The Returned by Jason Mott

The Returned by Jason Mott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although I initially requested this advance copy due to enjoying the (entirely different but named the same) TV series I was pleasantly surprised by the difference. With the same general idea of the dead returning it was a much more thought provoking and emotionally charged tale. Excellent writing and characters really made me keep reading and I would recommend to any fantasy fans who like a touch of the real life thrown in for good measure.

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Book Review: Unearthed by Rebecca Bloomer

UnEarthed by Rebecca Bloomer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book started off strong and really held my interest. The main premise is this uber geek girl was heading off to a Mars colony with her mum to join her father who had been working there. Settling in for her mum is hard and she realises that some of the friends she's made aren't all they seem.

The colony setting on Mars is really well described though and the main character is actually very well written and you do find yourself liking her.

Great premise and enjoyed reading but was so disappointed in the ending as I felt so much more could have been done with it. Still light and enjoyable and the kindle formatting was fine.

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Book Review: Kiss River by Diane Chamberlain

Kiss River by Diane Chamberlain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received this book as an e-book proof from the publisher in advance of the reprint. I have read 'The Midwife's Confession' and 'Kiss River' is just as good. Despite being a sequel to 'Keeper of the Light' which I haven't read, I was able to read this book as a standalone and follow the story and the characters and their history without any problems. The main character of the book, 'Gina' is a new character anyway so you haven't missed anything there.

Although the characters were well written and I did have empathy with a couple of them, I did find that some of them were glossed over when I would want to know more about them and there was a bit of the 'Lost' in the story where nobody seemed to ask the obvious questions??

That aside, it was an enjoyable read and not only would I recommend to fans of Jodi Picoult, etc, it would also encourage me to actually go and purchase more books by this author as I enjoyed her style of writing so much.

The formatting of this e-proof was absolutely spot on with no problems.

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Book Review: Rapture by J.R. Ward

Rapture by J.R. Ward
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really do like J.R. Wards books as a paranormal fantasy read and Rapture was no different. However, I'm getting bored with the predictability of the genre now and am not sure I will buy any more in the series.

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Book Review: The Romanov Cross by Robert Masello

The Romanov Cross by Robert Masello
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent mystery thriller from Robert Masello. The dual timeline worked well and the main characters were well written and thought out. The formatting of the ebook was perfectly fine. One that I will reccommend to fans of James Rollins and Jeremy Robinson.

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Book Review: The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan

The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hopefully the formatting of the introduction of this ebook will be cleaned up before General release. Once into the actual book it seems to be fine.

The earlier years involving the death of Arthur and then their mother are rushed through but I suppose enough has already been written about those events and this book is really concerned with Margaret and her journey becoming queen of Scotland.

Into the fourth chapter and the formatting has gone very askew. Margaret is being portrayed as a spoilt, impetuous little girl.

Her marriage and life with James seems all about watching James punish himself and her cope alone with watching her children die while she's still a child herself.

Her stupidity with regards to her second marriage seems ridiculous and the formatting gets no better.

By this point I was really struggling with finishing the book but I did and the ending was fine. I was just glad to be done frankly. I didn't feel any particular sympathy or connection with any of the characters.

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Book Review: Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman

Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a really intriguing start to a new series. It's an interesting take on the fairy world and although I haven't come across any sex scenes yet I would still say this isn't for young adults due to the language content.

The story is set in the present day but across three dimensions or lands, mundanus (our dimension if you like), exiluim (where the far are) and the nether (where the great families, the puppets, the fae touched, our main characters) are. Now this is where my first fault comes from with this book. It is never satisfactorily explained why, our how, these three dimensions came to be. There is some sort of story of it but not enough for me so I'm hoping it is explained in future books.

Our main female character 'Cathy' ran away from her family in the nether some time ago and is now forced to return there and to their outdated society system where she is being forced to marry the son of another great family.

But at the same time there are illegal treatments of 'mundane s' occurring that a sorcerer and an arbiter (disconnected from his soul fae policeman) are trying to resolve and Cathy end up getting them with that.

So confusing? Well yes but actually it all comes together nicely in the end and all boils down to good old political intrigue, power struggles and society battles and is frankly rather good fun to read.

However, at the end of the book things get a bit more nasty, a little bit gruesome and sets everything up for the next book which I definitely can't wait to read.

The book Itself is well written and I really enjoyed the main characters. It's nice to finally be reading a heroine who is rather punchy although Will is pretty boring. Sam is a mundane who gets caught up in it all and I really want to see more of this character in future stories as him and Cathy were a good combination. Here's hoping the author thinks so too.

With regards to the formatting of the eproof the only error I could see was a typo where there was an extra s at the beginning of Scotland and that was it. A bit of a rarity for an ebook although they are definitely improving in this area. I also liked the design of the cover.

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Book Review: The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith

The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. Essentially I think this book was about the mystery surrounding an artist but it was such a lovely gentle read and moved at such a relaxed (not slow) pace that the mystery just seemed to unfold in an entirely satisfactory way. My first time reading a title by this author but definitely won't be my last.

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SecondWorld by Jeremy Robinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this book to be enjoyable and far fetched and a fun technothriller read. You have to be willing to suspend belief for it but if you can you will find it draws you in and carrys you along to a twisted ending!!

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I Love My Slow Cooker: More Than 100 of the Best-Ever Recipes - Delicious*Nourishing*Easy to Make by Beverly Leblanc


The introduction of this book gave really good information about serving sizes in relation to your slow cooker size and a really good guide on which features you need to consider when researching which slow cooker to buy. It also gave very clear explanations of ingredients and methods used in preparing meals to go in the slow cooker.

The soup section was fairly comprehensive and I will definatly be trying the red lentil and sweet potato soup recipe among others. The bolognese sauce also looks good to make and freeze which is another thing I liked about this book, in that she gives the freezer life information for some recipes also.

I would have liked to see a basic table in the meats section giving information on general cooking times for different cuts of meat in case you wanted to try your own recipe that you weren't sure of the cooking time for, but apart from that there were a lot of nice looking recipes in this section, especially the pork ones.

Some of the recipes didn't have particularly long cooking times so I wouldn't be able to make them when I was home on my lunch break for tea that night as they would need to be started closer to tea time.

I didn't find the vegetarian or desert recipes particularly inspiring, however, I thought there was a really good range of stock and accompaniment recipes at the end of the book which you don't always see.

Overall this is a fairly nice Slow Cooker recipe book that I would be happy to have in my kitchen even if I wouldn't go out and buy it straight away.

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Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shadow of Night is the second in this paranormal trilogy from Deborah Harkness and I really really enjoyed it. The combination of paranormal fantasy and historical fiction worked really well and I thought the author did a fantastic job of describing Elizabethan England. The main character, Diana, really reminds me of Clare from the book 'Outlander' by Diana Gabaldon (another timeslip novel) in that they are both strong minded and strong willed women. But unfortunately Matthew doesn't live up to my expectation in this book and I found myself really disliking him and some of his Elizabethan friends by the end of the book (I really really can't stand Kit!!).

The odd intersection of bits of the present time which showed how Matthew and Diana were affecting the future were well done and flowed well with the rest of the story. Deborah Harkness really comes across as a talented writer and I am looking forward to the final book of the trilogy although there is no hint of a release date on it yet. With the surprise ending of this book I am intrigued to see where they go from here.

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The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've never really known much about the Neville sisters and so this book intrigued me. I feel that it really seemed to convey the precarious position and helplessness of daughters of powerful families of the time. But it also illustrated the rivalry and love of two sisters so was very much like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' in that regard. I only really felt pity for Isabel Neville and didn't really like her character that much. Although I started off really liking Anne Neville, by the end of the book I felt particularly disenchanted with her character and just felt she was manipulative and motivated by fearful revenge as opposed to the good of her family.

The writing of this book was the usual standard of Philippa Gregory's work and I did like the fact that the language wasn't as foul as in some of her Tudor works (not that it really bothers me). I don't know a great deal about this particular time of English History so I can't say whether it's accurate or not but I did enjoy the description of the time. The book grabbed my attention and I did stay up way too late reading it and so managed to finish it in about a day.

Overall this book is a highly enjoyable piece of historical fiction with war, love and politics. Fans of Jean Plaidy and Philippa Gregorys' other works will enjoy this book too.

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Bertram - The New Love of my Life!!!

Last Thursday (25th October 2012) we bought home a special new gadget!!  My new Kindle Fire HD 32GB who has lovingly been christened 'Bertram'.  (My mother suggested the name).  And I LOVE him :o)

So let's start at the beginning.  The Kindle Fire has never been available in the UK until last Thursday.  Anyone who wanted one had to order from the states and had the whole palava of trying to sync their accounts so they could purchase blah blah blah.  But then in early September Amazon announced they were finally bringing the Kindle Fire to the UK and not only that but also the HD versions and NOT ONLY that but they were partnering with Waterstones who would be selling it for them (along with the rest of the Kindle family)!!!  As some of you will know, Waterstones is the last major bookshop chain left in the UK and I happen to work for them :o)  So of course I was super excited about this as my two great loves of technology gadgets and working for a bookshop were finally merging.  Happy Days!!

After convincing HWP (He Who Pays) I had to have one seeing as the launch date was so close to my birthday and technically it was for work so was a necessity, I slapped down my deposit for a 16gb and eagerly awaited launch day.  Come launch day I was on a day off but was still there at 9am to pick up my little beauty (much to my boss' confusion).  As it turned out I actually went home with a 32gb instead of a 16gb.  I had decided that with the staff discount and a birthday gift from my parents towards it I was going to upgrade and I am glad I did.  I am not sure the 16gb would have been enough for me given my addiction to marvel super hero films and knitting podcasts.

So this was the super pretty box I came home with:

Front on the left and the back on the right giving basic specification.  The Fire HD was already half charged when I got home and as I already have a number of USB chargers I plugged the cable in to start it charging the rest of the way.  Bear in mind, there is no USB wall plug adapter included in the box so you have to either buy one if you don't have one or put up with it charging very slowly from the computer.

So lets discuss some of the aspects of this little tablet in detail and when I compare to other devices I have had these include the iPad 2, iPhone 4, HTC Flyer (all gone now) and my current phone which is a HTC Sensation XE.

Wireless Connection:
The Fire HD picked up my wireless straight away and as soon as my Amazon and Gmail accounts were linked (both painless processes) I was good to go.   The dual antenna makes this really fast and downloading video podcasts, streaming music and video has all been very quick compared to some of the other devices I have owned in the past.

Operating System:
The Kindle Fire HD is running the Android 4.0 system which is Ice Cream Sandwich.  HOWEVER, Amazon have slapped a customised front on this which some people are very unhappy with.  I actually am not.  I like the carousel operating system and find it smooth and easy to use.  I know it means you have to use the Amazon App store (more about this below) but this actually makes me feel like I'm being a bit more cocooned and bit more secure like I was in the Apple environment as opposed to being thrown to every Tom, Dick & Harry designing Android Apps like I am in the Play store.  Controversial maybe but it's my blog so neeeh!! :o)

Applications:
One of the biggest reasons anyone buys a tablet, smartphone, iPad etc is for the applications and they can either make or break your experience of your gadget.  The quality, availability and price is all very important.  There are three main places to buy apps that can't be mixed and matched and these are iTunes store, Play/Android store and Amazon App Store.  The iTunes apps only work on Apple products and the Play / Android store apps only work on items using an android operating system.  And then there are the Amazon Apps.  These also only work on Android operating system but only on the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD.  So even though I have bought the Ravulous app from the play store for use on my android applications I have to buy it again for my Kindle Fire HD from the Amazon app store.  Now in the case of the Ravulous app that's not a big deal.  It's £1 for an excellent application each time I buy it.  However when you are talking about the BeyondPod unlock key for my podcast catcher which is £4.99 each time you get a bit miffed.

Saying that I still did it as it's the only application of that price I would have to do it with.  Most of my other applications such as Goodreads, Netflix and Evernote are all free from both stores as are many other excellent applications and they all installed and synced beautifully on my Fire HD.  It's so nice to see my pdf patterns on a 7" screen on Evernote for a change!!

The email application for the Fire HD synced seamlessly with my gmail account and when the Calengoo app was offered as the free app of the day (an excellent bonus feature of the Amazon App Store over Play) I downloaded it and my gmail calendar is now keeping me and HWP synced (ha, well that's the theory anyway!).  Games such as Bejewelled 2 (which was the free app the day I bought the Fire HD), Angry Birds and Cut the Rope all look and play beautifully too.

Video:
The HD video promised by this tablet was a big pull to me so I couldn't wait to see how it handled the gorgeous Thor and it didn't disappoint.  When I plugged the Fire HD into my laptop using it's usb cables, Windows did it's plug and play thing and I could drop my avi movie file straight into the movies folder.  However, the Fire HD won't play avi files in its video.  So I then went to the app store and downloaded an avi player for free and it worked perfectly.  I now have Thor in HD where ever I am :o)  The video podcasts downloaded by BeyondPod were all excellent quality as well and all you knitting video podcasters such as StudentKnits, KnittyNatter and KnitPurlGurl were looking gorgeous as every ;o)

Camera:
There isn't one.  Well, there is but not really.  It's strange because there is a front facing camera which takes HD video when you are using the pre installed Skype application and it's really good video quality and works great when I tested it Skypeing with eldest child.  But it doesn't take pictures.  You can download an app from the app store which will enable you to but I haven't bothered as I have an 8MP camera on my phone so don't need to.

Books:
I suppose we better talk about books seeing as it's an ereader shouldn't we??  Well actually lets get that misconception out the way straight away.  I'm fairly certain that most tech savvy people out there realise that despite this gadget having 'Kindle', which has always been associated with ereaders, in it's name this isn't an ereader.  It's a multimedia device and has always been billed as one.  It's not the same as reading a book on an ereader but it's a hell of a lot better than reading it on an iPad!!

The Fire HD is very light and easy to hold while reading as a book and as I always have my kindle books on LCD screens set to sepia with the brightness down I don't tend to experience a lot of eye fatigue on it and my coursebooks and Little1's kids books with drawings and illustrations all come across really well on the Fire HD.  It's not exactly very sunny here in Aviemore at the moment so the fact that I've experienced no glare on the screen is good but this hasn't really been properly tested.  The screen is said to have been treated to reduce the amount of glare that you should experience in direct sunlight but I will have to wait to really know.

In the same way as my Kindle Keyboard and Kindle App on my phone and Little 1's android tablet, everything is there for you in the cloud and I still say that the Amazon Cloud was the best idea they ever had!!  Although I am not about to throw away my Kindle Keyboard (or even pass it on to one of the kids) I still haven't read a book on it since I got my Fire HD and don't really have any reason to at the moment.

Audio:
The audio quality of the Fire HD is very good when watching films and podcasts on and I've done both both with and without headphones.  That's pretty much all I can say on that one!!  I didn't buy the tablet for my audiobooks, audio podcasts and music as that's what I bought my specifically designed for audio smartphone for and so keep all of that on there.

Accessories:
There's the usual plethora of cases, chargers, cables etc available on Amazon as well as in selected Waterstones stores.  I purchased the purple official Amazon Kindle Fire HD case for Bertram which has the magnetic sleep/wake function that those with iPad smart covers will be used to.  It also enables the Fire HD to be stood up when watching videos or reading a book so I can knit at the same time.

So that's my review of the Kindle Fire HD 32Gb.  As you can probably tell I love it and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a basic HD tablet.  It's available for the same price from Amazon.co.uk and from Waterstones stores.  I can see this being under a lot of Christmas trees this year and it will deserve it's place there.

On a side note, my mother purchased a Kindle Paperwhite the same day (as they were also released) so I will be borrowing that in the near future so I can write a review on here.

A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved reading these earlier works by Terry Pratchett, especially reading his explanations of where from and how the stories came into being. A nice little insight into an amazing mind that I admire so much.

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The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Although I know this is the first in a trilogy i really feel that there were so many characters with secrets I stopped caring about two thirds of the way through the book.

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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was really fun and simultaneously disturbing. I found it fun because of the fact that I got so many of the references not only because I was a child in the 80's but also because I have a fairly decent knowledge of gaming, both computer and d&d style. It's good to know that other people did listen to Bryan Adams and Def Leopard!! So why was it disturbing? Well, maybe because of the fact that I know an okay amount about computer gaming and am such a tech addict (yes I did pre order the Kindle Fire & get the shakes without my HTC!!) I can see how society could end up as slaves to a virtual environment that is so much better than reality and that is scary. The world described by the author is really very believable and that in itself proves what an excellent read this is. Fans of dystopia and gaming fiction will really enjoy this.

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The Chessmen by Peter May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received this advance proof copy at the bookshop I work in and I loved it. Coming from the Island means that I recognise all the landscape and cultural references but at the same time there is an excellent crime story that had me hooked to the very end. I couldn't put this book down and will be highly recommending it to all our customers when it hits the shelves later this year/beginning of next.

The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent take on the vampire story. I really enjoyed this book and thought that the characters were really well written. There were some things I didn't understand like why certain people would deliberately put themselves in harms way (you'll see what I mean when you read the book) but by the end of the book I wasn't questioning it anymore. I am really looking forward to the sequel 'The Prey' which is due out 31st January 2013.

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Breathe by Sarah Crossan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent start to this dystopian future series. Once again the YA authors prove themselves a force to be reckoned with with quality writing, pace and excellent characters that you can really get behind. Gripping story lines without the need for gratuitous sex and language mean this is an excellent book for adults and young adults to enjoy.

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I Am Alive by Cameron Jace
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For such a low price on Kindle, this book was really enjoyable. Yes, the editing might not have been perfect but as I am used to reading unedited proof copies of books it didn't bother me. The storyline was interesting and disturbing and I am looking forward to the next in the series to see how certain things are explained.

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