What I have been reading
Oct. 6th, 2015 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scripsiI’ve read the first two books about Chief Inspector Gamache by Louise Penny; Still Life and A Fatal Grace. I must say I’m quite charmed. They are cosy whodunnit’s and the settings in the first two books (at least) is the fictive village Tree Pines in Canada. The actual murder plot isn’t too complicated; I guessed the murderer in both books before I’ve read a third. Three Pines is very much an ideal community, one I doubt exist in reality. It’s the cosy and welcoming village that you can’t find on a map, but who welcome strangers. It’s a place where people care about each other and the food at the B&B are always perfect. It’s an unashamedly idealized place, but somehow the author manages to give the murders plausibility. Much, I think, because the character’s are so compelling. They feel real and you very quickly get a vested interest in their well-being. Also, instead of just following the main character, Gamache and his team, we also get to know some of the villagers from book to book, giving a welcome counterpoint to the police work.Perfect reading under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and a snack, because you will get peckish, food is constantly and lovingly described.
The plot in Still Life is the shooting of the well-loved former school teacher, a nice old woman no one can imagine would be a candidate for murder. In A Fatal Grace the murdered in universally hated, a woman who goes through life alienating and belittling everyone she meets, including her husband and child. The book can probably be read out of order, but they are a series and I think it enhances the experience to read them in the right sequence as the character’s life isn’t set, but changes over time. I will definitely read more by this author.
Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge, a YA fantasy novel. I’m growing to like this author more and more.She Has a knack for writing realms that feels both familiar and strange. Gullstruck Island is a large, but isolated island, originally inhabited by a number of native tribes. A couple of centuries before the books start a more advanced culture has conquered the island, living quite peacefully with all the tribes except the Lace. Lace are seen as untrustworthy and shift and they are more or less treated as outcast. Regardless of origin, some people on the island are born with the ability to let their senses leave the body and go all over the island.
The heroine of the books i the Lace girl Hathin, the younger sister of a Lost. At least that is what the tribe fervently wants to believe because Arilou isn’t quite like other Lost. And after a number of horrible events, Arilou is suddenly the only living Lost on the island and she and Hathin are on the run from a faceless and seemingly all-seeing enemy.
I really loved how Hardinge used folklore into the narrative. The Lost treats the number of volcanoes on the island as gods, giving them all different personalities. When Hathin travels over them she interact with them, but it’s never clear if the volcanoes actually are sentient or if it's all in her mind. It’s not important what the truth is, it’s important that Hathin believes. Belief and revenge and what that do to people are the strongest themes in this book and very well depicted. This is the third Hardinge novel I have read and in my IMO the best.
The plot in Still Life is the shooting of the well-loved former school teacher, a nice old woman no one can imagine would be a candidate for murder. In A Fatal Grace the murdered in universally hated, a woman who goes through life alienating and belittling everyone she meets, including her husband and child. The book can probably be read out of order, but they are a series and I think it enhances the experience to read them in the right sequence as the character’s life isn’t set, but changes over time. I will definitely read more by this author.
Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge, a YA fantasy novel. I’m growing to like this author more and more.She Has a knack for writing realms that feels both familiar and strange. Gullstruck Island is a large, but isolated island, originally inhabited by a number of native tribes. A couple of centuries before the books start a more advanced culture has conquered the island, living quite peacefully with all the tribes except the Lace. Lace are seen as untrustworthy and shift and they are more or less treated as outcast. Regardless of origin, some people on the island are born with the ability to let their senses leave the body and go all over the island.
The heroine of the books i the Lace girl Hathin, the younger sister of a Lost. At least that is what the tribe fervently wants to believe because Arilou isn’t quite like other Lost. And after a number of horrible events, Arilou is suddenly the only living Lost on the island and she and Hathin are on the run from a faceless and seemingly all-seeing enemy.
I really loved how Hardinge used folklore into the narrative. The Lost treats the number of volcanoes on the island as gods, giving them all different personalities. When Hathin travels over them she interact with them, but it’s never clear if the volcanoes actually are sentient or if it's all in her mind. It’s not important what the truth is, it’s important that Hathin believes. Belief and revenge and what that do to people are the strongest themes in this book and very well depicted. This is the third Hardinge novel I have read and in my IMO the best.
