Exit Strategy, by Kelley Armstrong

3.5 stars

I've been something of a Kelley Armstrong fan for some time now, having torn my way through the Women of the Otherworld series, plus two supernatural YA trilogies, and discovered they were brain candy of the highest order. With the last entry in this trilogy now published, I'm turning my attentions to Nadia Stafford. There are no supernatural shenanigans in this one but thankfully it's just as addictive as Armstrong's other work, as well as continuing with her tradition of starring heroines who don't make me want to do this:

A former cop, Nadia was ousted from the force following the death of a suspect - one that wasn't exactly accidental. Having lost everything in the aftermath, Nadia has started a new life as the owner of a hunting lodge. One that moonlights as a hired killer. Trouble is, Nadia (professional name: Dee) isn't the only professional killer around and one of their number looks to have gone rogue, attracting a lot of police attention. So when Nadia's mentor, Jack, shows up with an offer for her to join him and few others from the hitman community to take the guy out, she does.

Setting up Nadia's world nicely and introducing us to some characters who will obviously become big players as the series progresses, I really enjoyed the way Armstrong wrote about her and the way she approached tracking down the killer (and I really enjoyed Evelyn, the gun-toting and not very trustworthy OAP). 

The scenes around the killer's victims were all very effective and, while I'm no expert on police-work or, indeed, that of professional killers, all of the details and techniques at least seemed plausible to me.

I was glad to see the initial case would be solved in this entry - no cliffhangers here! - and while I'm not particularly keen on love triangles, so far Nadia's is taking a backseat. And although I'm sure it'll become more of a focus as the series progresses, I quite like Jack so am happy to see how this builds (as I am equally sure that he will emerge the victor).

Too Good To Be True, by Jan Harold Brunvand

3 stars

My introduction to urban legends came early, and at the hands of my auntie. When I was a kid, my brother and I would spend the latter half of the week at our grandparents' and, while they did their weekly food shop, we’d be left under the charge of Auntie Lisa, who’d soon have us squealing and our hair standing on end as she told us about The Dead Roommate, the Maniac on the Car Roof, The Call From INSIDE The House, and The Licked Hand (these are the first I remember hearing, along with one about an old woman who comes to the door and you notice she has a missing finger….I can’t remember the rest of the story, but I can remember nearly hitting the ceiling whenever Lisa would get to the end and screech “YOU DID IT!” and lunge for us. Got us Every.Damn.Time.) I’m now looking forward to my own niece and nephew becoming old enough for me to scare the bejeesus out of, and this book should be a good source for me to mine.

A compilation of all of the urban legends you’ve heard (plus many more) ranging from the comic to the horrifying, from the old to the new (including all those warnings about gang initiations, petrol stations and checking the back-seat of your car that people are always sharing on Facebook), Brunvand’s writing style is a little irritating at times, especially whenever referring you to the ten thousand other books he’s apparently written on urban legends, but not enough to detract from the legends themselves.

My Year In Books

As I mentioned yesterday, I managed to read 84 books this year (yes, I am the sort of person who keeps track of this sort of thing. I'm also the sort of person who thinks 84 is a paltry figure, and that I really should do better in 2014). Only a few were actually published in 2013 - I have far too many unread books already sat on my shelves and in my Kindle to allow me to get around to those for a while yet - so this won't be a round-up of the year's best books. What this will be is a list of those books that I loved most in 2013, or loathed (click on the titles to be taken to the reviews).

Those I loved and that you should run out instantly and get copies of

10. Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway
9. Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
7. HMS Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian
6. Eleanor of Aquitaine, by Alison Weir
5. The Liveship Traders (series), by Robin Hobb
4. Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, by Mara Leveritt
3. The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
2. Wolf Hall & Bring Up The Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (Thomas Cromwell #'s 1 & 2)
1. The Ocean At The End of The Lane, by Neil Gaiman


And those that made me wish I'd never learnt to read in the first place

10. Gentlemen Prefer Succubi, by Jill Myles 
9. The Atrocity Exhibition, by JG Ballard (although I feel bad about it)
8. Witch Fire, by Anya Bast
7. The Fall of Arthur, by JRR Tolkien
6. Magic of Thieves, by C. Greenwood
5. Hunter's Moon, by CT Adams & Cathy Clamp
4. Helen of Troy, by Margaret George
3. Ravens, by George Dawes Green
2. Dead Ever After, by Charlaine Harris
1. Taken by the T-Rex, by Christie Sims & Alara Branwen

And there you have it. I read some blinders this year, but also read an awful lot of bad Kindle smut. And although that always figures highly in each year's most hated list, it seems I never bloody learn. Especially when it's free.

What were your favourite reads this year? And which books made you want to throw them on the fire? Do share...


P.S. If any of you are interested in my full list of books for 2013 (you never know, there could be at least one very bored person out there) then click here. And while you're over on Goodreads, don't forget to get yourself a profile, friend me and start reviewing. Go on...

2013 - A Round-Up and A List

Well, I think we can all agree on one thing - 2013 was definitely a year. The jury is still out on whether it was a good one, a bad one, or a mix of the two.

As for my year, it's most definitely been a mix. I started the year recovering from a bit of a breakdown before going back to work, where things went from bad to worse when Midge left me for other pastures. I started this blog, went to visit some wolves, and finally did a festival with Rerab. I read 84 books, met Neil Gaiman, and lost my shit when he 'liked' my review of his book, The Ocean At The End of The Lane.

I lost a grandmother, a great-auntie, a few heroes, and my beloved cat, Eric. I saw just how strong and inspiring my family can be when faced with awfulness, as well as finding out that other members don't really do that unconditional love thing.

My gorgeous niece went to big school, and my scrumptious nephew developed an obsession with Ghostbusters (an obsession I wholeheartedly endorse), while I developed two brand new obsessions of my own in Thomas Cromwell and Mads Mikkelsen. 

I'm ending the year harbouring a cold (those flu jabs I get each year are staggeringly effective) but surrounded by fantastic presents and looking forward to an imminent visit from one of my favourite people who I don't see enough of.

But most importantly, I'm also ending it with a list (beware spoilers!):

Best Film

NikNak would like Gravity to get the nod here but, as I haven't yet watched it due to being wigged out by the very idea of drifting in space, my vote goes to Alpha Papa - Alan Partridge's glorious turn on the big screen that actually managed to make me forget to hate being in Vue for an evening.

For iPhone/iPad click here.

Most Disappointing Film

Giant robots fighting huge gaijin should have been fantastic, especially as Idris Elba was also in it, but sadly Pacific Rim turned out to be 132 minutes of who cares?

For iPhone/iPad click here.

TV Show of the Year

Easily won by Yonderland, the new fantasy series from those behind Horrible Histories, which has given me my new favourite minions, ever.

For iPhone/iPad click here.

Most Shocking TV Death(s)

Well, a shock to anyone who hadn't read the books, at least, what was most shocking to me was that I'd somehow managed to keep my mouth shut about The Red Wedding for the last few seasons of A Game Of Thrones. But even knowing what was to come, I still got goosebumps when the Lannisters sent their regards...

Most Gorgeous TV Show

No contest here, it has to be Hannibal. And not just because of Mads...Whether it's the splendid suits, those incredible cooking scenes, the creepy crime scenes, or inside Will Graham's head, every inch of the screen is utterly beautiful.

Best Use of Office Equipment

Hannibal's twin Rolodexes easily win this one - one for the people...

...and the other for the recipes.

Scariest TV Chef

Managing to edge out Hannibal, Masterchef's Monica Galetti is seriously scary. She's also seriously awesome and I suspect, in NikNak's case at least, a little bit sexy-scary.

Newest Member of the Mothering Club

Mainlining all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad this year soon saw Jesse Pinkman join the Mothering Club, comprising folk who all want looking after (by me), such as The Wire's Bubbles, Friday Night Lights' Landry, Oz's Alvarez and Stand By Me's Chris.

Most Hated TV Character

Also given to me by my viewing of Breaking Bad was my all-consuming, impassioned hatred of 2013's leading TV character, Walter White. It started somewhere around Season 2 and continued unabated throughout the rest of the series, punctuated by frequent expletive-laden rants at my TV. I spent most of my time hoping Skylar would wait until Walt went to sleep and then stab him in the fucking neck.

Weird Crush of the Year

Quite what is it about this murderer with half a face that gives me the warm and fuzzies is still unclear, but Boardwalk Empire's Richard Harrow easily wins this category.

Best Use of Music

American Horror Story: Asylum nearly won this for the awful French nun song that was played constantly in the Common Room. In the end it was pipped to the post by itself, when the incomparable Jessica Lange (previously the vicious nun in charge of the place) suffers a break and hallucinates this brilliant musical number (with apologies for shoddy quality):

For iPhone/iPad click here.

Biggest Waste of Clancy Brown

Sleepy Hollow got me all excited when it started this year when Clancy Brown's name appeared in the credits. Sadly, my excitement was to be short-lived, as he lost his head before the first ad break.

Question I was asked most this year, to which the answer was always no

Are you watching Homeland?


Well, those were my screen highlights from 2013. What were yours?

Allegiant, by Veronica Roth

1.5 stars

A disappointing and messy ending to what had been, up until this point, a decent little sci-fi series, in this instalment we find out what's outside the gates of the city as well as finding out that it wasn't worth finding out, some peripheral characters meet their ends and I struggle to care, Tris is a hypocrite who's not only never, ever wrong but a bit of a dick about it too, and Tobias gets to narrate his own chapters while I wish he wouldn't, as he's quickly revealed to be squirmy with fear and self-doubt, and I soon learn to hate his parts.

Starting in the aftermath of the Prior video, Tris and co have been arrested by Evelyn and the Factionless who've not only taken over the city and abolished the faction system, but banned anyone else from leaving too. Tobias is working for his ma, while slinking not at all stealthily about behind her back to secure Tris's release. Which is achieved through Tris doing what she's best at, and lying her head off.

Quickly joining the Allegiant, a secret club who want to stick to the city's apparent founding purpose and send a Divergent army out into the world, Tris and her friends (plus a few others) are soon hurtling towards the gate and the outside world. Which is where we start to learn that the whole series up until this point has been bollocks, that everything we think we know about Tris's world is a lie and, unfortunately, that the truth is a little nonsensical and not very interesting. There's no need for a Divergent army outside after all, and we're certainly not going to be seeing any apocalyptic battles any time soon. Instead we'll be stuck in a compound not far into a society that's still divided (over genetic purity, this time) where we'll be learning some dodgy stuff about genetics, meeting lots of new characters that I don't care about, finding out that Tris's mum had a boring love triangle, discovering that there's a Bureau for Genetic Welfare and that they're idiots, and deciding that it's totally cool to do something you think is evil if you're the one doing it.

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

Turns out that the city is an experiment. The Government, having started screwing with people's genes in an effort to promote more desirable traits, screwed up and damaged them instead. This resulted in the Purity Wars, which in turn resulted in half the country dead. So the Bureau did a few 'corrections' and popped people into secure areas, cutting them off from the outside world in the hope that in several generations' time the bad genes wouldn't have just been passed down but would have healed themselves instead. They would know it was successful when a number of Divergent emerged, at which point they'd be scooped out to share their good genes with the outside world.

With Tris's city on the verge of blowing the experiment and Evelyn threatening to unleash a death serum on the population, the Bureau now want to re-set the city's memories and brainwash them back to square one. Angry that the Bureau would stoop so low as to steal people's memories, Tris proposes to stop them...by re-setting the Bureau's memories instead. Trouble is, the resetting serum is in a room where the air is full of death serum, and so whoever takes on the task will be undertaking a suicide mission...

Whilst I hadn't expected the series to be able to live up to my expectations after the opener, having suffered a bit of a lull in Insurgent, I still hadn't expected to see such a big drop in quality. Tobias's chapters didn't add anything for me other than irritation, and at times sounded virtually indistinguishable from Tris. After two books getting us here, Roth had awful lot of information to cram in about how the world actually did work and didn't handle it particularly well, having our new characters take giant information dumps all over the pages. With everything from entering the outside world on making me want to yell at the book, I found that while I liked that Roth went where she did with the ending, and while in keeping with Tris's character, it was robbed of any punch by my having long stopped caring what happened to these stupid people and their stupid societies.

Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

3 stars

Picking up exactly where we left off, Tris and Four have managed to stop the Erudite-controlled simulation that had turned the Dauntless into a mind-controlled army. Trouble is, quite a lot of the newly awakened Dauntless have decided to stick with Erudite anyway to continue their assault and so Tris, Four and their small band of survivors have nowhere left to turn but to the remaining factions, Amity and Candor. Asking a bunch of peace-loving stoners and people who can't lie to harbour fugitive goes about as well as you'd expect, however.

Also seeking shelter for a spell with the factionless, it's not surprising to find that the people most oppressed by the faction system have had it up to here with it, and would quite like to bring about a change in regime. Which they plan on doing by destroying the information that sparked Erudite's war against Abnegation - information that confirms there's a whole world outside their gates, one in which the Divergent will play a big role.

Suffering slightly from second album syndrome as it tries to tell us the middle of a story, I also found Tris a little more annoying this time around. A lying liar who wants to die, she's apparently no longer able to so much as touch a gun due to her guilt over events in the last book, but isn't about to let that stop her from trying to win the Martyr of the Year award by continually throwing herself into dangerous situations. She's just doing it without any weapons now.

Still, with the big 'reveal' (which wasn't much of a shocker, to be honest) I'm still into this enough to jump straight in to the next book.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth

4 stars

I've seen people on Goodreads squeeing over this series for a while now but, having been taught a harsh lesson by George RR Martin, I'm now refusing to read a word of a series until they're already published. Now that the last part of this series, Allegiant, has made its entry into the world (and with a movie adaptation about to be unleashed upon us) it's safe to start.

We find ourselves a world where all of the old identifiers - religion, race, culture, money, whether you're the type of person who ties your jumper around your waist or your shoulders - are no longer important and people's lives are determined by which of five 'factions' they belong to: Abnegation, Erudite, Candor, Amity, or Dauntless. Abnegation are selfless, the Erudite value intelligence over all else, Candor about all about honesty, Amity about peace and the Dauntless are brave...

...well, at least that's what they're supposed to be (although they're mostly just pointlessly reckless, but more on that later).

Reaching 16 means it's time to choose - right after a personality test (I love those! And I initially think this would rock and that I would totally be in Erudite, with a smidge of Abnegation as I have a habit of acting the martyr, although whenever I've had a drink I'd belong to Candor, before realising that I'm actually a bit of everything depending on what day it is, what the weather is like, whether I'm at work or not, etc, etc). Joining Beatrice Prior as she chooses which faction to belong to, we find out that (as noted above) there are many people who find it difficult to think within such narrow perimeters, and that there's a word for these people - Divergent. And that having aptitude for Dauntless, Erudite, and Abnegation, Beatrice is Divergent too, a secret she must keep at all costs for fear of becoming factionless, or even killed. 

Choosing to join Dauntless, we're then thrown into initiation alongside the newly renamed Tris and things get a bit Ender's Game. As Tris is in Dauntless, initiation means she has to do things like no longer enter buildings via doors but by jumping off their roofs instead, hurling herself on and off the moving trains that are her main means of transport, beating her fellow initiates unconscious, and getting tattoos, piercings and wearing black clothes (as that's what the truly dauntless do. Which must mean that the wispy teenagers draping themselves over the sundial and hanging around Blue Banana are all actually triple-hard bastards). Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering how they go about their lives, there aren't many adults within Dauntless and so we shouldn't be too shocked when it turns out that the kids in charge have somewhat twisted its original ideals in favour of being pointlessly vicious and quick to punch people instead. Being cold, occasionally cruel and nearly always surly, Tris fits right in.

The biggest part of Dauntless initiation involves facing your fears in simulations (it's via these simulations that Tris's instructor and love interest got his silly nickname, Four. He only has four fears, you see, something which is apparently awe-inspiring although I think it just means he's spectacularly unimaginative). Unfortunately for everyone, those simulations and their methods of transmission were all designed by the Erudite, and are about to come in very handy during their attempt to seize power.

With an interesting world set up and a great pace this was an excellent start to the series that kept me turning pages long into the night. I'm interested to see where the attack will lead us and how it will affect the factions, as well as seeing if we'll find how those fences the Dauntless are supposed to guard are important. However, I really couldn't give two hoots about Tris and Four's relationship (even though he's actually quite a refreshing love interest who doesn't stalk his intended, nor treat her like she's weak and stupid, or throw a strop if she has an independent thought, and doesn't get violently possessive around other men) and wish that just once we could have a YA heroine whose relationship status doesn't become a large part of the story.

Still, the niggles are all fairly small in the grand scheme of things, and they're certainly not enough to keep me from diving straight in to the next book.