Literary Brooding

Snake Bite – Christie Thompson Allen and Unwin 2013, 319 pages. First of all just pick this book up and read it. Do not read the blurb at the back, do not get bothered about what genre it fits into, just read it. Why? Thompson has captured a slice of Australia life that is unique and beautifully but brutally revealed on the page. This is a warts and all story, that is fresh and vivid. Jessica (Jez) is 17, closing in on 18 and has finished school for the year. She is stuck in the Canberra suburb of Kambah and life truly does suck. Her mother is an alcoholic, it is a stinking hot summer and there is nothing to do but take drugs, drink and screw. In this chaos of boredom Jez tries to find some meaning to her life. Should she stay in Kambah or move to Melbourne, should she hook up with Lukey or remain friends. Then there is how to deal with being eternally embarrassed by having a fat mother. It is not an easy world that Jez has to navigate. There are characters such as C...

Curse of the Wolf Girl - Martin Millar 2010, Piatkus, 534 pages I have read Millar’s other works and I loved ‘The Good Fairies of New York’ and the first in the wolf girl series ‘Lonely Werewolf Girl’. Both of those works are dazzling and some of the best urban fantasy reading I have ever done. The follow up to ‘Lonely Werewolf Girl’ is somewhat of a disappointment. Picking up from the first novel we see Kalix the teenage werewolf trying to make a normal life, she is attending school and trying to get along with everyone. A series of events bring back into conflict with the clan and with the guild who hunt werewolves. That is about as basic as I can make the story because it is anything but that. The world Millar has created is dense, believable and a wonderfully created. The characters lift off the page and are flawed to perfection. The dialogue is sharp, witty and you are continually engaged in the story. Why was I disappointed with the story? For me, there just see...

James Patterson -  Maximum Ride  'The Angel Experiment' I was looking for a series to get into and I thought I would give Patterson’s young adult series, ‘Maximum Ride’ a go. I had read a few reactions on Goodreads to the first book and they were quite polarising as a real love it or hate it and not much in between. That is what appealed to me and that I had read ‘adult’ Patterson novels and they were enjoyable. It meant I was prepared for the ultra-short chapters that are a hallmark of Patterson but what I was not prepared for was a half-baked idea. So the gist of the story is that Max and her friends (Fang, Iggy, Gasman, Nudge and Angel - who become known as the Flock) having been hiding for two years after they escaped from ‘the school or institute’ where they were the science experiments.  They escaped and have been living a somewhat idyllic life when the ‘Erasers’ (wolf like security guards from the institute) raid the Flock’s hideout and manage to succeed in c...

Bit of catch up time as there is a few reviews I have not got around to posting. So here we go The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (audiobook) Percy is fighting for the survival of everything and everyone in the penultimate finale in the series (or is it?). I have listened to all five books and it has been an interesting experience. The stories are well crafted and well thought out. You can read (or listen) to each story as a standalone and not feel that you missed anything. For fans of the series the ending is somewhat satisfying and that is what counts. I would like to go on about the book but to be honest at the end of it, I was like ‘yep it’s over, isn’t that nice.’ That is pretty sad that after five books I just felt meh about the whole thing. I think for me the whole problem was that Percy became too perfect, the earlier books he had vulnerabilities, made mistakes and in this book his invulnerability made him too wooden for me. I was more interested in the characters ...