Tag: Book Review

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Marilia, The Warlord by Morgan Cole

Firstly, huge thanks to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: BooksGoSocial
Publication Date: 28/02/2020
Length: 482 pages
Genre: Fantasy

CW: sexual assault

Blackwells.co.uk

Born the bastard daughter of a painted lady, Marilia was told she would live out her days within the walls of her mother’s brothel, a companion for the rich men of Tyrace. But after a terrible betrayal, Marilia’s world turns upside down. With the help of her twin brother, Annuweth, she flees the only home she’s ever known in search of the one man who can offer her a chance at a better life–the Emperor of Navessea’s greatest general, a friend of her deceased father.

What follows is a journey spanning years, from the streets of the desert city of Tyracium to the splendor of the emperor’s keep and the wind-swept, wild island of Svartennos. Along the way, Marilia discovers, for the first time, the gift she has for strategy and warfare—a world that is forbidden to girls like her.

When the empire is threatened by a foreign invasion, the defense of Navessea is left in the hands of a cruel and arrogant general no match for the empire’s enemy. With the fate of her new home and her family hanging in the balance, Marilia swears to use all her courage and cunning to do whatever she can to help repel the invasion—if she can convince anyone to follow her.

The struggle that follows will test her to her core and lead her back to the past she thought she had escaped. Facing treachery within her own ranks as well as a devious enemy commander, Marilia will need all the help she can get, even if it means doing something her brother may never forgive—making a deal with the man who murdered her father.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

The Hungry Ghost by H.S. Norup

Firstly, huge thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Pushkin Children’s
Publication Date: 24/09/2020
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Fantasy | Middle Grade

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Freja arrives in Singapore during the month of the hungry ghost, when old spirits are said to roam the streets and families must make offerings to appease their ancestors. She’s homesick for her Danish hometown and isn’t sure she fits in with the ‘happy family’ of her father, her step-mother and twin step-brothers.

As Freja tries to settle into her new life, a mysterious girl in a white dress starts to appear to her, seeming to beckon her on. Following this figure, Freja begins to unravel an old family mystery – one that must be solved before the month is over, to allow both girls to be freed from secrets long-buried.

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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?

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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.

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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…

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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

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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.

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