Book: The Shepherd's Crown

The Shepherd's Crown
Terry Pratchett
Amazon.com Link

Terry Pratchett's final Discworld novel, and the fifth to feature the witch Tiffany Aching.

A SHIVERING OF WORLDS

Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength.

This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad.

As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land.

There will be a reckoning. . . .

THE FINAL DISCWORLD® NOVEL


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As with all Terry Pratchett books, I loved this. I don't think my review will do much justice to it. It's Tiffany, with her level-headedness. It's the Wee Free Men. It's the Witches.

I won't say much as it will indadvertedly spoil the book (I have some things to say about the storyline, so I'll refrain), but I enjoyed this very much.

Book: Hill of Secrets

Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel
Michal Hartstein
Amazon.com Link

On a blooming May morning, five bodies of a single religious family are found in their apartment, in the quiet suburb of Givat Shmuel (Shmuel's Hill).

Detective Hadas Levinger, a renegade atheist daughter of a religious family, is put in charge of the police investigation. Slowly and skillfully she peels the shells protecting this unique community and reveals hard and painful secrets.

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Overall an interesting read. I was on the fence about giving this a minus the various formatting flaws and misses (misspellings, repetitions - I remember around four instances that four instances it happened - repetition here intentional, and many, many typos) in the end decided to keep 3 stars. I think those errors can be easily fixed by the author sooner or later.

I think if this were not a Jewish based book, the constant religious background explanations would have been tiring, but I found it fascinating as I know nothing of Jewish culture. So probably someone who knows the Jewish culture may find that a little tiring.

The final outcome was slightly surprising but once the big cat was out of the bag, the remaining mysteries were pretty easy to guess. I thought the final show-all was not necessary, as it lends a bit to the whole detective feel, but it helped to clear out small issues (still, personally I thought it unnecessary).

It was a pleasant read, looking forward to others in the series, if there is a series :-)

Book: Alice Takes Back Wonderland

Alice Takes Back Wonderland
David D. Hammons
Amazon.com Link

After ten years of being told she can’t tell the difference between real life and a fairy tale, Alice finally stops believing in Wonderland. So when the White Rabbit shows up at her house, Alice thinks she’s going crazy. Only when the White Rabbit kicks her down the rabbit hole does Alice realize that the magical land she visited as a child is real. But all is not well in Wonderland.

The Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland and is systematically dismantling all that makes it wonderful. Plain is replacing wondrous, logical is replacing magical, and reason is destroying madness. Alice decides she must help the Mad Hatter and all those fighting to keep Wonderland wonderful. But how can she face such danger when she is just a girl?

Alice must journey across the stars to unite an army. She discovers that fairy tales are real in the magical world beyond the rabbit hole. But they are not the fairy tales she knows. Fairy tales have dangers and adventures of their own, and Alice must overcome the trials of these old stories if she wants to unite the lands against Ace.

With the help of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White and heroes old and new, Alice may have the strength to take back Wonderland.


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I was slightly sceptical of this due to some of the existing reviews, but now coming to think of it, I think I quite liked this.

This book made use of various fairy tale characters and settings as we know them AND as we don't know them. It was really interesting to see such a twist.

Probably the down side is it was rather stagnant in the first part of the book. Once Alice cleared Peter Pan and Pinocchio, things got rolling and turned fast pace.

The ending was somewhat surprising but I can take a surprise here and there once in a while.

If you like fairy tales and don't mind seeing them taken out of context to become something else, do give this book a try.