The Bone Hunters

Book Title: The Bone Hunters

Author: Joanne Burn

Date Started: October 27th  2024

Date Completed: November 5th 2024

Genres: Historical

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

Fossils, fossil, fossils, what better thing to do than discover and fawn over them. I've been to Lyme once - very briefly on a film location recce - but reading this book I felt the sharp sea air again, the pebbles shifting underfoot. Staring up at the towering cliffs waiting to topple over themselves and onto you, and the white hot excitements of what exists within the stones surrounding you. It feels folkloric even then, and I suppose it is in a lot of ways, something that is even played with a lot in this novel.

The Bone Hunters is far more grim than its synopsis will have you suspect, but it's not keenly dramatic for the sake of it. Each beat has its place in the plot and in Ada's story, and creeps up a cliff small step by small step until you stand at the peak staring at the blackness below. In only 400 pages, an expansive tale unwinds itself with relationship morphing in new directions neither Ada nor I saw coming. (And some of my favourite representations of female/male friendships I've read in a long time.)

Ada's character was a significant highlight of the novel; the balance between headstrong determination and active awareness of her precarious situation was so well developed her quietness spoke volumes in every chapter. It's rare to find a character (let alone a woman) realistically shown to be confident and loyal to herself but still be fought with worry about her place in the world - yet so many of us are like this.

The Anning inspiration is very clear from the start, but I really like the creative license used to tell a slightly different story while paying homage to the mother of geology. I hadn't heard of Joanne Burn before this Netgalley arc but I will be looking up their books now - as is the magic and privilege of being a book reviewer.

The Colour of Revenge

Book Title: The Colour of Revenge

Author: Cornelia Funke

Series: Inkheart #4

Date Started: October 12th  2024

Date Completed: October 27th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Inkheart was always special in a way so few stories achieved - who could possibly top the idea that reading aloud could make the story real? That you could speak your most beloved, most feared, most magical characters, objects, worlds into being? It's so simple, as most good stories are, and I was not alone in being entirely enraptured by it as a child (made all the more precious because my mum read the whole thing to me at the time, too).

But, as much as I loved Mortimer, aspired to be Elinor, and felt very much like Meggie, who didn't really want to see the mythic heroes from the ink world on a true adventure of their own? Who didn't want to meet the Motley Folk, escape danger with the Black Prince, witness the Fire-Dancer's mastery of the flames? There were flickers of it in the original trilogy, but our wish is granted fully here and now. The Colour of Revenges is so immediately immersive - the prose, the imagination, the characters painting you into the story within mere moments and fragments of paragraphs - that the idea that you could speak aloud these characters and they would become real feels just as true as the first time I read about a battered book called Inkheart and the world inside of it.

I feel ambivalent about the continuation of beloved series - I do like letting a story be over at the original destination but, at this point, so many of them have done it and brought with them lovely new stories. There's a moment, towards the end of this book, where two of our most beloved heroes about about stories; where new ones start and old ones end. Literal or philosophical, it's something that could be a materialistic meta media moment it not spoken with feeling. But the enchanted inweave of Inkheart only ever speaks with feeling, even when she speaks through her characters; "In my experience, the story never ends. Only the heroes change."

The Haunted House on Hollow Hill

Book Title: The Haunted House on Hollow Hill

Author: Derek Landy

Series: Skulduggery Pleasant

Date Started: October 7th  2024

Date Completed: October 11th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Action

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

I always marvel at how quickly Derek must write for the main series and these spin-offs to come out in such quick succession. I enjoyed the podcast version of this story a lot, but I find it hard to follow audio-only media so decided to read the books as well (I conveniently drifted off to sleep on the episode the killer was revealed so it made both experiences satisfying).

You can tell that the novel has been written for an audio production, the scenes dance around a little unnaturally for prose - but it's also very creative with the sound landscape and design. Of course that makes the podcast version really interesting, but it's also fun to see the way it weaves into the fabric of the narrative even when written.

These little mystery spin-offs are always fun and realised to the point they don't feel gratuitous. Derek is so good at creating new casts of characters, it feels new every time. I also really enjoyed that Valkyrie and Skulduggery are rarely the protagonists but instead feature in someone else's story. It makes the universe all the bigger and exciting.

Ultimately, The Haunted House on Hollow Hill wasn't my favourite instalment in the Skulduggery series (saga, is it big enough to call a saga yet?) but it was still fun, and actually really cool to see them trying new forms of storytelling for the series that make it all the richer.

Mr Fox

Book Title: Mr Fox

Author: Helen Oyeyemi

Date Started: September 21st  2024

Date Completed: October 7th 2024

Genres: Magical Realism

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

I love me some magical realism, I love fairy tale retellings, or be concise; I love Helen Oyeyemi. She is undoubtedly one of the most exciting, creative and dynamic storytellers out there. Her books feel so original even though they're steeped in stories we know like the back of our hands (or, I have to remind myself, are familiar even if you're not an amateur folklorist like me).

Mr Fox retells the Victorian fairy tale of the same name by Joseph Jacobs - as well as the countless other adaptations of Charles Perrault's Blue Beard and the dozens of very similar fairy tales involving a husband who punishes his new wife's curiosity once she discovers the corpses of his previous spouses. Oyeyemi's Mr Fox takes the wit and wariness of Vonnegut's version alongside the wicked vibrancy and liberation of Marina Warner and Angela Carters'. And I don't use those names to compare, but to celebrate the well-deserved place Oyeyemi has carved out for herself among them.

I'm discovering that Oyeyemi's novels are omnipotent yet aware of their own edge and irony; the novelist is simultaneously hidden behind her characters and yet oh so obvious as the author. Her narratives are magical realist and literary but also delve into downright fantastical and even social realist in tone, their transitions meticulously timed. It's the kind of book you descend into and have to blink a few times once the pages have stopped turning to reorientate yourself.

Rule of Wolves

Book Title: Rule of Wolves

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Series: King of Scars #2

Date Started: August 6th  2024

Date Completed: September 20th 2024

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Romance

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

As part of my quest to finish the unfinished book (and TV) series on my list, I picked up the second book in the King of Scars duology having left it behind after the first book came out. I'm glad I did; this book was a nice ending to the saga that began with Shadow and Bone, appropriately bittersweet with a feeling of real weight and accomplishment within the world.

King of Scars wasn't my favourite, and seemed to wander around various places, characters and themes and struggled to decide what it wanted. Rule of Wolves similarly had its focus on a few too many places - particularly with merging two series like the Netflix adaptation decided to do. There were several references and cameos that didn't amount to much, and it's fun but actually ends up making the world feel so much smaller. That all being said, it was nice in the moment and this second book definitely had a better-realised plotline and resolution.

I wouldn't mind visiting Ravka again, but I would love a story that doesn't feel the need to incorporate existing books and characters and can breathe by itself. I very much look forward to whatever Bardugo has cooking up that is new too.

Blue Door Venture

Book Title: Blue Door Venture

Author: Pamela Brown

Series: Blue Door #4

Date Started: June 30th  2024

Date Completed: July 25th 2024

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

My saga of finishing off childhood book series continues, this time with a classical and beloved one: the Blue Door Theatre books. These stories, like Ballet Shoes and Malory Towers, sustained me as a child on magical dreams of the theatre and performance. It was a joy to revisit the world - and poetically at a time when I had finally been able to fund a creative passion project with a team of wonderful people; arguably the thing these stories had persuaded me to do all those years ago.

I loved the road-trip mystery plotline, it felt fresh from what I remembered of the series. Touring around all these places in the UK, many of them now familiar to me, as the characters discovered them for the first time was a lot of fun - and of course incredibly wholesome. As with a lot of old-fashioned ensembles, the characters blur a bit and end up divided into the boys and the girls. But Brown has such a respect for all kinds of hard work that the relationships and drive of the friends and siblings felt genuine and inclusive. For a book from the 40s, it holds up impressively well.

While it was a shorter story in the series, I massively enjoyed reading it. I can't believe there's only one left (she says after not reading this book for a decade) - and with Maddy, the only real protagonist, no less.

Godkiller

Book Title: Godkiller

Author: Hannah Kaner

Series: Fallen Gods #1

Date Started: June 23rd  2024

Date Completed: June 30th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

Simply put, Godkiller is the most fun I've had with a fantasy adventure in ages. While it started off feeling like a gender-bent Witcher-y story (no harm in that), it quickly fell into its own stride and become unputdownable.

There are compelling characters with solid motivations and unravelling stories; such lush, grim and spectacular worldbuilding; each scene hums with a special little magic. This book envelops you almost instantly and stretches as far as the eye can see. But the one thing that warmed my heart the most was some of the best diverse representation (featuring diversity as normal, beyond a token character trait) I've ever read.

The final twist I did see coming, but even so the ripple effect it had across the ensemble retains its impact. I cannot wait for the second book (I already bought it before turning the last page of this), and hopefully more to come down the line to spin this tale even further for us to enjoy. There's a lot still simmering away and as Kaner puts it in her acknowledgements, this is just the beginning.