CBR16 Book 24: "The Late Mrs Willougby" by Claudia Gray

Page count: 390 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Miss Juliet Tilney goes to visit her friend Marianne Brandon in her charming home in Devonshire. They haven't seen one another since the rather unfortunate house party where Mr Wickham was murdered, and Miss Tilney and young Jonathan Darcy managed to discover who killed him. 

Jonathan Darcy finds himself the rather reluctant houseguest of a former school bully, Mr. Willoughby. He goes to see him so as to not make his parents constantly worry about his lack of friends, but is rather miserable until he discovers that Miss Juliet Tilney is also in the village, visiting the Brandons. 

During the dinner party meant to welcome her to the neighbourhood, Mrs. Willoughby drops dead, clearly poisoned. Malicious gossips seem convinced that Marianne Brandon, did the deed out of jealousy and some sort of misguided attempt to get back together with him. She was, after all, openly and passionately in love with Willoughby and nearly died from the heartbreak when he jilted her to marry his now-dead wife. Juliet and Jonathan, however, are convinced of her innocence and decide to once again investigate a murder, to ensure Mrs. Brandon isn't sent to the gallows because of malicious rumours. As their investigation progresses, there are other strange occurrences, that suggest the murderer may not be done yet - are Jonathan and Juliet also in danger?

The Austen fan fic continues, but this time Ms. Gray hasn't included characters from literally every single published Austen novel. This second Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney mystery focuses more on various characters faithful readers will remember from Sense and Sensibility. Elinor Ferrars is happily married to her Edward, and very close to giving birth to their first child. They are still estranged from his snobbish mother but hope that the arrival of the child might make the old matriarch soften her feelings towards him, even though she disapproves of his chosen wife. Colonel Brandon's ward (Jonathan Darcy's cousin, as she's the illegitimate child of Mr. Wickham) now also lives in the village, and may have her own reasons for wanting Willougby to be widowed. 

The book obviously invents a backstory where Jonathan Darcy and Willoughby went to school together, and it's not really a surprise to anyone that Willoughby would have been a merciless bully. Also invited are another couple of school friends, one of whom seems to have had a history with the now-deceased Mrs. Willoughby, and a charming young man with a solid grasp of chemistry who offers to aid Darcy and Miss Tilney in their investigation, once he discovers what they are about. Jonathan may be socially inept, but even he notices that his friend seems interested in Miss Tilney. Spending more time with her has made it pretty obvious to Jonathan that he likes Juliet as more than a friend, but as he is unsure whether she returns his feelings, he's far too reserved to confess his infatuation. 

Gray is an imaginative and engaging writer, and her cast of characters actually feel like they have stepped out of the pages of an Austen novel. Both Jonathan and Juliet are engaging protagonists, and I understand that both for storyline reasons, and the conventions of the time, Gray needs to create obstacles to stand in the way of their eventual happy ending. But I'm not going to lie, I was ready to figuratively lock them in a room and scream "Just kiss already!" at the end of this. So if they don't get together at the end of the next one (which apparently involves them trying to figure out who wants to murder Lady Catherine de Bourgh), I will be extremely vexed. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not really sure what is going on with the perspective on this cover. The silhouettes are all well and good, but poor Mrs. Willoughby hasn't just been murdered, she looks as if she has been squashed flat by a steamroller. Such indignity in death. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 23: "The Murder of Mr. Wickham" by Claudia Gray

Page count: 320 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 3 mins

Mr. Knightley and his wife, Emma (formerly Miss Woodhouse), have been happily married for several years. They are inviting a number of friends to a houseparty; Mr. and Mrs Darcy of Pemberley with their son Jonathan, Colonel and Mrs. Brandon (no children yet, as they are very newly married), Captain and Mrs. Wentworth,  Edmund and Fanny Bertram and Miss Juliet Tilney, daughter of  Henry and Catherine Tilney. Unfortunately, they also receive an unexpected and unwanted addition to the party, Mr Wickham, who has unfinished business with several of the members there. The Knightleys would love nothing more than to send him away, but stormy weather forces them to give him accommodation.

As well as a complicated family history with some of the guests, other members of the houseparty or their close family are now in debt to Mr Wickham, and there are tensions and a lot of awkwardness. Then the loathsome Mr Wickham turns up dead, clearly murdered. The officers investigating seem convinced the guilty party is one of the servants, but Jonathan Darcy and Miss Juliet Tilney, are convinced the real killer is one of the other guests. Miss Tinley is the only one who didn't have any prior connection to the murder victim and Jonathan Darcy is Mr. Wickham's nephew. They conclude that since they are likely the only ones who couldn't have killed him, they should investigate and try to figure out who actually murdered the avaricious and unpleasant Mr Wickham before some innocent servant is hanged for the crime. 

As their investigation progresses, it turns out that Mr. Wickham was possibly even more despicable than previously suspected, and would happily engage in blackmail as well as dodgy business practices that made others lose their savings. Pretty much everyone at the house party seems to have had a motive to kill the man. Jonathan Darcy is also pleased to discover that Miss Juliet doesn't seem worried about or affected by his rather unusual behaviour - he is somewhat lacking in traditional social graces.

This is high-level Jane Austen fan fiction, published as a historical murder mystery. Gray speculates what the lives of various popular Austen characters might be like after the romantic stories in each of their novels ended. To someone like me, who has read and greatly enjoyed, most of Austen's books (Not you, Mansfield Park, never you), it was fun to revisit these characters and see where Gray has imagined them ending up. Edmund Bertram is still rather boring and his wife Fanny is about as interesting as plain bread, but even their subplot ended up being interesting to me. 

Jonathan Darcy is clearly written as neurodivergent and struggles with social interactions. His family know him and make allowances for his sometimes odd behaviour, but in a new place with new people, especially one as tense and occasionally awkward as the aftermath of a murder, he struggles to conform. He manages to be open about his challenges to his new friend Juliet, who doesn't seem to be scared or put off by it and they become close friends over the course of the investigation, even when the case starts looking more complicated. 

I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by Billie Fulford-Brown. She has a pleasant voice and manages to differentiate the various characters well. The only other book by Claudia Gray I've read was A Thousand Pieces of You, back in 2017. It was fine, but not very memorable, and I never got around to reading the second and third book in the trilogy. This book, on the other hand, was a fun and entertaining read, and I pretty much instantly wanted the sequel (see my next review) I am also very excited about the third book, where we are graced with the presence of the formidable Lady Catherine DeBourgh).

Judging a book by its cover: I like the simple, but evocative cover art style. The manor house, the various silhouettes in the window, and the lightning bolts. I question how there can be a fierce lightning storm and a visible crescent moon at the same time, though. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR12 Book 78: "The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep" by H.G. Parry

Page count: 496 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Official book description: 

For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob - a young lawyer with an utterly normal life - hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other.

But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world, and for once, it isn't Charley's doing. There's someone else out there who shares his powers and it's up to Charley and a reluctant Rob to stop them - before anyone gets to The End.

This was the September selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club, and yet another book I've read this year where I hadn't heard of the author or book before picking it up. Only a few weeks before reading this book, I watched the new Armando Ianucci adaptation of David Copperfield, as that gave me a little bit of insight into Uriah Heep as a character and the general plot of the novel he originates in. There's a bunch of other famous literary characters who turn up over the course of the story, proving to me that taking a total of three years of English literature studies as part of my university career wasn't a complete waste of time. 

Among the famous literary characters who turn up over the course of the book, we find Dorian Gray, who in this version could give Lisbeth Salander a run for her money where hacking and computer surveillance are concerned, a very temperamentally unstable Heathcliff, the White Witch of Narnia who rides a motorcycle (much easier upkeep than reindeer) and wears a motorcycle, and five different versions of Fitzwilliam Darcy (they all share a house, only one has bothered to learn how to cook). Neither of these have been read to life by Charlie, one of our protagonists, they have appeared because some reader, or the collective imagination of readers in general made them manifest. They all live in a strange, mostly hidden side street in downtown Wellington, New Zealand, where Charlie works as a university professor and his brother Rob is a lawyer.

I count Charlie as a protagonist, even though we don't actually get any chapters from his POV. He's just such a central character, and so much of the plot revolves around him and his relationship with Rob, who probably gets the most POV chapters. We also get some from Rob's fiancee Lydia, and some from the POV of Millie, a fictional character from a series of children's adventure novels who was brought out of one of her novels when Charlie was a child and managed to escape. Unusually, she's the only character who has actually aged and changed, something these creations are not supposed to do. She has a job as an accountant and works with Dorian Grey to actually get money and finance the various fictional characters on their secret street. 

The fictional characters are scared because there are rumours that there are big changes afoot. Charlie and Rob discover that someone else shares Charlie's abilities and can bring fictional characters into the real world (and read them back onto the pages again as needed) and has been using several fictional characters for criminal endeavours. This individual seems to want to bring forth a fictional world to replace that of the real one, which would obviously be pretty disastrous. Since this person keeps sending people and/or creatures to kill Charlie, they figure out that it must be someone at least vaguely connected with him, and the two brothers, helped by Millie and some of the literary residents of the secret street work together to figure out the identity of the villain, and how to stop them, before it's too late.

Charlie was a prodigy who read classical works of literature when he was three and had a ph.D before he was 20. Being his older brother has always been rather exhausting for Rob, as even without the whole "being able to actually bring forth people, things, and creatures from books" thing, his brother wasn't exactly the most socially adept human being. He feels like he's both lived in the shadow of his brother's accomplishments his whole life, and constantly had to bail his brother out of trouble. Despite the advice of his parents, Rob has never told Lydia, his fiancee, anything about Charlie's special abilities, so she just knows something is seriously off, but not what he's hiding from her.

While there is absolutely the big, rather strange plot of this villainous individual who shares Charlie's powers to replace the real world with a fictional one, I would say that the most important theme of the book is the relationship between the brothers, which starts out as rather fraught and is tested in a number of ways throughout the story. They clearly care for one another very much but have never been able to communicate clearly with one another, and Rob's resentments and Charlie's poor self-esteem need to be dealt with if they're going to get through the story to the happy ending. 

I was surprised when I discovered that the author behind the initials is actually a woman because it's such a male-dominated book. My favourite characters, however, were Millie and Lydia (who I thought was way too good for Rob, and should consider dumping him, even after she discovered the truth about everything and he started becoming a slightly better boyfriend). When we discussed the book in my book club, my views were shared by several of the readers, and we all felt rather disappointed once it was revealed who the actual villain of the story is, and what that individual's motives are. It just felt very anti-climactic and we wished that bit of the story had been more interesting and imaginative. 

Still, this is the author's debut novel, and it's certainly unusual and a fun enough read, especially if you have a fairly wide-reaching knowledge of classical English literature. 

Judging a book by its cover: Shelves and shelves of leather-bound old books, surely every book lover's dream? There's even a ladder to help you reach those books on the higher shelves, which suggests that it's a library with high ceilings. I must admit, the cover is very appealing to me. It's hard to resist a well-stocked library.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR9 Books 119-120: "The Unwritten, vol 10: War Stories" and "The Unwritten, vol 11: Apocalypse" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Total page count: 304
Rating: 4 stars

Tom Taylor is trying to find his way back to his friends, moving through a number of children's stories. Even when he's reunited with his storyteller father, Wilson Taylor, who by writing a popular fantasy series where the main character shared Tom's name, pretty much gave him the abilities to move through all manner of works of fiction, and his friends, the world is in chaos, as the Leviathan, the source of all the stories in the world, is gravely wounded. The boundaries between stories are thin and unreliable and it's difficult to tell what is real and what is fiction anymore.

Tom and his little band of supporters need to find a way to heal the Leviathan, but it seems as if all the wicked forces in the world are working to stop them, controlled by Pullman, the eternal adversary. To complicate matters further, there's the mysterious puppet-mistress, Madame Rausch, who seems to have her own agenda, separate from both Pullman and the Wilsons. In the end, it all comes down to one final quest and if Tom succeeds, he can save both our own reality and restore the balance to the worlds of fiction. If he's thwarted, thing could go very bad indeed.

War Stories and Apocalypse collects issues 1-12 of the miniseries The Unwritten:Apocalypse, which is both the final installments of the entire run of the comic, yet somehow also seems made to stand on its own. Throughout the graphic novel series, author Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross has collaborated closely, exploring the importance of storytelling and the nature of stories. What is reality? What is fiction? Is our world just a story told by someone else? What is it about humanity that we keep coming back to the same themes and motifs in storytelling through the ages? Are there ancient archetypes built into our DNA?

It's been about ten days since I finished vol 11: Apocalypse and I wish I could give you a clear and concise opinion, but I'm honestly not sure I got all the things that Carey and Gross were trying to tell me. I'm not sure I'm literate and clever enough to parse all the various levels of the storytelling that was coming across. I have studied literature at university level (but unlike my husband, who is naturally analytical and pretty much picks apart anything he watches, reads or listens to just for fun, I generally prefer to just consume my entertainment on more of a surface level). It's clear that in these 12 issues, Carey and Gross are saying goodbye to their characters, tying up loose ends and providing an ending. There's a lot of clever stuff in here, but again, I'm not sure I understood it all. Even after having recently seen Mike Carey talk about the ending at a sci-fi/fantasy convention, which made things somewhat more clear, I'm not entirely certain if I get all the nuances here.

Maybe, in time, if I go back and read the whole series closer together, this will make more sense to me. I am tempted to just make my husband finally read the final issues and make him tell me what he thinks. I frequently do better when I can bounce ideas off someone else.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Books 115: "The Unwritten, vol 9: The Unwritten Fables" by Mike Carey, Bill Willingham, Peter Gross and Mark Buckingham

Page count: 144 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Tommy Taylor has been separated from his friends and is desperately trying to find a way back to them. He also needs to stop the ancient adversary, Pullman, from killing the legendary Leviathan once and for all, but is waylaid on his journey when the various witches and magical personages of Fabletown attempt to summon the greatest mage the worlds have ever seen, in order to stop the menace threatening their own realms. Tommy is pretty sure he's not the person they're looking for, but it's clear that the remaining (and rapidly decreasing) citizens of Fabletown need all the help they can get, and he's not really in any position to refuse.

Many years ago, I was given the first volume of Fables as a Christmas present by my husband. I read and enjoyed the comic for several years, but eventually got fed up with it not seeming to go anywhere interesting (and Bill Willingham's statements that he didn't really have an end in sight anywhere soon). According to my records, Fables, vol 10: The Good Prince was the last one I read, back in 2008, after having skipped vol 9 altogether (not sure why, but I bet it's because I'd heard negative things about it). I didn't really start reading The Unwritten until 2010, so when discovering that volume 9 of that comic was going to be a crossover with Fables and furthermore that said crossover was disappointing to a lot of long time readers of The Unwritten, I pretty much just stopped reading the comic.

I just checked - it took me 3 years and 8 months between reading The Unwritten, vol 8: Orpheus in the Underworld (early August 2014) until I finally picked up and read The Unwritten Fables (late November 2017). If I hadn't recently seen author Mike Carey at a small fantasy and sci-fi convention in Oslo, talking about the final parts of his series, in addition to the fact that I have a LOT of comic books/graphic novels to get through by the end of December if I want to complete my Graphic novel reading challenge, I may just have let the final three volumes languish unread on the shelves.

Now, since it was so long since I last read about Tommy Taylor, and his friends Lizzie and Richie and all of the others, I didn't feel quite the same annoyance of being taken out of their world and being thrust into the Fables universe, where things have clearly moved on a LOT since I last read that series. A malevolent creature calling himself Mister Dark has brainwashed and married Snow White and is raising her many children, while they keep Bigby Wolf locked up in a dungeon and are systematically trying to wipe out all the remaining Fable characters, with rather a high success rate.

Summoning a great magician is their last hope, and let's just say most of them are not happy when Tommy Taylor shows up instead of some legendary saviour. Meta fiction is always an important part of the Unwritten comics, and there's quite a bit of discussion about what's real and what's fiction and whether our real world, where Tommy originates, is just another work of fiction (which in terms of The Unwritten being a narrative created by Mike Carey and Peter Gross is indeed true), but mostly the six issues collected in this trade are just rather grim and seem to have been an excuse for Bill Willingham (the creator of Fables) to kill off a lot of beloved characters without any serious long-term consequences.

I also much prefer Peter Gross' art style to that of Mark Buckingham, and it was strange to see Buckingham draw Carey's characters. I can absolutely see why this is the lowest-rated of all the volumes in The Unwritten, and don't regret having waited so long to read it. I'm sure it was a lot of fun for the writers and artists to collaborate on a project, but in the end it seemed rather meaningless and more gimmicky than anything else.

Judging a book by its cover: Peter Gross tends to draw really cool covers, and on this one, we get Tommy blowing a golden horn (this is a rather significant story point). The New York cityscape going up in flames suggests the danger to "our" world posed by the happenings in the Fables world, but of all the various covers for this comic, this is not all that remarkable.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 36: "The Unwritten, vol 8: Orpheus in the Underworld" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Page count: 176 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This trade paperback of The Unwritten collects issues 42-49 of the comic. It's been going for years now and is really quite heavily arc-based, so I wouldn't start with this one. It's a great comic, especially for anyone who loves books and reading. Start at the beginning with Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity.

Tommy Taylor discovers that Lizzie is not lost, she's just trapped in the Underworld, and he resolves to find her and rescue her. He finds a way in through an Aboriginal folk legend told in the Australian Outback, but doesn't exactly arrive directly in Hades, because when does anything run entirely smoothly for Tommy and his friends? He has to travel through a desolate wasteland, nearly getting eaten, being offered sexual favours in return for food by destitute and starving Austen heroines, accompanied by the unicorn. When he finally arrives in the Underworld, he can no longer remember why he's there. Meanwhile, Didge is trying to solve a crime involving a series of grisly deaths that appear to have been caused by zombies, assisted by a not too enthusiastic Richie.  There's a troubled young boy whose notebook may hold clues, but he's too terrified to talk to them.

Every time I review this, I find myself at a loss to capture why it's such a good comic, and why people should try it and find out for themselves. I'm actually going to borrow from my previous review, apologies for laziness, but I have a very big backlog of books left to review. "The Unwritten is a difficult series to describe, and I don't feel entirely up to the task of explaining just how wonderful and interesting and special a reading experience it is. Mike Carey writes about the nature of storytelling, and identity, and how stories shape the world and the things we believe in. Peter Gross' art is also a thing of beauty, and he manages to illustrate the issues in so many different styles, depending on what the story demands. If you love novels, and stories, and the art of storytelling, you should really do yourself a favour and check this series out."

The volumes tend to end on cliff-hangers, and in this case, the end heralds a cross-over with another big fantasy series, Fables, which I read the first ten trades of and rather enjoyed. I've unfortunately not heard great things about the cross-over online so far, and it fills me with trepidation. I hope the rumours are exaggerated, because The Unwritten has been extremely strong throughout so far, and I'd hate for it to go downhill because of an audience-pleasing publicity stunt.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 35: "Saga, volume 3" by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Page count: 144 pages
Rating: 5 stars

This trade paperback volume of Saga collects issues 13-18. It's an ongoing series, and you really should be starting at the beginning. It's also the best comic book/graphic novel series I've read in probably a decade, so if you haven't read it, run to your nearest comics shop and come back when you've caught up. Also, it goes without saying that there may be spoilers here for earlier in the series.

Marko's mother has decided to join her son and his new family on their quest to find D. Oswald Heist. Meanwhile, a pair of tabloid journalists are trying to get to figure out exactly what is the story with Marko and Alana. Could two enemy combatants actually have deserted, got married and had a child? There are, however, forces who aren't all that excited about the story being published and want them to stop. The Will, Cat, Gwendolyn and the slave girl they rescued are stuck on an idyllic alien planet while waiting for their spaceship to be repaired. Gwen is impatient to catch up to their targets, but the Will seems quite content to stay on the new planet. He doesn't seem to realise that he's seeing impossible things and that listening to the wrong influences could put them all in terrible danger.

I gave the last two trade paperbacks 4.5 stars, but who am I kidding? This is absolutely solid gold entertainment and I'm not going to hold back any longer. The story has everything. Humour, action, romance, adventure, danger, a talking cat who can tell if you're lying, a ghostly babysitters, a very snarky narrator constantly teasing things yet to come. These six issues of Saga made me laugh out loud, bite my nails with tension, swear loudly, nearly cry more than once, sigh happily and squee at least once. The dialogue is snappy, the characters are great, the art is absolutely gorgeous and some of the concepts and ideas presented just blow my mind away. I keep badgering all my friends to read it, and have bought the first volumes as gifts for several, in the hopes of getting them hooked. I'm really not joking when I say that everyone should be reading this.

With this book, I have also completed my first reading challenge of the year, Meet the Protagonist.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 154. "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" by Robin Sloan

Page count: 305 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Having lost his job as a web developer due to the recession, Clay Jannon finds a new job as the night clerk in the titular bookstore, belonging to the mysterious Mr. Penumbra. Not that he sells all that many books. As well as the normal shelves, with its somewhat eclectic selection of novels and non fiction, there is what Clay calls the "wayback" section of the store, huge shelves of unique volumes, not to be found in any search engine, a sort of strange lending library for the odd individuals who show up with a laminated cards, returning a volume and fetching another at random intervals. Clay is asked to keep a log, describing the appearance of each of the customers and the state of mind each new customer was in when they come to swap a book.

Clay starts using his web developer skills to make a 3D-model of the store and the "wayback" section on his computer, trying to see if there's any pattern, rhyme or reason to the strange regulars and their lending patterns. He also works on trying to lure new customers to the store, using all the tools available to him in social media to advertise its location. Once he meets Kat, a young lady working at Google, his plans to map the mysterious patterns of Mr. Penumbra's store really take off, and soon he and his friends are involved in a mysterious quest involving a global conspiracy, a secret organisation, code breaking, data visualisation on a massive scale and possibly the secret to eternal life.

As someone who loves books, a book about a mysterious book store and a mystery surrounding reading sounded pretty enticing, but like so many other books, this ended up on my TBR shelf and languished there for a long time. It ended up being a very different book from what I was expecting, and I can see why it's not everyone's cup of tea, as it's very clever in slightly knowing and self referential way, combining the story of an ancient secret society trying to decode books with digitalisation, e-readers and Twitter. There are so many geeky references here, to role playing and gaming and various types of programming and web developing. Some might describe is as a "Hipster quest narrative", and they wouldn't be too far off the mark.

I think the book may have gotten a bit too clever for its own good in places, and the conclusion of the story doesn't come together as well as it began. I'm not sure I believe certain of the developments the story took, and that some of the characters got a bit lost in the main thrust of the excitement of the denouement. Still, it's a fun book, with a rather unusual premise, and I enjoyed reading it.

#CBR5 Book 153. "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards" by Kristopher Jansma

Page count: 272 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is such a very difficult book to review, as to give away too much of the plot, or say too much about the characters would ruin the reading experience of those yet to read it.

Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous author about the art of writing, the art of creating fiction or just lying. "The truth is beautiful. Without doubt; and so are lies." is the first one. In the first section of the book: "What was lost", our unnamed narrator starts telling us about his childhood, waiting in Terminal B of an unnamed airport for his flight attendant mother to come back from wherever she'd gone to next. We're told how the twenty-two page adventure story he wrote (with illustrations) was lost when the man who ran the watch repair suddenly collapsed, and the book was thrown away. He tells us about going to a debutante ball because the brother of the girl he fancied was injured on a golf course shortly before, about going to college and starting to write in earnest, striking up a friendship and life long rivalry with the mysterious and charismatic Julian. At college he also meets the glamorous Evelyn, a promising actress, who may or may not be the love of his life.

In "What was found", we may finally have discovered the name of our narrator, or have we? He's had a disastrous falling out with his two closest friends, and is now travelling the globe, making a living from spinning clever and believable lies in one way or another. This section really spans the globe, set in parts in America, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Iceland and a wealth of other locations and continues to explore the nature of truth, lies and the art of storytelling. Can we trust our narrator, or is he always going to be unreliable? Is he still "telling us the truth but slant" as he learned in college? Does it actually matter?

This book first came to my attention when Joanna Robinson, one of the staff writers on Pajiba raved about it, saying it was one of the best books she'd read all year. That made me notice it in a number of other places, and other Cannonballers and online reviewers have rated it very highly as well. It made it a natural choice for "a book everyone but you has read" in my Book Bingo challenge, and it also worked nicely in my A to Z challenge. I read it pretty much in one sitting, while on the plane back from Marrakesh after Christmas. It was one of the only things that took my mind off the churning nausea raging in my belly, and for that I am very grateful. I may not have loved it as much as Joanna, but I can highly recommend this clever book to anyone who likes a more unusual read exploring the joys of fiction.

#CBR5 Books 84-85. "The Unwritten vol 6 and 7" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Total page count: 384 pages

Rating: Vol 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words - 4 stars
Vol 7: The Wound - 4.5 stars

This review covers volume 6 and 7 of The Unwritten, which collects issues 31-41 of the comic book. If you haven't read any of the previous volumes, this is really not the place to start, although you should totally read it, because it's awesome. This review will probably unavoidably contain spoilers for earlier volumes, so if you want to avoid them, skip this review for now.

In Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, things are coming to a head between Tommy and the mysterious Cabal that's been hounding him him and killing pretty much everyone he loves. Lizzie and Richie are still by his side, but they are worried that Tommy is using too much of his newly discovered powers without proper control. In alternating chapters, we see Tom taking the battle to them, ignoring the warnings of his closest friends, and we learn more about the Cabal and the sinister and deadly Mr. Pullman, and his true agenda. Tommy's battle is fraught with danger, and not without personal cost.

In The Wound, a year has passed since the dramatic events in Oxford at the end of the last volume, which finished off several of the story lines set up over the first 30 issues of the comic, and much of this volume centres around a new character, Australian police detective Didge Patterson. She's investigating a series of mysterious disappearances, believed to be linked to the rapidly growing cult The Church of Tommy. Tommy himself is on his way to Australia, as part of his world-wide lecture tour. Meanwhile, Richie has become world famous in his own right, having written a best-selling book. He's parted ways with Tommy and is trying to track down and get some answers from the ancient puppet mistress Frau Rasch.

The Unwritten is a difficult series to describe, and I don't entirely feel up to the task of explaining just how wonderful and interesting and special reading experience it is. Mike Carey writes about the nature of storytelling, and identity, and how stories shape the world and the things we believe in. Peter Gross' art is also a thing of beauty, and he manages to illustrate the issues in so many different styles, depending on what the story demands. If you love novels, and stories, and the art of storytelling, you should really do yourself a favour and check this series out. You should, however, start with volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity.

CBR3 Book 78: "Heat Rises" by Richard Castle

Publisher: Hyperion
Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: September 25th, 2011
Date finished: September 30th, 2011

NYPD Detective Nikki Heat is trying to figure out why a parish priest was brutally tortured and killed in a New York bondage club. Her investigation takes her into the path of South American guerilla freedom fighters/terrorists, drug dealers, vicious CIA contractors, and also seems to piss off her Captain, who is clearly troubled by some of her discoveries. Having taken the lieutenant's exam, and clearly done very well on it, there may be a promotion in her future, if only she can survive the hired thugs sent to kill her.

There are further deaths, and as the trail suggests involvement from the highest levels of the NYPD, Nikki finds herself stripped of her badge, and left out in the cold. Luckily, she has help from her boyfriend, the successful investigative reporter Jameson Rook, and together they're determined to crack the case, solve the crime and get Nikki her badge back.

This is the third novel by Richard Castle, protagonist of ABC's weekly drama Castle. No where on the internet does it seem to reveal who actually writes these novels, which is a shame, because I would totally buy more of that author's works. The Nikki Heat books are frothy, entertaining and fun, with some violence and grittiness thrown in, just like in the TV show, and they're quick, exciting reads. I was especially interested in the ending of this one, which takes the characters in an intriguing direction. I hope that there will be a fourth one coming out around the time of Castle's fourth season, cause I'm well and truly hooked.

CBR3 Books 71-73. "The Unwritten vol 1-3" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Publisher: Vertigo
Page count: 462 pages
Date begun: September 7th, 2011
Date finished: September 8th, 2011

Book 71 - Vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity - 4 stars
Book 72 - Vol 2: Inside Man - 4 stars
Book 73 - Vol 3: Dead Man's Knock - 4 stars


Tom Taylor is the inspiration behind his father, Wilson Taylor's hugely successful fantasy series about Tommy Taylor (very much in the vein of Harry Potter). His father disappeared at the height of his success, and Tom makes a living appearing at comic book and fantasy conventions. He's bitter about the abandonment, and feels that the only thing his father ever gave him was a head full of useless trivia about literary geography. Tom's life takes a turn for the puzzling and strange, when at a convention, a young woman, Lizzie Hexam, claims Tom is not Wilson's real son, and that he is in fact an impostor.

When he goes to Switzerland, to the villa where his father wrote the Tommy Taylor novels, and where Wilson Taylor was last seen, he ends up being accused of murdering a group of mystery and horror writers, who had been attending a writer's convention at the house. Tom is sent to prison, not realizing that the brutal murders were committed by Pullman, a sinister man who can turn people or things into text by just touching them. In prison, he befriends Savoy, a reporter placed in the prison to write an insider's perspective on prison life and Tom. It is clear that there is a lot more to his father's disappearance, and his own identity than Tom first suspected. He's convinced he saw the flying cat from the Tommy Taylor adventures sitting in a tree when he was arrested, and occasionally,  the magical sigil that protects Tommy in the books, appears as a tattoo on his hand. Lizzie Hexam also clearly knows more than she lets on, and appears to be in contact with the missing Wilson Taylor. Who is Lizzie? Who is Tom really? Why did his dad disappear? Who is the shady organization that framed him for murder, and wants to get to his dad?


I've been a fan of Mike Carey's for a long time. I like his Felix Castor novels, I think his run on Hellblazer was very enjoyable, and I think Lucifer is probably one of the best Vertigo graphic novel series ever, after Sandman and 100 Bullets. So when rave reviews started coming in about The Unwritten, I was eager to check it out. So far, it's great, and while the first three trade paperbacks are thin (collecting the first 18 issues of the comic), there is a lot of story development. I like the riffs on popular young adult fantasy, with elements not just from Harry Potter, but all sorts of clever things. There's obviously a huge amount of literary references in the comic, not just to fantasy, and Carey has interesting things to say about the nature of fame and celebrity and how we interact with books and other media in this day and age. The covers to the comics are all gorgeous, and the art by Peter Gross is very suited to the book. I'm eagerly awaiting volume 4: Leviathan, and can recommend this comic to pretty much anyone interested in clever, entertaining storytelling.

CBR3 Book 25: "One of Our Thursdays is Missing" by Jasper Fforde

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: March 28th, 2011
Date finished: April 1st, 2011

This is the sixth book in the Thursday Next series, and I can absolutely assure you that it makes little to no sense if you haven't read several of the others in the series. The first book in the series, The Eyre Affair, is excellent, so go start there if you're interested. Also, may contain spoilers for previous books etc. etc.

There's a war brewing in the Book World, and Thursday Next, the famous heroine and literary detective who is needed to manage the peace talks, appears to have gone missing. No one seems to know where she is, and the life of her fictional counterpart is starting to take odd and unexpected turns as a result.

Yes, that's a super short summary of the book, but I'm really at a loss to even begin to explain the intricacies of the plot of this book. Jasper Fforde's literary universe is a very complex one, both with his alternate version of reality, where the real Thursday Next lives, and the one he explores more closely in this one, the Book World. Simply put, every time someone in the real world reads a book, the fictional counterparts in the Book World act that story out. When the reader puts the book back down, they can go on with their normal lives. The fictional Thursday starts out being very little like her real-life counterpart - she's calm, sedate, a bit boring, and a bit of a tree hugger. As increasingly more complicated puzzles and challenges get thrown her way, she starts realizing that she has the potential to change and be so much more.

The previous novel in the series, First Among Sequels, took me ages to get into, and I didn't really feel that it got good until shortly before the end. In this one, Fforde suddenly explores an entirely different aspect of his world, and very different characters, and it just didn't grab me much. Several people have given this book a very enthusiastic review, so I had high hopes for it. It did not live up to my expectations, and at this rate, I'm not going to be in a hurry to read any more books in the series either.

CBR2 Book 8: "First Among Sequels" by Jasper Fforde

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
Page count: 404 pages
Rating: 2 stars
Date begun: November 30th, 2009
Date finished: December 4th, 2009

In this fifth book about Thursday Next, Fforde's unusual heroine has seemingly retired from her busy and dangerous career as a literary detective and enforcer of justice in the Book world. Her husband thinks she's working with her former colleagues in a carpet laying business, but of course, she is just as busy as before trying to sort out the many complications and problems that occur in literary fiction.

Reading rates in Outland, as the literary denizens like to call the real world, are falling drastically. The attention span of the common man is getting shorter and shorter, only very extreme reality programming such as Celebrity Kidney Swap seem to be holding their attention, and Thursday and her fellow Jurisfiction agents are not sure what to do about it. Sherlock Holmes appears to have been murdered. Bookworld beaureucrats want to turn Pride and Prejudice into a reality reading experience, where readers can vote off characters they don't like. One of Thursday's literary counterparts is trying to take her place, and her son Friday is failing spectacularly to live up to his future potential.

I really loved Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair when I discovered it many years ago. It was original, funny, clever and made me look at Jane Eyre in a completely different light. The second and third book in the series were enjoyable too, but as the series has progressed on, I'm not sure I'm as fond of Fforde's ideas anymore. It took me nearly a week to finish First Among Sequels, which is unusual, considering it's not a very long book. It also took me a year and a half from buying the book to actually reading it, because I just wasn't that bothered about finding out what happens to Thursday. What used to be funny and clever just doesn't seem as good anymore, and while Fforde's writing is still good, I may think about giving up on the series.

The action of the book is slow at first, but picks up towards the end. I may give the sixth Thursday Next book a chance, whenever it comes out, but if it fails to live up to my now-reduced expectations.