A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

   

It took me quite a while to read the third volume of A Song of Ice and Fire because I chose to read the version split into two paperbacks, making it easier to carry around and also enabling me to take a little break half way through.  And I honestly needed the break because this is one of the most epic books I've ever read.  It's by far the best of the series and there's no way I can gush about how fantastic it is without mentioning spoilers, so consider yourself warned!

So many dramatic events take place - it's like Martin spent books one and two building up to this epic, clearing the decks type of story.  By the end of the second paperback there was a game-changing event in practically every chapter and I was completely and utterly hooked.  I read the last 250 pages in one night, staying up much later than I should have done but I honestly could not put it down.  Reading the book made me feel happy, angry, frustrated, shocked and amazed all at once. 

The most shocking event was of course Robb's death during the Red Wedding.  It was at this point that I realised that George R.R. Martin's world really isn't a safe one for any character, even one that the author seemed to have been grooming to be the eventual winner all along.  It's been a while since I've felt actual anger at the direction a story was taking (I put the book down and complained to my husband, who has already read it) and it's a sign of how involved I was in the story.  Up until that point, I had thought Martin was working towards the Starks being the eventual victors, but now I'm not so sure.  The realisation that any of my favourite characters could be next in line for the axe made the story seem much more real and immediate.

After Robb's death, there were many other deaths but I was a bit desensitised.  I wasn't expecting Joffrey to actually die and will miss him in an I-loved-to-hate-him way, he was such a great villain.    Likewise I wasn't expecting Jaime to lose a hand or Tywin Lannister to be murdered.  I knew Littlefinger was not to be trusted,  but the last chapters at Eyrie revealed just how sinister and calculating he is.  And the ending with Catelyn was unexpected to say the least!

One thing I admire about George R.R. Martin is how he can make me completely revise my opinion on a character by offering their point of view.  In books one and two I thought there was nothing likeable about Jaime but through his story-line with Brienne he actually became one of my favourites.  Likewise the Hound. I'm still not keen on the Wall story-lines (although I do like Jon) and was secretly hoping Mance Ryder and the wildlings would win as that would have been more interesting.  Daenerys is an interesting character but I'm getting impatient for her to actually arrive in Westeros so her plot can link with the others.

It'll be interesting to see where Martin goes in the next book as the wars of the five Kings are well and truly over, with all but Stannis dead.  I have a feeling the pace will slow and the story will start to build up again before reaching a crescendo like this one in a few books time.  

Verdict: I haven't loved a book like I loved this one for a long time.

Source: Personal copy

Score: 5 out of 5

Sam Sunday #2: House-Buying Limbo

So here we are a week later and still no real progress on the house buying situation, it's getting really frustrating.  We have sorted out an issue with our mortgage provider (they had the wrong information from our mortgage adviser at one point) but we still haven't exchanged contracts or you know, actually moved.  We are waiting on the current owner at the moment as we're done and dusted with the legal work; all we need to do is pay the solicitors and I'm not doing that until we have an exchange date.  My solicitor still thinks we could exchange on 1st Feb, but I'm dubious to say the least.  It's the half term break for us in three weeks, realistically I would like to either be moved by then or be actually moving during the week off.  I thought planning a wedding was stressful, but it's got nothing on buying a house!

I've been feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, I think the stress from this combined with some additional work stress has got to me.  I was supposed to spend some time with my sister and nephew yesterday, but I decided to rest instead and hopefully not pass any germs I may have on to the baby.  Instead I had a leisurely visit to the library (who else does this when stressed?) and then baked some coconut and lime cupcakes (see above).  We had this flavour combination on our wedding day so baking them always brings back happy memories.

Despite having a busy week, it's been a great week in terms of reading.  I've been reading the following:

  

I finally finished part two of A Storm of Swords and I just loved it - expect a gushing review soon!  I also finished book one, part one of War and Peace for the readalong I'm participating in and I expect to finish Property tonight as I've only got 40 pages to go.  All three books have been very enjoyable.

Review posted: Mirror Earth by Michael Lemonick.

Library Haul #2

I've been in a strange reading mood lately.  I usually love historical fiction, literary fiction and books set in other countries but at the moment I don't know what I feel like reading.  I blame George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire; I finished Storm of Swords yesterday and it's such an all-encompassing, engrossing book that it's hard to know what to try next.  Hopefully my new stash of library books will help:

    

First my fiction/poetry selections (links go to goodreads):

1. Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt - I'm a fan of the Canongate myth series but boy am I behind with them!  This is apparently book 17 and my reading total is still in the lower end of the single digit numbers.  Based on Norse mythology, Ragnoraok is about a young girl evacuated to the English countryside in World War Two who is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths.

2. Ariel by Sylvia Plath - You can tell I need to rejuvenate my reading by trying new things as I never normally pick up poetry.  But I live Sylvia Plath and I've never actually read this in full.  I have high hopes.

3. Property by Valerie Martin - I use the Orange Prize as a recommendation list as I generally enjoy the short-listed books and winners.  Property won in 2003 and is set in the deep South of America in the 1800s.  Manon is unhappily married to the owner of a sugar plantation in Louisiana as whispers of a slave rebellion grow.

  

On to the non-fiction selections.  I was in a non-fiction mood today, so they outnumber the fiction:

4. The Devil Came on Horseback by Brian Steidle - Brian Seidle was one of only three Americans hired by the African Union to document the situation in Darfur during 2004.  This book is him bearing witness to the atrocities and genocide.

5. Titans of History by Simon Sebag Montefiore - I know the type of history that focuses on big personalities alone is out-dated now, but I do enjoy it.  I've read and enjoyed Montefiore's books about Stalin so I'm hoping to enjoy skimming through this guide to influential personalities throughout world history.

   

6. The Lost City of Z by David Grann -  A British explorer attempts to fill in the blank spaces on the map of the Amazon during the 1920s but then vanishes without a trace.  I love a good adventure story, especially if it's true.

7. Enslaved by Jessica Sage and Liora Kasten - Modern day slavery is such an under the radar issue, so I'm looking forward to this book of true stories from slaves.  Hopefully I will learn more about the millions of people that are currently held as slaves around the world.

Have you read any of these titles?

Mirror Earth: The Search for Our Planet's Twin by Michael D. Lemonick

One of the joys of having taken an astrophysics module last year is that I'm now fascinated with the universe.  I've always been a bit interested; but now I know about dark matter, black holes and the inside of stars, I'm completely absorbed. Expect this to be the first of many reviews of non-fiction books with a space theme.

Mirror Earth is about one of the most exciting research topics in astrophysics at the moment, planets that exist beyond our solar system (exoplanets).  It was only in the 1990s that scientists were able to detect such planets, and they've been overturning our expectations about the universe ever since.  Before exoplanets, scientists assumed that planets near their stars must be small and rocky, with large gaseous planets further away (such as Jupiter and Saturn).  But the first exoplanets discovered were many times larger than Jupiter and many times closer to their stars than Mercury is to our sun.  Many have strange orbits and don't behave in the way that we expect planets to at all.  Theoretically, these planets just shouldn't exist.  But they do.

Of course, discovering exoplanets (and there are many known ones now) is only the first step for scientists who hope to find a 'mirror' earth, one that could meet all the conditions for life.  This is really the meat of the book, as Lemonick discusses attempts to isolate and study planets that could possibly be habitable.  He takes a Bill Bryson-like approach of mixing the science with information about the scientists and the process of discovery, and this is largely successful.  I spent the first half of the book in awe of the perseverance and ingenuity of scientists who have been able to identify invisible planets around stars that are mere sparkling dots in the sky.  It's not simply a case of looking into the sky with a telescope, it's about the slightest movement of a star due to the planet's gravity and the tiniest possible blurring.  It's technical stuff.

Things get even more interesting as the discussion moves on to questioning our assumptions about life.  Most of the book and indeed, most of recent scientific history, is taken up with the quest to find planets like our own because scientists have assumed that life can only exist in similar conditions.  But in the final chapter, Lemonick considers other possible planetary systems from the realm of theoretical physics.  It's possible there are carbon-based planets with cores of pure diamond and "diamond continents sloping down to seas of tar."  What kind of life might such a planet harbour?  It seems physicists are questioning their basic ideas about life and I can't wait to see what research comes out of this in the future.

I really enjoyed Mirror Earth, but it wasn't perfect.  Whilst it was interesting to read about the actual scientists and their quests to discover planets (especially their funding issues), some of these sections went on for too long.  Had I not studied astrophysics at an introductory level, I would have struggled to understand the techniques the physicists used, although I could have kept up with the theories and discoveries easily.  But for an "awe and wonder" book, it's hard to beat.  The universe is more strange and diverse than we ever thought, and we're only scratching the surface of all the different possibilities.

Source: From the publisher, via Netgalley
First Published: 2012
Score: 4 out of 5.

Sam Sunday #1: The Snow Edition

Photo Credit

I'm always writing that I want to make my blog more personal, more than just a stream of book reviews, so today is the start of weekly personal updates on a Sunday.  I enjoy personal posts on other blogs and getting to know the bloggers behind the reviews, so it's time I opened myself up a bit too.

I'm currently tucked up warm inside a blanket as it's snowing outside and has been since I woke up this morning.  The snow is fairly light but has settled and is slowly accumulating.  It's been constantly snowing on and off since Friday and although school was open on Friday, I'm sort of hoping for a snow day tomorrow.  I have a long commute and my car is unable to cope with snow, so if school does open tomorrow I'm expecting a long journey in via train and bus.  I love my job, but getting in via public transport is a massive pain.

However, the snow has given us an excuse to have a lovely weekend in.  I caught up on some reading yesterday and started a new course on Coursera.  I've always loved to study and over the last year or so, I've been missing being at university and learning new things.  I took an astrophysics module through the Open University last year (which was incredible) but unfortunately my budget doesn't allow me to do that very often.

But Coursera is wonderful - it's real, live university courses without the cost.  I'm not looking for course credit, just mental exercise, so I'm not bothered that I'm not earning credits.  At the moment I'm one week into a course entitled 'The Modern World: Global History Since 1760' and it seems like it's going to be fascinating.  I'm considering an algebra course that starts next week, to keep up the mathematical side of my brain, but I'll see how I go.  There's an interesting one coming up on fantasy and sci-fi too, but I have enough to read at the moment!

Hopefully we should be finalising buying our house next week.  It's been a lengthy and frustrating process - we made an offer in September and will not move before Feb 1st or Feb 8th.  I'm expecting lots more calls to solicitors/ mortgage advisors and I will start officially stamping my feet and making demands if it is not sorted soon.  I thought planning a wedding was stressful, but it's nothing to buying a house.  Anyway, fingers crossed I have good news to report next week.

Books Read:

  

Reviews posted: Sea of Ink, The Runaway Princess

Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe

Ah, the last novella in mine and Lyndsey's (from Tolstoy is my Cat) Peirene Press readalong.  And it's a good one too.  Sea of Ink tells the life of Bada Shanren, born into the Chinese royal family in 1626, shortly before the dynasty is destroyed by rivals.  Abandoning his life as a Prince, Bada becomes a nomad painter, wandering between different towns and roles.  Disillusioned with humanity, his paintings focus on nature and become more simplistic over time.  Sea of Ink tells the story of both his life and the development of his art.

Despite not being a big fan of art, I really enjoyed Sea of Ink.  I liked how Weihe took us right into the mind of Bada Shanren as he painted and made the physical process of painting such a large part of the story.  Bada Shanren's quest to capture nature with a single brushstroke had a sense of poetic beauty about it, and I loved that the paintings were included in the book alongside the relevant chapters.

Sea of Ink is a tranquil book.  Although Bada Shanren faces some difficult life events throughout it's pages, the whole story is calm and quiet, which I appreciated.  Sometimes we all rush around, ignoring the world around us, and this novella works as an antidote to that.  It reminded me to take a moment to really see what is around me.  Sea of Ink is about perseverance and living your life in your own way;

"...besides the old role models you also have your own: yourself.  You can not hang on to the beards of the ancients.  You must try to be your own life and not the death of another."

The only issue I had with the book was that it didn't seem to flow as smoothly as some of the other translations from the series.  And the sacrifice for the calm, tranquil qualities in the story was some degree of disconnect from the main character.  I never felt Bada Shanren's losses heavily as Weihe keeps him at a distance from the reader.  The story was about more than the character, and I was OK with that.  

I'm glad we finished the Peirene Press novellas on a high note!  There'll be one more discussion post next Thursday and then it's all over.  I'll miss opening the cover of a new novella every Sunday evening...

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Published: 2012

Score: 4 out of 5

The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne

Amy Wilde is at a party one evening when she meets a man named Leo.  Only after several dates does she realise that he is in fact Prince Leopold, a member of a minor European royal family.  Sounds perfect, right? But Amy is totally unprepared for the change in her life that dating royalty brings - her every move is scrutinised in the papers and she's put on a punishing fitness regime by Leo's family.  When a chance change to the succession laws brings Leo closer to the throne, the pressure on Amy intensifies and her own secrets threaten to become public knowledge.

The Runaway Princess is certainly different from my normal reading but I was craving a bit of brain candy last week and I did dream of marrying a Prince as a young girl (My Mum always wanted me to marry Prince Harry and my older sister to marry Prince William!!).  I liked the premise of the book, how it promised to go beyond the 'happily ever after' and I was in the mood for some light relief.  And on these terms, the book delivered.  It was fluffy and fun and it was always a pleasure to pick it up after being at work all day long.  It's easy to empathise with Amy and Browne had some fun with the minor characters too.

The only problem with this book was that Leo was mind-bogglingly perfect.  I mean, come on!  I could buy that he was sick of the trappings of royalty and just wanted to meet a normal girl, but I couldn't believe that he was that accommodating and non-spoilt, in addition to of course being amazingly handsome.  In fact, a better story-line could have been Amy falling in love with his arrogant brother Rolf, that might have had some more chance for character development.  As in most of the chick-lit I've read, the ending felt very tidy and again, I couldn't believe that Leo was that perfect.

On the whole, I spent a happy few nights with this book in a happy, stress-free place.  It's not high literature, but I did enjoy escaping with it :)

Source: Personal copy (kindle)

First Published: 2012

Score: 3 out of 5