I am reviewing the fantasy novel Small Gods by Terry Pratchett which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This is one of the funnier installments in the Discworld series. The Discworld series is a fantasy series about a world which is discworld and populated by various entities like dwarves, trolls, vampires, humans & other things. I think certainly most of the books would appeal to all ages and Terry in his own unique style does away with logic in favour of humor and they are very funny. The story to this book is his take on religion. A god called Om is communicating with a young student at the local boarding school and he tells the monk in charge that they need to travel to a far off land over desert and ocean and convert the people to the Omnian religion. Of course he has got the om word because it's a well known mantra in transcendental meditation and does make a good name for a god. Anyway a group of them including a tortoise make the journey but all doesn't go according to plan and some of them decide to settle in the far off land where they have their own ideas about religion. I think it does have a reasonably happy ending. I did quite enjoy reading it and some of the humor did make me laugh aloud.

I am reviewing the novel Gone by James Patterson which is a very good thriller which I bought from kindle. This novel is the 6th installment in the Michael Bennett series where we have a policeman in who serves in New York who lost his wife to cancer but who has 9 adopted children all adopted by an Irish nanny called Mary Catherine who is devoted to her job and has a bit of a crush on Mike. At the beginning of this book there is a big gangster take over where a load of dons in the mafia and their families are wiped out. The man responsible is hispanic and offered a deal to the dons some time ago but it got scoffed at. It starts off a bit like the James Bond where we would see a terrifying baddie and think how on earth is in this case Mike and his family going to deal with this even though we know he is going to come out on top. Anyway apparently Michael broke the nose and arrested the hispanic gangster some time ago so he and his family along with their nanny go in hiding. Their only hope is for Mike to help the FBI find these crooks which means working with Emily Parker who is a past love interest and a bit of a rival to his nanny and he is going out with the latter. There is also at least one informant within the police effort to find this man which means the baddie knows everything including where Mike's family are. The baddie also kidnaps and kills people in a bid to get back at Mike. Of course it does have a happy ending. I did enjoy reading it and it keeps your interest throughout, not to mention there is lots of tension.

I am reviewing the thriller novel The Up And Comer by Howard Roughan which is an excellent story which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. Howard has co written various novels with James Patterson and does seem like a pretty good thriller writer. This novel isn't that different to the kind of thing Patterson writes. The book plays with your emotions quite skilfully and the key character who is an up and coming lawyer in a successful firm, hence the title, does starts off as not very likable but I did find myself feeling sorry for him by the end of the book although perhaps justifiably there is a bitter sweet ending. It's very skilfully written and it does seem a shame it hasn't reached a more mainstream audience. The plot is a lawyer in a successful firm who is married to the bosses daughter is having an affair with the bosses wife who he is meant to be defending on a driving whilst under the influence charge. Then an ex friend of his comes back in his life and has snaps of him and the bosses wife that incriminate him. He wants a $100,000 to keep quiet and threatens this bloke and refuses to pay up. In the meantime he joins a poker circle with some friends and cleans up with lots of money, he gets $3,000 alone when he joins the group but it makes sense to pay the ex friend to stay quiet especially when he discovers he knows his boss. Anyway by a twist of circumstances he ends up killing the ex friend more in manslaughter than murder but makes it look like a robbery gone wrong. At this point his whole starts to come apart and the police are hot on his trail. I really enjoyed this book and it definitely keeps your interest throughout.

I am reviewing the fantasy novel The Crippled God by Steven Erikson which is an excellent book which I bought from a local bookstore. This book was part of the Malazon Book Of The Fallen fantasy series which has to be one of the greatest of this type of series ever written. Quite a long time ago before I did fiction book reviews I read the first 8 books of this series and this is the 10th and final book and there is a kind of spin off book of short stories. Each of the books of the series is around 900 pages so it will take up a lot of time reading it but it's quite rewarding. Also they are really for adults as they are quite violent but apparently it did well in a poll of fantasy book series of the Millennium. The books are set in and around a country called Malaza & in this book there are various groups vying for control including someone with an impressive army who wishes to challenge the gods, little realizing you need to be dead to become a god. There is another group who wish to reintroduce dragons to the desert where they once roamed and they do come in handy in one of the battles where they smell blood and decide to eat the enemy who at the time are winning. There is a female good character who leads a coalition on a knife edge of collapsing. It turns out she is pregnant and even who own troops think they are done for and suggest slaughtering the horses for food. She does insist on sticking with it and there is a happy ending. There is also a group who want to slaughter all humans and start the evolutionary cycle all over again. I would suggest if you read this series start with the 1st book because otherwise it gets quite confusing keeping up with what is going on. The early books have a section that explains the various characters which is handy although it's a nuisance having to keep referring to it. I am going to re read this series again and I can review it on here so that might be quite interesting. The last few hundred pages of this book are very exciting and I think this final book is a worthy ending to what is a great series. It's strange to think the 1st book was turned down by many publishers before a relatively less well known publisher decided to take a chance with it.

I am reviewing the novel The White Princess by Philippa Gregory which is an excellent historical fiction book which I bought from a local supermarket. I think the ending of this novel is the climax of the Cousin's War series based on the story of the Plantangenet rulers and at the end we see the beginning of the Tudor house. Philippa has a PhD from Edinburgh University and really seems to know her history. This book almost reads like an eyewitness account and she is a stickler to the facts in her stories. She has already done a series based on the Tudors so this series is a nice add on. This novel starts with the Battle Of Bosworth & Richard the 3rd's death and how Henry the 7th became king despite there being an unknown disease that many is a punishment from God. Henry marries Richard's sister to try and unite the Houses of Lancaster & York. At first his bride is reluctant to have anything to do with him and considers the sex they have to be rape and can't believe his mother actually condones it. As times goes on she warms to him gradually but when a pretender who is just a boy is trying to take the thrown although there are other people behind it. He eventually gets a job in Henry's kitchens and she is grateful to him for sparing him. Two other people claiming to be her cousin and brother aren't so lucky. Henry goes to all the trouble of staging an invasion of France just so the king will hand these 2 over. They do flee to Flanders but are eventually captured in Spain and handed over. At the end of the day the young lad claiming to be her brother does believe he has a genuine right to the throne and his sister despises how he is treated. It's a great story and I think it shows the best stories are often real life stories.

I am reviewing the novel Doctor Sleep by Stephen King which is a very good horror story and which I bought from a local supermarket. This book is the long awaited sequel to The Shining and primarily follows the story of Dan Torrance the young boy who tells his parents there is an evil presence in room 217 of the hotel where his parents are caretakers and his dad has a drink problem. The name The Shining refers to the gift the son has and the energy force he detects is called steam and is given off by people. In this book his mother was badly injured by the explosion at the end of the book and has obtained damages from the company who owned the hotel but these weren't as substantial as if she had held out for more. This book follows on from the story in the book rather than the film which obviously had to be shortened. Dan has this gift and in this book tells his mother to keep out of the bathroom due to another evil presence but spends long periods without eating or speaking. The other survivor out of The Shining helps care for him but they have become drifters and encounter other people who are mostly getting on in years but live on the steam the living people give off and that person or victim inevitably dies as they absorb their energy. This story reminds me of Desperation also by Stephen King and although not a sequel to that book there are certainly similarities. There is a happy ending and I think it is a reasonable sequel although not as good as the original. Apparently when they made The Shining film originally Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film about Napoleon Bonaparte starring Jack Nicholson and when that fell through because it had wasted quite a bit of Jack's time they decided to do The Shining. I did read they did a survey of the best horror film and 1st was The Exorcist, 2nd was Halloween & 3rd was The Shining. I enjoyed reading this novel but it's not a classic.

I am reviewing the novel Daughter Of Smoke And Bone by Laini Taylor which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. I haven't got a lot of experience of reading teen fiction but although this book is good I think there are other authors who do it better. Also because many of the characters are meeting for the first time there is more emphasis on that than the story which is not all together a bad thing but I think maybe the sequels might be an improvement. I do think it is quite original having the heroine fall in love with a devil who is quite a good character and her having a mother who did the same thing and that is how she came to be born. The ending is a cliff hanger which is obvious when you realise this is a fantasy series. Much of the story is set in Prague the capital of the Czech Republic. I did quite enjoy reading this book which is around 350 pages so is a decent length. I don't like it if a book is really short as I think it reflects how much effort the author put into it and I can speed read so have no problem reading a long book.

I am reviewing the novel The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I wouldn't normally read this kind of book but I think it is regarded as a bit of a classic and Jennifer Lawrence won the Best Actress Oscar for the film based on the book so I was curious about the book even though I haven't seen the film. The plot is that a young man who is in a psychiatric hospital at the beginning and hardly remember anything about the last few years is trying to get around his mum to get him released. He is released soon afterwards and wants to get back with his ex-wife even though she has a restraining order and they are calling the current situation apart time. He is mostly trying to keep fit and healthy. He is desperate to make contact with his ex-wife and an opportunity appears to present itself. A friend of his called Tiffany wants to enter a dance competition and says that if he partners her she will contact Nikki his ex-wife on his behalf. He agrees to this and Tiffany is apparently an accomplished dancer but up until wouldn't let her friends and family see her compete until now. Also she is going to write the replies from Nikki herself and try and give him closure. Nikki doesn't want anything to do with him. They do well in the dancing competition but with his ex-partner things don't go so well. There is a happy ending however and the book is very funny. I really enjoyed this book and at around 300 pages it is a reasonable length.

I am reviewing the novel A Tap On The Window by Linwood Barclay which is a very good thriller which I bought from a local supermarket. I think Linwood is one of the best thriller writers currently writing and I did quite enjoy reading this book which has only just been published in Britain. The book is around 500 pages so is a decent length. The plot concerns a father whose sone jumped off a roof after taking bad recreational drugs and had been missing for some time. The father is determined to find out who is responsible for selling him the dodgy drugs. He is at a traffic lights in the rain and a young lady who knew his son is desperate for a lift and also another rather dodgy motorist has made her a bit fearful for her safety so he agrees to give her a lift. In his search to find the dubious drug dealer he agrees to buy that lady and her friend some drugs each and also he ends up taking some. The drug is what I think is called MDMA although in the book they use the proper name. Anyway both of the die as a result and he is fearful of ending up on multiple murder charges. The only solution is for him to get to the bottom of what is going on. The story is set in Toronto which is Linwood's home in Canada. Apparently he used to be a columnist for the Toronto Star. He has written quite a few thrillers and does seem quite consistent. The novel also has quite a happy ending & I would recommend it.