I decided to read this book because I saw a description of Uprooted, and thought it looked interesting, but I hadn’t read anything else by Naomi Novik, so I started with this series. I’m glad I did. This book is set during the Napoleonic Wars but has dragons that form an Aerial Corps There are many more dragons on the French side than the British side, so when Captain Will Laurence discovers a egg that is about to hatch aboard a French ship he and […]
A war-time fable that didn’t really work for me
Nine-year-old Bruno lives in a big house in Berlin and is not at all happy when the household is packed up and he, his mother, his older sister and the servants are forced to travel by train to a new house, far away in the desolate countryside. He misses the bustling city, the house with such a great banister for sliding down, his grandparents, his friends, even his school. At the new house, there is no one to play with, just a small garden and […]
Oh My Ghosh
“Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for ‘the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel,’ bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure of blood….” — Thomas de Quincey In 1839 the Chinese government, alarmed by the increasing number […]
This is book one in a series, people
3.5 stars When Lord Nicholas Falcott, the Marquess of Something-or-other (I finished this book more than a month ago and can’t be bothered to go looking up piddling details like that) is about to be killed on the battlefield in Spain in 1812, he suddenly finds himself transported forward in time about 200 years. After being nearly run over by a car, he wakes up in a modern hospital, in the company of a stranger who tells him that jumping through time is less unusual […]
Jane Austen meets Fight Club meets Dickens
Well this one is definitely making my favorite books of 2015 list. I’ve been saving it for my half cannonball. It has everything a person could wish for in a book: Female pugilists! Gambling dens! Orphans growing up in brothels! Handsome fops! Ladies in corsets! Scoundrels everywhere! As a huge Jane Austen fan, it was really fun to read something taking place during the same time period in a completely different context, something that’s not afraid to delve into the seedy underbelly of English society. […]
“Running, I soon realized, was the best way to stay ahead of fear.”
In her author’s note, Margot Livesey states quite plainly that the source of inspiration for this book “should be obvious.” It’s been long enough since I’ve read Jane Eyre that I didn’t get to play the details pedant, but The Flight of Gemma Hardy so closely matches the main events of its classic predecessor that my foggy memory had no trouble recalling parallel characters, locations, and plot points once re-imagined through Gemma’s steps. The set-up is familiar: Gemma is orphaned and raised by family members who […]
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