“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
~ Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons

Sometimes you really should judge a book by its cover, the publishers spend a lot of time and  money on them after all. And this one with its gorgeous cover by Ken Garduno is a perfect example.

There I was on Saturday with a few minutes to spare before my bus arrived I popped into my local bookshop for a quick browse. (Yes. I know. My own fault!) I was just about to leave when I spotted this fantastic looking, compact book.

While It’s a peculiar and very quirky little story, it’s also utterly brilliant.

The book’s epigraph I quoted at the start, gives us a clue about who the bad-guy is going to be…

It used to be a happy town, celebrating life and flight with balloons and vibrant bird life, but as the book opens, February has tighten his wintery grip on the land. The balloons and birds have been grounded, and the land is blanketed in snow.

On the 127th day of February the first child goes missing from the town. Yep, you read that right, the 127th day! As I said earlier, this is a peculiar little book.

As their world gets bleaker and bleaker the towns-people start to take the battle back to February and war is declared, the first attempt to take the offensive involves them wearing summer clothes and talking loudly about how nice the weather is.

The story telling, is not the only thing that is quirky about the book. The way it is laid out adds to the effect with short, sharp chapters, and different fonts and sizes employed to emphasise certain bits of the story. With each chapter focusing on a different person or group I was initially reminded of Steven Millhouser’s Enchanted Night. But you certainly won’t feel the same way about February as you do the night when you finish this one. Even though Jone’s writing is just as brilliantly evocative.

“I closed my eyes. I imagined Selah and Bianca in a canoe so narrow they had to lie down with their arms folded on their stomachs, their heads at opposite ends, their toes touching. I dreamed two miniature suns. I set one each upon their foreheads. I dreamed a waterfall and a calm lake of my arms below to catch them.

I really can’t recommend this one enough. It’s almost definitely going to be on my top-ten of the year.

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Buy: Light Boxes from The Book Depository

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Which I have to say is absolutely true, I have other books in the queue to be read at the moment, but they don’t have a chance until I’ve got up to speed with Thursday Next’s adventures to-date.

As, has been mentioned, they are nigh on impossible to describe to anybody who has not read them, so I will relate a little story to you as a warning as to where not to read them.:oops:

Earlier on this afternoon, whilst on my break, I grabbed my copy of “The Well of Lost Plots” and headed down in to the staff canteen, grabbed a can of Dr Pepper out of the vending machine, and settled down to read.

I read, quite happily, grinning at all the correct places, until… Well as I said they’re hard books to explain, but suffice it to say, I started to giggle, then chortle, then made that spluttering noise you make, when you’re tying to reign in your laughter, because people are beginning to look at you funny, closed my eyes, took some deep breaths, and eventually opened my eyes again and slowly turned round to see who I was going to have to bribe with coffee to keep quiet…

Luckily, I was on my own, so nobody saw it, at least I don’t think so anyway. There is the possibility that the canteen door moving slightly, was just a draft, and not it closing, as someone left, time will tell.

Now a few quotes to try and give you some idea what we’re all on about

“You’re the Cheshire Cat, aren’t you ?” I asked. (Thursday Next)

“I was the Cheshire Cat,” he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. “But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I am now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

And, some Advise from Mrs Havisham[2] (with whom, Thursday Next is apprenticed to, as she learns how to be a Jurisfiction[3] agent) as to why the cast of “Wuthering Heights” all have to attend mandatory rage-counselling sessions[4]:

If this book is to survive, we have to control the emotions within it; as is, the novel is three times more barbaric than when first penned — left to its own devices it won’t be long before murder and mayhem start to take over completely — remember what happened to that once gentle comedy of manners Titus Andronicus ? It’s now the daftest, most cannibalistic blood fest in the whole of Shakespeare.

And one last quote:

“. . . The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighbourly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumoured that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone’s guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. “If you want to be a SpecOp,” the saying goes, “act kinda weird . . .”
MILLION DE FLOSS
-A Short History of the Special Operations Network

###

fn1. I’ve since found out after speaking to friends, this is how everybody is introduced to these books!

fn2. Yes, that is the Mrs Havisham from Great Expectations

fn3. Come on now, Keep Up!

fn4. I said, Keep Up!

• Buy, The Eyre Affair
• Buy, Lost in a Good Book
• Buy, The Well of Lost Plots
• Buy, Something Rotten

[rating:90/100]

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The story follows Santiago, a young shepherd, who after meeting with an old king, sells his sheep, so he can follow his dreams. The real story though is not so much the physical journey he undertakes, as he head the The Pyramids in Egypt. But his journey as he grows and changes as he progress towards his goal. The people he meets and the time he spends immersed the the places he stays or passes through all contribute.

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy confides to the alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself,” the alchemist replies. “And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

Buy, The Alchemist here.

[rating:71/100]

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Unfortunately the main Source of evil Obadiah Demurral, a priest who has fallen under the spell of dark magic, never quite reaches the point when you are truly afraid of him, and yet this is very dark novel, **spoiler** where even at the end, things are never truly settled. **spoiler**

I should mention here that, the authors day job� is as a vicar. It is the writing style that for me does not work, the author has quite obviously drawn comparisons with his religious beliefs and his books battle between good and evil.

It is here is where I have a problem The Christian content is just too obvious, with characters drawn straight from the pages of the Bible, and passages of speech are obviously analogies or direct quotes from biblical and liturgical texts. (And we are talking very well known and used passages) They just seem like they have been inserted with a large hammer, and remind me far too much, of years of bad Sunday school services, and threw me straight out of the story every time.

As a Christian, I have seen this book in a few Christian bookshops/events since its release. So it seems quite well liked and respected, but I just can’t help thinking that fusing this kind of fiction and such an obvious Christian message is not quite the right way to go, because it never quite succeeds at either of its intents.

In doing a quick check on the author here to check a fact or two, I found out he is the vicar of Cloughton in Yorkshire near Scarborough, which is here i went to do my leader training for when I used to help run my local Boy’s Brigade company, which of course means absolutely nothing, other than it made me go “Hey, look at that!”

Buy, Shadowmancer here.

ETA: In the vein of “Hey, look at that!” I met the author at a signing, a couple of years after making this review at it’s original home on my former blog, and while we were chatting and he was signing, we discovered his family used to live just down the road from me, and when I say “just down the road,” I do mean “Just”! Again not important to the review, but, “Hey! Look at that!”

[rating:60/100]

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Synopsis

Wayward daughters. Missing Husbands. Philandering partners. Curious conmen. If you’ve got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s only – and finest – female private detective. Her methods may not be conventional, and her manner not exactly Miss Marple, but she’s got warmth, wit and canny intuition on her side, not to mention Mr J.L.B. Maketoni, the charming proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. And Precious is going to need them all as she sets out on the trail of a missing child, a case that tumbles our heroine into a hotbed of strange situations and more than a little danger …Delightfully different, THE NO.1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY offers a captivating glimpse of an unusual world.

Just finished this book the other day, and I thought I’d leave a quick review. First off if you are hoping for a proper detective novel, then this is probably not the book for you, as there is no major mystery to be found. In fact all Mma Ramotswe, investigations are mostly very simple and are solved with a fair amount of ease and gives the book an episodic nature. But for me the point of the book was the setting and the characters you meet, through Mma Ramotswe’s eyes, one of whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stands out, the local mechanic and Mma’s helper and hopeful suitor, who know pretty much everyone and refers to them by what car repairs they have had. It makes a great lunch time� read due to it’s easy story and flow. And as the work colleague, who was sat opposite one lunchtime earlier this week. Who only just avoided being sprayed by my lunch, the book contains one of the funniest paragraphs, I have ever read!

“Now constipation was quite a different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party – with a chance of government perhaps – but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.“

Buy The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency from Amazon

[rating:73/100]

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