A rather mediocre set of books:
Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O’Brian
A fitting conclusion to the series, though it did feel somewhat subdued as both Maturin and Aubrey are feeling their age and Aubrey is moping about convinced he’s never going to get his flag. Maybe O’Brian was getting a little tired by now as well, it is, after all, the 20th book. I‘ve loved the journey, it’s had its ups and downs but overall a great series of age-of-sail adventures. I think it unlikely that I will read the ‘final’ unfinished book. The final chapters in this one provide a perfect ending to the series. 4/5 stars
The Hidden Base by AE Warren
A difficult one this; the first book intrigued me and I thoroughly enjoyed it and, though I felt it had some weaknesses in the set up, I was largely able to pass over them. This second book, though stronger in some respects, seemed to take those weaknesses a little further, leaving me a little ambivalent. Things just all became rather messy which is, one might argue, how real life is but it still felt unsatisfying. It seems this will be a series of four books which I think is probably one too many and some comments I have seen suggest the third is marking time somewhat, which may prove a little frustrating. However having read two books I feel I am invested in reading the second two. 3/5 stars
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
I have read many comments about this book describing it as being an ambitious debut. It is certainly that. Successful though? I’m not so sure; in parts maybe. This is a series of short stories/novellas with multiple loose links between them. I say loose but typically the links will be pivotal in one story but peripheral in the other. A slightly strange set up and I struggled to find any overarching theme running through them all. If it sounds similar to Cloud Atlas structurally, then yes, it is, though far from being the same. There is no splitting of the stories, and they all span more or less the same period of time. But they are also written in multiple different styles. For example the first two feel heavily influenced by Murakami who I know he respects and later openly wrote a tribute to with Number9Dream, some have marked magical realism others less and yet others none. I mostly enjoyed the stories but one, the Russian one, I actively disliked, finding all the characters unpleasant. Overall, a good book but I felt it fell rather short of Mitchell’s ambition. 3/5 stars (probably 3.5 to be fair)
The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer
This was disappointing. The first book in the series was marred by too much navel gazing and angst from the main protagonist. The second book toned these aspects down and was very much better for it but, had I not bought the first three together on a deal, I probably wouldn’t have continued past the first. This book seemed to ramp the navel gazing and angst back up again which was annoying but, far worse than that, it desperately need not better but just some editing. Considering this is a traditionally published book (Daw) it was dreadful; filled (and that is no exaggeration) with incorrect, missing or duplicated words, but, of course, the incorrect words were all correctly spelt incorrect words! So at least they ran it through a spell checker! If they actually had a proof reader go through it then they should be sacked! And this was topped by science that was filled with errors. The previous books mostly dodged this with lots of hand-wavium science, which is fine; not all SF has to be hard SF. But this time Palmer seemed to feel the need to explain much of her science and it was often incorrect. The sad thing is that underneath all those criticisms lies quiet a good story, in fact all three so far have had good stories; it’s just the implementation that is lacking. A poor book and with there being a fourth, and final, book in the series, I’m left wondering whether it’s worth buying and at over £11 for the ebook that is feeling unlikely. 3/5 stars
