Book Reviews From The Bookbag
The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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The Shattered Crown (Steelhaven: Book Two) by Richard Ford
The king is dead… his city is next shouts the strapline, and it's not wrong! Following on from Herald of the Storm, Janessa is the new queen and is quaking; she's young, inexperienced and watching the massed hordes of Amon Tugha approach to rout the kingdom of Steelhaven. This isn't the only problem her father's untimely death has left her with; there's a whole heap of trouble (internal as much as external) and hardly anyone Janessa can trust. Little Rag is now in the Guild but it's not all she dreamt it would be or as safe as she'd hoped. Meanwhile Merrick the ex-mercenary and Kaira, the former spear maiden are settling into their new job as bodyguards to the Queen. Merrick, though, has other things to think about as his past comes back to haunt him. Waylian the witch's assistant is still alive, which is good. And Regulus? He just wants to offer his men's swords in defence of Steelhaven but just didn't realise how difficult that would be, even before the fighting officially starts. Full review...
The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes
As John Delahunt sits in a cell for the condemned writing an account of his life, we go through it with him. It all begins as he witnesses a fracas between his fellow students and the police after a visit to one of the fine hostelries Victorian Dublin has to offer. In this way John's brought to the attention of 'The Department', a pro-British intelligence unit based in the notorious Dublin Castle. John agrees to help them not realising this is never going to be an agreement he can back away from, no matter how hard he tries and no matter how much it costs him. Full review...
Where Are You Banana? by Sofie Laguna and Craig Smith (Illustrator)
Banana. It may not be the most obvious name for a dog but it’s the name of Roddy’s pet. Apparently it was Roddy’s first word, spoken, by coincidence, when the new pup arrived. A tad precocious and serendipitous as first utterances go but I’m going to let that one slip as, dog name aside, 'Where Are You, Banana?' contains some delicious observations of family life captured in both written and painted form. Full review...
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
Death Row, in a prison somewhere in the rural US. It's an old prison too, where the modern sensors and security will never be seen, and where those waiting years for their final, final appeals – or for the closing act in their life – remain underground, in dank cells that have no mod-cons, and can easily flood when the rains raise the water table too high. It's where a man called York is seeing out his days, and whereas a female investigator is trying her hardest to get evidence that might see his sentence quashed or changed, he is saying it should be carried out forthwith. While she tries to piece together what got him there and what made him take that terminal decision, shadows of her own dark background are forced to move into sight. All this is told us by the omniscient narration of another man on Death Row, thanks to two heinous crimes… Full review...
The Four Seasons of Lucy Mckenzie by Kirsty Murray
For the first time in her life, Lucy dreaded Christmas.
She has been sent to stay with her Great-Aunt Big, who lives in a homestead in the Australian wilderness. Her family, meanwhile, will be spending Christmas in Paris, tending to Lucy’s older sister who is in a coma following a tragic accident. Lucy is deeply worried about her big sister and understands why she has been left behind, but she is filled with trepidation at the idea of spending such a long time with her eccentric Aunt, miles away from civilization without even as much as a mobile phone signal. Full review...
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
'All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock and a pair of balls.' Thus we are introduced to the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-life, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment of the overvaluing of male achievement, and an unapologetic, playful boldness with language. Full review...
Urban Outlaws by Peter Jay Black
What skills would you need to trick the rich and powerful out of their ill-gotten gains? A posse of brilliant lawyers and accountants with elastic consciences? A cache of guns and bombs? Well, maybe, although it is very possible that all that will do is to turn you into villains as dirty as your marks. And, if you'll forgive the sudden descent into street-speak, that's not the way these five young Urban Outlaws roll. Full review...
The Dead Wife's Handbook by Hannah Beckerman
Rachel wasn't ready to drop dead at thirty-five. It's been a year since - a year she's spent trapped in some sort of netherworld that allows her brief, tantalising glimpses of the lives of those she's left behind. There's no apparent rhyme or reason to the glimpses, and Rachel wishes they were more often and lasted longer. Full review...
Mungo Monkey has a Birthday Party by Lydia Monks
It’s Mungo Monkey’s birthday which means…Party Time! From baking a cake to blowing up balloons, he’s so excited to get things organised and ready for when his friends arrive. Full review...
What's Your Favourite Animal by Eric Carle
I love that this book is written by Eric Carle and friends. There’s something rather lovely about the idea of a group of authors and illustrators, hanging out and deciding to collaborate on a project together. Unlike the usual two-person job, though, where the result is typically as seamless as if it came from a single pen, this is an eclectic mix of pages that very clearly come from various minds. Let me explain. Full review...
Dream On Amber by Emma Shevah
Ambra Alessandra Leola Kimiko Miyamoto has a very long name. I have a very short name, so I can’t relate. But I’m with her on other issues. Like how hard it is to start secondary school and try to make new friends when you’re not quite like everyone else. Maybe you’re a bit smaller than the other girls. Maybe you’re of an interesting heritage (say, half Italian, half Japanese). Maybe one of your parents has gone AWOL. Maybe you don’t have all the right gear you need to blend in – sometimes a caveman mobile phone just won’t cut it. Ambra has all of these things working against her, AND a name that makes it sound like she’s identifying with an item of underwear, so it’s no wonder she’s changed it to Amber in a bid to fit in. Full review...
The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones
Imagine a story – a good old-fashioned adventure with journeys and magic and villains and young people finding their strengths despite the odds, and coming at last to the place they belong. Then imagine another story, a heart-touching one this time, about the writing of that story, and you have the whole of this charming book. Full review...
Hero by Sarah Lean
Leo is a boy with a big imagination. He is a bit of an outsider and feels overshadowed by the achievements of others, in particular by those of his older sister, but in his dreams he is a brave and all-conquering Roman gladiator. Desperate to be a hero in the real world and receive attention from those he wants to impress, one day Leo makes a bad decision and does something wrong. As the repercussions multiply and Leo feels that he has let everyone down, the disappearance of a small dog called Jack Pepper offers him the opportunity to put things right. Full review...
Bring Me Home by Alan Titchmarsh
When we first meet Charlie Stuart he's half wishing that the guests at his annual summer party at his Scottish castle would hurry up and leave - and half hoping that he could delay what he knows will have to be done once everyone has gone. He knows that life will never again be the same, but to understand why we have to go back from June 2000 to 1960 when Charlie was just a young boy being shown the ways of the loch and the surrounding land by the ghillie, who, oddly enough, was also his uncle. Full review...
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley
Flavia de Luce is nearly twelve but she's grown up without the presence of her mother who is presumed to have died in a mountaineering accident in Tibet when Flavia was just a baby. The loss has left its mark on the family: Colonel de Luce is a broken man and as it was Harriet who owned the family home - Buckshaw - they've lived in a financial limbo. But now Harriet's body has been found and we join the family as it's brought back to the village on a train commissioned by the government. The great and the good are there - including Winston Churchill - but there's also a mysterious death. And the man who has died whispered a warning to Flavia just before he went under the wheels of the train. Full review...
Bear and Hare Go Fishing by Emily Gravett
Bear and Hare are friends who like to do activities together, and since Bear REALLY loves fishing, that’s what they’re doing today. But will Bear catch a fish…or something else? Full review...
The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin by Daniel James Brown
You see, Jesse Owens had it easy – all he had to do was run fast. Alright, he did have to face unknown hardship, heinous prejudice at home and abroad, and make sure he was fast enough to outdo the rest of his compatriots then the world's best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but others who wished to do the same had to do more. People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe Rantz. He certainly had to face hardship, the prejudice borne by those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from the NW USA, and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscles, and operate at varying tempi, with the temperament of the weather and water against him, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakes. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertaining. Full review...
White Space by Ilsa J Bick
Seventeen-year-old Emma has problems. The metal plates in her head may be holding her skull together, but they don't stop the headaches, or the 'blinks' - periods of time that Emma loses. When Emma wakes from a blink in the middle of a snowstorm, driving in a valley she doesn't recognise, and crashes into a snow mobile, it doesn't take long for things to start getting weird. Full review...
Ironheart by Allan Boroughs
India Bentley's father went missing looking for oil in Siberia. Except it wasn't just oil he was searching for - rather, he was trying to find the lost fortress of Ironheart, whose old world secrets could save humanity - or destroy the world. When she meets tech-hunter Verity Brown and her android bodyguard Calculus, India manages to become involved in a daring adventure with some seriously unsavoury characters. Can she save her father, and the world? Full review...
Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley
Stella grows up with her single mother in Bristol in the 1960s; her father left when she was a baby, but her mother has cultivated the convenient myth that he died. In the stand-alone first chapter, Stella recounts a disturbing incident of domestic violence that affected her Aunt Andy. Sordid snippets from the ensuing court case stay with Stella over the years; 'Innocent-seeming fragments would get in past my defences…then stick to my imagination like tar.' Even so, the novel that follows is about the way in which we engage with memory – facts that linger versus those we, deliberately or subconsciously, choose not to tell. Full review...
Itch Scritch Scratch by Eleanor Updale and Sarah Horne
Warning: This Book Will Get Under Your Skin
Well, that's what it says on the back of the book and I can promise that it's true. You might like to wear a pair of those cotton mittens for babies whilst you read. It will feel awkward, but you'll feel the benefit, honestly. But - I'm getting ahead of myself. You want to know about the book. It's a family story - and the family in question are head lice. Full review...
Jane, The Fox and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault
Bullied at school and lonely because her former friends don't talk to her, Helene loses herself in the pages of Jane Eyre. To a girl who thinks of herself as fat and plain, Jane's story gives her hope - but can she find happiness? And how will a trip to a nature camp affect her? Can it give her the confidence and courage to change the way she sees herself? Full review...
Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines
A book in the Science fiction genre can easily get wrapped up inside itself if it not careful e.g. a dream on top of a vision, set in a future alternative world. Juggling all these concepts and creating a novel that is entertaining and at least in some way believable is not easy. This is proven in Peter Clines’ Ex-Purgatory, the fourth outing in the Ex series. Our heroes are used to being surrounded by the undead, but at the start of this novel they wake up in their old lives. What is a dream and what is a reality? Full review...
All I Said Was by Michael Morpurgo and Ross Collins
Our young friend looked up at the window and saw a pigeon balancing on the window sill and our young friend had a thought. I'd like to be you, he said, dreaming of flying off to anywhere that he liked. The pigeon was quite happy to change places: lying on the bed reading a book seemed like a good idea, so the two changed places. Our young hero thought it was great as he flew off towards the sea:
I want to be a bird all my life. Full review...
Willow Trees Don't Weep by Fadia Faqir
Najwa has been raised by her mother and grandmother with only stories of how awful her father was. He can't answer for himself as he left the farm when Najwa was three years old. After her mother's death Najwa is encouraged by her grandmother to find him as her grandmother is too frail to protect her and a single woman with neither husband nor male guardian is considered loose and worthless in Amman. And so the journey begins, taking Najwa to Pakistan and the centre of Taliban training, to Afghanistan and eventually to a Europe which deigns itself more civilised but seems more alien. Full review...
Mother of the Year by Karen Ross
The one person who could best judge a 'Mother of the Year' competition would surely be a nominee’s daughter, right? And yet where three-time winner Beth Jackson is concerned, her daughter JJ is the one person who remains unconvinced the accolade is warranted. Full review...
All That is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon
Moscow, 1986, and a nine-year old piano prodigy is trapped in a subway station by bullies, who carefully break one of his little fingers. Rehearsal cancelled, the boy finds his favourite aunt, who takes him to treatment only to discover her ex-husband the doctor involved. Many miles away a slightly older young man is off on his first hunting trip with the men of the village, only to find diseased cows, and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinated. What has affected them, and will of course affect all the characters in the book, is the nuclear disaster in the plant at Chernobyl. Full review...
Dandelion Clocks by Rebecca Westcott
This is a very difficult book to read. Make no mistake: that's not because of poor writing or a dull story — far from it — but because the story is so sad and yet uplifting, the situation so honestly and movingly portrayed that you'd need to be an automaton to read it without tears. Jacqueline Wilson is quoted as saying readers will need a large box of tissues, and she wasn't exaggerating. Full review...
Panic by Lauren Oliver
Every summer, a game takes place in Carp. The stakes are high and the prize is big, a life changing amount of money for the person who can hold their own the longest and outlast their competitors. Anyone from the graduating class of high school can enter, and many do, but in the end, only one can win. Along the way the contestants’ limits are tested, pacts made and broken, and secrets revealed. From some of the challenges, there may be injuries, traumatic or even fatal, but the lure of the prize money is so great that many choose to ignore the risks. Full review...
And Then Came Paulette by Barbara Constantine
Ferdinand was a widower and he lived with his son, daughter-in-law and their two children on the family farm. Well, he did until the family moved away. Apparently Ferdinand was occasionally prone to swear and obviously children can never be allowed to hear such words. That left him on his own except for the children’s kitten to which their mother was allergic in a farmhouse which demanded a family. He was lonely and he began... well, let’s call it making mischief. Assault is such an ugly word, isn’t it? Then he met Marceline - or rather he encountered her dog and in returning it discovered the old woman is a room filled with gas and leaking rain water through the roof. Full review...
Libriomancer by Jim C Hines
Pulp fantasy may be frowned upon by some who believe that novels should be about emotions, inner journeys and despair. Fantasy and science fiction can have all these things as well, but they can also be fun, entertaining and laser pistols. ‘Libriomancer’ by Jim C Hines is a great example. It is a book that follows Isaac Vainio, a Libriomancer who has the power to draw magic from books. He must use this gift to good effect when one day, whilst sitting comfortably cataloguing, he is attacked by three vampires. Does that sound fun to you? If so, read on; if not, this may not be the book for you. Full review...
Hector and the Big Bad Knight by Alex T Smith
All is not well in the happy village of Spottybottom as the Big, Bad Knight has stolen Granny’s magic wand. Hector wants to help his Granny get her wand back but there is a problem because Hector is the tiniest boy in the village and the thief is quite possibly the biggest and the baddest knight around. However, perhaps Granny should not despair because Hector has a plan! Full review...
