PREMISE: I admit, I generally copy this premise shit from Goodreads. No point me reinventing the wheel. I also do that because it’s a professional summary of the book and something that I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near in terms of quality. However, I realise that’s such a cop out and in my attempt to produce a professional blog of all my own shite writing and perspectives, I’ve decided to do it all myself. Which basically means if you have even a passing interest in the book I’m talking about, go to Goodreads for a better summary of it because I’ll have likely fucked it up.
So, this book; two related, converging stories set a few hundred years apart, told using a stunningly clever and gorgeous variety of media (text, pictures, drawings, maps etc.).
I have a dream. That one day my one little daughter will walk into Waterstones or Foyles or Barnes & Noble and not see a Romantasy section full of similar-looking novels with beautifully designed covers and gloriously curly fonts but rather a shelf with the title ‘Original Novels’ and under which sits copies of this book and S and House Of Leaves and Maxwell’s Demon and XX and hopefully a raft of other novels that have some originality about them.
To quote the kids of today, this kind of book is my jam. Particularly when it’s done as well as this. That’s the thing with books like this; there’s so much thought gone into the story, the design, the individual elements to be added, how it all hangs together etc. It becomes a real experience to read. It won’t be for everyone. One man’s Donald Duck is another man’s Donald Trump (aside from the fact that one is a laughably fucking idiotic clown of a cartoon character and the other is a duck).
In fact, this book is everything Trump isn’t; it’s intelligent, eloquent, thoughtful, interesting, fantastic to look at and something that adds to society that we can be grateful for.
PREMISE: Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like other people. But when he single-handedly stopped that tornado on a stormy Christmas day in Oklahoma, he realized just how different he actually was.
That tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn’t like to take credit. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places. From freak storms to trees that appear to grow over night, Weylyn’s unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the woman he loves. But Mary doesn’t care. Since Weylyn saved her from an angry wolf on her eleventh birthday, she’s known that a relationship with him isn’t without its risks, but as anyone who’s met Weylyn will tell you, once he wanders into your life, you’ll wish he’d never leave.
Thank you, Goodreads, thank you. I know I should stop going on there and actually be creative and original enough to come up with new and exciting perspectives on these books I read, but why bother when Goodreads is such a fertile ground for such absolute tosspots? And there’s a word I’ve not used in a few decades…
Again, let me reiterate that I’m not having a go at people who don’t like the book. All those 1-stars from people who just didn’t like it are all fair enough. We don’t all like everything. One man’s Jimmy White is another man’s Jimmy Saville. No, I like to search through and find the complete twat muffins that bask in the joy of anger and negativity. Oh, and utter stupidity.
Talking of which, let’s start with Patricia who came up with one of my favourites straight away: “A little far fetched” stated Patricia. No fucking shit, Sherlock…it’s a fictional fantasy book. I can picture you watching Star Wars: “Seriously…how many robots do you know that are fluent in 6 million forms of communication? Ridiculously inaccurate”.
Barbara Shoop (stupid fucking name) gave it 1 star after only reading 18 pages. Well done Babs, you really hung in there. Alberta gasped “Finished, but barely”. How do you barely finish a book? Do you physically struggle to turn over the last few pages? Crabbymama (assuming that’s a reference to her lady garden) started her short and pointless review with “Worst Superhero book ever”. WTF? That’s like commenting that Cujo was a poor guide dog. This wasn’t a superhero book, Crabster.
Jennifer, a native of Montana where the book is set is “sick of others writing what they think Montana is like” and lumps Yellowstone in with this. She goes on to say (about wolves, which feature heavily in the book) “Wolves are savage animals! Ask the ranchers in the northwest! They kill just to kill! Not just for food which is what some would like you to believe. Look up wolves kill over two hundred sheep in one night eastern MT, leave them lying dead”. This may come as a shock to you Jen-babe, but this book is fiction. None of it is true. That’s what the word fiction means.
My favourite ‘review’ by far is from Scott, who wrote this baby: “This book was utter crap. Most people who would share my opinion probably would not bother to pick up this book in the first place, so my one-star review is a minority opinion here”. The level of big-headed fuckery on display here is astounding. What I think Scott is trying to say is that all the people who are exactly like him (i.e. opinionated wankers) are too smart to pick the book up in the first place, but if they did and then read it, hated it like Scott does and then reviewed it, would also give it a 1-star rating, hence increasing the number of 1-star reviews and their relative percentage against the 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-star reviews so that that percentage would actually be accurate, and not currently skewed as Scott thinks it is due to normal and sane and people not having read it, hated it and 1-star reviewed it. You with me? In summary, Scott hates the book so much that he thinks others exactly like him would also hate it. What Scott is likely forgetting is that there’s not too many twats like him and therefore the numbers are all about right.
As I think with all books, you might like it, you might not. I loved it; loved the story, thought the writing was beautiful, was able to suspend my disbelief for long enough to realise it’s a fantasy story and very likely not true and thought the book was pretty magical if I’m honest.
PREMISE: Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency’s work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
You ever read a book where every word feels important? Not just well thought out or well written, but actually critical to the story in a way that kind of carries a gargantuan weight. That’s what Martin MacInnes does. Across all three books he’s written he has a way of writing that is not just addictive in terms of the prose and the beauty of reading but somehow it’s as if every single word is of vital significance.
Unlike me, as I clearly can’t even explain why I like something. Good job I don’t do this book review (not that these are reviews) shit for a living. I’d have been sacked long ago.
I loved MacInnes’ first two books but this felt like a real step up and I think of it within a bracket of books I’ve read that have something cerebral, wondrous and magical about them. Very much looking forward to book no.4.
PREMISE: Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. “I nearly missed you, Doctor August,” she says. “I need to send a message.” This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
Claire North is a genius in my eyes. Not only is she a fantastic writer and storyteller but she comes up with just the best story ideas; a man who lives multiple lives, a person who can move between bodies just by touching them, a girl who nobody can remember, the Harbinger of Death. She also has such a ‘smooth’ way of writing, which I realise is just a fancy way of saying that she’s a really good writer. I mentioned it in a previous post; some writers words you can just swallow like soup whereas others might contain a few small croutons or large chunks of Ryvita. Ultimately tasty but might take a bit of work to get there. Claire North to me is the Heinz Oxtail of writers. Gloriously good.
PREMISE: Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals—or “Cures”—by cracking open their damaged bodies or temporarily burying them in the reviving, dangerous Ground nearby. Ada, a being both more and less than human, is mostly uninterested in the Cures, until she meets a man named Samson. When they strike up an affair, to the displeasure of her father and Samson’s widowed, pregnant sister, Ada is torn between her old way of life and new possibilities with her lover—and eventually comes to a decision that will forever change Samson, the town, and the Ground itself.
This book blew me away (so much so that it’s my Portland Award winner for 2020). Sooooo (the more O’s, the bigger the emphasis) beautifully written and a really unique premise and story. It stayed with me for ages afterwards too, floating around the largely blank space of my mind and coming to the forefront every so often. It’s one of the few books that I know I will find time to read again at some point when all this ‘new novels’ malarkey calms down and there’s no new releases for a year or two. Bound to happen at some point, surely.
Portable Wonderland 