With the help of another player (handle “Sigourney”), Johnny must save the world, save the ScreeWee and work out what is real, and what is not.

The story is hilarious; my personal favourite is Johnny’s friend Wobbler, who creates a game called “Journey to Alpha Centauri” which has to be played in real time, thus taking 3000 years to complete.

Johnny and his friends star in two later novels: Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb. In all three stories, Pratchett deals with real-life issues, but always with his trademark humor.

The Johnny stories were some of Pratchett’s favourite works, but they never sold as well as his Disc World series.

I’ve really enjoyed exploring them again with my kids; although the tech references are dated, the ideas are still interesting, and Pratchett’s characters are vivid and exciting. Tip: get the audiobooks. They’re a lot of fun for car journeys, especially the voices of the ScreeWee. Appropriate for ages 9 and up.

Find Only You Can Save Mankind on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2rx1GF9

Body of Glass – Marge Piercy. (Also published as He, She and It).

He, She and It

Published in 1991, Body of Glass was one of the first novels to explore characters shifting between the physical to the virtual worlds, and was awarded the Arthur C Clarke Award in 1993.

Shira, an expert in cyber socialization, works for Y-S, a multi. She lives under a glass dome, safe from the environmental pollution that’s killed much of North America. But when her ex-husband wins custody of her son, she decides its time to return to her home town Tikva, and begins working on a new project: the cyborg Yod. As she learns to live without her son, she realises that Tikva is under attack, and Yod is to be its defender.

The book cuts between the past and the present, and deals with gender identity, sexualisation and race. It’s scarily prescient, with topics like: what is a cyborg? Where does humanity begin and end?

The sex scenes are reasonably descriptive, so I wouldn’t recommend this for early YAs but it’s suitable for late teens, and definitely recommended for girls – its unusual to see women cast in starring roles in sci-fi. It’s set in a Jewish community, and I totally enjoyed the opportunity to read and learn about this culture.

Piercy also wrote Woman on the Edge of Time, an unnervingly accurate novel about the future.

Find He, She and It on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2rx1shh

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Neuromancer

Neuromancer won the Nebula Award, the Philip K Dick Award and the Hugo Award in 1984. Case, a washed up computer hacker, is hired to conduct a hit on a powerful artificial intelligence. He’s assisted by razor girl Molly Millions, an augmented street samurai with mirror-eyes. Together they discover why Case has been hired, and the identity of who it was who hired him. The story ends with the world changing, as a new AI is born.

Neuromancer birthed the terms ‘Matrix’, ‘hacker’, ‘cyberspace’, and is at least partially credited with having spawned the internet as we know it. Gibson himself says this isn’t true; that he saw the trends emerging and ran with them. Whatever the truth to the tale, there’s no doubt that Neuromancer both reflected and shaped reality.

Although the book isn’t as good as, I think, Gibson’s more recent works, it’s still an amazing, sometimes puzzling read. It’s suitable for older readers, especially teens who love tech. The language is dense and sometimes hard to follow, so better for competent readers.

Incidentally, if you like the concept of Neuromancer but find the actual story too complex, try Burning Chrome, Gibson’s first story collection, published in 1981. It’s a little easier to read, but still has Molly Millions, dancing in black leather with her silver-mirror eyes.

Find Neuromancer on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2rzx7ym

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

Stephenson works part-time for Amazon-owner Jeff Bezos, as his ‘chief futurist’, so he’s uniquely placed to both dream and implement the future.

Snow Crash, released in 1992, is one of his earlier works. It’s a racy, exciting ride with a page-turning, complex plot and intriguing characters.

Our hero is Hiro Protagonist, a part-time pizza delivery boy for the Mafia, part-time builder of the Metaverse, an emerging cyberspace landscape. Hiro is rescued from pizza-delivery death by Y. T.,  a young skateboard Kourier. Y.T. (“don’t call me ‘Whitey’, I’m Y.T.”) and Hiro embark on a quest to find the creator of Snow Death, a computer virus that threatens to destroy the Metaverse, before it infects the real world.

Snow Crash does contain some info dumps, in the form of the Librarian (oh, how Ready Player One), but the actual story is so exciting that its easy to forgive this small sin. It’s a great read for smart older teens and adults.

I heard that Snow Crash is being made into a TV series by Amazon (of course)! If so, it will be amazing. Oh, and if you enjoyed Snow Crash, you’re in luck, because Stephenson is a prolific writer of very fat books, so you’ll be happily occupied for weeks!

Find Snow Crash on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2rzYLvd

Book Review – Local Books: Forbidden Love

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Forbidden Love: A Book Review of The Larnachs

I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts based on the local literary scene.

writer's notebook
Notebook – Image from Pixabay

Side note: I live in Dunedin, a UNESCO city of literature, where we’re blessed with an extraordinary amount of books, novels, authors and artists.

You can find out more about the scene through Beverly Marshall’s literary tours

The Larnachs by Owen Marshall

The Larnachs

The Larnachs, by Owen Marshall.

Here’s my review from Goodreads:

The Larnachs is a beautifully told tale of a forbidden love affair. This story is based on the true story of Constance Larnach and her step-son, Dougie Larnach, and her husband, William Larnach, a self-made millionaire, politician, and dreamer. Larnach’s now mostly known for his eponymous Castle, but in the days of the disastrous affair, he was a member of parliament and a well-known figure in Dunedin.

The story moves between Dougie and Constance’s point of view, and as the narrative moves inevitably to its terrible ending, the reader can’t help feel sympathy for the star-crossed lovers. I particularly enjoyed this book as its set really close to me, so I know the locations well.

Marshall’s done a lovely job of interweaving local lore with historical fact, but The Larnachs never slips into drily-told history.

I thoroughly recommend this book, partly because of the historical context, but also because it poses a central question: what to do when you fall in love with someone totally off-limits? Can love really conquer all?

Local Setting

Larnach’s Castle still stands today. Want to see the castle Larnach built?

Love Books? Try a Literary Tour in Dunedin, a City of Literature

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Literary Tours

Love travel and books? Here’s a chance to combine your passions – take a Literary Tour!

Let me introduce Beverly Martens. Beverly is a communications expert who moved to Dunedin several years ago. A lover of books and writing, last year Beverly decided to set up a small business, taking visitors to Dunedin on tours of our vibrant literary scene.

Beverly’s story is an interesting insight into the varied places writing can take you, and her tours offer visitors a chance to explore a city famed for its literary history – away from the normal tourist trails.

Beverley Marten of Dunedin Walking Tours
Beverly Martens

I’ve asked Beverly to tell her story in her own words. Here it is below:

Literary Walking Tours, Dunedin

Hi, I’m Beverly Martens, owner/guide of Literary Walking Tours in Dunedin. 

I was looking for fulfilling part-time work, but as I ‘d been focussed on writing these past few years, my previous business contacts had gone stale, and I was over qualified for many of the part-time jobs available.

However, with Dunedin now an official UNESCO City of Literature, I saw a unique opportunity to merge my new literary life with  my previous marketing and pr skills and start this new small business.

Also,  I’d had recent experience running a monthly Wine Club,  so I knew how to host people and give them a great time!

– Why did you decide to base your tour here in Dunedin? Did you look at similar tours that are done elsewhere?

My tours would have no context if Dunedin wasn’t a UNESCO City of Literature (only one of twenty world-wide). Once we got that designation it kind of all made sense.

And yes, I researched walking tours in other cities, including Paris and Dublin etc, but I doubt I’m ever going to dress up in period costume and start spouting Shakespeare.  What I offer is in-depth knowledge about Dunedin’s writing scene from both a historical and current perspective.

Old-Fashioned Romance

– Where do you go on your tour? What do people like to see?

I offer two separate walks:  one through the historic part of the University of Otago campus, and a shorter (1½ hour walk) around the centre of Dunedin that showcases both some historic buildings and the key figures that have shaped  Dunedin as a place where writers live thrive.

Guests enjoy both the historic buildings and the anecdotes I tell.

– What is it about the writers you feature on your tour that people love hearing about?

The human-ness of our key NZ literary figures. Being a full-time writer has never been an easy choice for anyone, and those choices have consequences (mostly good) that still resonate in the city today.

– What do people most say they enjoy?

‘Dunedinites’  love being a tourist in their own city; discovering out-of-the-way places that they didn’t even know existed!

Overseas visitors are charmed by our historical buildings, and how I weave through the continuing influence of some of the province’s founders into the opportunities (such as writing fellowships and writing competitions) available to writers living here now. Also, some of the  quirky projects Dunedin has are interesting. For example, our ‘mini libraries’ Lilliput Libraries, poems on the back of our parking meter tickets, and so on.

– Where can people find you?

My website is  www.literarytours.nz  or you can email me at: info@literarytours.nz

3 Intriguing Books That Made Great Holiday Reading

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What to Read on Holiday?

fairytale book
Image source

The big problem with holidays is: what to read? You need something chunky enough to occupy the airport layover but with sufficient pacing to hold keep your attention at a thousand feet. I got lucky on a recent trip and found three great books that did both.

Here they are, in order of reading (I’ve included links to the Amazon pages of these books, in case you want to try an extract for yourself).

  1. A City of Mirrors
  2. The Sudden Appearance of Hope
  3. The Bridge to Lucy Dunn

About My Holiday:

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll see I’ve just been to Australia. The trip was a fascinating mix of bizarre and sublime – from an Elvis competition to humpback whales! (I’ll probably blog later on this unlikely combination.)

Each of these books definitely added to my holiday experience, partly because of the themes they tackled, but also because when you have a good book, how can you be bored?

A City of Mirrors

Holiday reading - Mirrors

A City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

This is the third and final novel in The Passage Series (The Passage, The Twelve  ).

The Passage Series is set in a dystopian future, where a people have been transformed into bat-like vampires; only a few true humans remain.

So far so tropish.

But what sets The Passage apart from others in the genre is the sheer quality of Cronin’s writing, his fascinating characters and the underlying tone of the desparation. The books are long, but they’re very digestable.

A City of Mirrors is, I think, the best in the trilogy. Mirrors follows Amy, the girl from nowhere and we learn about her ability to move through time. There’s more of Alicia too, which I always like (being partial to sword-carrying red-haired heroines!) but mostly the story follows Peter Jaxom and Sara Mitchell.

Peter and Sara believe that the virals have been vanquished. But they forgot about Zero, the oldest and the worst of the Twelve, and Zero never went away – he’s just been waiting.

What’s to like: as with the other books in the series, the writing is very good; at times, it’s brilliant. The story is compelling, the characters interesting and there’s enough tension to keep you reading.

What’s annoying: There’s the largest info-dump in the world, where Zero reveals his life history in one enormously long sequence. Goes on for aaages, and most of it you can pretty much skim. Some characters could be interesting but we never really know them (like Pim, who’s deaf and dumb). Also, the print version is enormous – just on 600 pages. Stupidly, I brought the print version and ended up carrying a brick around in my suitcase. If you’re getting it for a holiday read, definitely get the e-version!

Best quote:
‘The world was real and you were in it, a brief part but still a part, and if you were lucky, and maybe even if you weren’t, the things you’d done for love would be remembered.’

The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Holiday Reading - Hope

The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

I love Claire North’s writing – her other books Touch and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August were enthralling, intriguing sci-fi/fantasy mixed with thriller action. Technically (speaking as a writer here) this is hard to achieve – when writing sci-fi you need to explain the world, but a thriller has to be fast-paced to be, well, thrilling. North manages this difficult challenge brilliantly.

You can read more about Touch and Harry August in an earlier blog post here.

Like Touch and Harry August, The Sudden Appearance of Hope features a protagonist with an unusual ability: Hope Arden is totally forgettable. No one remembers her, not her parents, her friends, or her lovers. She’s therefore an extremely successful thief. And borderline suicidal. Enter Perfection, an app promising users a perfect life, a terrorist named Byron and suddenly Hope becomes the key to a new, extremely valuable technology.

Like Mirrors, Hope is a long book, so if you’re reading it on holiday, definitely get the e-version.

What’s to like: Like North’s other works, the pacing is superb. All three of us – husband and teenage son – raced through this book! The ideas unpacked by the story are truly compelling: What is perfection? How much does software understand? What are we, if no-one remembers us? What is memory?

What’s annoying: There are a lot of bullet points and lists. Sometimes this is interesting, sometimes not so much. Hope describes the technology developed by Perfection as a threat to the species – but I never understood how. And finally, the way Hope jets around the world merrily on stolen passports really annoyed me.

It’s not the passports that strain belief (although I don’t think they’re quite as easy to steal as North makes out, but hey, it’s fiction) but the absence of jet lag. I’ve done enough long haul flights to know how crippled you feel on arrival.

Oh yes, and the part where Hope does her own physiotherapy. That whole chapter (I’m a physiotherapist by training) was really a WTF read. Totally unbelievable. My son goes ‘oh mum, it was fine’! So if you’re a physio, just skip that chapter.

Best quote:

“Truth: sometimes a murderer cannot be found. Truth: sometimes your children are taken and you are left behind. Truth: poverty is a prison. Truth: disease and age come to us all.”

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

Holiday Reading - Lucy Dunne

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne by Exurb1a

My son introduced me to this work. Exurb1a is a youtuber (I’ve not watched his videos but I sure want to now).

The Bridge to Lucy Dunne is a short-story collection of fantasy and speculative sci-fi. They’re easy to read and very well-written. Some are very short, others are in multiparts. Some are written like an interview transcript, others as diaries,  others as a fable.

Like The Sudden Disappearance of Hope, the stories in Lucy Dunne discuss deep issues: who are we, why are we here, what is God, what is time? But also they’re entertaining and because they’re all so different you can’t really predict what’s coming next.

I think books like The Bridge to Lucy Dunne represent an exciting new wave of platform agnostic narratives: youtube, book, gaming.

What’s to like: The shortness of the stories! Seriously, after reading two massive books it was a relief to dive into a quick read. I enjoyed the diversity of the story structures. But mostly, I enjoyed the ideas behind the stories. My favourite was VASE, about a device that removes your awareness of thought. Without conscious thought, what are we? No depression, but no rapture. And yet, does this make us more or less human?

(A digression: I was listening to this really surreal interview with Thomas Thwaites (GoatMan: How I took a Holiday from Being Human) – some concepts in VASE are real.

Listen to the interview here: Acting the Goat )

What’s annoying: Some of the stories (The Rite, The Flowers) were a little predictable. And some of the more complex issues, like VASE, might be more suited to a deeper structure, like a novella.

Best Quote:
“When cameras were invented plenty of people thought they stole the soul of anyone they took a picture of. There’s always a brief period of hysteria when a new technology comes around.”

Over to you.

Feel free to share. Any book discoveries you’d recommend? What holiday reads have you found?

5 Books That Were Better as the Movie

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Can a Movie be Better Than the Book?

Usually there’s no contest between the book and the movie, but this list suggests that sometimes, just sometimes, the movie might actually be better…

In order of Movie Greatness, here’s my list of 5 movies that were better than the book. Yes, really. Some are new, some are classics and some may surprise you.

Sit back, grab some popcorn and enjoy!

5 Books and 5 Great Movies

5. The Birds

The Birds
While the basis of this short story by du Maurier was similar to the book – birds start attacking humans –  unlike the movie, the book is set in the UK and (spoiler alert!) does not end happily. It’s a long short story and not particularly scary, or (I think) that riveting, unlike some of her other works, which really are page-turners.

The movie is way better – even today, when it seems pretty dated, especially this obvious green screen – because Hitchcock develops the tension amazingly effectively, much more so than du Maurier. After reading The Birds, I wondered why he decided to even use it for the movie, although I’m glad he did.

 

4. Howard’s End

Howard's End
The movie was an Academy Award-winning Merchant Ivory production, starring Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham-Carter. Like its more famous cousin, A Room with A View, Howard’s End is an adaptation of an EM Forster novel, and deals with class and relationships in Edwardian England. Personally, I find this production not as amazing as Room (it doesn’t have the incredible music score) but the great actors alone make it worth watching.

Unfortunately, the book is not as entertaining as the movie. It grinds on and on and is, frankly, dull. (Unlike A Room With a View, which is just as much fun as the movie). And when reading the book you can’t even become distracted by the gorgeous costumes.

 

3. The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games
I loved the book; really fast-paced, page-turning with epic battle scenes. However…I liked the movie more. Why? Because of the styling. The gorgeous sets of the Capitol, the Louis XIV vibe to the costumes, the colours – so cool. Plus, the movie has Jennifer Lawrence!

2. A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly, like Minority Report and Blade Runner, is based on stories by Philip K Dick. Unlike the other movies, Scanner sticks fairly closely to the book’s narrative about a totalitarian police state and an undercover cop. Scanner is a grim read, full psychosis, drug dealing and a bleak future-view. The book is slow going in places and, although it’s got some interesting elements – like the main character’s coat, made up of images of people – I didn’t find it the easiest read.

The movie isn’t the easiest to watch, either, and it does help if you’ve read the book. But there are three things the movie has that the book doesn’t. These are: Keanu Reeves; a tighter script; and AMAZING rendering. If you’re into weird-but-interesting movie productions, A Scanner Darkly is a must-watch.

1. Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a great read; the story of Sophie Hatter and Howl, the wizard without a heart. BUT, although the book is good, the movie by Hayao Miyasaki is gorgeous! The beautiful anime alone makes it worth watching, but Billy Crystal as Calcifer the Fire Demon is fantastic. (Apparently Diana Wynne Jones wasn’t overly impressed by the movie, but I think she was way too picky. If someone wanted to set one of my books into a landscape as wonderful as this film, I’d be delighted!)

Bonus Runner-Up:

Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile
If you like period dramas and murder mysteries, this is definitely a must-see. The book, by Agatha Christie, is a good read. Christie’s husband was an Egyptologist, and she spent a great deal of time on and about the Nile, so who better to write about a group of affluent tourists on a Nile river boat? Confusion abounds when one is murdered. Fortunately, the world-famous detective, Hercule Poirot is among the guests.

I’m not entirely sure this movie is better than the book (which is why it’s a runner-up). But it has four things that just might make it superior:

  1. The sets – the movie was shot on location in Egyptian, so the scenes in the ancient temples feels just wonderful.
  2. The cast is an all-star roundup of the seventies movie industry: Peter Ustinov as Poirot, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, Maggie Smith.
  3. The costumes – they won an Oscar.
  4. The movie is way less racist than the book.

This trailer is so dated its retro! Don’t you just love the music…

Note: if you enjoyed A Death on the Nile, try Murder on the Orient Express.

Conclusion

Usually there’s no contest between the book and the movie, but this list suggests that sometimes it’s possible to expand on a good story, and make it even better.

5 Books to love forever

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5 Books I’ve Loved —

fairytale book
Image source

Falling in love with a book feels both wonderful and awful. Wonderful, because for a moment you’ve totally forgotten everything else. You’re lost in an imaginary world, where only the characters and their struggles exist. But it’s awful too, because a book always ends. At some point, you’ll have to close the pages and step away.

Sometimes it feels as though a book has ripped your heart out – which is totally crazy, because it’s only words on a page, right?

Here’s my top 5 books of the last 12 months.

I fell deeply in love with each of these books. Each felt different to anything else I’d read before; each was fast-paced and exciting, and dragged me into a different world. Some are part of a series and some are standalone. If you do read any of these I can promise: you will not be bored.

  1. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
  2. Touch – Claire North
  3. Station Eleven – Hilary St John Mandel
  4. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
  5. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stievfater (The Raven Cycle, #2)

Why I Fell in Love: Book Reviews

Touch

Touch, by Claire North

Everyone raves about Gone Girl, and it’s a wonderful book; exciting and suspenseful (plus, it made a great movie). But if you like suspense and seat-of-your pants reading, you must read Claire North.

Claire North is a pseudonym of Catherine Webb, a British writer who wrote her first book at the age of just fourteen. Yes, you read that correctly.

Touch is about Kepler, a being who can slide inside other people’s bodies, just by touching them. Kepler has no sex; he/she is the person he inhabits. He’s also a broker, finding bodies for other beings like him. But someone, or something, is after him, and now he’s on the run. In Touch, Kepler moves from body to body, on a quest to find a nightmare. Do you suddenly wake up, with no recollection of where you’ve been, or how you’ve got there? Have you been losing time? Perhaps Kepler’s been using you.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

The first 15 lives of Harry August by Claire North

Harry August lives his life over and over again. Each time he dies he finds himself reborn in a restroom in 1919. He is an Ouroboran, destined to repeat his life. He is not alone; there’s a club of members who pass messages throughout time, from one Ouroboran to another. Don’t let the sci-fi premise put you off, because at its heart, Harry August is both a thriller and an intriguing tale about one man’s struggle with loneliness.

Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Hilary St John Mandel

Hilary St John Mandel is a Canadian writer; this is her fourth novel. It’s a powerhouse of a story, and has one of the most complex narratives I’ve  read. The story weaves back in forward through time, beginning with the death of Arthur Leander in London. Leander, playing the role of Lear, collapses on stage of a heart attack, just before the beginning of a pandemic that spreads rapidly through the world, annihilating civilisation and grounding planes. Station Eleven moves through multiple points of view: Arthur, his ex-wife, a child actor, an audience paramedic. Each character has their own story to tell. The pace is extraordinary; for such a complex novel, it’s never boring, and at sometimes so mind-blowing I couldn’t bear to put it down. This was my must-read novel of 2015, and I’ve already read it again since.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Jacob  always thought his grandfather couldn’t distinguish truth from fiction; his tales of growing up in an orphanage filled with children of peculiar gifts seemed a fantasy to obscure the truth – that his family was murdered by the Nazis in WW2. But when his grandfather is murdered, Jacob realizes that perhaps the truth is stranger than he’d thought. I’m in awe of this book. Not only because of its wonderful story, but because of the craft behind it. Riggs does a wonderful job of scenes with multiple characters (it’s really hard to do this and not get the reader confused) and his prose is both economical and powerful, a trait only the best writers display. Miss Peregrine is illustrated by the most awesomely bizarre photos. It was these photos that were the genesis of the story, and its worth getting the hard copy of the book rather than a download, simply because of these images.

Miss Peregrine’s being made into a movie, due for release shortly, and since I read this book there have been two more books in the series published. Miss Peregrine’s is one of those stories that’s so perfect in itself that it makes me reluctant to read the rest of the series, in case it can’t live up to the promise of the first!

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stievfater (The Raven Cycle)

The Dream Thieves

Oh my god, this series is fantastic! (see my earlier blog post on this book). The Dream Thieves is Book #2 in the Raven Cycle and I’ve listed The Dream Thieves here – rather than the other books in the Cycle – because The Dream Thieves a) was the first book I read in the Cycle and b) it totally blew me away.

Compared to the other 4 books listed in this post, The Dream Thieves isn’t that complex. Set in Aglionby Academy, it tells the story of the extraordinary Ronan, a psychic called Blue and their mad friends. The Dream Thieves contains a sometimes bizarre, always exciting mix of drag racing, ghosts and dead Welsh kings. If you enjoy fantasy, adventure and historical references this is a must-read.

Confession time: I haven’t read the last book in The Raven Cycle yet! Like Miss Peregrine I’m almost scared to, because the rest of the series was just so great that I don’t want to be disappointed at the end.

In Conclusion

I read a lot of books. Some of them I put on my shelf at Goodreads.com , although recently I’ve been slack and haven’t been as religious at filing them as I should. (I might update it shortly, so keep an eye out). But even though I read a LOT, I rarely fall in love.