Empty Shelf/Mad Reviewer #33 Raging Star, Moira Young.

The epic conclusion to the Blood Red Road trilogy, and it was worth waiting the weeks I had to wait to read it. We left Saba and co fleeing from Ressurection, New Eden’s HQ-cum-prison. A lot of the gang are dead. They have no idea what to do now except resist in any way they can. The book opens with them daring to blow up a bridge, though it’s seriously bad timing and a lot of people die. Saba loses her nerve. The others begin to think they can’t trust her. Then, Saba has a revelation. They can’t fight DeMalo and his visions with violence. They have to use what he ignores as weakeness – love. In New Eden, families are torn apart. DeMalo is building his world on a weak foundation of broken bonds and fear. Saba decides to use this to bring him down.

Yet, she struggles. She struggles with her passion for DeMalo. She knows him to be evil but can’t resist his attraction and his grand vision for the world. It’s her love for Jack, her family, and the rest of the population – the population not lucky enough to be DeMalo’s ‘Chosen Ones’ – that keeps her in check. She’s determined to fight for freedom and a share of New Eden for everyone, whatever it takes.

I was worried that this book was going to suffer from end-of-trilogy syndrome, like Mockingjay and Allegiant. It’s not my favourite of the trilogy, but it doesn’t feel rushed and the conclusion is a satisfying one. As a YA series, it’s one of the best I’ve read. I highly recommend.

Empty Shelf/Mad Reviewer Challenge #32 The Fault In Our Stars, John Green.

I could talk for England about this book. I feel like I have done already. I’ve bought copies for people, lent my copy out to friends, and it is now currently working its way around some of the teenage girls at school. There is a bit in TFIOS about reading a book that fills you with evangelical zeal and you have to get everybody to read it before the world can be put right. That’s how I feel about it.

The basic plotline does not do justice to the epicness of the story. Girl meets boy. Girl has cancer. Boy in remission from cancer. They fall in love. Go. You know it’s going to end badly. You wonder what you’re doing to yourself. But it’s worth it.

Hazel and Augustus are my favourite ever literary characters. The first time I read this book I was in Pret A Manger in Canterbury, having just borrowed it from Canterbury city centre library, and I had to leave the café because I was laughing so much. Yes, the cancer hangs over Hazel and Augustus’ heads as an ever-present threat, but they really get how to be young and alive while still remaining genuine and real. Their courage lets up. They have bad days and they’re not afraid to show it. They are just ordinary kids living with a horrible disease. They don’t let it define them.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Oh, and with regards to the film? In my opinion it’s the best book-to-film adaptation I’ve ever seen. The bits they cut out don’t make the film lose out in quality or detract from the story. Read it, watch it. It probably will break your heart, but it’s worthy for that to be okay.

Empty Shelf/Mad Reviewer Challenge #31 Sabriel, Garth Nix

Yet another great find, lent to me by the friend who has really good taste in books. Sabriel is the daughter of a necromancer called the Abhorsen, but what is different about this necromancer is that he does not raise the dead. He keeps them beyond the gates of death and stops them from reappearing in the natural world.

Sabriel, whilst at boarding school in Ancelstierre, realises that her father is missing. She knows it can only be something particularly disastrous that has happened to him so she leaves school to cross into the Old Kingdom to try and find him. With the help of a strange, snarky cat called Mogget, and Touchstone, who was trapped as the figurehead of a ship for a few hundred years, they find out what happened to her father. 

This is a great, easy read. I must confess I was put off at first when I discovered that the context of this book was necromancy, having never gone in for anything that dark in terms of themes before, but my misgivings soon gave way to being swept up in the story. I really enjoy the characters, particularly Mogget – his sarcasm and condescension are very entertaining – and it’s a really good, well-paced plot. A really good tale for lovers of fantasy. 

About the Strike

It's 07:32 and I'm sitting in a classroom at my place of work. About ten minutes ago I approached the front gate, in front of which were standing a few teachers. Behind them were placards resting against the bars. I got handed a piece of paper which explained why they were striking.

Reading the piece of paper saddened me. As someone who is married to a teacher and, in my job, supports teachers in a variety of lessons, I can see the strain they are under, and even that word is an understatement.

I am getting really sick of people who say that teaching must be such an easy job - you only have to be in school between 9-3:30, and you have all the holidays on top of that. What right have teachers to complain?

They have a right because the average teacher is now working 60 hours per week, yet their paid hours are perhaps fewer than two thirds of that. As a teacher, you never switch off. There is always more lesson planning to be done, more books to mark, more emails to be answered, more data to track, more more more. And that's besides the teaching - getting a class of nearly thirty students to be engaged and quiet for nearly an hour? I'd like to see the critics try to do that, especially when a lot of students are switched off before they even enter the classroom because they don't like the subject. I'd like to see the critics experience the holidays of a teacher, because they're never just holidays. They are desperate respite times during which teachers try to catch up on every part of their job that is not the actual teaching. I spoke to a teacher who spent six hours of his bank holiday marking non-stop.

Good luck to all the teachers - and every other public sector worker - who are striking today. Let's hope Gove will finally listen, even if that hope is a small one.

RE: hitRECord

Today I received what is probably the most exciting post I've ever received in my life.

It was my contribution royalties from hitRECord's first ever TV show.

What is hitRECord, I hear you ask? And what's this about TV?

hitRECord is an amazing online community. It was founded by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and it is a place where artists from all over the world can come and make art together - writers, actors, animators, illustrators, etc etc.

Last year, a new American cable channel called PIVOT teamed up with hitRECord to make a season of eight television episodes, each regarding a theme. A lot of work went into it over the course of nearly a year, and it aired in the USA in January. The first episode is free on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl_wdODKGtM

I contributed ideas to each of the episodes, and I'm thrilled because two of my ideas ended up in two of the episodes, RE: Money and RE: Patterns. I'm including the link to the opening monologue for money - listen out for my name "bfinlayson" around the 1:08 mark :) :) :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuQtXplXDs

hitRECord is not about the money. It's about making art together. That said, hitRECord pays its contributing artists for their work, because that's just fair and right, isn't it? And let me tell you - there are some AMAZING artists on that site.

Go. Explore. Join. Help us make hitRECord on TV season 2 :)

Until next time!

Empty Shelf/Mad Reviewer Challenge #30 - The Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher

A few different people had recommended this book to me. Once I got hold of a copy from a friend, I could soon see why.

The population of Alera contains those with special abilities. They're called "crafters" and they can control elements - earth, air, fire, water, and metal, through a bond with an element's "fury". We meet Amara, a windcrafter, who is on a training exercise with her mentor, Fidelias. They are both Cursors, spies and messengers for the First Lord, Gaius. However, Amara soon finds herself tricked and betrayed by Odiana, a water witch, and Fidelias himself. She manages to escape and tell Gaius, who then sends her to the city of Garrison to spy out the land.

The story then switches to a certain steadholt in the Calderon Valley, owned by Bernard, who lives with his sister and their nephew, Tavi. Tavi is fifteen and furyless, which is pretty significant. When Tavi and Bernard set out to find a lost sheep, they come upon a Marat warrior. The Marat are a race who have fought with Alerans in the past, and the fact that they are in Alera is pretty alarming.

Fast forward and we find that Aquataine, one of the Lords, is the one organising the rebellion against Gaius. Epic battles ensue, and Gaius' side wins, though very narrowly.


The world building and history making in this novel is fantastic. Butcher sequences together complex politics and intertwining storylines brilliantly, so much so that it feels like you're reading something straight out of the Ancient Roman Empire - furies aside. The characters are diverse, genuine, and real, in that some are bent towards goodness and some towards evil, but are completely human in their actions and motivations. By that, I mean there aren't the typical all-good and all-evil - each of the characters has light and dark within them, and they choose their courses of actions - particularly Fidelias - for specific reasons.

This is the start of what is sure to be a brilliant series, and I'm very excited to see how the characters and politics - particularly the furyless Tavi -play out.

Empty Shelf/Mad Reviewer Challenge #29 - The White Princess, Philippa Gregory

Last in the series of the "Cousins' War", 'The White Princess' brings together the fascinating conclusion of the series detailing the Wars of the Roses and the reign of the Plantagenets, with the victory of Henry VII over Richard III at Bosworth.

The story begins with Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, lamenting the loss of her lover, Richard III. She knows that she has to marry Henry, as part of a deal struck between her mother and Henry's mother, though the task is abhorrent to her. It seems equally so to Henry, who rapes her before they get married in order to see whether she is fertile or not. He would not waste his hard-fought victory, after being in exile for most of his life, on a barren wife. To the great relief of everyone involved, Elizabeth gets pregnant and gives birth to Arthur, who would later become betrothed to Catherine of Aragon. More babies follow, and the gentle softening of Henry and Elizabeth to each other, until they reach the point where they feel at peace and content with one another, and there is even love on Elizabeth's side, which she would have sworn at the beginning of their marriage would never be so.

Though Gregory uses many sources for her writing, she notes that still much of it is speculation, simply because there are certain things we can never know the truth about. She takes one plausible view and builds on that, and the story is no less intriguing or fascinating for it. And though it's fiction, the knowledge of history imparted is really interesting. For example, I had never known that Henry VII's reign was so fraught with paranoia, that plots seem to abound in every corner to put the Plantagenets back on the throne, including rebels presenting boys who claimed to be Richard, the younger of the Princes in the Tower who went missing. To this day no one knows for sure what happened to them.

Romance, political intrigue, interesting characters, and an easy flow - this novel has them all. A brilliant read, and a fantastic end to a brilliant series.

Until next time!