The Queen's Fool

The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory
Historical Fiction
Hannah Green is a young Jewess recently forced to flee from Spain. She is posing as a boy to help her father who is a bookkeeper. Lord Robert Dudley realizes she can foresee the future and she becomes King Edward's Fool. Hannah The Fool gets to go to court. She goes through the King's death and then Queen Mary's rise to the throne. On top of this is Princess Elizabeth's eternal scheming to get on the throne.

Dudley with whom Hannah is in love asks her to spy on both Mary and Elizabeth and thus puts her in danger. Hannah although she loves Dudley is also engaged to a man of her own religion.

All this intrigue makes for quite a page-turner. Hannah is only a young teen who must hide her religion and not play favourites among the Royals. Gregory really does try to portray Mary in a more kindly light then history has us believe. As for Elizabeth, what a skank! Could she have really have been this bad?

First Line: "The girl, giggling and overexcited, was running in the sunlit garden, running away from her stepfather, but not so fast that he could not catch her."
Rating:
(4.0/5)

Survivor in Death by J.D. Robb

Survivor in Death by J.D. Robb
Mystery

Nine year old Nixie Swisher was in her kitchen getting an orange fizzy when her entire family was murdered in their sleep. She too was supposed to be killed, but getting that drink saved her life. Lieutenant Eve Dallas gets the case and keeps Nixie safe in her house while she hunts for the killers. Eve isn't very good with kids, adding to her stress as she tried to piece together the puzzle. This murder seemed harder for her to solve than some previous ones. The team had to grind data a bit more than usual, but that helped made the story more believable.

I enjoyed how uncomfortable it was having a kid around for Eve and Roarke. I hope Nixie returns in some later stories. Roarke says he wants kids with Eve eventually but I can't see her ever becoming a parent. Beyond that, I felt like the motive was rather weak. Why would multiple people agree to help someone with their revenge? It just didn't make sense to me.

First Line: "A late night urge for an Orange Fizzy saved Nixie's life."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Blood Money by Erika Mitchell

Blood Money by Erika Mitchell
Thriller

Azzam Abdullah is an Iraqi-born Londoner, heading up the accounting department of Sun Corp. Sounds normal right? Except Sun Corp is a terrorism financier and its owner plans terrorism activities himself. Azzam lost his family to terrorism in Iraq and despises what the company does so he feeds information to the American government to make sure that Sun Corp can't kill any innocent civilians.

When Azzam learns that the company is planning an attack at a conference using ricin, he tells his contact Bai at the CIA and they move in to confiscate the weapon. This brings to light that there's a mole in the company and the CEO sets out to find out who it is. Azzam is in danger and if they find him, his life will be at risk.

Terrorism thrillers certainly fit in with the news these days and this book did not lack for thrills. There are some good twists and turns and one that I didn't see coming at the end of the book. I always enjoy being surprised and find that it's happening less and less for me while reading these days.

I found Mitchell's writing very fluid, which may be a bit odd to point out and yet when I think of this book I think of how well and smoothly it went through the plot. I believe I read that Mitchell doesn't plan her plot line out before she writes and just lets it come to her. This could be part of the reason why it was so fluid to me.

One thing I would have liked to read more of was character development. I felt like for Azzam, Bai, and the CEO of Sun Corp we only scratched the surface on what makes them tick. Since I didn't know much about their background or who they were it was harder to connect with them. I'm sure Bai has an interesting back story and it would have been great to learn more about him. The book stands at 253 pages so it's not like additional character development would have made the book too long.

Visit Erika Mitchell on Facebook

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this book.

First Line: "The imam's warbling voice ricocheted off the domed ceiling of the mosque and reached Azzam's ears past a sea of prostrated bodies."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Fiction

In the mid-70s, India went through quite a bit of turmoil. The Prime Minister declared a state of emergency and there was a government sterilization program convincing, or at times forcing, citizens to stop having children by surgical means. Poverty was rampant and despair more common than happiness. A Fine Balance focuses on the lives of a student, a widow, and two tailors. The reader learns about their backgrounds, which are plagued with grief, and how they came to meet each other.

Dina is the widower, having lost her husband of three years to a hit and run accident. She is inherited his flat and the landlord wants to try to kick her out to rent it at a higher rate. She used to sew but as she's grown older her eyes have gotten worse so she wants to hire two tailors. At the same time, she takes a border in her flat. Income from these two sources should mean she doesn't have to ask her brother for money but at the same time the landlord can use both of those to try and get her kicked out. The border is the son of a grade school friend named Maneck. He grew up in the mountains and wanted to take over his dad's general store business but his parents decided it was more important for Maneck to get an education in the big city. While on the train to Dina's flat, he meets the two tailors Ishvar and Om. The tailors are uncle and nephew, coming from a small town where they both apprenticed in a tailor shop. Despite losing most of his family to a massacre, Ishvar has a fairly good attitude about life while Om does not. The two start to sew for Dina in her flat and Om wants to cut out the middleman.

This has to be one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Without giving too much away, there is just too much pain and misery for the characters and all of India. There's supposed to be "a fine balance" between happiness and misery but I felt like this was false advertising for the book!

Despite this being such a depressing read it was still satisfying. Mistry is a master at writing characters you can connect with, despite their foibles. You care for them, you want them to pull through and be happy.

I think this book would have been better off without the Epilogue. There were too many coincidences to make it believable and it got way too depressing.

First Line: "The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed."

Rating:
(4/5)

Innocent in Death

Innocent in Death by J. D. Robb
Mystery
Two 10-year old girls at the Sarah Child Academy discover the body of Craig Foster, a popular history teacher. He was poisoned with ricin. Foster had absolutely no enemies. He was liked by staff, students and parents. Dallas has to really puzzle this one out to find out who could have possibly wanted Foster dead.

An ex-girlfriend of Roarke's shows up. Dallas detects a wistfulness from Roarke and feels their relationship go off kilter.

Another great book in the series, after 24 books and still going strong. This murder was a chilling one and the trouble between Dallas and her hotter then hot husband was sad but felt so real.

First Line: "Pop quizzes were killers."
Rating:
(4.0/5)

Reaper Man

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Fantasy
Death has been sent into unwanted retirement. He goes to work as a farmhand with Mrs. Flitworth. As he starts to find out what real life is all about, Death finds out he likes farm life and Mrs. Flitworth.

But there is no one to usher the dead off and souls and life force begin to build up. Winnie Poons,a wizard, died but has since returned to his body and the remaining wizards are not happy. The wizards try to put Poons' body to rest but do not succeed.

As the life force builds cities want to grow and it is up to the undead to rectify the problem.

I love the character Death. As for the wizards, it is difficult to understand what they are about. I did however enjoy Pratchett's weird form of changing everyday things like the shopping carts. Very good satirism

First Line: "The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse."
Rating:
(3.5/5)

Remember When

Remember When by Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb
Mysterygoes
This book contains two stories.

Laine Tavish is a small town antique store owner. She has escaped a life on the run with her father, Big Jack O'Hara. Jack was a con man and thief. Laine has settled down to a nice rural life when her long-lost uncle comes into her store, gives her a cryptic message and runs outside to die from a car accident. Soon afterwards Laine's house is ransacked.

Max Gannon is working with the insurance company to find some diamonds which have been stolen. Max and Laine team up to find her father and the diamonds.

The second story is an In Death one.

Samantha Gannon arrives home to find her home-sitter and best friend dead. Samantha was on a book tour promoting her book about her grandparents, Laine and Max Gannon.
Was the murder because someone was looking for the diamonds that weren't recovered?

This was an interesting concept for a book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt it was not at all like reading two short stories. It was intriguing how the two stories even though written by the same person had slightly different styles.

First Line: "A heroic belch of thunder followed the strange little man into the shop."
Rating:
(4.0/5)

Mort

Mort by Terry Pratchett
Fantasy
Mort is a young farmboy who goes to the market in search of a job. He is still there at midnight long after most people have been taken when
"Death comes to us all.
When he came to Mort, he offered him a job."

Mort is apprenticed to Death. Death teaches him how to usher a life to the next world and other intricacies of his job. Then Death takes a rest and leaves Mort to do the job. Mort does not do well when he encounters a princess who is supposed to die and he just can not let that happen. The world is now out of synch and will anything to 'right' itself.

This is the first Discworld book I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how Pratchett strings the words together and turns everything upside down or sideways.

First Line: "This is a bright candlelit room where the life-timers are stored - shelf upon shelf of them, squat hourglasses, one for every living person, pouring their fine sand from the future into the past."
Rating:
(4.0/5)

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent by Veronica Roth
Teen

Beatrice Prior is from the faction Abnegation, which is know for its selflessness. There are four other factions that one may belong to in this new society, which was created because they thought this would stop wars from happening. Just before your 16th birthday, each teen is given a test to determine which faction they belong to. On choosing day they are allowed to either stay with their current faction or change to a new one, where they remain for the rest of their lives. When Beatrice takes her test though, there are abnormalities. She qualifies for three different factions, which isn't supposed to happen. She is divergent and being divergent is a very dangerous thing.

I'm sure like many, this will bring back reminders of The Hunger Games. It has many similarities: a strong female lead character, a new society broken up in different ways, dissension and more. This book had me hooked but I found it a somewhat slower read than The Hunger Games, which I blazed through. This book was enjoyable, I really liked thinking what if. What faction would I be placed in? Not as enjoyable as The Hunger Games but pretty close.

First Line: "There is one mirror in my house."

Rating:
(4/5)

Visions in Death by J.D. Robb

Visions in Death by J.D. Robb
Mystery

Eve Dallas gets a call on the way home from a party with her husband Roarke to a park in NYC, due to a homicide. The scene is rather grisly. A single mother walking home at night, she is beaten, raped and strangled before posed and her eyes cut out. Eve knows she needs to stop this guy before he kills again and she's helped in a very unlikely way. A sensitive, who can see visions and read people, visits Eve telling her that she saw the crime happen in her visions. She describes things that haven't been released to the public. Eve isn't quite sure what to make of her but uses it as assistance to the investigation.

I think this was one of the better 'in death' books. The investigation wasn't pretty, there was a lot of painstaking details that needed to be tracked down, which made it feel more real. I also think that Detective Peabody came a bit more in to her own in this book. Finally, there was a nice twist at the end that I wasn't expecting.

First Line: "She'd gotten through the entire evening without killing anyone."

Rating:
(4/5)