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The Palace Circle - Rebecca Dean
by eilidhcatriona
Having read and loved Rebecca Dean's Enemies of the Heart, I was keen to read more of her novels - and chose The Palace Circle as the next one I would read. It opens in Virginia, where eighteen year old Delia has just married Viscount Ivor Conisborough, over twenty years her senior and a member of the British aristocracy. At first she ... loves her new life in London, where she meets people such as Winston Churchill and Wallis Simpson, but she soon discovers there are secrets in her and Ivor's life.
The Palace Circle covers both world wars, and later includes Delia's daughters, Petra and Davina, as narrators. The family moves to Cairo where Ivor is appointed as an advisor to King Fuad, and this is where much of the action is focussed during the Second World War.
In structure, story and setting, The Palace Circle is quite similar to Enemies of the Heart. It opens before the First World War, is set in London and Cairo (Enemies is set in Yorkshire and Berlin), covers both world wars and features two generations of narrator. There are also plenty of love stories, heartbreaks and misunderstandings. I thoroughly enjoyed Enemies however, so while The Palace Circle wasn't completely new, it was still exciting and absorbing.
As a lead character, although she later takes a backseat to her daughters, Delia is very likeable. She is young and perhaps rather naive at first, but she is a strong young woman and makes the best of life. The trials that she suffers through made me indignant on her behalf, and then happy when things began to work out for her. A lead character that inspires emotion is important in novels such as this, where characters are at least as important as the excitement of the history.
At first, the story is Delia's alone, although it soon expands to include her daughters and others. The two world wars are important parts of the story and setting, but the focus is not on the history so much as on the characters we are reading about, and their place in the events of the time. The Second World War seemed to form a greater part of the story than the First, as there are war issues tied up in the stories of at least two main characters during the time. Additionally, being largely set in Cairo, the war seemed much closer at hand than the First World War had done in the setting of London.
Dean's writing is very good, and perfectly suited to the style of novel and its setting in history. Characters and narration do not use language inappropriate for the time period, and Dean's writing is not too informal or modern - yet neither is it stuffy and dull. She strikes just the right balance between evoking the tone of the period and writing for a modern readership.
While I think I preferred Enemies of the Heart due to its setting of Yorkshire and Berlin, and probably also because it was the first of Dean's novels that I read, The Palace Circle is by no means inferior. It has great characters, plenty of twists and action, and gripping character-driven storylines. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have continued reading Rebecca Dean's other novels.
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A Highland Christmas - M C Beaton
by sharper_fin
Marion Chesney has been writing the Hamish Macbeth crime series of books under her pen name of M.C. Beaton since 1985 and her legion of fans will be delighted to see the twenty-ninth book in the series - 'Death of Yesterday' - has recently been released. This book, 'A Highland Christmas', was first published in 1999 and is officially ... the sixteenth in the series but it's marketed as a stand-alone tale and would therefore prove an excellent starting point for anyone new to the saga of the lazy policeman who patrols the sleepy village of Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands.
Unlike every other title in the series this one does not feature a dead body (it's the only Macbeth novel whose title doesn't begin with the words 'Death of...'). Perhaps the author decided that murder didn't sit too well within the book's comfortable Christmas theming. Actually, the only cases that Macbeth has to investigate are some stolen festive lights and a missing cat, but as always with M.C. Beaton's crime novels, not everything is as it seems. Hamish's life and the cast of unusual characters who inhabit Lochdubh are as important to the plot as any criminal activity.
This is cosy crime at its finest written by a master craftswoman at the top of her game. If you like your whodunnits gritty, realistic and blood-soaked then this is probably not the book for you. If, however, you fancy something gentle to read with a nice cup of tea before bedtime then you could hardly find a better read.
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Zombie Apocalypse Fightback
by sparkymarky1973
I quite enjoyed Zombie Apocalypse, the first of these two Zombie anthologies, that looked at an infection that had sprung up in the U.K and which dealt with the ramifications and repercussions that followed, so had big hopes for this sequel. True, the last book got a bit shoddy at the end and began to get a bit silly but still, it would ... be great to see what happened next I thought...
Wrong!
This book advertises itself as a continuation of events that tells what happens when humanity begins trying to claw its way back to the top of the food chain following events in the previous anthology. Those who have read that book will recall that the plague was released after builders opened up an ancient tomb in preparation for a big celebration of everything British.
What we get instead for a large chunk of the book is a lot of material dealing with the past and the original origins of the plague as researchers try to go back into the history of the person whose tomb was opened. A bit like Who Do You Think You Are then but with Zombies...
This is all well and good but, frankly, I found it all a bit...well, boring. I wanted more action, something to stimulate and hold my interest instead I got...this.
Boring, boring, boring ~ those three words adequately describe my feelings when reading this book. Here's some more ~ not impressed, dull as dishwater, worse than watching paint dry. Yes, all these words describe what I felt reading this.
I wanted to like it....but I couldn't. Though the last book ended badly, this is ALL bad. Don't waste your money ~ get it out o the library. Even better, don't bother and pretend you did. Your imagination could probably conjure up a much better effort than this sorry excuse for a Zombie novel!
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