Gamma by M. Susanne Wiggins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While my attention was captured from the beginning by this dystopian sci-fi tale, I had some problems with understanding the underlying plot and the general location of the setting. It took me many pages of careful reading to decide that we were on Earth, in East America, and there was a sense of oppressive control from outside influences. It could well be that the author intended the lengthy sense of mystery to pervade a good proportion of the book, but I needed more information about the world that was being built for the many characters, whose rather mundane lives were being presented, often in tedious detail. Having spent some time in this book review on the negative points for me, I can now switch to discuss its more gripping, intriguing and fascinating aspects.

There are weird auroras and telepathic properties apparently possessed by certain people, and sinister secrets to be discovered as the tale progresses. The four main characters, Alec, Meg, Tavis and Frank, were all distinctly well written and had me eventually rooting for them to the end, although I liked Meg and Tavis from the very first pages when they each appeared. Sebastian, Chaza and Kyrie are essential to the background revelations of the story, helping to explain some of the psychic, almost clairvoyant, properties and events, which surround the younger characters. The inner thoughts and feelings of the characters come through with remarkable believability and the author, Wiggins, is to be congratulated for her skilful portrayal. The dialogue throughout the book always had a strongly authentic feel to it, but occasionally, the conversations were too long, and slowed down the pace of the tale. Presenting explanations this way could maybe have been improved by showing actual events to illustrate them rather than talk about them? I found the sexual scenes and the birth of a baby extremely well done, with a respectful use of tact and subtlety, giving an essential feeling of romance and emotion, rather than the, all too often, implicitly gratuitous portrayal found in erotica.

I was well into the story before I became more definitely aware of the influence of space travelling aliens, so uncomfortably affecting the cosy domesticity of my favourite characters. And so, despite the lengthy narrative, I was firmly hooked and eager to discover what awaited them. The imagery, both metaphoric and actual, used by Wiggins is compelling and wonderful and helped to counterbalance some of the deeper psychological moments for this reader. Towards the end of the book there is another character who explains, ad nauseam, many of the complications in the plot to the interested parties, as well as to the reader of course, and I wondered whether that was really necessary considering that a sequel (or two?) was on the way. Notwithstanding this, I enjoyed M. Susanne Wiggins foray into fantastical sci-fi with Gamma and look forward to reading more of the saga later. This intense and imaginative epic will, without doubt, appeal to the many other fans of the genre.


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Through the Nethergate by Roberta Eaton Cheadle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the story and the setting for Through the Nethergate as it had the intriguing plot of a teenage girl, Margaret, who has the ability to see supernatural beings and even imbue them with the properties of living beings through her presence. We are in an ancient haunted inn where the ghosts take on a certain amount of physicality and seem able to retain their sense of good or evil from their past experiences when they lived. The author has obviously researched in depth some of the historical events and incidents that befell the ghosts that Margaret meets and who are trapped between the Underworld and the Overworld. This was completely fascinating for me, although I wondered how many of the young readers targeted would find this amount of detail a little too much sometimes. Many of these characters and events had me reaching for history and reference books to discover more than my shady recollections told me; in particular about the Chartists of 1839. But this is a tale of good versus evil after all and so there are dastardly villains in the form of Lucifer and Hugh Bigod, each with designs upon world domination. I enjoyed Margaret’s interactions with her Grandfather and the various spirits and incarnates along the way, and we even have a little gentle romance hinted at with Henry. However, I have no wish to spoil the plot and young readers can find out more when they read this historical fantasy adventure themselves. While the story does romp along at a good pace most of the way I found the ending a little too slow at unfolding. It needed more of a sense of urgency with less detail from history and more description of sounds and smells, and maybe traumatic sights for the young fans of a historical novel that combines fantasy with horror.


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The Hidden Queen by Janelle Garrett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall I quite enjoyed this story as it was intriguing with lots of twists and turns, and with some very strong, well-drawn characters, including Gwen the Queen, plus Nathaniel and Charles, her main romantic interests. Unfortunately, there were several things I found disappointing. The book is described as a historical fantasy and the only link that I could find with the past was the allegorical reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the spread of Christianity during Gwen’s conversations with the disgraced monk, Jakob. Considering the expected archaic times in which the tale is set I found most of the conversations jarring because they included too many modern words, phrases and idiomatic expressions. Perhaps it was intended, due to this novel being aimed at a young adult readership, but I prefer conversations in a historical novel to have some authenticity in the dialect and expressions used between the characters.

The plot and the method of telling it are excellent. A farm girl who suddenly discovers that her mother is the Queen of Rodasia and that she will be expected to soon take over quickly captures the reader’s attention. The story is told through two timelines, and uses Gwen’s memoirs as well as the third person narrative, which worked well much to my surprise. Her political and social discussions with her maids and advisers in the royal court are well done and believable. The biggest disappointments, for me however, were the number of required edits and the abrupt ‘ending’ to the book. The story was not rounded off properly and could not be called a stand-alone novel. It was so obviously a lead-in to the next novel in a series but not done well, which as I said made ‘The Hidden Queen’ an intriguing, captivating tale requiring some serious polishing.


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Finding Jackson by Anne Holster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This coming of age story promised an interesting take on the usual background influences that often produce the final adult who emerges from a ‘human pupa’, but I found most of the book tedious to read. The amount of detail that we are given through the voices of Jackson, his mother, Annalise, and his girlfriend, Leah, was surplus to requirements for me. This may have been due to the fact that it is so obviously a novel aimed at young adults and I am certainly not that. As a grandfather I thought most of the teen angst experienced as a result of parental influence or ‘young love’ somewhat obvious, although most of the language and idiomatic expressions were novel to me, and occasionally surprising – even shocking! I felt there was often a loss of atmosphere, when a sense of time and place, sights, sounds and smells could have conveyed feelings better. The settings of the 1970s and 80s did not always ring true; the mention of a couple of bands was not enough.

The style of narrative with each of the three protagonists telling the tale from their own point of view would have been less confusing if they had each done it through their own chapter, but it often occurred within the same chapter, utilising a change of font to distinguish a different character speaking. This felt clumsy and unnecessary. Having got all the negative points out of the way there are a lot of positive things to talk about in Finding Jackson. The main characters are strong and well-written with plenty of believable dialogue, particularly between parents and their offspring. The rock-an’-roll attitude around Jackson and Ace, his father, contrasted well with that of Leah and her ambitious middle-class parents, even though it became a little predictable at times. I think it was this that had me rooting for the couple to the end. Fortunately there were emotional moments that had me empathising with them and made me keep turning the pages.

Overall, for me, the book could have been about a third shorter but I suspect that it has plenty of appeal for the YA readers it is aimed at, and will go down well with them.


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Coyote Summer by Laura Koerber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third book by Laura Koerber that I have read and I enjoyed it just as much as the others. I imagine it was inspired by the recently created ‘Me Too’ movement and the story takes the point of view of a young man, Ben, who is about to move on in his life when he goes to college or university. Koerber’s writing is as beautiful as ever, succinct but never boring, intriguing and even magical at times; she manages to get inside Ben’s head and convince the reader of his naiveté during a summer when he comes of age. The trials and tribulations that confront him, his encounters with Puppy and her hippy family, when he has his first teenage crush, and his determination to break with the odious Clint, are all totally convincing. It is also a tale of family dynamics and the confrontations and discussions between Ben and his ambitious, middle-class parents are particularly well-handled. I found the conversation that he has with his father, about not wanting an Ivy League ‘experience’ later in the tale, felt authentic and real.
I found my emotions moving from horror and disgust, to wonder and wry humour, and then to hope and satisfaction at the denouement of the story. Normally I find books written in the first person confusing and unconvincing but Koeber’s narrative, written through Ben’s confusion about what sort of person he wants to become, despite (and because of!) the many influences and pressures that surround him, had me hooked. The characters and conversations are convincing, although I would have liked much more about the Native American culture behind the coyote ‘fairies’ and its mystique. Unfortunately, there were a few proofing issues that reduced my rating from 5 to 4.5 stars. Notwithstanding that, I can completely recommend this adventurous and brave attempt to bring to the fore the issue of, often ‘hidden’ or unspoken, sexual assault through the eyes of a gauche and bewildered witness, Ben O’Rourke.


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Owl Manor: The Dawning by Zita Harrison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I began reading Owl Manor: The Dawning, a Gothic Romance, with some trepidation; not because this genre of novel makes me feel nervous or fearful about its scary content, but because I grew out of this type of book long ago. When I was much younger I enjoyed Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Pit and the Pendulum and other similar novels, usually looking forward to a bit of madness and murder that would take place within the walls of an old castle or manor house. Notwithstanding this doubt I read on and found the first half of Zita Harrison’s book intriguing through her excellent portrayal of Eva, the main character, and the sorry domestic situation in which Eva found herself when she rushed into her marriage with Lewis. This was during the early years of the 19th century when the plight of women was to be much less than equal in status, et cetera, than men. We are completely sympathetic to this clever, attractive and strong-willed young mother who hates the poverty and struggle of her life. The desperate circumstances that she and her family are in when they move to the gold rush region of Denver, Colorado, change for the better when Eva becomes a servant at Owl Manor – enter the crazy madman, Mr. Bradstone.

From this point onwards Eva’s behaviour towards ‘the master’, and more seriously her intrinsic character, changes so much that I began to suspend my belief in the story. While I quite understand that some heroines, such as Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre, in historical novels seem destined to fall for the flawed male character that shares the limelight with them in the novel, in this book I found it stretched the credibility too much. Apart from this I found the typos and edits throughout and the rushed final chapter also spoiled my enjoyment. There are very few ‘surreal’ novels of the ghostly, ghoulish, gothic or fantasy type that can dispel my overall feeling of “nonsense” when I read them. The books of Mervyn Peake, J.R.R. Tolkien and Dennis Wheatley will always, for me, take a lot of beating.


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Born in the Purple by Dora Ilieva
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sort of historical fiction that I enjoy reading most of all. It is packed with all kinds of intriguing historical facts and figures from a time and place of which I knew very little, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire in the 11th and 12th century. Most importantly it is very well written with plausible conversations between the main characters: Anna Komnena; her siblings; her mother, the Empress; her father, the Emperor; and various patriarchs of the Orthodox Church including, most significantly, Leo the Deacon. The reader is kept in suspense all the way in a book that could also be described as a romantic thriller. There is the political conflict between the Church and Alexios, the Emperor, which is half-expected; but the deeply felt disagreements that exist for Anna, simply because she is a woman, captured the heart and mind of this reader from the very beginning.

The story is told through the main characters involved with the imperial royalty and Constantinople, but in particular through Anna, a strong, intelligent but loyal woman. Her problems arise because she is a woman who finds it very difficult to obey the expectations of the mores of the court and the church. She wishes to be a physician and writer of history when all of the men around her, as well as her grandmother, demand that she marries and has children. Like all the rulers of the world for many centuries she is expected to supply a male successor to the crown. The author provides compelling and realistic romance in this dramatic tale, with beautiful and heart-warming complications that persist until the denouement.

My only criticism would be the odd word or phrase that jumped out at me because it was too contemporary, and a modern idiom like ‘okay’. Notwithstanding that Born in the Purple is a book I heartily recommend to lovers of the historical novel.


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Wilding by Isabella Tree
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When economics told the owners of the land at Knepp, in West Sussex, that their methods of intensive farming there were becoming no longer possible they made a brave and adventurous decision: leave it all to nature! Isabella Tree’s amazing book, ‘Wilding’, relates the story of what happened next over the following ten plus years. If you are interested, or concerned about the desperate situation in which the natural world finds itself due to the agriculture, industry, deforestation and population growth of the human species, then you will find this book inspirational. Even if you do not belong to those worried people, often despicably described as ‘tree-huggers’, but like to simply enjoy the natural environment, then reading ‘Wilding’ will cause you to think; to think that perhaps there is a better way that we humans may live alongside nature without destroying it. This destruction is often either deliberate, through the use of pesticides and herbicides, or unintentionally through our ever expanding towns and cities. It may cause to remind you that we no longer see as many insects, like butterflies and moths, bees, wasps and beetles, about as when we were children. All of which creatures are part of enormous food chains and food webs that include birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, left behind intensive farming and experimented with biodiversity, eventually achieving far more success than even they could have hoped. The list of creatures, plants and fungi that returned to their land when given the freedom to do so was incredible. They introduced breeds of cattle, pigs, deer and horses that would enjoy ranging across their land freely, much as the original wilder breeds would have done throughout Britain and Europe centuries ago. The book goes on to describe an amazing list of animals like nightingales, peregrine falcons, purple emperor butterflies, fish and even earthworms that began to recolonise there once the ecosystems were allowed to develop naturally and at their own pace. The book’s cover picture features the turtle dove as an eminently suitable example of a disappeared species from the British countryside, but which has returned in numbers to Knepp.

If we are to become truly serious about encouraging our young to save their planet, a la David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg et al, then this book alongside George Monbiot’s ‘Feral’ should be taught as part of required reading in schools and colleges. It is not, as might be claimed by some, merely an evangelical rant about the loss of wildlife and natural environment, since it pays detailed respect to academic studies about the difficulties involved in rewilding our ‘tamed’ lands; land drained, cleared of scrub etc, in order to support farming and the production of food for a growing human population. There is a lengthy discussion within these vitally important pages about whether Britain was ever covered throughout by closed canopy forest, and just how important in nature the oak trees would have been (and still are) before armadas and fleets of wooden sailing ships were needed for fighting wars. On another tack the book tells of older generations than the post war baby-boomers, such as mine, who could recall walking through countryside filled with hawthorn, hazel, wild roses and even, heaven forfend ragwort. While more recent farmers felt that if their ‘traditional’ methods were undone and the land was left uncultivated, it would appear neglected and not natural, there were those whose childhood included those elements of wildness that saw it as wonderful and therefore truly ‘natural’ – not at all repugnant as it was claimed. Their ideas of ‘natural’ included profusions of ‘weeds’ i.e. wildflowers and the sounds of insects and birds, most of which has become scarce in recent decades.

Isabella Tree’s book concludes with an in-depth look at what has become of soil on the majority of agricultural land; how it has become depleted of structure and humus, how it is easily run off during wet weather and usually contains too much of many harmful chemicals that find their way into groundwater, rivers and streams. Thus our many years of relatively cheap food has an extra cost that continues to be funded by our environment. She even writes challenging some of the more modern ideas of conservation, challenging what seems to be various wrong classifications of the many species of woodland creatures for example. Left to their own devices it could be that their habitat would not become adapted to fit in with how we have changed the land after all. These broader ideas had me thinking about my own acceptance of conservation projects, especially when we learn here that soil restored naturally will hold far more carbon than soil that is constantly replenished by man-made fertilisers. It is to be hoped that there are many decision makers within government, manufacturing and agriculture that find time to read this extremely compelling book.


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Unnatural Separations: A Brief Memoir About Spiritual Transformation in An Academic World by Laura Clementz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I began reading the introduction to ‘Unnatural Separations’ I had difficulty in understanding what the book was about to tell me. It states in the sub-title that it is a ‘brief memoir about spiritual transformation’ and so I was prepared for a narrative that would include, I assumed, the usual discourse of introspection by the author from time to time. However, after reading around half of the book I began to feel somewhat overwhelmed by the diarist approach to Clementz’s writing. It was interspersed with many chunks of philosophical terminology that had me reaching constantly for ‘The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’, and of course that took me off track with its own constant references to further explanations. This was not entirely unexpected as the author’s master’s degree includes philosophy. I was not entirely ungrateful to the author for pushing me into revising concepts like empiricism, epistemology, the soul and spirituality, and it did help me confirm a future aim to avoid books described as ‘memoires’ - noire or otherwise!

Confusingly, it was not until I had read the last page that I began to understand the introduction, and thus some of the theorising in the book, when I went back to read it again. When the author takes a refreshing vacation, and a new clarity about her suitability for her career enters her thinking, then a different self-awareness seems to come over her. Whether this was spiritual or supernatural in nature at all I found doubtful. It was more a case of allowing oneself time to rethink one’s life, so far! Significant decisions about her options had to be considered and resolved. The refreshing reminder about the wonders of the natural world that crept back into her consciousness, releasing a much needed peace, caused me to sigh with relief on Clementz’s behalf.

But then I was still left wondering what on earth were those two decades, previous eight chapters and scores of pages all about? The main saving grace for me was there was no attempt, using ill-informed pseudo-science, to justify the existence of some form of divine ‘unmoved mover’ in the outer heavens to whom confused and frightened humans may turn for guidance.


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Moments We Love by Balroop Singh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I have never been a particular fan of free verse poetry, there were some poems hidden within Balroop Singh’s collection that did appeal and speak to me. Perhaps it was the education I received, when a pupil of a boy’s grammar school in the 1950s/60s, that continues to influence my preference for poems with a particular meter and a recognisable rhyme and/or alliteration and assonance. That said I persisted throughout my reading of ‘Moments We Love’ looking for, and occasionally enjoying, poems that stirred either memories or moments. There were quite definitely several verses that I found profound and emotional. With an individual poet’s collection one tends to look for links between different poems and for many pages of the book ‘love’ was so very obvious. I realised the clue was in the name of the book!

Unfortunately, for about half the book I found so many references to love, in all its multifarious forms, rather tedious after a while. It was understandable for Ms Singh to include her heartfelt and skilful references to romantic love but I found my thoughts shouting out ‘OK, I get it! Love hurts and heals sometimes – but enough already!’ This, together with my past experience as both student and teacher, had my sensibilities crying out for punctuation. I want to know whether the creator of verses and stanzas, stories and even tomes, had paused or even stopped in their tracks, in the same parts as myself. Did their emotions chime or synchronise with mine? Admittedly, punctuation did appear sometimes but it produced surprise from this reader as it felt out of context when considered and compared to the overall ‘free’ tenor of the style of virtually all the poems. When Balroop Singh stepped outside of her intense concentration of the ‘self’ and considered the wonderful world of nature, I began to really appreciate the emotions of awe and wonder expressed in her own special way.

My particular favourites were: Memories and Moments; Moments that Glow; Drifting Apart; Redwoods; I Dived in to Discover; Nature Lover; Wishes; Fortitude and I Feel Most like Me.


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