Seven books that I reviewed when this blog started thirteen years ago

Posted on by Mike Finn

Today, WordPress wished me a happy anniversary and told me that this blog has now been up for thirteen years.

I decided to take a look at what books I reviewed way back in April 2011 and was surprised to find reviews of seven books that I still remember fondly. Four of them are mainstream books packed with emotion. Three of them are Fantasy of Urban Fantasy books packed with original ideas and strong characters.

I’ve listed them below with links to the original reviews. I think they’re all worth reading. I hope that one or more of them capture your interest.

With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a ‘half-Jewish’ farmer’s daughter from the plains of the Midwest, has come to university – escaping her provincial home to encounter the complex world of culture and politics.
When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is drawn into the life of their newly-adopted child and increasingly complicated household. As her past becomes increasingly alien to her – her parents seem older when she visits; her disillusioned brother ever more fixed on joining the military – Tassie finds herself becoming a stranger to herself. As the year unfolds, love leads her to new and formative experiences – but it is then that the past and the future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.

‘A Gate At The Stairs‘ was a joy to read. I fell in love with the language, the storytelling and Tassie Keltjin, the central character. At the time, I said:

“Text like this I can taste. I sip at it the way I would a good wine. Recalling it makes me smile. This is how I would like to be able to write…

…she manages to move her story forward in a way that reflects life as we experience it: each day is new and undefined until it slides onto the pearl string of the past that we carry with us and understand only when we look back and not always then.

She keeps the immediacy of experience, the heat of emotion, the sense of being adrift in our own lives, of never quite knowing who we are or what we expect of ourselves until we are too late to go back and change the choices that have made us less than we wanted to be.”

In a dusty postwar summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

‘The Little Stranger‘ is an enigmatic tale of declining English gentry, haunted by their past and entombed in the wealth-turned-to-debt of their isolated manor house.

This is an unnervingly spooky tale but what stuck in my memory was how finely the emotions and interactions of the people were drawn. At the time I said:

“This is more than an essay on class decay or even on the impact of the supernatural. Waters’ has the rare ability to expose the small nuances of emotion that drive our behaviour, sometimes almost against our own will.

Liam Pennywell has spent most of his life dodging issues and skirting adventure when suddenly, in his sixty-first year, something happens that jolts him out of his certainty and leaves him with a frightening gap in his memory.

In trying to piece together what took place on his first night in a new apartment, Liam finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own set of thorny problems…

‘Noah’s Compass’ is a complex novel about simplifying your life. The characters are ordinary people and nothing much happens except the everyday things that all of us live through. This was a book that resonated with me, especially in the way it dealt with memory and with choices. At the time, I said:

“Anne Tyler’s gift is to make us look again at all those things that we take for granted and see them differently. In this case, she shows us that passivity may not be a virtue, that life is what you remember and that memories are made and preserved by the people who you are connected to.”

Since the death of his fiancée Aimee, Ross Wakeman has been unable to fill the hole she has left in his life. Seeking to end his pain, he becomes a ghost hunter, despite never having seen a ghost.

However, when his job leads him to the town of Comtosook, it becomes apparent that Ross isn’t the only one haunted by the past. When he meets the mysterious Lia, who brings him to life for the first time in years, redemption seems around the corner. 

But the discoveries that await him are beyond anything he could dream of – in this world or the next.

‘Second Glance’ is a novel about being haunted by loss. about being unable to find a reason to live, about seeing clearly how things are and being brave enough to do what has to be done. It was my first Jodi Picoult book and it took me completely by surprise. At the time, I said:

“In this book, nothing is what it seems at first glance. Picoult juxtaposes the rational views of the 1930s eugenics movement and current genetic screening with the emotional richness of unique but damaged people. She acknowledges the power of inheritance and family but she weighs it against the potential for individuals to transcend their background through their love for others.”

Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who’s passed, and share their very last moment. Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver have become experts at getting paid and getting out of town fast – because people have a funny habit of not really wanting to know the truth. 

At first, the small Ozarks town of Sarne seems like no exception. The pair have been hired by local police to find a missing girl. But the secrets of her death – and the secrets of the town – are buried deep enough that even Harper’s special ability can’t uncover them. With hostility welling up, she and Tolliver want nothing more than to be on their way. But then another woman is murdered. 

And the killer’s not finished yet. . .

Harper Connelly is one of my favourite Charlene Harris characters. ‘Grave Sight’ is the first of four books about her. I devoured all of them in a couple of months. At the time, I said:

“Charlene Harris has a talent for writing about the different and the damaged; Harper Connelly is both.

Harris’ smooth writing style makes this book an easy read but that is not to say that the book is without substance. Harper Connelly and her brother are both people I want to know more about: ethical, loyal, brave and broken.

Harris gives Connelly a distinctive and compelling voice. This is a woman who sees the world differently and is brave enough not to look away.”

Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap is a legend to all who don’t know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteran of the wars against the lizards he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire’s slave trade. Where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives.

Archeth – pragmatist, cynic and engineer, the last of her race – is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire and sent to its farthest reaches to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire’s borders.

Egar Dragonbane, steppe-nomad, one-time fighter for the Empire finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. But out in the wider world there is something on the move far more alien than any of his tribe’s petty gods. 

Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all three of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world. Called upon by an Empire that owes them everything and gave them nothing.

‘The Steel Remains‘ is sword and sorcery for grown-ups: nasty, brutal and completely convincing. I’d read and enjoyed Richard Morgan’s body-swapping Science Fiction and I was surprised to see that he’d changed genres. I quickly found that he hadn’t changed styles and that his sword and sorcery was as original, gritty and brutal as his Science Fiction. At the time, I said:

“

Those who know Morgan’s work will find familiar themes here: the brutal alpha male warrior that we would not welcome into civilized society, the abuse of the weak by the powerful, the talon-like grip of religion ripping at the belly of human emotion, the betrayal of those who fight and win by those who manage the politics of peace.

They will also find a new world so fully imagined that its scent will still linger in your nostrils after you close the book and a plot that will clearly span several books.

And of course, they will find a fierce male warrior, a leader, a fighter, a man driven by rage and passion, who is openly and vigorously homosexual in a land and time when this is punishable by death through impalement.”

Seventeen-year-old Riley, the only daughter of legendary Demon Trapper Paul Blackthorne, has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. The good news is, with human society seriously disrupted by economic upheaval and Lucifer increasing the number of demons in all major cities, Atlanta’s local Trappers’ Guild needs all the help they can get—even from a girl. When she’s not keeping up with her homework or trying to manage her growing crush on fellow apprentice, Simon, Riley’s out saving distressed citizens from foul-mouthed little devils—Grade One Hellspawn only, of course, per the strict rules of the Guild. Life’s about as normal as can be for the average demon-trapping teen.

But then a Grade Five Geo-Fiend crashes Riley’s routine assignment at a library, jeopardizing her life and her chosen livelihood. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, sudden tragedy strikes the Trappers’ Guild, spinning Riley down a more dangerous path than she ever could have imagined. As her whole world crashes down around her, who can Riley trust with her heart—and her life?

‘The Demon Trapper’s Daughter‘, now titled ‘Forsaken‘ in the US and the UK, is an original urban fantasy for young adults that spawned a whole series (the ninth book will be published this year). I had a lot of fun with this. It was built around original ideas and it was written to twist old tropes into new and engaging shapes. At the time, I said:

“Forsaken” is centred around a rare thing, an original idea – a world plagued by demons and protected by a Guild of Demon Trappers or, occasionally, by special agents working for the Pope.

The world Jana Oliver creates is fresh, plausible and intriguing.I liked the fact that, in the face of these extraordinary circumstances – dangerous demons rampaging through our cities – people carry on life as normal with all the same rivalries, ambitions, and hopes.”

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