JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Gravity is the Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty

Abigail Sorensen has spent her life trying to unwrap the events of 1990. It was the year she started receiving random chapters from a self-help book called The Guidebook in the post.

It was also the year Robert, her brother, disappeared on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

She believes the absurdity of The Guidebook and the mystery of her brother’s disappearance must be connected.

Now thirty-five, owner of The Happiness Café and mother of four-year-old Oscar, Abigail has been invited to learn the truth behind The Guidebook at an all-expenses-paid retreat. What she finds will be unexpected, life-affirming, and heartbreaking.

Gravity is the Thing is an exquisite novel from Australian author Jaclyn Moriarty, a charming, heartwarming story about family, love, and hope. It’s about self-discovery and self-worth, and it’s about the complexities of relationships. This is one of my favourite books this year.

I fell in love with Abigail Sorensen from the very first page, from her trip to the airport all the way through the book until the very final moment. She’s observational, witty and hilarious, but she’s also caring and compassionate. Her voice is instantly relatable and she invites you into the book with her storytelling.

She’s also emotionally scarred. When she was a teenager, Abigail’s brother went missing and she’s never let go of him from her mind. She’s never given up hope that she’ll find out where he went or what happened to him. This retreat she’s been invited to seems like a ridiculous venture with no useful outcomes, but Abigail feels like she might get some answers by going. She feels drawn to this retreat. She somehow feels like Robert’s disappearance and The Guidebook are connected.

“Now we are in a field. Wilbur is handing out sacks that smell of horses and hay. He is shouting instructions. We are climbing into the sacks, lining up side by side for a sack race. Unexpected! The strange awkward loping of a sack race. (I am winning the race for a moment! Then tipping sideways into rutted grass. Bruising my hip. Coming in last. Oh well.)”

Abigail’s journey in the present is intercepted with flashbacks to the past — to Robert’s disappearance, to her marriage and its subsequent breakdown, to the birth of her son. The transition between past and present is effortless and allows for ease of reading.

The book is also peppered with chapters from The Guidebook that Abigail has been sent through the years. The Guidebook chapters have a habit of reflecting Abigail’s life, and they’re a timely delivery to her door each time.

Additionally, the mystery surrounding Robert’s disappearance does get solved by the end of the book, and it’s one of the major things that drives the pace of the book. As Abigail’s experience with the retreat continues, little clues are dropping into her life and she starts to feel like she may be able to solve the mystery, all these years later.

“Much of my sixteenth birthday was wasted being furious with Robert, at the same time as secretly thinking that his absence meant a surprise party for me, at the same time as being faintly frightened that something was wrong.”

I’ve read a few of Jaclyn’s books, and I love how well she weaves everything together and brings it to a close. Any loose bits of information are answered or explained, and the reader feels complete when they close the book.

I highly recommend this to readers. Gravity is the Thing is poignant, filled with beautiful writing and glorious characters. The premise is incredibly unique, and will draw readers in and keep them hooked until the very final page.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Gravity is the Thing
Jaclyn Moriarty
April 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason’s The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War One explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and, finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason is a literary novel set during World War I, about a young medical student who enlists and is stationed at a field hospital in a Church in remote Eastern Europe.

Lucius is in over his head. He’s not experienced enough to be the sole doctor in this tiny field hospital, and he must learn fast. He’s suddenly in charge of amputations and treatments and diagnoses, but he’s overwhelmed.

Luckily, there’s a nurse at the Church called Margarete. She has already been there for some time and she trains Lucius, mentors him. Over time, he gains confidence and skill and is able to help the men who have been injured in the war.

“They started in the nave, near the door, in Fractures and Amputations. Traction ropes hung from the roof beams, and little towers of wooden scaffolding with rope and counterweights had been set up on the floor…She had amputated his leg above the knee and reset a wrist fracture, and kneeling, she inspected the wounds quickly, showing them to Lucius.”

The prose is quick and effortless, the story moving at exactly the right pace for the reader to understand the characters and their motivations, but for the reader not to be bogged down in unnecessary detail.

The setting and time period is a huge part of the story, and Daniel has captured the unrelenting winter so well. They’re in such a remote location that it must be very cold for most of the year, and this often impacts wounded soldiers. Sometimes it takes days for them to arrive at the hospital after they’ve been injured in battle, so by the time they arrive with Lucius and Margarete, they’ve got frostbite and they’re forced to amputate.

The winter soldier mentioned in the blurb of the book actually isn’t in the story for very long, but he changes Lucius and Margarete’s lives without meaning too. Lucius makes a choice to keep Horvath in the hospital because he thinks he can cure him. But it’s a selfish choice, not for Horvath’s benefit but really for Lucius. And keeping him at the hospital longer than necessary triggers a chain reaction that flows for the rest of the novel.

“Looking down at his thumb, he could still feel the wet pills crumbling as he pushed them deep into Horvath’s cheek. He had no explanation for the strange magic he had just discovered. But most advances in medicine involved some serendipity. What was important now was that he watched and studied carefully, and learned.”

This is an epic novel about war, loss and pain, but also love, connection and the bond that can form between two people who find themselves in an impossible situation.

The Winter Soldier is also about how one decision can be a catalyst for so much, completely changing a person’s life and connection with someone else. It’s a novel about accepting what you cannot change, and about forgiving yourself and learning to move forward with your life.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Winter Soldier
Daniel Mason
October 2018
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Girl King by Mimi Yu

Two sisters become unwitting rivals in a war to claim the title of Emperor in this sweeping tale of ambition, sacrifice and betrayal for readers of Tomi Adeyemi, Kendare Blake and Samantha Shannon.

All hail the Girl King

Sisters Lu and Min have always known their places as princesses of the empire. Lu is destined to become the first female emperor, while Min is resigned to a life in her shadow. When their father declares their male cousin heir instead, his betrayal throws both their lives into chaos.

Determined to reclaim her birthright, Lu must flee the court in search of an ally. Her quest leads her to Nokhai, the last surviving wolf shapeshifter. After years in hiding, Nok is forced into an uneasy alliance with the girl whose family killed everyone he ever loved. Now they need an army to take back the throne.

Left alone in the volatile court, Min’s hidden power awakens. It’s a forbidden, deadly magic that could secure Set’s reign . . . or allow Min to claim the throne herself.

But there can only be one emperor, and the sisters’ greatest enemy could turn out to be each other . . .

The Girl King by Mimi Yu is the first book in a new fantasy series, about two sisters who become unwitting rivals in a war to claim the title of Emperor. This book explores issues surrounding family, sacrifice, ambition, prophecy, destiny and betrayal, perfect for young adult readers.

This debut is amazing — refreshing, unique, enthralling and extraordinary. I went into this book completely blind, having never heard anything about it. It was delivered to my door as an unsolicited request from Hachette Publishers, and I’m so so glad they sent me a copy. I demolished this book, and I’m now so eager for the sequel.

There are many characters in the book, but the main protagonists are princesses and sisters Lu and Min, and Nok, an apothecarist’s apprentice living in a poor village in the city’s North. When Lu flees home, she crosses paths with Nok — who has his own special abilities — and they work together to overthrow Set and his army.

Lu is determined but naive, which aligns with her privileged upbringing and her young age. She is determined to be the dynasty’s first female ruler, and her father’s betrayal is not going to stop her from being Empress.

“Chaos broke. Shouts went up from her men — there was a flash of steel as weapons were drawn. A crossbow twanged and someone in Hu reds fell to the ground. Lu tried to track who it was, who had shot — who, if anyone, was on her side, and who was the enemy.”

Lu is very flawed and the people she meets on her journey are not shy in acknowledging that. It’s refreshing. Lu is too young to possibly know everything she can in order to overthrow and rule her family’s dynasty. She needs to grow up and mature, and she needs allies. She needs to learn to trust others and honour promises, and she needs to learnt to connect with people so that they can trust her as a future ruler.

Set may be young, but he’s a great villain. He’s cunning and clever, he’s brash and careless. He’s also overconfident; he’s not as skilled as Lu in combat or swordplay. He’s a child. He’s unprepared for what he’s been thrust into, and once the Empress pulls the right strings to allow Set to be the new Emperor, he disregards her and pushes her aside and that’s probably one of the biggest mistakes he makes in this book.

Min is forever overlooked. The second sister, never destined to rule. She never receives the same kind of attention or training from her father. But she is not to be ignored. Unbeknownst to her, she harbours very powerful and effective magic that once unleashed, changes the empire and has a big impact on the war between her and her sister Lu.

“Lu felt a familiar pinprick of annoyance. Sisters, she was fairly certain, were supposed to present a unified front against their parents. Min acted more like a twice-shot, over-burdened messenger, running ragged between Lu and their mother, trying to keep the peace. Their mother was a tyrant, true, but if only her sister would stand up herself now and again.”

The plot moves quickly and the characters are all three-dimensional, full-fleshed out. It’s easy to become lost in the story, reading chapter after chapter, desperate to get to the end. The writing is smooth and visual, with effective dialogue and vocabulary used to allow the reader to visualise what’s happening.

I felt like Min’s magic, and her abilities, weren’t really explained as clearly as they could’ve been. I don’t 100% understand the magic she is able to do, and what the magic inside her means for her surroundings, but I believe this may become clearer as the series progresses.

Despite this, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. This is my first 10/10 for 2019, and I think anyone who loves fantasy books, or sagas or series will love this. But truthfully, I think all readers — young and old — will enjoy this story.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girl King
Mimi Yu
January 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

The Three Secret Cities by Matthew Reilly

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE FOUR KINGDOMS SCORNED.
THE HUNT FOR JACK WEST JR HAS BEGUN.
A SHADOW WORLD BEHIND THE REAL WORLD

When Jack West Jr won the Great Games, he threw the four legendary kingdoms into turmoil.

A WORLD WITH ITS OWN HISTORY, RULES AND PRISONS

Now these dark forces are coming after Jack … in ruthless fashion.

THAT IS REACHING INTO OUR WORLD … EXPLOSIVELY

With the end of all things rapidly approaching, Jack must find the Three Secret Cities, three incredible lost cities of legend.

It’s an impossible task by any reckoning, but Jack must do it while he is being hunted …

The Three Secret Cities is the fifth book in Matthew Reilly’s Jack West Jr series, bringing another high-stakes race against the clock for Reilly’s loyal readers.

in each book of this series, Captain Jack West Jr and his team must solve some sort of puzzle or mission to save the world. In The Three Secret Cities, they must find three ancient weapons and use them to complete a ritual that will save mankind.

Whilst you could follow this storyline on its own, the reader would get more enjoyment if they’ve read the whole series thus far. Each book may have its own unique plot, but more events in the book would make sense if you’d read them all, including any references to past books. Reilly’s inclusion of Schofield and another character from the Scarecrow series will delight fans.

“Hades marched right past them, hit a switch under his desk and a whole bookcase in the wall suddenly swung open on a hinge, revealing a massive silver vault door with a high-tech digital keypad and scanner on it.”

Like the other books in the series, The Three Secret Cities features real world places from both modern and ancient civilisations. This is a fictional landscape that’s believable and entertaining, with mythology woven into the plot.

Reilly’s pacing is always sharp and quick, and the story moves along really well. The reader is engaged in the storyline from the very first page, and will find a lot of enjoyment in Captain Jack West Jr and his adventures. Readers are always craving what’s next.

There’s a great sense of camaraderie in The Three Secret Cities; all of his team members have their own specialties and together, they can solve all the mysteries that come their way.

Scattered through the book are black and white diagrams. They might be of locations or tombs or puzzles and they help the reader better understand the context of the story. The diagrams help the reader visualise complex plot points or puzzles.

“Sparks flew, fibreglass shattered and suddenly the plane had two stub-wings instead of real ones. Jack ducked his head as the Piper zoomed into the deeper darkness of the side canal, still travelling at phenomenal speed, kicking up a churning wake in the narrow confines of the canal.”

Matthew Reilly is a brilliant writer, and his books are always fast-paced with wonderful characters and perfect pacing. I’m excited and eager for the next book in the Jack West Jr series.

These books are also beautifully packaged. They’re hardback with pristine jackets and colourful cover designs.

It’s difficult to fault this series and this latest book, and that’s probably why Reilly’s books are so popular and why he has such a loyal fanbase. If it’s been a while since you’ve read the previous book in the series, then the prologue in The Three Secret Cities will jolt your memory and remind you what happened in their previous adventure.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Three Secret Cities
Matthew Reilly
November 2018
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.

Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice – save the woman he loves, or everyone else? – while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the muse of nightmares, has not yet discovered what she’s capable of.

As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel’s near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with the thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor is the second and final book in this fantasy duology. The events in this book take place almost immediately after the end of Strange the Dreamer.

It’s been over 18 months since I read, loved and reviewed Strange the Dreamer for this blog. I’ve been desperate to get my hands on this sequel, and it’s been one of my favourite reads of 2018.

At the end of Strange the Dreamer, former librarian Lazlo Strange is revealed as a godspawn, a bastard child. 17 year-old Sarai has died after falling from the citadel and becoming impaled below.

In Muse of Nightmares, the reader is thrust back into the magical world of Weep and the Mesarthim, where dreams become nightmares and the godspawn want vengeance. Minya has saved Sarai’s soul so that she can live on, but she’s controlled by Minya and can’t always act of her own free will. She is at Minya’s mercy.

There were many questions at the end of the last book. What will happen to Sarai now that she has died? What will become of Lazlo and the city of Weep? What will happen to their powers? What really happened with Minya on the day that Eril-Fane slayed the children in the citadel?

“Sarai has lived and breathed nightmares since she was six years old. For four thousand nights she had explored the dreamscapes of Weep, witnessing the horrors and creating them. She was the Muse of Nightmares.”

Strange the Dreamer was really about Lazlo, but Muse of Nightmares is very much Sarai’s story. The blue-skinned goddess is front and centre in this book. And despite how the first book ended, she has a huge role in this sequel and her relationship with Lazlo strengthens and grows throughout this book.

We meet two new characters in Muse of Nightmares — sisters Kora and Nova. Both of them are intended to be sold by their father and married off, but they both harness very strong powers and are destined for much much more than that. We follow their journey throughout the book and as you can imagine, they cross paths with the other main characters in the story — Lazlo, Sarai and the other children.

The writing in the book is well-paced with concise sentence structure and the perfect build of tension. The story moves quite slowly but that’s not a bad thing. The reader can sense a big confrontation coming, but before we get there, we need to understand so much more about Kora and Nova and how the godspawn will seek vengeance on Eril-Fane and the city of Weep.

The character development is really strong in Muse of Nightmares. Minya holds a pivotal role in the plot, and we dive into her memories and find out more about her past and her trauma and how and why she’s transformed her army to benefit her own agenda. We come to understand her, and at times, sympathise for her.

“This was Minya’s dream. It if was keeping a secret, it was her secret, and her mind keeping it…Sarai thought that Minya must be hiding something with that blur. She needed to know what it was. She gathered her power around her. She was the Muse of Nightmares. Dreams did her bidding. They could not hide things from her.”

It’s wonderful to read a sequel that is just as good, if not better, than the original. I was invested in this book from the very first page, and this series has fast become one of my favourite fantasy series.

As Kora and Nova’s story develops and their paths cross with the other characters, tensions rise and the stakes become much higher and everything is brought to a very dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

In this sequel, love and hate, revenge and redemption, destruction and salvation all clash. It’s been worth the long wait for this book to arrive, and I highly recommend this duology to fantasy lovers.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Muse of Nightmares
Laini Taylor
October 2018
Hachette Publishers

%d bloggers like this: