Blog Tour: Twice the Speed of Dark

Book Title: Twice the Speed of Dark

Author: Lulu Allison

Date Started: November 11th 2017

Date Completed: November 22nd 2017

Genres: Contemporary, Magical Realism, Adult
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Four stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Lulu for sending me her lovely book for review ◆

At the heart of Twice the Speed of Dark is the dark subject of domestic violence, but the black hole of Anna’s story is grief. How does one deal with the loss of a child? Where does the responsibility of blame get placed when that loss is the consequence of something darker? And why is justice not final to those involved?

The story of this novel goes in little circles like a cyclone as Anna goes through the transition of her grief. Again and again, she finds herself in the same place, thinking the exact same things. Personally, it circled a little bit much at the start for me; for about a week Anna sits sullenly and writes about the deaths of strangers across the globe. In fairness, it establishes the depths of trouble our protagonist is in.

Written almost like poetry, the exploration of grief reminded me a little bit of Margaret Atwood mixed with Jeanette Winterson: those long, visually-conjuring metaphors of idleness and isolation. By throwing a dash of magical realism into the mix, we go down the Claire Fuller route. (Overall, I wish there’d be more of the magical realism. I liked the way it played about with the timeline and created personas for people that weren’t in Anna’s immediate area of contact.)

The unhealthy cycle Anna is forcing herself through (and there are definitely times when our flawed protagonist makes active decisions to prolong her grief, because anything else feels like a betrayal, or impossible) is almost aesthetically around Anna. The vistas from the holiday she takes to escape the return of her daughter’s murderer are bright and sunny, but it’s like there’s a fog around Anna. While it’s definitely grief that is the focus of this story, I can’t help draw comparisons to other mental health issues.

But, ultimately, Twice the Speed of Dark isn’t just a fly-on-the-wall view of Anna’s grief; it’s also the transitional stages of it that she goes through. Almost ten years after her daughter’s death, things are finally ready to shift a little - sparked by the catalyst of the murderer’s return. While I can’t say that grief is an emotion I’ve yet to have experienced on any real scale, from an outsider’s perspective the book seemed to capture it pretty well. That stuck place where everything feels the same, the physical tension your body gets just from the reminder of circumstances - all things I’m pretty familiar with through depression. But what shifts this for Anna is a somewhat tried-and-tested solution, but a true one nonetheless.

I always like it when stories use the kindness of strangers to provide a different way of looking at things, or even just a quiet nudge outside of what a character would expect. Chance encounters are sometimes criticised in fiction for being just that - fictional. But anyone who’s even just travelled on their own knows that sometimes an unexpected connection with someone you’re unlikely to see again can make a world of difference. Without going too far into spoiling the book, Lulu uses this not so much to solve all of Anna’s problems, but to give her the anonymity from her life that she needs to come to terms with it.

I think it’s interesting that this book is coming out at the same time as the film Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. The universe has funny little ways of drawing comparisons itself, but the two pieces almost seem to be different forks off the same road. While I haven’t seen the film, I’m aware it’s also about a mother dealing with the murder of her daughter and the injustice of the perpetrator walking around. While Lulu’s novel takes a more meditative and magical realist stance on the subject, I have a feeling the emotional but go-getting feminism in both works will compliment each other well. If you want to prepare for the film, pick up Twice the Speed of Dark - and if not, you might want to after you’ve read this.

Over the next few weeks, Twice the Speed of Dark is touring across the blogger community.

Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour!

You can buy Twice the Speed of Dark straight from Unbound or Amazon
and find Lulu on her Website, Twitter and Instagram.

The Book of Bera

Book Title: The Book of Bera

Author: Suzie Wilde

Date Started: January 23rd 2017

Date Completed: February 4th 2017

Genres: Historical, Fantasy, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Unbound for this proof copy for review ◆

A fantasy adventure following a Viking protagonist was an intriguing prospect filled with a lot of potential. Which, as so many books end up being, wasn't used as well as it could have been. The downfall for The Book of Bera for me was that it was trying to be something it wasn't, and missed its mark as a result. Unfortunately, I didn't reach the end of this book, but I reached my 100-page limit for giving books a try.

I'm quite frustrated with this book in general because it could've been so good and enjoyable had the story been allowed to play out naturally. It is, by nature, quite an exciting adventure story, and Wilde's endearing writing makes it feel childish - and childish should in no way be a criticism as long as it's used properly. The problem that I found was that Wilde was determined to push darker issues to make a point about the tone she wanted, but that tone didn't fit the story I was reading. Had I not come across a rape scene (which I wasn't completely happy with, let alone with of the lack of sensitivity on it involving a child) I would've been happy calling this a kids book whether it was aimed at young adults or not. I think it's a bit of a shame because addressing those issues doesn't really have any wider significance, and meant that Wilde couldn't follow what I felt was the naturally adventurous side of the story.

Following on from that, I so desperately wanted the fantasy element to be pushed more. Is it fantasy? Is it magical realism? It wasn't particularly clear because it wasn't at the forefront of the narrative, which I personally think it should have been. We get a lot of daily Viking activities but I wanted to know about the folklore and traditions as well - but the extent of that was pretty much the skerns talking to Bera. Which was great, if a little sparse through the story. Wilde seemed to focus on other things and didn't let the part of the book that felt more unique pay off.

The Book of Bera throws you into the story pretty quickly, and things escalate almost immediately. Almost too fast since events don't feel like they flow into one another - they more follow one another in unrelated bursts and poor Bera is battered around in the meantime. While I felt some sympathy for our protagonist (when she wasn't annoying me) I got very frustrated at the book expecting me to get emotional over characters and things that have been given no development. One of the keys events that kicks off this book is the death of someone close to Bera, but it happens with so little build up - of both tension and character development - that when I was expected to mourn I just sort of shook my head. This happened a couple of times in the amount I read of this book and it started to get on my nerves that the story was depending on your emotional reactions to things that had no emotional effort behind them.

What interested me about this book was the opportunity to learn about Viking culture and see that utilised in a story. I've never read anything like that before and I think the reason why a lot of people are looking at it is because of that very point. The folklore element, as I've already discussed, feels like it's glossed over, but the everyday culture itself is an integral part of the story. Which is wonderful - if I knew what all these words and references meant. As a reader, I felt thrown into the deep end of the world without any explanation or background. I didn't felt like I was given a chance to understand the verbiage before it was being used as a big part of the story, so I started missing key points pretty quickly. This is probably a big reason as to why I couldn't follow this book through to the end and is a real shame because it was what I was so intrigued by that ended up losing me.

There aren't a great deal of characters we're encouraged to attach to in this book (apart from the ones we know for two seconds), so ultimately our whole engagement with the story lies heavily on Bera's shoulders. This could've been great in getting across that idea of loneliness but power in independence. Could've been. Now I can't claim to know what Bera is like at the end of the book, but from what I read she played a very passive part in the story. I appreciate that she's a child and doesn't understand a lot of the horrible things that are happening a lot of the time but a) it isn't the most engaging perspective to read from and b) it doesn't mean the bad things that do happen can just be dismissed because she can't understand them. Now, to be fair, I've read far worst protagonists, but it just drew me back to the idea that Wilde was trying to push in a direction the story didn't want to go in, to the point where it was disjointed.

There's nothing wrong with a fun fantasy adventure exploring a culture, but The Book of Bera felt like it was trying too hard to push itself into a tone it wasn't meant for. Writing this for children and exaggerating the magic and adventure could've made it a very good book, but for me the off-tone story that didn't properly delve into the Viking culture led by a passive character didn't retain my interest.

Versailles

Book Title: Versailles

Author: Yannick Hill

Date Started: October 29th 2016

Date Completed: November 9th 2016

Genres: Sci-Fi, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Unbound Publishers for this copy for review ◆

Versailles was an interesting idea and something I hadn't seen before in the Young Adult genre but it wasn't pulled off as well I would have liked. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but they were far and few in between and as a whole piece, it couldn't hold my attention. I got about half way through, but unfortunately I just had to make the decision to leave it there because I wasn't giving it much attention anymore because it just left me unengaged.

When I started this book I was pleasantly surprised by how different it felt. The first thing that I noticed was how like a script it read - and in a good way. I can see how some people might find it a bit disjointing, but for a film geek like me, it was strangely refreshing. Not least in the way that it hid some of the very direct storytelling the Hill uses; I hate it when authors tell the reader things in a situation or about a character instead of showing them through the action, but it wasn't so frustrating in this style. Unfortunately, it isn't really enough to hold up a story that doesn't feel like it's progressing even at the halfway point.

The story about the family inside the digital fortress of Versailles was miles ahead of the exploration of technology's influence on our culture. This isn't even that much of an insight into what constant, inescapable media could do to a family in a fictional world, it's about this particular family. Perhaps if the message around technology wasn't so confused it might be different, but what I read in the first half of the novel showed the evilness of humans to be a far greater threat than the technology they used to stay in power. Honestly, as far as I could tell the technology wasn't that damaging at all (it's even a very clear and effective escape for River's problematic situation), but it's in fact the father who's ruining these people's lives - a father who is painted as a one-sided psychopath, I might add.

Which moves me onto my other issue that made it had for me to stay engaged and immersed in the story: I didn't know what I was supposed to take seriously. There's a lot of abstract imagery in Versailles, and that caught my attention at first, but then there's some things that I don't know if they're actually there in this futuristic technological dystopia, or if they're a metaphor. When you combine that with some honestly ridiculous attempts to create teenage memes or whatever you want to call it, you cross a line between what can be understood in the suspension-of-belief that fiction creates, and what's just silly. I don't know what parts of Versailles were supposed to be taken seriously and what was intended to be satirical, and I think that comes from putting some character into prose.

I think the biggest problem for me was that the characters were just dislikeable. Now, I appreciate they're all supposed to be brainwashed at the start (presumably it develops a little more in the second half of the book, but I didn't see huge leaps in the first portion), but it's exaggerated to the point where I didn't like them, and I wasn't rooting for them or anything they did. And the problem was then that you're supposed to connect to these people being smothered in this futuristic digital palace, but I didn't because they felt so alien and emotionless to the point where it wasn't enjoyable to read about them. Even Missy, who arguably leads the story through her rebellious act of running away from both her home and all social media, doesn't feel like she actually believes in what she's doing. They're characters going through the motions of a narrative without the heart to come to life.

For an exploration into the influence of technology for a Young Adult audience, Versailles is an interesting new addition to what's available. Personally, it couldn't decide on what it was enough to be able to get me on board, but there are definitely some aspects which I was pleasantly surprised to read about. It's not quite contemporary but features family dynamics, not quite sci-fi but is definitely very futuristic, not quite adventure but has road-trip aspects to it - the list goes on. I can't say I've seen anything exactly like it on the market so if it sounds intriguing maybe it'll be that something new for you.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27993245-versailles