Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Format: Paperback
Rating:  5 Stars
Reviewer: Laurel

This book was on my radar for a while before I bit the bullet and purchased it. Then it lay around for a while on my bookshelves before I picked it up. What was that they said about Willy Wonka?

I’d pick this up evenings mostly, just before bedtime, and cram in a few pages. Early on I was calling this book “my candy”. Just one amazing, awesome, rollicking adventure in cyberspace – and a trip down memory lane to boot. Now, I’ll freely admit, there are many many games, movies and books mentioned in this book that I haven’t played… but there were also quite a few I was aware of and even some I’ve played, watched and read. Regardless, I was taken back to my childhood and my teen years and those early days of computer games.

But it wasn’t really until the last part of the book that it really smacked me upside the head just what a great story is. Wade, Wade. What DID YOU DO!?!!? Talk about giving someone a heart-attack! Yep. Wade totally crept under my skin and before I realised it, I was heavily invested in his success. And though one knows the outcome from the start, that really didn’t help much!

Fabulous stuff. Excellent if one likes books about gaming.

 

Zululand Snow by Ian Tennent

Source: Mischief Managed
Format: Kindle ebook
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewer: Laurel

While Zululand reels under the blows of a lunatic’s hammer, half-hearted schoolboy Craig’s imagination ignites when he links an Anglo-Zulu War letter his grandfather bequeathed him, to his History teacher’s mesmerising tale of the lost inKatha, ‘The Soul of the Zulu Nation’.
However, in his feverish quest to find the relic he unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events which disturbs the dark equilibrium of forces in his hometown; forces both past and present, and steeped in malice.
As chance encounters with his History teacher become alarmingly more frequent, events explode when the boys clash with caddies from the local golf-course, the malevolent greenkeeper makes a sinister threat and the finger of suspicion drifts towards a friend’s father when the lunatic’s hammer falls once again.

Set in a small town in Zululand during the turbulent summer of 1983, Zululand Snow is the tale of a boy searching for a way to bring a glorious past back to life. It’s a tale of history and imagination, of folklore and legend, and the gravitational pull they exert on the marrow in a boy’s bones.

What a great book! I’ve just closed it a few minutes ago, so the closing passages are still running around in my head.

The experience begins right from the first sentence, which I give you here:

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Up ahead, bullet-grey clouds muscled in from the east, flexing their knuckles like giant fists spoiling for a fight.

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Just that there is one of the many gems sprinkled through this book that give one pause for thought. I loved some of Tennent’s similes and metaphors.

Boyhood adventure gets mixed with Zulu superstition and beliefs in this fantastic tale of the search for the Inkatha Yesizwe, “The Soul of the Zulu Nation”. I loved the way that half way through the book one’s scratching one’s head as to how various elements could possibly add up, and at the end of the story it’s all neatly tied up with bows on top and one can rest easy. But oh, the shenanigans those boys got up to! Makes me remember life as a child in the Eastern Cape, which at times could be very similar – heading off into the veld without a care in the world. Just as a child’s life should be!

Very well written, and vivid, Tennent doesn’t spare one the harshness of circumstances back in the time when this was set (I’m aiming for 1980s/90s, I imagine), but nevertheless he imbues the story with adventure, danger, excitement and the thrill of the chase. A fabulous read that I’ll be recommending around, for sure!

Sovran’s Pawn by JC Cassels

Format: Kindle ebook
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewer: Elizabeth

Convicted of treason and sentenced to be executed, Bo Barron is the last person who should be infiltrating a Sub-socia weapons auction. But when her father is kidnapped and the ransom demand is the schematics to an experimental weapon, she has no choice but to go under cover with her uncle to get it. 

Nobody counted on former-government-agent-turned-holofeature-hero Blade Devon’s infatuation with her. A botched assassination under the guise of a bar brawl leaves Bo blind and Blade wondering if there isn’t more to this job than he was led to believe. 

Never able to resist playing the hero, Blade tends her injuries and delves deeper into the intrigue only to find this mission isn’t about a weapon at all. It’s about two Sovrans’ maneuvering for control, with Bo and Blade as their pawns. 

All Bo and Blade have to do is figure out how to survive the game they didn’t know they were playing. 

The catch is, no one and nothing are what they seem…

First of all, I never write reviews. I am one of those people that is way over-extended in life with really too much on their plate. In fact, this is the first review I have ever written on an Amazon purchase and I am probably one of their best customers. So in general when I take the time to sit down to actually write a review it is either because I thought the item was absolutely horrific or incredibly earth-shattering fantastic. This book is the later of the two.

If you are looking for a book that is going to help you get away from reality and immerse you into a new world of adventure and romance…this is the book for you. From the first chapter, the reader is involved in the prison escape of Bo Barron who has been wrongly convicted of treason and at the time is sitting in her cell awaiting execution. As the plot moves along in this book- Bo becomes an unwilling participant in one political intrigue after another all with unexpected and unpredictable twists and turns. Along the journey she also unexpectedly meets a mysterious man who is her match in both wits and character. Somehow this overly head-strong and independent heroine manages to meet her hero or is this mysterious man really her nemeses and the tool of her eventual downfall? On the surface this budding romance may appear sappy but rather I found the whole book entertaining and way too short. In reality this book possesses a lot of depth with layer upon layer of intrigue and suspense which on another level makes the reader reflect and analysis the characters and events.

Overall, this book is well written. It is full of non-stop action that actually does have a well-developed and for the most part a very unpredictable plot. As the book progresses the reader is introduced to characters that are real with just enough information that makes the reader want to come back for more which surprisingly only adds to the suspense of the plot. This book is a fast read and probably one of the most enjoyable books that I have read in a while. I am totally looking forward to the second book in this series.