Satima's Blogspot: Recent reading in fiction

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Recent reading in fiction

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 |

Posted by Satima Flavell

I am a greedy reader, and my eyes are bigger than my stomach. (I will not bore you with laments on the size of said stomach.) I have a TBR pile that would stand taller than me if it were really one pile, but in fact it's several piles, which makes the total count a bit less daunting.

In recent weeks I've vanquished a couple of fantasy novels by favourite authors. Glenda Larke's The Dagger's Path continues the story started in The Lascar's Dagger. It begins with a murder, and thus the tone of the book is set. Yes, there's plenty of violence, but as usual, Larke gives us a tale full of exotic places and intriguing characters, which, as she says in her endnotes, pays tribute to her love affair with South-East Asia. The Dagger's Path ends with hints that book three will bring a whole new variety of magic into play. I'm looking forward to it already!

By contrast, Juliet Marillier's Tower of Thorns , the second Blackthorn and Grim novel, is set in an imagined ancient Ireland. Unlike the author's earlier leading characters, the protagonists of this series are mature adults, perhaps in their late twenties or early thirties. Blackthorn is a wise-woman: a travelling healer who has been unjustly imprisoned by the vicious Lord Mathuin of Laois. She and a fellow prisoner, known only as Grim, managed to escape at the start of book one and had a long and adventurous journey home. In Tower of Thorns, they once again set out on a long journey: one fraught with adventures and near disasters.

Second only to fantasy in my preferred reading are historical novels. Good historical novels: the kind that display the writer's knowledge of the chosen period as well as telling a good story. Of all the people writing in this genre, perhaps my top favourite is Bernard Cornwell. I've recently read his novel called 1356 - a story that pays tribute to the Hundred Years War: the people who lived through it and the people who died because of it. George RR Martin is on record as saying that Cornwell writes 'the best battle scenes of any writer ... past or present'.

It's impossible to disagree with Mr Martin here, because Cornwell's battles are the go-to pages for any writer wanting to learn how to master the art of mass bloodshed, at least on paper! In the past I have grouched about Cornwell's tendency to 'head-hop' - i.e. to tell us what character A is thinking then in the next paragraph to shift into character B's headspace. Many readers these days dislike this, largely, I think, because of the influence of film, where we tend to stay with the main character for most of the time and only shift to another character if and when there is change of scene. I was pleased to see that in 1356 Cornwell has abandoned this bad habit and given us an even better read as a result.

Right, that's run-down of my recent reading in fiction. I've read a couple of excellent non fiction books, too, which I'll save for next time!

Recent reading in fiction

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Goodreads reviews for The Dagger of Dresnia