I’ve been a fan James Maxey for a while now and this remained the only book that I hadn’t read, his earliest book. It does show that it’s his first published novel, or at least shows how much he has improved as a writer since.
It tells the story of man who wakes up one day to find he is sleeping in a house belonging to a strange couple, except he’s not really in a strange house, it is his house. At first he assumes he is dead and that all of this has gone on a month after but everything shows that it isn’t the case. It turns out that he never existed at all, due to a man scientist who has changed the past and, in so doing, altered the present.
The book proposes to be set within a reality version of our world if things like superheroes were real but in all honesty it is no different from any comic book that you can pick up, just in a novel form. I like my superheroes and Maxey comes up with some neat concepts and his heroes are suitably hero-like without going over-the-top or making his story too childlike–this is for adults–but I couldn’t help think that there was something missing, something tangible to make it special, that something that all his later books had that made them so memorable and stylish. This book was entertaining and I enjoyed it but just a few days after I had finished it I can’t even remember the main character’s name, the Nobody of the title. The characters just don’t have the quality that makes them stick in the mind that his other characters, like Bitterwood, had and I think it all has to do with Maxey being a young writer with much to learn, which he obviously did.
I enjoyed it and it’s certainly worth a read but if you’re new to Maxey you should probably pick the Bitterwood trilogy or his short story collection There is No Wheel.

I played and enjoyed the iOS game Infinity Blade of which this novella is a sequel/prequel and so I downloaded this out of interest as the price wasn’t too high, even if it was just a novella. The game didn’t have much of a story, or even a story at all other than an interesting fantasy setting with some science fiction overtones littered through it so I wasn’t expecting too much from this but I finished it pleasantly surprised.
If you don’t know, the game tells the story of a knight who turns up a castle, makes his way through various enemies until he meets the God King whom he fights to the death and his descendants do the same for, well, infinity. Dialogue is spartan and often little detailed but it proved interesting and it led myself to wonder what it was all about. This story by Brandon Sanderson, a writer I knew nothing about, fills all the story ideas in and really fleshes out the characters in a way that the game only hinted at. I was gripped constantly by the story and it really does become involving and emotional at times. It doesn’t explain too much, most likely leaving the rest up to the sequel to the game that comes out next month but I would recommend this, even if you have never played the iOS game.
I also noticed the writer having written a series of book known as Mistborn. I’ll be checking that out after reading this.

Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy has apparently many fans, especially in the USA and when amazon were selling the kindle versions in a sale I had to buy it. I bought all three books and unusually for something like that I didn’t even take a break after reading each one, I read them right through and enjoyed them immensely.
Starting with The Hunger Games, the first in the series, and the best of the lot. The story of a girl, Katniss Everdeen, who is chosen to be in the titular Hunger Games, a barbaric TV show where two people are chosen from various poor districts and made to fight to the death for the amusement of the Capital who are the rich part of society in what is left of an apparently mostly destroyed united states while the districts starve to death and produce everything for the fat Capital and are only given food if they put their children into the games.
The main crux of the story of Katniss and Peeta, from the same district and share a kind of love; in the case of Peeta this is true love that any young man would have for a young girl and in the case of Katniss it is just the love of friendship, at least until she decides that showing a fake relationship for the audience actually benefits them both and produces some kind of added likelihood that they may survive this together.
The Hunger Games is excellent and enthralling, enjoyable to the very end, and although this is advertised as a children’s book its very violent and adult in its themes.
The second book, Catching Fire, is not quite as good as the first but still very good, showing how Katniss and Peeta get on after the events of the first book and showing the full extent of the evil of the Capital, something only hinted at in the first book, and showing more of what the outside world is like. This book repeats much of what happened in the first book and ends up being just a little shallow for it. The uniqueness of the first is lost when the author decides to repeat it but it has a surprise ending that makes it worth the while.
The third book, Mockingjay, is probably the weakest of the bunch but don’t let that fool you into thinking its bad. It’s not. Yet it does have something missing, no real main topic or plot point to cling onto while showing you the actions of the Capital feels a little over the top and unrealistic. The character of President Snow in particular goes from being someone interesting and intelligent while being subtly menacing to just being a straight out bad guy and that is disappointing.
The last book is entertaining and as the last of an apparent trilogy its a suitable bookend, especially with the bleak and dark ending which is a very different thing to read.
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins is a great read for adults and teenagers alike just maybe read it first before you give it to any kids as the violence can get extreme.

I’ve been reading King since I was young and he’s always been my inspiration as a writer and how I see other books that use his style. He’s been accused of doing sloppy work for the last decade and there is some degree of truth to that but I’ve still enjoyed all the books that I’ve read in the last few years even if they don’t touch the quality of his older works.
Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of four novellas, not unlike his old collection Different Seasons and this doesn’t touch the quality of those older stories but, still, there is some good here.
The first story is of a farmer conniving with his son to dispose of his wife who is threatening to get rid of the farm that has been in his family for generations. He justifies her death by showing how abusive and hurtful she can be towards her son and husband although it still feels like a bit of an overreaction to the situation. There is also some supernatural aspects mixed in to this 1920s set story to make it a little more King-like.
The second story, Big Driver, is the story of a woman’s rape at the hands of a giant clichéd southern hick and her story of her quest for revenge. I was disappointed in this one, I was waiting for a twist that never came and I was frustrated with a main character that just refused to do the obvious and sensible thing by reporting her rape to the police and getting the guy arrested. Yes, that would have led to a less interesting story but it was frustrating to me how an apparently intelligent woman could be so stupid, even if she did really want the guy dead.
The third story is of a man, dying of cancer, who is given the opportunity to pass on his bad luck to someone he hates for nothing more than giving the seller a small percentage of his wages every year. Again, I was waiting for some kind of twist that never happens. It feels like a morality tale without the actual morals and this man just doesn’t feel any remorse for what he has passed on to the person that he hates. I was reading, waiting for the moral lesson to slap me in the face but it doesn’t come; in fact King seems to be justifying ruining a man and his family’s lives as long as you really do hate the guy. Odd but quite enjoyable.
The last story, A Good Marriage, is the story of a woman, happily married for nearly thirty years, who discovers one day that her mild-mannered, coin-collecting spouse is not who she thinks he is and may be a serial killer. I enjoyed this story, again there is no twist when I was expecting one but the ending feels satisfying and does make you wonder just what would you do if you found out the person you loved was a psycho and a murderer. That’s one tough question.
Full Dark, No stars is a fine and fairly entertaining book but it is a bit forgettable, without any of the stories really sticking in my memory like Different Seasons did. King may have lost some of the magic but that doesn’t mean you should just dismiss him completely because, although there may be nothing especially memorable about this book, it still has some good entertainment value.
One more thing: I read the new paperback edition which contained a bonus short story which is even more forgettable than the main stories.

I couldn’t help but get swept up in all the great reviews and constant advertisement for Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels and to find that there are fifteen of them was pretty daunting so I started the first book with little optimism; I very rarely am impressed with books that are popular, finding the ones that few people read to be better most of the time and after reading the first Jack Reacher book I’m not sure my opinion has changed.
Jack Reacher is a wanderer. At the start of the book he has been wandering around the USA for six months after leaving the military. He doesn’t stick in any one place for long and that seems to be the basis for all the novels. He enters a town and gets involved in some kind of conspiracy or action that he just has to sort out himself, always being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is not a bad idea for a series and I get the feeling that this first book, compared with the rest in the series, is more of a test for what the rest will be like.
Killing Floor is told in first-person from Reacher’s point of view and from checking the rest of the books in the series I noticed that the rest are in third-person, which would be much more effective; Reacher is fine as a main character but the story should not be told from his perspective; his opinions are often very annoying and make little sense. He is a shoot first ask questions later kind of guy but the perspective should always be from someone who has some sense and can think things through, not Reacher, so it made sense that the author would change it for later books. Reacher would be much more interesting as seen through another’s eyes.
Some of the plot twists fall a little flat, being obvious from well before and this proved annoying. Jack Reacher constantly knows things rather than just assuming the obvious. He knows that certain characters are dead even though he can’t possibly it so, of course, they’re not really dead at all and Reacher comes off as idiotic and far too eager to spout of things he just doesn’t know. This happens throughout the book and it’s constantly annoying but does not destroy what is a reasonably interesting story involving counterfeit money and murder.
I will read the next book, because I am interested and I do believe things will evolve over time for Jack Reacher but I do hope this is just what I think it is: a starting point for better things.

Although I have read this book before many years ago I read it again recently and enjoyed it immensely. Terry Brooks really does have a love for writing and it shows throughout this short book. If you’re an a writer that needs some inspiration then look no further.

As someone who isn’t hugely interested in crime fiction (I’m more into sci-fi) I’ve always been drawn to Deaver’s crime books, especially his Lincoln Rhyme series. I don’t know what it is and even considering that each book in the series almost exactly mirrors the last, albeit swapping out different killers for each one, I’m always sucked in.
The Burning Wire brings back Rhyme and his partner Amelia Sachs for the case of a disgruntled electrician who works for the biggest supplier of electricity in the country; he doesn’t agree with a lot of their policies and believes himself to have been given a form of cancer from working on the wires for years so, in revenge, he sets out to kill innocents using something known as arc flashes: When you overload certain electrical circuits you cause devastating effects on the surface, usually electricity escaping through a person, or people, killing them in the process. Of course, if you’ve read Deaver then you know that nothing is quite as it seems and certain people may just not be who you think they are.
It’s good fun, as always, and it keeps you hooked but I felt that Deaver needs to try something radically different now. He doesn’t need to kill off Rhyme but he needs to try something different before he becomes too stale. The Kathryn Dance books are fine but, again, too similar to the Rhyme series. I’d love to see him go back to more original fiction, like his book Garden of Beasts. With his next book being the next James Bond we may just get that but for now you can still enjoy his particular form of crime novel.

I downloaded this from the iBook store and read it on my iPhone, something that I didn’t think that I’d ever be able to do on such a relatively small screen, but I did and it was an excellent book, well-suited to the small screen. Tom Reynolds is the pseudonym of an inner London ambulance driver, a man who has written a blog about his daily life and the strange things that happen in said job. This book collects the blog entries into an agreeable collection. They each take just a few minutes to read and they’re perfect for those moments in the toilet where you just need something to read. It became quite addictive, where you just need to read one more–then just another…okay, maybe another and then that’s it. I spent quite a few hours just lying in bed (in the dark, which is really an advantage with a backlit screen like the iPhone’s) reading about all the strange occurences in this man’s job. It’s great fun and makes you learn about what these people actually do who work for the ambulance services and some of the crap that they have to put up with.
Both this book and it’s sequel, which I’m still to read, are available for free on the amazon kindle and the iBook store so check it out.

After downloading Ur by Stephen King to my iPhone using the Amazon Kindle app I really had to wonder how fast technology is going. It is racing ahead of us and with the Apple iPad coming out soon to the UK I have to realize that I simply can’t afford to keep up with it. I’ve been tempted by the Amazon Kindle but having to order it from the US site and still having to browse an American catalogue puts me off. Why should I have to see everything in dollars? It just feels wrong. So I’ve yet to jump into the e-reader Market but a lot of people have and one of those people is, apparently, Stephen King, a man who always seems to be willing to try out the newest things especially in writing. He made available a story that you could only read through the Amazon Kindle, a story about an Amazon Kindle that arrives on the doorstep of a man who quickly realises that this is not the normal Kindle at all but just some kind of weird inter-dimensional creature of a Kindle. It gives access to books written by authors who may have died but in another dimension they have kept on writing. This Kindle gives access to those books.
It’s an interesting story and I could just hear King’s mind going around and around imagining stories that Hemingway and Shakespeare may have written if they had lived for years to come. I don’t know how it is to read on a Kindle itself but on my rather small iPhone screen it was surprisingly good and easy to read, which I didn’t expect. Well worth checking out.

Heechee Rendezvous is the third in the series of Heechee novels by Frederik Pohl and so it follows the same character, Rob Broadhead, a man who, in the first novel–the often considered classic Gateway–made his millions from the Gateway, a space station filled with alien ships that can take a man anywhere in the universe, the problem being that you don’t where that part is or if you’ll survive the trip. He made his riches but in the process left the love of his life to die. The first is excellent, perfectly setting up a sense of intrigue and mystery about the Heechee, the unknown aliens that have created Gateway but come the second book he starts to explain things in far too much detail. Part of the first book’s elegance was that so little is known about the Heechee but once he starts explaining stuff it ruins the illusion. Yeah, it’s all part and parcel for sequels to start giving answers to the question but that’s why the first book was so good, because we didn’t know very much about them and to then not only explain them but to show them interacting with others of their kind, that kinda ruined it for me.
Problems from the second book are still here in the third. I had so many questions relating to the second book that just weren’t answered and neither are they answered in this one, but I did get answers to questions that I didn’t want to know the answer to, something that proved annoying.
Pohl is a good writer and this does touch on greatness at time but it never really reaches the height of the first in the series.