December Wrap Up

A less than average month this one. I read just five books. I don'y why that should be. Everything else has slowed up as I age, so maybe my 'readspeed' has too. It doesn't really matter except that as I grow older and time is running out I feel I need to speed up my reading! So many books, so little time.

I was always a Star Wars fan, right from the start. So the month begins with Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist that details her time filming the first movie from some journals she kept at the time. She's witty and open. The diary entries are accompanied by her observations of Hollywood life and the nature of celebrity.

Second up was the third part of a dystopian series by L.G.Jenkins. The series is called The Merit Hunters and this third book iOS entitled Quiet Echoes at Night. I blogged about this book.https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2024/12/quiet-echoes-at-night-lgjenkins.html

This next book isn't published until 21st February. you might want to note it on your calendar for it is a marvellous story that had me enthralled. Climate crisis and global warming at its heart it's also a book about love and calamity. I haven't reviewed it yet but I will do. 

Consolations II by David Whyte was extraordinary to experience. I started out by reading it as I would any book, starting at the beginning and intending to read through until I finished it........then on to the next book! But this bad boy had other ideas! So intense and absorbing were the ideas and thoughts contained within each 'consolation' that I found myself reading just one section a day. I needed to consider and absorb the beauty and complexities of the essays. It was uplifting and thought provoking and absolutely perfect for those who love words and their meanings. 

Finally Part One of The Memoir by Cher. I've often been critical of celebrities who pen a memoir while they are still relatively young and their careers appear to be in full flow. I always think that an autobiography or memoir is something you write retrospectively when you've been around for long enough! At 78 I think Cher has! This is very entertaining. Cher seems to be a natural raconteur. The book is honest and funny and I will look forward to Part Two. Do you need to be a Cher fan? Possibly not but I think it helps. 

Quiet Echoes at Night - L.G.Jenkins

 This story is the third in the Merit Hunters series. I read the first two, originally titled Crowned Worthy and Stolen Crowns but I believe they have been republished with different titles; Sun of Endless Days and Storm at Dusk respectively. 

I wrote about them on my blog.

 https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2021/04/crowned-worthy-lg-jenkins-blog-tour.html

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2022/01/stolen-crowns-lgjenkins.html

Both of the previous two stories ended with the most infuriating cliff hangers! I say infuriating because I just had to know what happened next! And...... it's happened again!! Another ending that leaves you hungry for more. 

I would say that to fully enjoy and appreciate this book you do really need to have read the first two. I don't necessarily believe that to be a flaw. I would say the same of The Maze Runner and Hunger Games series, for example. But there is always a complexity to dystopian landscapes and regimes that begin to be established in the initial book and developed in subsequent titles. This has been done very effectively in this series.

We meet some old "friends' - Ajay and Genni for example - and some new. The dystopian landscape strikes a balance between those things we experience in our current, contemporary lives and can readily relate to and those fantasy things and beings that populate dystopia. Some of the desert creatures (Ooops, I really don't want to give too much away) derive from an oasis of imagination. 

The allegorical inference did not escape me either and I fully expect further exposition in the final book in the series. As the collection develops the reader can see the moral and political implications with a greater clarity. Something that I find delightful is how this author has grown and developed her craft. In terms of the quality of the writing and plotting I would say this book is the best yet. It's an engaging story where we are invited to engage and root for characters who may not always have behaved appropriately. Emotions are conflicted and the fragility of the human nature is exposed as well as the endurance of the human spirit and the strength of belief.  

I can't wait for the next book!!!!