Emma

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I have to admit when I first got this book I assumed it was non-fiction. I was quite surprised to find out it wasn't but I enjoyed it anyway. It is quite similar to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Hundred-Year-Old Man, we see Aganetha at the age of 104 looking back on her life. Though I think this novel is quite a bit more serious.

This book is about running and the Olympics. The way the author writes about running is so lyrical it will make you want to go outside and run. But it is also about women's rights and unwanted pregnancy. I have to admit when I got to the end of this book I refused to believe I was finished. It was a lovely book to read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think everyone should read this.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This book is what I imagine would happen if you mixed the Vogons from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with the bumbling idiocy of Winnie the Pooh. Its a quirky tale of misunderstandings which turns into a satirical take on capitalism. It was a very strange book, it takes place in a small idyllic country of seemingly no significant importance to the world. To be honest when I started reading this the descriptions made it seem so idyllic that I thought I was going to be reading some strange dystopian fiction.

But I really enjoyed it. It was a thought provoking read that really made you think about capitalism and the role of women in keeping a country running. It was also about tea and had a very good argument for tea becoming a basic human right and that is something I fully support.

I need to go read The Bell Jar now.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I really don't know how I feel about this book. It was an okay story, but a large part of the book is about a family who keep secrets from each other. However I couldn't help but be frustrated by this. Why couldn't this family just talk to each other rather than keep so many secrets, literally most of this book would not have happened if they had taken the time and used their words.

Not only that but the characters reactions to these secrets were so over the top it felt almost unbelievable. It was so annoying how these characters acted on a whim without ever stopping to think about their actions.

I have to say I did enjoy parts of this book, I liked how many of the characters used creative outlets as a way to heal. It just annoyed me how most of this book literally would not have happened if the characters had taken the time to talk to each other. If I were to sum it up in one word it would be frustrating.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This started off really good. It is a novel but almost feels like a series of short stories, every chapter tells a stand alone story about a female member of one family. I think this is the type of book you need to read more than once to fully understand what is going on, there is a family tree at the front of the book which helps, however flicking back and forth through the ebook version was slightly difficult.

The book is sort of a historical/ modern day fiction. However the final few chapters got so weird that I couldn't believe it was part of the same book. These chapters show what has happened to the family over 100 years in the future. I don't want to give away spoilers but it got really strange and these few final chapters are the reason why I gave this book such a low rating. Its almost like the book was trying to be like Cloud Atlas but it didn't work. I'm really quite disappointed as I was enjoying it up to that point.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

The Forever Watch is set on the generational ship “Noah” which is carrying the last surviving humans on a thousand year voyage to “Canaan”. People on board the ship have cybernetic implants in their brains which allow them direct access to the futuristic Nth web; their version of the internet. It also enhances their natural abilities turning them into telepaths, healers and almost animal like bruisers.

The main character “Hana” is the administrator of the city planning bureau. We first meet Hana just after she finishes Breeding Duty. A duty every female onboard ship must do; where they are placed in a coma for 9 months while their womb is used to grow a child. Shortly after she is asked by a friend to help on a case he is working on. As they investigate a murder they end up learning more about the ship and its mission than they ever expected to.

I've been trying to get my thoughts together on how I feel about this book and to be honest I can't. This is not a happy book. You definitely wouldn't want to let your kids read it. But it is fantastic. I really don't want to write too much about it because I don't want to give away any spoilers. The closest book I can compare it to is Across The Universe however this book is still nothing like Across The Universe and it is also infinitely better than it too.

There is one slight problem with this book. It is very technical. Technology plays a huge role in this book and with all the talk of compiling code, analysing networks and artificial intelligence you practically need a computer science degree to understand some of the language. But you can tell the author really knows what he is writing about. From knowing that software is not written from scratch and rather is mashed together from pre-written lines of code. To just knowing that software takes longer to test than is takes to be written. Seriously, I spent 3 years doing computing at college and 95% of that time was spend testing my code. The technology was one of the main reasons why I loved this book but I can understand how someone without any knowledge of computers might be confused by it.

Even though I loved this book I didn't give it 5 stars. I noticed a couple of small grammar errors which were slightly annoying. Some parts of the book I found implausible, the sheer size of the ship for example. And like I already mentioned I had a problem with some of the computer language. However overall I really enjoyed this book. It might not be for everyone but I liked it.

*I received a copy of this book from Hodder & Stoughton in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I like ancient Egyptian mythology. I find it fascinating. So when I came across a book about Ancient Egypt I thought it would be good. I was wrong. So wrong. This book was so historically inaccurate that it pained me to read it. First you have these Egyptian princes that were buried in a place that literally did not exist during the time they were alive. The author completely ignored every single thing historians know about Hatshepsut and made up a story about how she was in some secret club (Hatshepsut being one of the only female Kings of Egypt and was forgotten by history because she was good at her job).

Worst of all, it seemed like Houck got her information about The Book of the Dead from the Mummy movies. Surprisingly The Book of the Dead is not some magic book that you should never ever read or else you will bring the 10 plagues down on Egypt. It is literally just a handbook on what to do in the afterlife. Like I have a copy of this book. I have read this book and I can tell you with complete certainty that it has exactly zero magic spells in it.

Then Lily was so annoying. She finds this guy in the Egyptian wing of a museum, sees him heal himself and then he sneaks into her bedroom and she decides to help him because she thinks he is a cancer patient. And then there was the whole thing where she is talking about how attractive this guy is after only knowing him for two hours. Then of course in just a matter of days they fall in love and decide that they can't spend the rest of their lives apart. I'm not even going to get started on Lily “not being like other girls”.

But then there was that whole thing where Lily was basically kidnapped and taken to Egypt. The insta-love was bad but then she falls in love with a guy who basically forced her to go to Egypt with him. She may have said yes but that was only because she literally couldn't say no and that's just super creepy. Stockholm syndrome isn't a cute romance and I don't understand why so many authors try to make it seem like it is.

I was really disappointed by this. I genuinely did want to enjoy it. I like Egyptian mythology and haven't read many books about it. But this was just a bad historically inaccurate typical teenage romance. In my opinion you should just watch Night At The Museum instead.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I'm surprised to say this but I did not like The Ship. To be more specific I did not like the main character – Lalla. She felt like a spoiled little kid. She is born into this dystopian version of London but has lived such a sheltered life that she really doesn't understand what life is like in the capital.

Food is running out, people are fighting for survival and being killed by the government for not having an identity card. Meanwhile Lalla spends her time at home with her parents and goes on trips to the British Museum with her mum. She doesn't understand why life onboard the ship is so much better than what everyone had in London and therefore spends her time longing to have her London life back.

In fact at one point her father tells her that he built a ship for her so she has the time and resources to figure out what to do after the ships supplies run out. But instead of actually doing anything she just focuses on the fact that the food and clothes and toothpaste will all run out at some point.

I think this could have been a really interesting dystopia but it was ruined by an annoying main character.

Some books are like chocolate. You need to keep having more. Others are like a warm cup of tea. To me celebrity biographies are like crack. No matter how terrible they are I keep reading them. I'm not proud to admit I read this and it was astonishingly badly written. But I read it anyway.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This book is essentially a memoir written by someone with cancer. But to say it's just a memoir devalues what this really is. This book is one person's attempt to examine death – maybe even accept it. This book was written by a person who didn't want to die, but like all of us, doesn't get a choice in the matter. This is his attempt to help himself and others come to terms with their own mortality.

Paul Kalanithi was a writer who went on to become a doctor because he was fascinated with the brain. He wanted to discover where biology, philosophy and literature intersect. At the age of 36 just as he was to graduate medical school he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Suddenly he went from being the doctor to being a patient.

After his diagnosis Paul decided to continue his project, this book being the final result. However that's part of the reason this book is so heartbreaking because Paul never managed to finish his book – his project. His final words are not some insight into death, but advice for his young daughter who he would never see grow up. In a way this book reminds me of that John Green quote. “You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence”.

You go into this book knowing Paul is going to die and if anything it makes you realise how unfair life truly is. Here is a person, a husband, a father, a scientist. Just about to graduate. At the top of his game. He could quite possibly have become one of the best neurosurgeons in the US. Struck down just as his life begins. There is nothing more unfair than that, and it's what makes this book so beautiful and poignant.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com

There are two things you need to know about this book. The first is that read almost all of it in a single day. The second is that I was only 25% of the way through this when I went and preordered the next book. I think that says more of how I feel about this book than any other versions of “I like it” that I could come up with.

The strange thing I find with this book is it isn't in a genre I normally read. This may be a surprise but I don't read massive amounts of YA any more because I always feel that I can't connect with the characters. But for some reason I love this. I love that it's about the Library of Alexandria which is this thing people always go on about how amazing it would be if it were still around. But it's about freedom of information which is turning into a really important thing in the world we're living in just now.

I like the fact that this gang of kids actually has some adult figures around. Telling them what they are doing may not be the best or right thing to do. One of the things that always annoys me about YA books is how the adult characters being forgotten. In this the adults are part of the “gang”.

I love that you have a diverse cast of characters. It touches on sexuality and normalises LGBT relationships. The characters feel real because they are all motivated by something. Their actions aren't always the right ones. It feels like an adventure. And I love that this book made me feel real sadness when a robot cat died. Of course I also love that it's a book about books.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com

If you haven't heard of the Old Kingdom series before this is a set of fantasy books set in a world where one part of the world is like normal 21st century and the other half is magic. It has this really interesting magic system where magic is literally drawn in the air. The whole series focuses on the current Abhorsen, this is a necromancer tasked with protecting the world from dead creatures and various other bad things.

The magic system is my favourite thing about this series. First of all you have the charter marks (magic) that can be used and imbedded into things to give them magical properties (swords for example). We have dead things that can come back from the dead and a necromancer who has to protect everyone from the dead things. They do that with a series of magical bells that can control the dead things. And there is the fact that death is an actual place the necromancers, it's explained as being a river but there are various levels to ‘death' which people go through before finally arriving at the ‘ninth gate' where they die the final death.

Goldenhand is the fifth book in this series and it is a direct sequel to Abhorsen which was the third book (the fourth book Clariel, was set 500 years before the others). The thing you have to understand is Abhorsen was released in 2003 and I read it around then. So I have basically been waiting 13 years for this book. I've been waiting so long for this book I gave up hope of there ever being a sequel to Abhorsen. So I had extremely high expectations for this, not only because I've been waiting a long time for it. But this has to come after the huge finale in Abhorsen which saw the main characters destroying literally the most evil thing to have ever existed in this universe. And I'm amazed to say it lived up to those expectations.

The main character of Goldenhand is a strong independent woman who don't need no man (this could be said about the whole series). Okay so this book is about her falling in love but thats okay because we have seen Lireal grow as a character over the last two books and she went from being a shy librarian to a kick ass necromancer who literally saved the universe. Even the whole falling in love thing is fine because it fits with her story. This love isn't something that came out of nowhere, Nix was hinting at it in the last book. And it fits with her growing up and learning how to cope with her new role.

Even after 5 books the dead still feel scary. In these books the dead are zombie-like creatures that are repelled by water. They take lots of different shapes. Some are dead bodies whose spirits were brought back to life by a necromancer. Over the last 5 books there have been numerous times where our main character was being chased by some type of dead creature. But Nix still manages to make those moments scary and you actually fear for the characters life.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This was okay. A reasonably good science fiction book. The problem I had with this, and other books like it who have some sort of futuristic version of the internet. Is that the authors never really fully explain how it works. I mean authors will describe it as some sort of virtual reality, maybe mention spam bots or anti-virus or something like that. But they never fully explain how it works. I would like that little bit of computer science in there to understand whats going on. But I don't know, that might just be me being a computer nerd.

I also didn't like the description of the space station. We are told that the station is on an asteroid, but I could never work out if it looked like the ship in that whale episode of Doctor Who or if it looked like the Citadel in Mass Effect. I couldn't properly visualize the station and that annoyed me.

The fact that the station was being run by gods was annoying too. We are told what the gods do to keep the place running, but we are never told why there are a bunch of gods running the station. I don't even think these gods were people, from what I could tell they were just lines of code.

But yes, this wasn't great. Could be much better. If you liked Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch you might want to give this a read. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I liked this. It was a very character focused book. It was interesting to see how their lives were changed by just a few small decisions. Though as much as I enjoyed it I don't think it was very realistic. It is very romanticised, the thought that a tiny decision like going for a drink could so entirely change your life.

Another slight technical problem I had was that it was quite difficult to tell what timeline I was in. However this may be because I was reading an eARC and the headings were not quite clear enough, as such it was easy to miss them entirely. Other than that it was a pretty good book.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I can't decide how I feel about this book. It was partially based on the authors own life. He states “I was chronically shy as a child... I wanted to distance myself from school, from that whole experience. To have a keep-your-head-down-and-get-through-it attitude. I wanted to write something from the point of view of a schoolboy that felt real – real to the experience I had at school“. The author does this very well. But the entire way through this book I couldn't get the image of my own high school out of my head. I had a very similar experience at school, I didn't have many friends and spent many lunchtimes on my own. It was very weird, I kept imagining the characters in my own high school, even though it was nothing like the one described in the book. I spent more time thinking about my own high school experience than I did of the characters.

There was one thing however that annoyed me about this book. It is about obsession and mental illness. The main character has schizophrenia. From very early on in the story you know there is not going to be a happy ending. The entire way through the book you are trying to guess what is real and what is happening inside the main characters head. At the end there is a small epilogue telling you what was real and what wasn't. I didn't like this. Throughout the book you are told enough that you could make an educated guess at what happens at the end, I would rather have come away from the book still trying to workout exactly what happened instead of being told outright.

Basically this was a strange one, I can't say I liked it but I didn't exactly dislike it either.

*I received a copy of this book from Hodder & Stroughton in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This was a really strange book, its basically a dystopia though it doesn't feel like a dystopia. In this world people have forgotten how to use written words so they communicate in music. This does mean that there are many musical terms in this book and I did spend a good while googling musical terms. It was an interesting book but I didn't enjoy it. I feel that its one of those books you need to read more than once to understand fully. I also have to mention the cover which is really beautiful. Its one of the nicest book covers I have seen.

I basically stopped reading fantasy books for a while because it got to the point where I felt like I was reading the same story by a bunch of different authors. But this is different, it's a heist story set in a fantasy world. And it was really fantastic. I loved it and I need to make time to read it again. Also this book is a great example of a main character with a disability without that disability becoming the whole story.

This review may be slightly biased because I love this book. Like I really really love this book. Okay first thing is it's a post apocalyptic novel. But it's so believable. We don't have any of this phone signals turning people into zombies, or aliens invading or nuclear detonations. It's just a really really bad virus that kills almost everyone. I mean if Ebola or some other virus gets worse that could actually happen. It sort of did happen once with the Spanish Flu.

I love that it's sci-fi but not really. Actually its barely sci-fi. This is the sort of book I would recommend for people who don't like sci-fi. I mean yes a good part of the book is set in a post-apocalyptic world, but it's still not sci-fi. Apart from a new virus it really doesn't have any new science in it. Its really more a story about a bunch of people living in a world with no electricity, no medicine, no internet, no anything basically.

But the one thing I love most about this book (and I may start rambling here) is that is has a reference to Star Trek Voyager. This is probably no secret but I am a huge Star Trek Voyager nerd. One thing that annoys me when any media makes a reference to Star Trek is that they forget there is more to Star Trek than James T Kirk. I mean there are five Star Trek television series (six if you include the animated series), not to mention the movies. And yet when there is any mention of Star Trek in pop culture you can bet it will be referencing The Original Series.

So the fact that Emily St John Mandel referenced ST: Voyager and not only that but it explains a huge part of the book. That one tiny line explains the entire reason why there is a shakespeare company travelling around North America and Canada. That was the moment I fell in love with this book.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

June Mottershead was four when her father, George, moved his family to Upton, two miles from Chester, to begin the process of turning his dream into a reality. With no other children around to play with – her sister Muriel was ten years older – June's friends became the animals. Her closest friends became the animals. Her closest companion was an orphaned chimpanzee which she hand reared, and for six years the two were inseparable.

June soon became the poster girl for Chester Zoo and photographs of her cuddling lion cubs soon graced the front pages of British newspapers. She was 13 when war was declared in 1939 and, with the backbone of the staff headed to the front, it fell to June to take over as head keeper.

June is now in her eighties, is the guardian of her families legacy and in Our Zoo, she tells the fascinating story of a working class family with a very unusual home. This story of how her father set out to build a zoo without bars was turned into a six-part drama series currently airing on the BBC.

Stories about animals are basically my kryptonite and this book had many of them. There are plenty stories of hand-reared wild animals and the photographs of chimpanzees helping to build their own enclosure will melt your heart. This is a fascinating story of the every-day struggles and make-do attitude by the entire Mottershead family.

The story was told in chronological order with a few anecdotes outwith the timeline which was slightly confusing. I did feel that the story ended very abruptly and I turned the page expecting there would be more. But overall I loved this story and the only problem I had with it was the length. I would have quite happily read another 100 pages.

If you like these sorts of books I would also recommend Jeremy and Amy by Jeremy Keeling. This is the true story of a zoo keeper, an orangutan and one mans dream of turning a derelict pig farm in Dorset into a cageless sanctuary for primates.

*I received a copy of this book from Headline in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I really enjoyed Aurora, it's one of those books set on a generational ship. I've found that most books like this usually occur about halfway through the journey and almost always have some sort of plot twist. Aurora is different because it does not have a plot twist and deals with what happens when the ship gets to it's destination.

One thing I found great about it is that the main character is mentally stunted, it's never properly explained what her problems are, though we learn that it may be caused by living on the ship. The thing I love about this is that her disability is not the whole point of the story, it's just something she has and despite having it, is still able to get on with her life just like everyone else on board.

Now this book is a hard sci-fi, I love hard sci-fi and I really enjoyed all the science-y bits in this, but I found some parts were just a little too technical. I ended up skipping pages because I didn't understand the physics. I still enjoyed the book despite this but it was annoying that I had to skip bits.

My only problem with this book was the final section. I'll try to not give away any spoilers but I basically thought it didn't do a very good job of wrapping up the story. It almost felt like this final section should have been cut during the edit. It left me with more questions than answers. The actual last part of this book wasn't even a proper end, it sort of just stopped. I don't know if that means Kim Stanley Robinson is going to write a sequel or what. But yes, apart from the ending (which was a bit of a let down) I did enjoy this book.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

Despite being called ‘The Rise of Darth Vader‘ he isn't actually in this all that much. However the little insights you do get are very interesting. This takes place 2 weeks after the events in Return of the Sith and it's interesting to see the amount of conflict going on in Anakin's mind because even after the events on Mustafar he isn't totally Darth Vader yet. In this you see him fully turn to the dark side (and part of the reason why he doesn't go back to Tatooine). It's also really interesting to find out more about his suit and how the Emperor is possibly punishing him by making him reliant on it. Basically you should read this if you want to feel sorry for Darth Vader.

I was really surprised by this in that it wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. It wasn't good enough that I want to read the next book but it was still reasonably good. My only problem with it is that I got bored around 50 pages from the end and just skim read the last few chapters.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com

This book is the second part of a duology which means it's going to be difficult to review without giving away spoilers. But I'm going to try it anyway. It's better if you imagine this book like an urban fantasy version of Ocean's Eleven. It's this weird adventure story about a group of friends trying to save one of their own and then go on to con a bunch of business people out of their money.

The characterization is one of the things I love so much about this book. The characters feel so real. They all feel like genuine people. And they all have their own flaws and quirks. Not only that it's a diverse range of characters. From the colour of their skin to sexuality. It's not made obvious but these characters aren't all stick thin as well which is a big thing in a fantasy book.

I don't really know what else I can say about this. I love this story and I love these characters. But two books isn't anywhere near enough to tell all their stories.

This is set about 10 years after Return of the Sith and it's really fascinating because you get to see the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor. Because the Emperor is constantly expecting Darth to kill him and Vader is basically “yeah I will, but not right now”. Apparently that sort of thing is expected among the Sith. Also you get to see a little bit of Vader being all sad about Padme which is interesting.

I don't think I have ever cried so much while reading a non-fiction book.

Side note: My Kindle told me to review this book after finishing it. Seeing as I am now having to write this on Goodreads I can safely say, Amazon you suck.