Jon Courtenay GrimwoodBesprekingen

It is a pity the alternate-history flavor didn't come through stronger in this story. Still, it presented an interesting set of characters, an exotic location, and a decent enough mystery. It holds up better than its sequel, "Effendi"

I had a small amount of trouble truly getting into this book. I'm not sure if for whatever reason my brain just could not grasp all the different characters, or if there was just too much going on at once for me to follow properly, but I found myself constantly having to refer back to the 'Character List' in the front in order to remember who was who. Who was beholden to who, who held what position, etc.

There was also the matter that other then Tycho and Guiletta, the characters all seemed to have the same 'voice'. Its told in third person limited, but there wasn't much to distinguish one viewpoint from another. They all sort of bled into each other in a confusing manner.

Moving back to the confusion I felt regarding the characters and remembering their various allegiances, some of that stemmed from the fact few of the characters seemed to be truly tied to one faction or the other. Everyone was running so many agendas and schemes, most of which crossed each other and interfered with each other, it was hard to keep the lines straight. I eventually resorted to keeping a running list of everyone's actions, but even then it became a long winded chart.

Where Grimwood really shone was in his depiction of Venice and the time period. Many times I could almost feel the decadence and filth that Grimwood meticulously details of the canals, streets and palaces. The intrigues of the families and parishes, the various types of people and stations of life, they came alive. The narrative though doesn't let the reader figure out very much on their own. A mystery, or secret, is introduced, some clues are strewn about, but almost immediately things become obvious. There's very little sustained tension.

Es el siglo XV y Venecia está en la cima de su poder. En esta ciudad, mezcla de opulencia y hedor a cloaca, aparece el primer vampiro en Europa, setenta años antes que Drácula.
Atilo, el jefe de los Assassini del duque Marco, descubre a un muchacho agachado sobre un hombre al que acaba de matar. La velocidad a la que huye el muchacho le asombra. Y Atilo sabe que tiene que encontrarlo, no para matarlo, sino porque finalmente ha encontrado a alguien digno de ser su aprendiz.

Another science fiction book that reads more like fantasy, with a mystery spine. There were a couple of things I didn't like--the copyediting in Chapter One almost made me put the book down, with all the plurals with apostrophes, and Bobby gets way too much gratuitous tail--but the plot itself kept my interest.

On the other hand, any book with a crackhead kitten gets bonus points for weirdness. I'd actually rate it 3 1/2 if I could.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/half-life-shelley-jackson-end-of-the-world-blues...

I enjoyed this one too. There are two intertwined plots: an Englishman in Tokyo trying to find out who killed his wife, and a girl from a far future dying earth who has ended up in our time. I got slightly lost in places but I really enjoyed the ride. Jesse Hudson suggests that Grimwood is the 21st century Zelazny; I take the point.

July 1940 and the Nazis have taken over France and invaded the Channel Islands. Former King Edward, now the Duke of Windsor, has had to flee to Portugal. Here he is being wooed by the fascists to join their cause and return to the throne. Part of the plot involves installing Edward and Wallis on the Channel Islands where a former friend lives. Bill O'Hagan is a career criminal who is facing execution for murder but he is offered a chance, go to Alderney, impersonate the Lord of Renhou and steal the important papers held there.
There is a cracking story here but it is hard to get to through the morass. The first section of the book is so bitty and disjointed that I almost gave up but I'm glad I didn't as the narrative begins to take over. I feel that Grimwood has not been served by his editor as once the action gets underway there is a strong tale here focusing on the embittered Duke.

A sort of crime thriller based in Russia, specifically Moscow in the mid 80's. Tom Fox is newly arrived at the British embassy in Moscow when the ambassador's young daughter goes missing. Everyone suspects that she has got annoyed at not being allowed to attend a party and Fox is told to find her. What should be a relatively quick tasks turns into quite a drama. I found the book pretty good overall but I did have a few issues with it. The main issue I had was some of the more intriguing characters are completely wasted or simply disappeared all together with no explanation.

The Fallen Blade Stephanie Meyer and Deborah Harkness need a lesson in what a vampire really is and that lesson is "The Fallen Blade". Jon Courtenay Grimwood has taken a step back (thank God) towards the more traditional vampire myth. However, what really drew me to this book was its setting in 15th century Venice - a historical novel with vampires, witches and werewolves and plenty of political intrigue? Sounds pretty damn good to me!Although the plot was sound and kept me reading, the characters fell short of what I expected. To me it seemed as though the characters were underdeveloped and jumps in time within the plot really didn't help with that. I also found the relationship between the characters Giulietta, Tycho and Leopold rather confusing, although this was balanced out, in some ways, by the intricate political plot line.The writing style was also a little confusing in some places in that I had to read over the dialogue several times before I could understand what was going on and who was speaking.Overall I'd rather give this book 3.5 stars - I'd like to give it more but the characters were a let down and prose could have been more clear. However, Grimwood redeems himself by creating a powerful plot line and I'll definitely be picking up the next book.

At the end of the war, Berlin was a mess. Children wandered the streets, people were starving, and anything could be had for a cigarette. Add to the mix thousands of soldiers, all of them bored, and you have a recipe for depredation. "‘The ruins turned us all into rats … The self can be pretty vile if let off the leash.’ All those feral children. All that hunger and starvation. It must have been a feeding frenzy for someone like Blackburn. He wouldn’t have been alone either. Men like that recognized each other, hunted in packs, and protected each other. . . It was like stepping into hell. The problem is, some men like hell."

Some of those predators were officers and they turned a lodge into a true den of iniquity, some of them preying on children. But someone else was writing down the names of the worst, and many of those same men went on to high-level careers in government. Throw in those who want to sabotage the glasnost talks about reducing nuclear weapons and you have a rather incendiary mix.

Major Tom Fox is sent to Berlin to bring back a former defector. It was to be a simple mission. He has none of the above information, but soon it's apparent that someone wants the defector dead and Tom, too. But, most of all they want the memoirs the defector had been supposedly writing as he had the list of names. Fox is caught in a vice but has no idea who's turning the screws. When his children is kidnapped to coerce his cooperation, things get desperate.

This book will suck you into it as it races to the conclusion. I have already ordered Grimwood's other book. Superior spy novel.

Venice has always been the gateway between the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire. It is feeling strong too as it has held these two powers back, and the regent, Duchess Alexa holds a strong position. As she ages she is lining up Lady Giulietta to take over as regent, or maybe even Duchess. But they are still threatened, this time by the exiled regent and traitor Prince Alonzo. His plotting and anger over what is really a Millioni family dispute, will bring Alexa’s empire the closest it has ever come to destruction. To add to their problems, Venice is gripped by the coldest winter in living memory, wolves have returned across the ice. As they teeter on the edge of the abyss, the future of Venice is in the hands of Lord Tycho, former slave, kreighund and Assassini.

It is atmospheric, brutal and fast paced with great twists and turns. I am a fan of Grimwood’s writing anyway, but I do like the way that he has deeply embedded a fantasy story into a historical setting. Characterisation is not strong, but good enough to carry the story along. It is a fitting conclusion to the series, but does suffer the similar problem that more series have in that it is a tad predictable. Good though; just need him to get back to writing more sci fi!

An excellent follow on from the Fallen Blade. Top quality fantasy that is full of subtlety and intrigue.

It concerns the recently widowed Lady Giulietta, who has the German and Byzantine empires wanting their preferred suitors to marry her and control Venice. The fly in the ointment is Tycho, a lethal assassin, but afraid of the day, who detests the city, but starts to love Lady Giulietta with a blind passion.

The climax of the book is a battle between the German and Byzantine empires with Tycho making a bond and eliminating one of the suitors.

Cannot wait for the final book.

Complex & dark fantasy book

Meh.

Actually, this is an interesting book to try and talk about, because my emotional response when reading was "this is just lacking" but once I actually try and think about "how to fix it", I become puzzled as to why it doesn't work. It seems to have everything it should - a pretty tight story focused around a collection of interlocking characters with high stakes. Also vampires, werewolves, magick and swooning maidens.

Why doesn't it work?

For me, it's because I'm just not feeling it, and that's probably down to a couple of big factors about the way it's told. One: the story is tight, but the telling of it is all over the place. It jumps between narrators without balance (one guy's only used in the first third of the book, one guy only used in the middle third, the final third is almost exclusively from the "hero's" POV without break). It jumps around in time without giving you any clear indication until you get a couple of pages into the new chapter, and thus confusion abounds (not assisted by his drama-over-clarity style, especially in the meta-story patches). And Two: it talks a lot about the big emotions the characters are feeling - which drive their actions - but I rarely saw or felt the justification for them. This was especially bad for love, which all of the characters feel passionately for one or more of the other characters, usually not the one who feels that way about them - I had no idea what any of them were talking about, because there rarely seemed to be any basis for that love, and certainly few of them acted like they genuinely cared about that person. (Particular extra-special face-pulling for Tycho and Giulietta, who meet for scant moments and are bound by love henceforth. Bleurgh.) In general, I just didn't care much for any of the characters (a little for Atilo; a little for Desdaio; both of these withered as the book progressed) and thus I just plain didn't care.

Anyway, when you have a vampire and a werewolf duelling with magical swords atop a Venetian tower and I'm BORED, you're doing something wrong.

First and lingering impression is that this is Gibson/Stephenson lite. The day-after-tomorrow alterni-future setting did its usual best to confuse and frustrate me (I never know whether the words being dropped are concepts/gadgets that exist or are being made up, which makes getting my head around the worldbuilding difficult) but it was rich and exotic and interesting... sometimes possibly too much so; I felt like occasionally the author was wallowing in atmosphere, and then paring back his action, which made the pacing oddly syncopated for me. Moreover, the rich world stuff - not just the setting, but the accoutrements of the hero and his sidekick - wasn't actually central to the story, which was an unsettlingly simple murder mystery thriller-whodunnit.

That said, I did enjoy the story, and often the telling, even in the wallowing or paring. And if not seated in what Ashraf is, at least who Ashraf is is quite important to the story (and a thing worth talking and thinking about for 300 pages).

There were POV changes mid-sentence, but for once I didn't find that at all troubling, possibly because it was never confusing. Unlike the author's penchant for sentence-fragmenting lengthy run-on qualifying clauses, which tripped me up every single time and meant I had to re-read whole paragraphs.

For example: Hani was worried about something but asking her directly about it hadn't worked. Though he'd tried that several times, starting when he'd got back to the madersa after [character name] flat-lined.

Every time I came across this construction, I read the second sentence like it was starting with a conditional clause, and every single time I got to the end of the clause and found the fullstop and realised it had been a follow-on conditional from the previous sentence. Which I then had to re-read. Every. Single. Time.

A wacky yet enjoyable book. The main voice of the book is a man that begins his life as an impoverished French noble, and ends as the Revolution is busting down his chateau door. In between, his adventurous eating habits first make him an object of ridicule, then earn him a more admired status. It also helps keep him alive when he most needs it.

12/6: Some books definitely take a seat within my soul and stay for a bit longer than others, and that's how I rate them. As time passes I also consider how many times I mention it to my friends. It's been a couple of weeks since I finished this novel and I am still thinking about it. I have raised my star rating.

interesting ideas but I didn't care enough about the characters to continue

Très déçu... Beaucoup d'imprécisions (dans la traduction?). Un banquet bien fade.½

Nightfall Berlin – A Proper Spy Thriller

This is one of the best thrillers I have read in a long time. This is a tale set in the grim era of the cold war, just as the war was beginning to thaw. Set in East Berlin the full greyness of being on the Eastern side of the wall comes through. The publisher’s blurb on the front is correct for once, it really is a fine book and those that love vintage Le Carre are in for a real treat.

Major Tom Fox is on a rare holiday in the Caribbean with his wife and son, when he receives a call recalling him to work. He has to fly direct to West Berlin where he will be briefed and then he will bring a former British defector Sir Cecil Blackburn back to Britain, along with his memoirs. Easy he thinks, a bit of babysitting across and no trouble.

When Sir Cecil changes his mind, Fox turns up to find Sir Cecil suffered a violent death and his Stasi/KGB minder is dead at the door. The memoirs are ashes in the fire, but he manages to save a list before dashing away before the police turn up. He knows he cannot go back to his state-run hotel, and when he becomes a chief suspect, he knows the wolves will be out hunting for him. A spy in an unfriendly country being hunted by all sides is not the best position to be in when your life is in danger.

Matters take a turn for the worse, when his son, Charlie, is kidnapped in an attempt to force even more pressure on Fox to hand over Blackburn’s memoirs. In an attempt to stay alive, and keep his son alive, he has to make friends with people you would not necessarily trust your life with.

One thing is clear to Fox, he is alone, facing certain death, in a closed city where everyone is monitored, and it is only time before his hunters track him down and kill him.

Nightfall in Berlin will become a modern spy classic.

I just opened my copy for bibliographic purposes and spotted a typo in the very first sentence of the book. And not just any old typo; it was the name of the protagonist. Big thumbs-down to Earthlight (Simon & Schuster). I hope it won't spoil my opinion of the book itself when I finally get around to reading it.

The 2nd Act of the 'Assassini' sees Tycho raised up as a knight, as just as swiftly cast down, as Grimwood's alternate Venice is coverted by both the German and Byzantine empires.

Imprisoned in a Mamluk ship, Tycho arrives into a parallel Venice, ruled by a simpleton Doge, and populated by mages, girls fleeing unwanted betrothals, streetwise thieves, scheming assassins and witches and beset by supernatural enemies. He has come though fire from a land of ice, and must find himself soon, or perish...... John Courtney Grimwood delivers in 'The Fallen Blade'. First of a trilogy.