Category: Book Review

Rosie | Little Bird Book BlogLeave a comment

The Last Qumranian by Joe Basile

Firstly, huge thank you to Odyssey Books for getting in touch and sending me a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Odyssey Books
Publication Date: 01/10/2019
Length: 300 pages
Genre: Sci-Fi

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Time travel has been used to stop the birth of Christ, altering the timeline of human history.

Lukas is the last Qumranian, an ancient sect sworn to secrecy and to protect the prophecies that bind the worlds together. When they develop a powerful technology that can control time, their discovery attracts unwanted attention.

When the Unclean — a militant force powered by dark magic — attack the hidden Qumranian compound under what once was the Dead Sea, Lukas barely escapes. But at what cost? With his life intact, he finds himself a prisoner in an alternate timeline not his own.

Alone in a foreign landscape ravaged by wars, advanced by technology, oppressed by a corporation partnered with a ruthless religious group slaughtering any who oppose them in the streets, sinister supernatural forces, and an artifact that literally can — and has — changed human history, Lukas must not only struggle to stay alive, but locate the only thing that can prevent the Unclean and the powers that control them from destroying the world.

Will Lukas manage to retrieve the artifact before more damage is done to the timeline of history, or will he be too late, forever lost in a nightmarish alternate reality?

GoodReads
Continue reading “The Last Qumranian by Joe Basile” →

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Publisher: Scribner UK
Publication Date: 20/02/2020
Length: 163 pages
Genre: Translated Fiction | Korean Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: sexual assault

Blackwells.co.uk

Kim Ji-young is the most common name for Korean women born in the 1980s.
Kim Ji-young is representative of her generation:

At home, she is an unfavoured sister to her princeling little brother.
In primary school, she is a girl who has to line up behind the boys at lunchtime.
In high school, she is a daughter whose father blames her for being harassed late at night.
In university, she is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships by her professor.
In the office, she is an exemplary employee who is overlooked for promotion by her manager.
At home, she is a wife who has given up her career to take care of her husband and her baby.

Kim Ji-young is depressed.
Kim Ji-young has started acting out.
Kim Ji-young is her own woman.
Kim Ji-young is insane.

Kim Ji-young is sent by her husband to a psychiatrist.This is his clinical assessment of the everywoman in contemporary Korea.

GoodReads
Continue reading “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo” →

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

The Bridge of Little Jeremy by Indrajit Garai

Firstly, huge thank you to Estelle for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: 17/03/2019
Length: 278 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Jeremy’s mother is about to go to prison for their debt to the State. He is trying everything within his means to save her, but his options are running out fast.

Then Jeremy discovers a treasure under Paris.

This discovery may save his mother, but it doesn’t come for free. And he has to ride over several obstacles for his plan to work.

Meanwhile, something else is limiting his time…

GoodReads
Continue reading “The Bridge of Little Jeremy by Indrajit Garai” →

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 02/05/2019
Length: 325 pages
Genre: Greek Mythology | Fantasy | Historical Fiction

CW: slavery

Blackwells.co.uk

Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles: famed hero, loathed enemy, ruthless butcher, darkly troubled spirit. Briseis’s fate is now indivisibly entwined with his.

No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad: the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers’ camp – in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number – and she will be our witness to history.

GoodReads
Continue reading “The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker” →

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog7 Comments

Circe by Madeline Miller

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: 01/04/2019
Length: 333 pages
Genre: Greek Mythology | Fantasy | Historical Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe has neither the look nor the voice of divinity, and is scorned and rejected by her kin. Increasingly isolated, she turns to mortals for companionship, leading her to discover a power forbidden to the gods: witchcraft.

When love drives Circe to cast a dark spell, wrathful Zeus banishes her to the remote island of Aiaia. There she learns to harness her occult craft, drawing strength from nature. But she will not always be alone; many are destined to pass through Circe’s place of exile, entwining their fates with hers. The messenger god, Hermes. The craftsman, Daedalus. A ship bearing a golden fleece. And wily Odysseus, on his epic voyage home.

There is danger for a solitary woman in this world, and Circe’s independence draws the wrath of men and gods alike. To protect what she holds dear, Circe must decide whether she belongs with the deities she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. 

GoodReads
Continue reading “Circe by Madeline Miller” →

Rosie | Little Bird Book BlogLeave a comment

The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Publication Date: 02/04/2020
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction | Gothic

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

The year is 1793 and Herbert Powyss is set on making his name as a scientist. Determined to study the effects of prolonged solitude on another human being, he advertises for someone willing to live in his cellar for seven years in return for a generous financial reward. The only man to apply is John Warlow, a semi-literate farm labourer with a wife and six children to support. Cut off from nature, Warlow soon begins losing his grip on sanity while, above ground, Powyss rapidly becomes obsessed with Warlow’s wife, Hannah.

The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included. In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister.

GoodReads
Continue reading “The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan” →