More Than This

I was very, very excited when a proof of the new novel by Patrick Ness fell into my lap. I had seen pictures of it on Twitter and the book looks stunning, a black and white cross hatched book with a cut out on the front resembling a door where it is bright yellow and the title sits. My proof was just bright yellow and it looked striking and I wanted to dive right in and read it.

It came with a letter, where Ness says how writing about waking up abandoned had intrigued him for a while now. I rather got the impression that this book is rather personal,which makes me feel slightly bad for what I am about to say.

Anyway I started it and it was interesting, for about a couple of dozen pages. Then it got hard. Hard to read; hard to maintain interest; hard to stay with; just hard. The first part of the book deals with Seth who dies in the prologue. He drowns. He's of British origin but moved with his family to the Pacific Northwest. I was initially interested into how or why he drowned, but the book cuts away to how he is now, after he died and he's in an abandoned world which resembles his former home in the UK.
I'm not sure if it was this bleakness or the fact that it was the constant switching from Seth's life before he drowned to his "life" after he died, but it shames me to say that I lost interest. I found that I just didn't really care. I think the point was to be intrigued, alas I wasn't. Normally I fear that I would have given up at this point, but I really wanted to like this book; I wanted to carry on, even though I was struggling with it. Anyhow I battled on past part one and into part two, By now I took the hard decision to scan read. This was a hard decision because I was missing out on the prose which is so worth reading as it was quite beautifully written, but I just wasn't making any headway with the book. I'm not proud and willingly admit that beautifully written books are rather wasted on me. By scan reading I did miss out, but as I am very much a plot driven reader, I found the book far easier to engage with. 
I'm not going to say much else about the plot, except that it turns into more of a dystopian thriller in the middle and looks at some rather deep concepts. Seth's own story is in the end rather heartbreaking, and beautifully evoked. For me however it was just a little too long. In time I was intrigued with Seth and his story and I blame myself for not giving it my all.
In conclusion I would say More Than This is a book you really need to invest in if you are to read it; you really have to give it your all and if you do that I think that you will be richly rewarded. I fear that it is my own fault as a reader that I just didn't give enough to the book to get everything back. 

Claude in the Country

I'm not sure I've thoroughly communicated my deep love of the Claude books by Alex T. Smith. I simply adore them. They just tick so many boxes as they are ideal for the job that they do. They are funny, they have enough reading in them to satisfy confident readers, there is enough adult content to keep adults entertained without them getting bored through a staid story.
All the Claude books start in the same way be introducing Claude, Sir Bobblysock and Mr and Mrs Shinyshoes. As Claude In The Country starts our two chums are stuck inside because it had rained all day the day before. Sir Bobblysock has been writing his life story. I'm not convinced I can do this image justice, but he is sat at a typewriter wearing glasses on a chain. Just to remind you Sir Bobblysock is a sock. I regard this as complete and utter genius.
Our daring duo make it to the country where they meet a rather lovely farmer called Mrs Cowpat. Here Claude does all sorts of tasks for Mrs Cowpat. I particularly like the part where Claude goes horse riding but Sir Bobblysock decides to sit down and eat a chocolate eclair instead.
It is the day of the country fair and Claude has to wash Mrs Cowpat's pigs so that they are ready they go to the country fair. The pictures of the prizewinning vegetables and their winners are worth the price of the book alone. This is the sort of page that is innocent to children and rather amusing to adults. It's cheeky but rather fun.
The remainder of the story concerns a prize bull and a judge. Will Claude manage to be a hero again? Well I think that's a given, but they way it happens is so utterly charming and filled with fun that it really doesn't matter. Claude is a wonderful creation that I really can't recommend highly enough.

His Dark Materials

I fear that this post will say far more about me than it does about the books themselves and I know that I will get into a rather large heap of trouble from a certain friend if she ever reads this post. She'll know who she is, so if you are reading this, stop now! I'd also advise you to stop if you liked this trilogy.
It was over ten years ago when I first became aware of His Dark Materials. It was during the BBC's Big Read of the nation's 100 favourite books. It finished third which is a very impressive feat, only beaten by two books I feel very differently about; Lord of the Rings, which I can't begin to tell you how much I loathe, and Pride and Prejudice, which might, in my opinion, be just about the perfect book. I did little with this information except file it away until I was in a position to read it, shortly after all the hoo-har had died down. So shortly after I commenced my bookselling career, 10 years and counting, it was one of the first books I borrowed off the shelf and started to read.
It started off very well. I was entranced by the thought of Lyra hiding in the cupboard with her daemon as it shifted it's form next to her. I was on edge wondering if she would be caught. Then as the slide show began the magic word was uttered. Dust. At this point I lost all interest in everything that had gone before and put the book down in disgust.
About a year later I felt a little ashamed of myself so I tried it again with exactly the same result. I should point out that I do have form with this. I tried to read The Hobbit when I was ten or thereabouts and I never made it past the first sentence, there were just too many problems in those nine words for me. I still haven't got past the first sentence of The Hobbit to this day.
Anyway to cut a long story short I decided to read Northern Lights again before the film of the Golden Compass came out (I haven't seen the film and really don't want to). I finished it this time and got much further. It's over six years ago and since I have no intention of reading them again, some of my memories may be a little hazy, but instead of a review, here are a few of the thoughts I have marshalled together.
Lyra is one of the most annoying children in literature. She's a spoilt little brat who I couldn't stand and even though she is the main protagonist of the Northern Lights I couldn't wait for the story to move on so she wasn't in it. Mrs Coulter was about as threatening as a blancmange. Her daemon was slightly more so, but only slightly. I did however like the Polar Bears, and normally I dislike Polar Bears. The initial meeting was quite good and the battle was very scary and intense, That was the highpoint of the book. Everything else was just a little Meh. I just didn't get the supposed big themes. They were obviously just too subtle for me, or I was disliking the book so much that I was just in a rush to get to the end and couldn't be bothered to look deeper at the book and what it was trying to say.
I then did try to read the Subtle Knife. I can remember even less about this book than I can the first. I do sort of remember Will, a new character in this volume, used his knife to open a door to a new world where I think there were no children. That sounded rather blissful.
That's it for the second instalment. It seriously made that much impact on me. I did finish it though, even though I was getting steadily more vexed with it, but I made it and did get the the Amber Spyglass.
I was determined to read the whole lot. However, I was reading The Amber Spyglass in the bath,a pleasant image there for you, and this woman, who I can't remember who she was or where she came from, somehow travelled to a world where she met some creatures had a wheel for legs. This was the point that I threw the book across the room, where it hit the radiator and lay there for at least the next month. I was just too angry to even touch it.
So I never finished His Dark Materials. I don't feel ashamed to say that though I probably should. It's just not a series that is for me. It made me so angry when I read it that I couldn't look at the books without wanting to hide them away so I, or anyone else couldn't see them. I'm cross with myself as much as anything, but I maintain that the books are not as good as everyone says that they are.
It's been a long time since I read them and my hatred for them has slightly subsided over that time to a point where I am more indifferent about them. If you've enjoyed them I'm very happy for you. Alas, my abiding memory of His Dark Materials is one of frustration and anger.
Oddly I do still have my copies somewhere. I just don't know why.

Catch That Rat

I don't like saying bad things about picture books. I really don't. Picture books should be joyful things that entrance children and make them want to love books for the rest of their lives. There a many examples I could give of this, anything by the Ahlberg's or the wonderful Judith Kerr, Mick Inkpen and the timeless Eric Carle to name just four, I could easily go on and on and on.
Caryl Hart has written many children's books. I really liked one recent one, The Princess and the Peas, but I want to talk about her latest book, Catch That Rat.
It is a rhyming book a little bit similar to the Grande Dame of rhyming Children's books Julia Donaldson. It opens with a small white rat, dressed in rags running over a little girl's toes. After a little tippety tappety rhyming text the first spread ends with the words "Catch That Rat!" This refrain is used over the next half dozen pages at the end of the rhymes. It's nice for children to join in with. I can imagine a lot of children I know shouting this really rather too loudly. The little girl chases the rat through the house joined by her grandma then the postman and a builder and finally they end up in space where an alien points out the main problem of the entire book. The rat is scared. It is being chased for no reason whatsoever. This poor little rat has been chased over the course of the book for pretty much nothing. Which is why I don't like this book. It's a little thing, but it annoyed me a lot.

Siege and Storm

This is the second instalment of the Grisha trilogy which started really promisingly with Shadow and Bone which I blogged about a few days ago. Well, I've now finished the second volume and I eagerly await the third.
I never like saying too much about books which are the second in a series. When reviewing books I try to give an introduction to the book that makes a potential reader whetted and with enough information to make the book sound interesting but to not give any information away. With this book, I'll undoubtedly give spoilers for Shadow and Bone, so I'm going to say very little about the actual plot.
What I will say about Siege and Storm is that for a second book it is very, very good. Middle books of trilogies are hard. The first book has the glamour; It sets the scene, it delivers the characters, it entices you in. The third book has the climax, the grand finale, which (if the series is any good at all) should be satisfying and leave you feeling rather contented (not like Breaking Dawn. Yes, I know Twilight isn't a trilogy,  but this is just a note that the last book was dire and left me feeling angry that I'd bothered reading the saga to begin with.). The middle book has to make the leap between enhancing the first book and setting up the third. I thought Siege and Storm did that extremely well indeed.
There are some thrilling scenes of fights and daring escapes. The political aspect of the first book is developed further and the whole thing rattles along at a cracking pace. Even when the action stops there is enough going on to keep you entertained. Add to this the new characters that are introduced and the old ones which are enhanced and you've got a super read here.
I said in the post about Shadow and Bone that the book is similar to Twilight, and it's something I would maintain here. I think that if you enjoyed Twilight you would enjoy this, however I think the Grisha trilogy is far better then Twilight, which had four books with very little happening. There is action in wheelbarrow laods here, but sadly because it's not about Vampires I don't think it will have the same mass market appeal.
Perhaps oddly I also think that even if you loathed Twilight, then you would love this series. Given the current trend for dystopian novels and real life teen stories, this series really does stand out as an excellent example of what can be achieved in teen fantasy.
Just a note about the jacket. The turquoise colour with red onion domes is far more visually appealing than the grey, but after a conversation today when the phrase "onion dome" went straight over someone's head, I sadly don't think that they scream out to be picked up. They are books that you really have to sell to people. I'll do my best!
One final point, the books are labelled as teen, as indeed they are, however I think that they are suitable for quite young teenagers. there's a little bit of violence in there, but nothing worse than a Bond film and the romance isn't graphic in any way.
In summary a lovely second book with a thrilling and exciting end that sets up a finale wonderfully.

Lion vs Rabbit

Picture books are one of my favourite format of books. Good ones are able to move me, sometimes far more than a big chunky adult book that is supposed to be a tear jerker Sometimes I find then a little too calculated. I love how Picture Books have a kind of innocence that hangs over them.
I also love how authors are able to draw parallels, sometimes obscure ones between what is going on in the picture book and with real life. This book by Alex Latimer isn't obscure at all but does deal with a situation that many children, unfortunately will face.
Lion is a bully. A big, nasty bully. He does all sorts of mean things. He gives Buffalo a wedgie; he sticks a sign on Zebra, that says "I am a horse". He is mean and needs teaching a lesson.
Sadly it appears that there is no animal in Africa capable of teaching him this lesson. so the animals put out an  online advert for the strongest animals in the world to come and sort him out.
Moose comes from America, and challenges Lion to a fencing bout(!). Moose loses, Lion is triumphant. Bear comes from Russia, and Lion beats him, and Tiger comes from India, and Lion trounces him. The animals are distraught.
Then, from Europe,  Rabbit turns up. He's small and Lion is almost kind. He lets Rabbit choose the challenges that they will undergo. Rabbit is smart. The rabbit chooses a marshmallow eating contest. Who wouldn't? Rabbit wins. So follows a series of challenges where Lion and Rabbit go head to head. Lion knows he can beat the rabbit, but Rabbit has other ideas.
This book is one of my favourite picture books this year. It has a lovely moral, that even if you are stronger than everyone else, you don't flaunt it, you respect others and you do not bully other people. Shamefully I didn't get the plot twist until right at the very end. My excuse is that I was enjoying the book so much.
Lion vs Rabbit is a wonderful book, it is very funny and the images are rather wonderful, the look on Lion's face when Rabbit challenges him to an art contest is superb. It's the little touches too that abound in the book that really make it an absolute riot. It's a lovely addition to a young child's library.
Please buy it, read it and love it!

Peep Inside The Zoo

This is such a lovely, lovely book. It's essentially a very simple board book. What elevates it into a lovely book is the beautiful illustrations, the clever flaps and the die cutting which show tantalising hints of the next spread.
We are taken through a trip through the zoo. What I really liked was the text, which is informative and more of a reference book than a story, informing for example, how the penguins use their flippers to fly under water. My favourite spreads are the butterfly house where you open a butterflies wings to reveal a brilliant cobalt blue butterfly, and the gorilla house where you open the mother gorilla's arms to reveal her baby.
The final pages are lovely too, as they show the zoo at night and the flap where the keeper's flashlight illuminates the tiger is just lovely.
Beautifully illustrated by Simona Dimitri, this is a wonderful book to share.

The Brilliant World Of Tom Gates

This is one of the books, or series of books that causes most disagreements between children and adults in the shop. In case you haven't seen a Tom Gates book, they are bright and gaudy and rather eyecatching. Written by L. (Liz , but initialised so that boys won't realise a GIRL has written the book) Pichon, they are based around the notebook of the eponymous hero Tom Gates. As I have just stated, they are written in notebook form and are illustrated in the form of doodles around the pages, sometimes within sentences to draw attention to sweets or pop groups or other things that catch Tom's eye. The font used is unusual too and it looks like rather scruffy un-joined handwriting. which is part of the appeal of the book.
Tom is a normal boy, he has an older sister he likes to dislike, a best friend, a classroom enemy and a girl he is trying to impress. Much of this first book is devoted to his favourite band Dude3 and his own band Dog Zombies. It's nice stuff. I'm not convinced that the stories are great, but I'm 25 years past the target age, so I'm quite happy to go with the popularity of the books. Children from 8 and 9 upwards love them so much that they have won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and the Blue Peter book award. High praise indeed.
The point of consternation comes with the style of the books, the hand written font style is very spaced out and the illustrations appear quite basic. This is what adults see and they have complained to me that there is no reading in there.
Here I have a difficult line to tread; there is actually a fair bit of reading to be done in these books, not as much as in a "traditional" style book, but that is the point of the whole Tom Gates series, they are different. They appeal to children because they are not a "traditional" book. If you stripped out the images and printed the font in Times New Roman, then adults would be rather happy, but the charm of the books would be lost completely, and I suspect that they would not be as widely read. They also appeal to children as the stories are normal; there's no magic, little adventure, nothing set in the past or the future, in space or within a broken family, it's a story about a boy who goes to school and his home life. Children can relate to these stories.
I had one rather upset adult thrust a book upon me saying "look at it", meaning it looked shabby and with little content, I head another saying "You aren't reading that, it looks dreadful" both opinions based on the style of the books rather than the substance.
I have a very simple answer to these comments. The child is wanting to read. Celebrate that fact; your child is wanting to read a book. They are not wanting to idle away hours on a games console, or watch mindless cartoons, or do whatever else your average 10 year old does these days, but your child is wanting to read a book. That itself is a marvellous thing. Read it with them, find out why you kid likes it. Bribe them, tell them "you can read this book, if afterwards you read something I think you should read", something classic, something you approve of, but don't turn them off reading. Let them read something they will enjoy, let them discover that reading IS fun, because let's face it, it is. To stop a child reading something they want to read and forcing them to read something they won't like, is the quickest way to them losing an interest in reading full stop.
So if your child wants to read The Brilliant World Of Tom Gates, please let them.

Shadow and Bone

I was lucky enough to recieve a proof of this book, which I am ashamed to say lay on my "to read" pile for rather too long. The first two books in the trilogy are now available so I'm a little bit of a latecomer to the Grisha trilogy, but I did get there in the end, and I'm very glad I did.
This was a difficult book to review, simply because every time I tried to review it I ended up retelling the story. I find that a lot with fantasy books: I feel that I have to try to explain everything about the fantasy land. I'm going to try and not do that now.

I'll say is that it's a fantasy set in Ravka, based on 18th century imperial Russia and it's an excellent setting; unusual and refreshingly different from the usual medieval settings that fantasy authors usually think they have to use. Our narrator is Alina, an orphan, who it is discovered is a Grisha; a person with magical power. Alina's powers are unique and potentially very powerful. She is a Sun Summoner and has the potential to banish The Fold, a terrifying area of darkness that splits the country of Ravka in two and is perilous to cross.

It wouldn't be a teen title without a heavy dose of romance and Alina has two very different suitors. The first is Mal, her childhood companion, who is a tracker in the army. The second is the Darkling, the leader and most powerful of the Grisha. He's the character who sweeps in charismatically and departs almost as quickly, making the female Grisha, Alina included, swoon in his wake. However he has ulterior motives and Alina soon discovers his true intent.

Shadow And Bone is a quite superb book. It's the sort of book that should have huge crossover appeal. Alina is an interesting narrator, she describes herself as far from beautiful and yet has a strength of character which makes her rather attractive. The Grisha are well created. Their different ranks and their political intrigue is well written: informative but unpatronising. 

The book has been likened to Potter, Game of Thrones, Twilight and the Hunger Games. I'm not sure I agree about the Potter reference, but I think if you've enjoyed Twilight and The Hunger Games, then this is well worth a read. I think that it is certainly superior to Twilight, but I sadly don't think that it will inspire the devotion that those books did. Shadow And Bone is pacey and clever and if you read it soon, you can feel pleasantly smug at having read it before the film is made, which is speculated to be coming within the next two years.

I think the only disappointing thing about the book is the jacket. I really like it, but It's grey and has what looks like a Russian Cathedral on the front. Though I rather appreciate an onion dome or three, I'm not sure that they have wide teen appeal. Don't let it put you off. This is a romantic and thrilling read and well worth investing in.

Wonder

If you haven't heard about Wonder yet, then I really think you should have. It's written as a 9-12 book but it has adult cross over appeal.
The story, by R. J. Palacio, is about August, know to his family as Auggie. He's a young boy aged ten who his parents have decided needs to go to school. Auggie however isn't that keen on the idea. This is mostly due to the tact that he has been born with a serious facial disfigurement. One of the opening lines in the book says "Whatever you are thinking, it's probably worse." You are immediately sympathetic to August and his situation. You then find out about his many operations and what August looks like and you just feel for this little boy .
Auggie is invited to school before the the term starts and there he meets a handful of his new classmates who are going to ease him into the school life. This meeting is a double edged sword as one of the students, Julian, is a bully. He thinks that because Auggie is different, he needs to be alienated. We don't like Julian. At all. However there is another boy in the group Jack Wills, who is one of the good guys.
What follows starts as the typical children in fifth grade, child overcoming the odds type of book. Or you think it is. After about a third of the book, told through Auggie's eyes, we change perspectives and we have new voices telling the story. One of the narrators is Olivia or Via , Auggie's older sister. Now this is where I thought the book really got interesting. We hear about how her life has been dominated by August, his surgeries, how their parents always had to put him first. She's not resentful and she loves her brother dearly, but as she's just moved into a new high school, this allows her to be herself and not to be know as Auggie's older sister for almost the first time in her life. We have other narrators too, Jack Wills for one and Via's new boyfriend for another. I found his section is particularly annoying because Palacio chose to use no punctuation or capital letters in this section. It's a minor niggle, but it did annoy me.
As we move through these narrators we follow Auggie's year in fifth grade. There is friendship and heartbreak (not in a romantic sense) and yet the year ultimately ends in triumph for August and his friends
Wonder is a superb book. I must say that I read it after people had raved about it and I'm ashamed to say I was slightly disappointed in it because I merely thought it was superb and not mind-blowingly outstanding.
It's a very mature book for the age range, but it is one that children should be encouraged to read. Through it's pages we learn that August is a bright and sensible and sensitive child, who likes the same things that other children enjoy, It's just that he looks different to them. The more people that are able to read this book the better. It's a little sentimental in places, but that's nothing to whine about really. Just read it and you'll feel a better person. I did.

Osbert The Avenger.

I must admit I'm in two minds about this book. I absolutely loved it, however I'm not convinced it's entirely suitable for the age range, which is suggested on the back of the book for ages 9+.
Let me elaborate. Schwartzgarten is a bleak place. It's obviously intended as an Edwardian period, German set, slightly steam-punky city state which can only exist in literature. It's one of those places where dark and devilish deeds abound. Born into this city is Osbert Brinkhoff, a child genius. He is granted a place at the Schwartzgarten Institute, a school where only the cleverest pupils are allowed entry; a place where the teachers view it as their job to break the will of the children they teach. With one notable exception, the teachers are all as evil as it is possible for a teacher to be.
After Osbert gains a perfect score in an exam but is denied the prize that should be his, he challenges the Head Teacher. This is a mistake as the Institute is the richest, most influential organisation in Schwartzgarten and they arrange for Osbert's father to lose his job in a bank and his family to lose their home.
Things unravel further for Osbert and after he sees his violin teacher hurt his beloved friend Isabella, he decides to take revenge. Thus starts a series of unplanned and planned murders as Osbert accidentally at first and then deliberately goes about bumping off five of his teachers. It's lovely stuff.
The first victim, the violin teacher, is tied to his bed with violin wire as a punishment. Osbert doesn't know that the teacher's housekeeper has gone visiting for ten days, and so when she returns... Well let's say the violin teacher won't teach the violin, or anything else again. Buoyed by his accidental success, he then plans the murders of the remaining 4 members of the teaching staff. I particularly enjoyed the death of the only female member of staff, who is lured to a disused strudel factory. There she is captured, suspended by a rope and forced to eat strudel until she breaks the rope and falls to her death. Marvellous. The ending is rather exciting too, but perhaps even darker than the rest of the book.
As I said, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was deliciously dark, frequently thrilling, funny where it needed to be and despite it's darkness the writing had a lightness of touch to it that made reading it a great experience. It also had some great characters. I really liked Osbert's Nanny, who it turns out isn't adverse to bumping off her husbands.
I know it is a fantasy, but I do wonder about a 12 year old serial killer with a fondness for wielding a meat cleaver as an anti hero in a 9-12 book, but there's something so enjoyable about it I can't help enthusing about it.

Next on my list...

One of the rather enjoyable problems of working with books and having conversations with customers on a daily basis is, that with one thing and another, you get a reading list twice as long as your arm, in addition to the stack of books you've already got stacked around the house because you've run out of space on your bookshelves.
Being a children's bookseller is rather nice though as you can read a picture book in 5 minutes and can often read a 9-12 book in an evening, provided the dog doesn't decide that she needs all your attention, which at the moment she does.
Teen books do take a little longer though. I've recently finished John Green's Paper Towns which I really enjoyed, alas, I put An Abundance of Katherine's down after a couple of chapters. I really need to get going with it again. I also really need to read The Fault In Our Stars, but after reading Jenny Downham's Before I Die and before that a book which was far better than Before I Die, (shamefully I can't remember the title, however it involved a teenage cancer patient going to New York, falling in love and eventually succumbing ), I really don't feel that I can read another book like that at the moment. I've also read Wonder, for which there will be a review forthcoming.
So what am I reading next? Well I'm part way through, after putting them off for a long time, The Brilliant World of Tom Gates and I really do need to read Patrick Ness' Knife of Never Letting Go and A Monster Calls. I'm also fortunate to have received two rather exciting proof copies, I'm not 100% convinced I'm allowed to say exactly what they are at the moment, so I'll have to keep those under my hat for the moment. I'm going to revisit some old favourites such as The Hundred and One Dalmatians I may attempt to review the Potters and of course the remaining Claude books. If I'm feeling very, very brave I'll post my opinions on His Dark Materials, but I may need some serious fortification before I attempt that!
I'm going to start and review some more classics, including a few titles which were huge a couple of years ago, sadly I no longer have the books, but I think I can remember enough about them to review them effectively enough.
That's my plan anyway. Of course there may be something that springs up that I just have to read... I'd be very surprised if there wasn't.

Alex

Even though this is ostensibly a place where I review Children's books, as an (almost) adult, I do occasionally need to read the odd adult book to keep me, if not sane, then at least to get the little grey cells working a tiny bit harder.
I love crime novels. At the age of around 11, I made the seamless move from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie, and to this day I find the intricacies of crime plotting fascinating.
To keep my crime reading up to date, I read Alex by Pierre Lemaitre. Given the author's name you'll be unsurprised to discover that it's a novel translated from French into English and, well, it's pretty darn good.
Alex is one of those novels where you really don't know where it's going until you've got there, and even then it will take you a little while to work out quite how you got there.
Our detective is 4'11'' tall Camille Verhoeven. He's an interesting character, with, unsurprisingly as this is a crime novel and he's a fictional detective, his own demons and quirks. His mother was an artist and he enjoys doodling (my interpretation) all the way through the investigation. He's also traumatised by a personal tragedy, of which I shall say no more, it's not a plot spoiler, but some things you need to discover for yourself.
Which leads us to the case. Alex, the titular character is roughly abducted at the beginning of the book. Her situation is pretty dire, and these opening 10 chapters are rather brutal, she's forced to strip and is suspended in a cage. Oh and there are rats.
I'm not going to say too much else, except there are some huge and extremely impressive plot twists; just when you see where you think the story is going, there's a sudden u-turn which makes you re-evaluate what you have just read and where your sympathies lay. If I say any more then I'll give something away and I really don't want to do that, as I don't think it fair if you are going to read it.
As I said earlier, it's fiction in translation; the translation isn't bad, but it needs a very little effort to keep with it. It's a tiny bit clunky in places, but nothing that is really flawed or that spoilt my enjoyment too much.
If I had to make criticisms, I think the main one would be that it was a little too reserved in places. It will undoubtedly be compared to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but Larsson's writing for me is a little more brutal than Lemaitre's so that even though the horrors they write of are equally as vile, Alex just seemed a little more reserved.
Anyhow it's a great book, I'd highly recommend it and though I'd not go quite as far as to say beg, steal or borrow a copy, I do say read it. I think many will really, really enjoy it. I'm looking forward to the next one which is praise enough.

Anna Dressed in Blood

I don't tend to read horror books. I remember being traumatised as a child by a book that belonged to my sister. It was a pulpy trashy horror sort of thing which had people running away from giant crabs (!) and then, slightly later, at what was my sister's 21st birthday and a combined Halloween party, the film Halloween was on and I saw a little too much of it. I still can't watch it to this day and that's nearly 30 years ago.

So I was feeling brave when I picked up Anna Dressed In Blood which is a teen horror title. Very brave indeed.

The story concerns Cas Lowood, who is a 16/17 year old ghost hunter.  Since the death of his father, he's travelled the world with his mother killing malevolent ghosts; the kind of ghosts that don't stay dead; the kind of ghosts who, upset about the way they died, kill the living. He's essentially following in his father's footsteps, as he was a ghost hunter before him, and to that end he uses his father's knife, a long bladed weapon known as the athame. He's quite successful. 

His latest case takes Cas, his mother and her cat to Canada, and to mysterious Anna Korlov, who haunts the house where she was killed. There's something different about Anna though, she's an incredibly strong ghost, and instead of dispatching her Cas and his new found friends try to discover the mystery behind Anna's death. There's a deeper story here too though and the mystery of just what did happen to Cas' dad becomes a thrilling and unexpected plot twist.

I really, really enjoyed this book. It's worth looking past the frankly appalling cover which appears to have been designed to alienate boys from reading it; the computer generated face of a girl in a red dress beckoning, could have been so much better. Even a knife would have been more appealing.
There are quite a few genuinely scary and chilling moments in this book. Cas convinces a group of his new classmates to take him to Anna's house and what happens to the school jock there is brutal, the ending scenes too are chilling in their unexpectedness. There's also a nice balance of the characters, they aren't all you'd expect them to be. Add to this a touch of romance, not too heavy, but if you like that sort of thing, well you could read more into it than I did! It just all adds up to an enjoyable read.

In summary a great summer teen chiller I would say from 14 upwards, there are enough scares to keep you on your toes and even a scaredy cat like me found it to be a real page turner.

Sticker Dolly Dressing. Edwardian Fashion and 1920's Fashion

And now for something completely different.

I mentioned in my opening salvo that one of the great things about Children's books is the breadth and range that is currently available. Sticker books of course are nothing new, but recently the dolly dressing books have really become very popular. They are aimed at girls, (though recently a whole slew of books on warriors and pirates and the like have emerged with boys as the target audience) and have topics such as sport girls, dancing girls and the like and you dress the doll. Nothing too complicated there, really nothing to review. I don't like or dislike the books, some are mildly educational, as in Costumes From Around The World, but on the whole they provide a couple of hours of fun for a bored tweenager.

However recently 2 books have been published which are a cut above the average sticker dolly dressing book. They are historical fashions and focus on the 1920's and (loosely) The Edwardians.

I think these are wonderful and completely fascinating. They take an aspect of the times, so the 1920's book has pages on amongst other things, flappers, the obsession with all things Ancient Egyptian, a look at Coco Chanel, the crazes for sport and college life, Oxford bags and all. Each of these themes has mostly a two page spread with people posing in their underwear, all of which is quite glamorous. The fun comes in stickering the fashions over the right model! Depending on how much a perfectionist the child is, it will keep them busy for seconds, or hopefully hours!

The Edwardian book covers the up the the end of the First World War, but also looks at the Belle Epoch, Art Nouveau, sporting life and ballroom dancing and the rebirth of the Empire Line dresses from a century early. They really do give a thorough look at the main fashion trends of the day.

The fashions are mostly female, but there's a look at men's clothing in passing. I would honestly say to anyone interested in fashion these are worth a look at. I bought the 20's book for a friend recently who loves it! If you are tempted by them then may I suggest to get 2 as you'll probably want to keep one intact as they are such lovely books, I know my friend did! As I say, these are much more interesting and educational than the regular sticker books and will last a lot longer.