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 psychological thriller novel Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman which is a very good story and which I bought from a local supermarket. This book is part of the Alex Delaware series featuring a psychologist who works for the police in Los Angeles along with his partner Milo Sturgis. These stories tend to cover serial killings and this is no exception. The story centres on a well to do neighbourhood where there has been a spate of ritual killings done some time ago. The first one discovered is by a lady who is 5 months pregnant and is in a large metal container in a huge tree in her garden at the house she has recently moved into. There has been problems with the tree which has dead wood and it's as one of the large branches comes down, the metal box is exposed. The body has been there quite a long time. There is the body of a baby later discovered and it becomes apparent the killer is a doctor who used to drive an old classis car called a Duisburg and due to its age there are no records of it. They discover there were 3 of these cars in the area. This isn't as good as some of the other stories in the series but is still pretty good. I think When The Bough Breaks is my favourite. Anyway there is a happy ending and the story is nicely paced. Jonathan used to be a very distinguished psychologist prior to becoming an author and has written some factual books on the subject in addition to his thrillers. He is a gifted writer and most of his fiction books are Alex Delaware novels. I am surprised no one has made any of them into films as I they think they would be quite popular.

I am reviewing the adventure novel The Storm by Clive Cussler et al which is an excellent story which I bought from a local supermarket. In Britain this novel has only just been released on the paperback bestsellers chart and is currently doing quite well. It's part of the Kurt Austin series or the NUMA files as it is sometimes called. Actually he also does a Dirk Pitt series who also reputedly works for NUMA in a fiction sense and occasionally features as Kurt's boss in these novels. This novel kicks off in World war 2 with an American ship being hunted by the Japanese before it is destroyed for it's precious cargo. Actually the main theme of the story is nanotechnology and we later learn that the famed German scientist Wernher Von Braun as part of the story was working on nanotechnology which is creating many microscopic robots which can digest material and replicate and turn it into something else.There was a real scientist called Wernher who helped develop rockets in Germany during the war and later he defected to America where he was a key member of the Space Program. As part of the story there is a plan to change the climate pattern of the world to benefit the Middle East. There are 2 tyrants 1 in Northern Yemen & 1 in China that Kurt must hunt down. There is also a NUMA research vessel that falls victim to these nanotechnological bots. Incidently I did a post on Nanotechnology at http://scratbagroberts.com which is my main technology blog. It may be worth reading. Kurt comes across some survivors from the WW2 ship called the Roosevelts living on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean and worshipping American culture like a religion which results in some rather amusing questions for Kurt that he must get right and with a name like his at first they assume he must be German. He also has to pilot a seaplane and hasn't got a clue how to land it safely. They do say that is the most difficult aspect of flying. There is a nice young lady that helps Kurt and it has quite a happy ending as with all Cussler novels. I found the book very enjoyable and the plot is one of his best.

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.