BOOK: A Clash of Kings, George. R. R. Martin (7/10)

Why did I read it?
I own the A Song of Ice and Fire book boxset but rightly or wrongly my policy is to only read the book having watched the associated HBO Game of Thrones series. I had heard that elements of the second book A Clash of Kings were being split between the second and third season so having recently finished the third season it was time to return to George Martin's epics.   

What's it all about?

Civil war begins in Westeros as Renly Baratheon and his brother Stannis both refuse to recognise their nephew Joffrey as King of the Seven Kingdoms. Meanwhile Robb Stark is crowned King of the North and Baron Greyjoy declares himself King of the Iron Islands. Split between Winterfell, King's Landing and everywhere between, the Stark family is caught between the warring factions. Elsewhere, Jon Snow ventures North of the Wall to hunt wildlings and Daenerys tries to recruit support for her cause in Qarth.

  

The Good:

• The depth of Martin's universe is staggering
• Chapters told from the point of view of nine characters breaks the story down and keeps the plot compartmentalised
• Theon's humbling return to the Iron Islands and foolish return to Winterfell
• Tyrion's appointment as the Hand of the King 

The Bad:

• Picky, but the sheer length of the book. 915 pages is a very long read to commit to and the level of detail can be confusing if not read regularly.
• Daenerys' story often seems too detached from the majority of the book's events occurring simulatensously in Westeros

Favourite line:

'Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him' - Theon

BOOK: Without Remorse, Tom Clancy (8/10)

Why did I read it?
Time to continue Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. Without Remorse is the sixth book in the Ryan universe but chronologically it leads the series.

What's it all about?
Tom Clancy rewinds the clock to 1969 and tells the origin story of Ryan series character John Clark. Recently returned from Vietnam, Navy SEAL John Kelly loses his wife and finds love briefly in the arms of a another woman, Pam Madden, a tortured, drug-addicted prostitute on the run from her violent drug dealing pimp. Meanwhile the CIA hire Kelly to return to Vietnam and lead a clandestine operation to rescue a group of US POWs. After Pam is taken away from him, Kelly combines the demands of his country with his own mission for violent retribution.

Should you read it?

Without Remorse is probably the most atypical of the Clancy books I have read so far. Even with the Vietnam storyline it's the most domestic, the most personal and the least military based. It's an engaging, very personal tale of one man's retribution against those who wronged him and its interesting and refreshing to have a break from Jack Ryan's learned approach to uncover the back story of the more mysterious Mr. Clark.

The Vietnam side story taking place in parallel to Kelly's Baltimore killing spree is necessary for the sake of Kelly's back story but it is the deliberate planning of his revenge in a manner to a covert operation and Detective Ryan's pursuit of the unknown serial killer that makes Without Remorse a page-turner.

BOOK: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (9/10)

Why did I read it?
Cloud Atlas came to my attention on a list I saw (I would like to give credit but it was so long ago I've no hope of remembering it) that recommended books to read before their film adaptation was released in 2012. I didn't catch the film while it was out so the book will have to do until I do.

What's it all about?
Beginning in the Pacific in 1850 and ending in post-apocalyptic Hawaii in the far future, Cloud Atlas narrates the stories of six individuals linked together across centuries of time. Half of each story is told, in chronological order, until each is interrupted seemingly incomplete. This continues to the sixth story which is told in it's entirety before each of the stories are then concluded in reverse order.

Should you read it?
Cloud Atlas is certainly one of the most ambitious books I have ever read. Covering such a variety of settings, dialogues, plots and means of narration is a challenging read but the read always stays fresh and the reader is always aware that the story will be changing just around the corner. 

I'll admit that I did not enjoy the first half of the first story, 'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing', and it took me until the second story, set in inter-war Belgium, and the appreciation of this story's antagonist of the first story and the connection between the two to really pique my interest. From this point on though I was hooked. The concept of leaving each story incomplete, using the following story to fill in some blanks, before closing the stories in reverse order had me reading at record speed to return to the incomplete stories.   

Capable of some wry humour, grand themes and a rather bleak outlook on the future of human civilisation, Mitchell provides the reader with a fascinating journey from past to present to future. However, on the subject of grand themes, I can't help feeling that I didn't quite fully appreciate the notion of the characters being reincarnations of themselves. Mitchell details the identical birthmark that several characters share (or mention anyway) and Luisa Rey knows deep down that she has heard Frobisher's composition before but without having read the ideas of reincarnation in connection with the film I would have been in doubt (and I still am!) as to Mitchell's grand meaning.  

BOOK: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson (9/10)

Why did I read it?
The wife picked this one up in the bookshop and I read it after her after reading good things about it on-line at the 50BookPledge.

What's it all about?
The book's title is fairly self-explanatory but doesn't give away the full picture. The hundred year old man in question is Allan Karlsson, who escapes from his nursing home on his one-hundredth birthday.    What the title does not allude to is that during his hundred years, Allan, by chance and due to his non-prescriptive political and religious views, subtly influenced some of the major events of the twentieth century. The story of his past combines with his latest adventure on the run from the nursing home. 

Should you read it?
The Hundred-Year-Old Man is probably the craziest story you will read all year. Both stories told; Allan's present day escape from the nursing home (the man is a hundred years old!) and the story of his life, are fascinating tales, full of unexpected twists and turns. The circumstances in which Allan travelled across the world taking part in wars, coups and revolutions reminded me hugely of the film Forrest Gump, which is by no means a criticism.

Owing to the dry sense of humour of the book's protagonist and the ineptitude of the local police force, both stories become almost black comedies. Flitting back and forward between  Communist Russia, the Korean War or pre-revolution Tehran and present day Sweden, the story never slows down in the slightest and I found it a joy to read owing to the combination of history, humour and outright fun. Another must read from Sweden.

BOOK: The Sum of All Fears, Tom Clancy (6/10)

Why did I read it?
Another book, another Tom Clancy Jack Ryan story. Book number five of my odyssey through Clancy's Ryan series.

What's it all about?

A nuclear missile lies missing in the Syrian desert for decades until it is discovered by a farmer before ending up in the hands of Arab terrorists, angry that a landmark Holy Land peace deal between Jews, Muslims and Christians and brokered by the US is proving successful. The terrorists recruit East German nuclear experts, themselves angry that world socialism has collapsed, to help customise the warhead for use on American soil. With that emergency approaching, Jack Ryan, now CIA Deputy Director, has to deal with problems at home and a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the current US president and his advisers.

Should you read it?
TSOAF is the longest of Clancy's Jack Ryan books so far, and at over 1000 pages (paperback version) it was a chore to read in parts, and need not have been so. The main event of the book takes place about 600-700 pages in, and the story has been well and truly set by this point. From this point on the book became a real page-turner, as the tension between East and West increased alongside increasing DEFCON levels and Ryan tries to avert the global nuclear war his shellshocked president is leading the US towards.

Clancy being Clancy, couldn't not dedicate a vast number of pages to the details of the nuclear warhead's assembly and the side side story of the submarine USS Maine seemed totally superfluous. All in all it was no wonder the film adaptation was massively streamlined.

TSOAF is probably the most personal Jack Ryan story yet, even more so than Patriot Games, as National Security Advisor Elizabeth Elliott temporarily succeeds in undermining his marriage as well as his position. This storyline is ultimately easily solved but Clancy uses it to highlight the contempt Elliott has for Ryan, which has huge dangerous consequences at the vital moment. The trouble between Ryan and his wife also parallels the escalating strife between East and West, worsening through rash assumptions and easily solved through simple communication.

BOOK: Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy (9/10)

Why did I read it?
Following on from The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger is next up in my odyssey through Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. This story is new to me as I have never seen Phillip Noyce's 1994 film adaptation.

What's it all about?
In an election year, the US administration authorises the CIA to begin legally ambiguous covert operations against the Medellin Cartel deep inside Columbia, with intentions of impacting the import of drugs to the US. In parallel, the FBI uncovers and shuts down the Cartel's global money laundering scheme at a cost of millions of dollars to the drug kingpins. This provokes an angry response from the Cartel and endangers the lives of the men on the ground in Columbia. Previously kept out of the loop, newly appointed Deputy Director (Intelligence) Jack Ryan discovers the clandestine operation has been blown and works to get the teams out before it's too late.

Should you read it?

Clear and Present Danger is one of Tom Clancy's strongest works. All but one of the previous Jack Ryan stories were inspired by Soviet-American tensions but with the Cold War thawing out, Clancy turns his attention to the drug epidemic in the US in the eighties to good effect.

Covert operations in the jungle, assassinations, shady Presidential orders, drug kingpins, Clear and Present Danger is exciting from start to finish. Clancy's high level of technical detail is not as evident here, allowing the story to flow back and forwards from Washington to the jungles of Columbia.

Clancy introduces a wealth of characters throughout the book resulting in Jack Ryan's role being the most limited of all his books so far. The CIA operations ghost John Clark (played by Willem Defoe in the film adaptation) plays a far more prominent role this time around.

BOOK: The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Tom Clancy (6/10)

Why did I read it?
Book number four of my Tom Clancy odyssey.

What's it all about?
Cardinal of the Kremlin combines a cold war race to develop Strategic Defence Initiatives (so called 'Star Wars' by the media) with arms reduction initiatives, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and most prominently, the exposure of the highly placed US intelligence source in Moscow, Cardinal. Once exposed, Jack Ryan develops a plan to rescue the source without interfering in the political battle taking place at the very top of the Soviet Politburo.

Should you read it?
An expert at what he does, Clancy manages to weave the various plot elements into a reasonably taught thriller. Although the book takes it's place in the Jack Ryan chronology, Cardinal acts as a direct sequel to Clancy's first book The Hunt For Red October, with Captain Marko Ramius making a reappearance. Jack Ryan actually only plays a small role for the majority of the story, only coming to the forefront for the final act.

The story is definitely most absorbing when in the USSR, either following the Cardinal, his US contacts or the KGB's counter-intelligence officers, especially once the Cardinal becomes compromised or when concerned with the political scheming of the Politburo's top officials, including the KGB chief, for whom the discovery of an American source is political gold-dust. I found the 'Star Wars' laser weaponry side of the story and the detail in which Clancy describes it considerably less interesting and nothing more than a distraction from the cut and thrust of the espionage action. 

BOOK: Life of Pi, Yann Martel (9/10)

Life of Pi - despite appearances not a children's book!

Why did I read it?
I was really impressed by the trailer for the upcoming Ang Lee film adaptation and realising it was based on a best-selling novel decided to borrow the book from a friend. I'm never sure which is the best way round to read book or watch adaptations but there is no going back now.

What's it all about?
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure about an Indian teenager named Pi, who finds himself the sole survivor of a shipwreck on-board a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a chimpanzee, a zebra and a hyena for company. It sounds surreal but the first half of the book describes a credible back story. Pi's father is a zoo-keeper and the family decide to sell the zoo and relocate to Canada, hence the voyage across the Pacific with a ship full of dangerous animals. 

Should you read it?

The upcoming film poster

The book takes its time during the first half to set the scene with the tale of Pi's upbringing at an Indian zoo, his experiences with animals and also his take on spirituality but once his ordeal starts its clear why Martel dedicates so much print to the back story.

In terms of Pi's detailed account of his practical approach to survival the story is similar to the real life survival of Aaron Ralston in 127 Hours (minus the tiger).

A word of warning, Martel doesn't hold back in graphically depicting the demise of the boat's occupants and I'm not normally affected by violence in films but when related to animals, in particular during a week when my cat was badly hurt, it was almost too much to take.

The book is a fascinating combination of religion and animal psychology and a harrowing tale of survival at all costs that I couldn't put down. I have very high hopes for the film.

BOOK: Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (9/10)

After enjoying the adaptations of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road I decided I would give some of the source material a try. Blood Meridian is considered one of the Great American contemporary novels and tells the story of an anonymous teenager referred to only as 'the kid'.

Set in the mid 19th century on the US-Mexican border, the story really begins after the kid joins a gang of undesirable bounty hunters as they sweep through Mexico hunting Native American Indians, paid by Mexican officials per scalp they take. The story is unflinchingly violent throughout as the gang of scalp hunters begin to stray from their objective and commit terrible atrocities in the pursuit of money or pleasure. This includes killing peaceful Indians and Mexicans alike, scalping children, drowning dogs, running a cattle train off a cliff and culminating in the violent commandeering of a ferry crossing at Yuma for financial gain. Wanted by officials on both side of the border, their behaviour eventually catches up with them.

Although part of the gang, the kid is one of the more likeable members, he never appears to scalp anyone and seems to be part of the gang not through choice but simply because that's where he ended up. This is more obvious when you consider the motivations of the gangs leaders, Glanton and Judge Holden. Out for profit or the lust of war, these two are responsible for the gangs moral compass completely falling apart.

Judge Holden is one of the most fascinating characters I have come across in literature. He is described as a giant, almost seven feet tall, with not a hair on his body. He is clearly the most intelligent character in the story and carries around a book in which he documents all manner of wildlife and nature encountered on travels stating to one man that 'that which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent'. Despite being an educated man, the judge has extremely violent beliefs, something he tries to explain to his lesser gang members on several occasions. This confliction of size, science and violence captured my intrigue from the offset. The judge's relationship with the kid is a key theme of the story. The judge appears to almost want to make the kid a protege, however late on realises that the kid is not of the same mindset as him, stating that 'some bears dance and some bears don't'. The book's ending is ambiguous and allows the reader some imagination in considering the judges actions in the final act.

McCarthy's illustration of the great lawless American west is fantastic. He provides vivid depictions of the barren landscape, types of vegetation and ghost towns. Overall I think I enjoyed the story and characters more than the actual reading of the book, if that makes sense, largely due to McCarthy's writing style.

BOOK: Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur, Bernard Cornwell (6/10)

The final book of Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian trilogy finds Arthur still battling the invading Saxon armies, while struggling to keep the peace within the kingdoms of Wales and the South West of Britain.


As with each of the previous books, the story is a combination of epic battles and shield walls, mixed with the magic of Merlin and the contrasting religions of Paganism and Christianity. However, the description of the epic siege at Mynydd Baddon does feel repetitive coming off the back of the similarly epic battles at Lugg Vale in The Winter King and Thames Valley in The Enemy of God. That said, Cornwell manages keep to the rest of the story interesting enough until it's end when the reader is at last rewarded with discovering how the main protagonist and storyteller Derfel ends up a Christian monk. Across all three books I enjoyed the story in between the battles more when Cornwell's portrayal of the familiar historical characters was given chance to come across.


Looking back, the trilogy is an interesting and more realistic take on the often romanticised Arthurian legends, with a grand scope that Cornwell manages to do justice to.

BOOK: Enemy of God, Bernard Cornwell (7/10)

Enemy of God is the second book in Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles trilogy chronicling the story of Arthur and his battle against the Saxons.


Following on from the first book, The Winter King, Arthur has achieved temporary peace across the south of England via shrewd diplomacy and on occasions, war. Cornwell's trilogy portrays Arthur as an oath-bound Lord sworn to protect the kingdom of the infant King Mordred against the Saxons as the country itself is torn apart by warring Christians and pagans. Arthur is a principled leader who remains true to his oaths even as they overpower him and conflict with each other.


As with the first novel, the story is told retrospectively by the main protagonist Derfel, a former warrior and now monk loyal to Arthur. By telling the story in such a way, Cornwell maintains the suspense as the reader is aware of Derfel's present situation (writing the story in a monastery) but unclear how he ends up there from the story he is telling which is a world apart.


The book has an underlying theme of atheism common to modern times as Cornwell narrates the escalating threat to peace of the warring Christians and pagans and Arthur's struggle, despite all his best diplomatic efforts, to bring harmony to the rival religions.


I am largely unfamiliar with the story of Arthur and his knights of Camelot, and I enjoyed Cornwell's attempt to retell the story without all the usual romantic legends, however, in comparison with the first book, Enemy of God does feature more magical goings on as Merlin ropes Derfel into his quest to find the Treasures of Britain. The ending is particularly exciting as Arthur's friend Lancelot shows his true colours and places the story's heroes in danger while setting the scene for the final instalment of the trilogy.


A good mixture of history, legends, magic and religion.

BOOK: The Winter King, Bernard Cornwell (7/10)

The first in Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles trilogy is a fictional depiction of early Saxon Britain retrospectively told through the eyes of one of Arthur's warriors. Cornwell turns his back on the typically romanticised version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and portrays Arthur as the more historically accurate military leader. This is a refreshing change and allows Cornwell to ground the story in realism rather than magical fairy tales of ladies in lakes and wizards. However, Cornwell does allow himself the artistic license to introduce characters such as Merlin (a druid rather than wizard), Lancelot (a crown prince from Brittany) and Guinevere into the action.


The story tells of Arthur's return from exile in France to act as protector to the infant king of Dummonia and his attempts to unite the warring kingdoms of southern Britain and Wales against the growing Saxon threat.


Cornwell delivers the story in sufficient detail and depth to give the reader plenty to go on. Often historical authors can fall into the trap of either glossing over or dedicating too much time and detail to battle scenes but Cornwell seems to find the middle ground well in describing the book's final scenes. 


An enjoyable read for any fan of fictionalised history.