Sharp Words

9 out of 10
I’ve been waiting for this book since meeting Stuart Neville at one of the NaNoWriMo sessions at QUB last year. Stuart came in to talk to us about how he’d written his first novel, and how he’d got published, and I know I left the room feeling intensely jealous of the way the publishing part at least had seemed to come so easily for him!

I missed the novel’s launch in the No Alibis bookshop in Belfast, but I trotted down there the first day I could (back in July) and bought a copy – which turned out to be signed, so that was a nice plus and a damn good reason for supporting small independent bookshops! I started reading that evening, but didn’t tear through it in the way I usually do with new books. I wanted to savour it… and I really wanted to like it.

And thankfully, I really really did. It’s a well-paced, thoughtful, intelligent thriller that drew me in from the very first page. However, I like to read novels at least twice before I review them. So although I originally read it at the beginning of July, it has taken me until the end of August to feel brave enough to pick it up again – for me, brilliant as I thought it, it’s not the kind of book I can read over and over. It’s not the kind of book to read as an escape from reality – which is precisely why my husband gave up after the first couple of chapters (his loss).

Anyway, a synopsis. The novel is called The Ghosts of Belfast in the US rather than The Twelve, but both titles refer to the twelve ghosts which haunt protagonist Gerry Fegan. They are the ghosts of the people he killed while a republican hitman: a selection of soldiers, police, loyalist terrorists and civilian innocents. But although Fegan was the one who pulled the trigger or planted the bomb – and did twelve years in the Maze prison – ultimately others carry responsibility too for those deaths. And now his ghosts want vengeance.

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I spotted this on one of the book-related blogs I read, and thought I’d promote it myself:

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

It runs from September 14th until the 18th (which is a very short week, IMO), and its raison d’être is to celebrate book bloggers – which as far as I can tell, means those blogs which concentrate on posting reviews, long or short, of all sorts of kinds of books.

Book bloggers are encouraged to register and participate; one of the fun-sounding things is that bloggers swap interviews. There are awards of course, and giveaways, and over 400 bloggers took part last year (that’s an awful lot of books being promoted out there).

I’m not registering myself, because I don’t think I blog enough about books (nor have I been blogging enough at all lately), but some of my readers might find it relevant… and I just like the idea.

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Susan, bless her, has tagged me with a meme in a most timely fashion. But although I’m supposed to tag people in return, I’m not going to bother; I’m not sure exactly who’s reading this any more. (I need to start networking again, and rebuild my audience.)

Collect the book that you have most handy, turn to page 161, find the 5th complete sentence, and cite the sentence on your blog.

If you mess our mutual friend about in any way, shape or form, Marie McKenna has an accident.

There’s a threat for you! This is from the excellent Belfast-based thriller The Twelve, by Stuart Neville, which I’m re-reading at the moment so I can finally write a review. (Expect one before the end of August.)

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I’m still alive. Still around. Not blogging much (evidently) except to update The Wombat‘s adventures.

Still writing? Well, that’s a yes and a no. I’ve had a busy (non-writing) August, with trips away and a lot of work to do, but back in July I created myself a wiki for world-building purposes. I churned out around 2000 words of background material (and have included those words in my total) but there’s still a lot of work to do. I could write without having all the background set up, I suppose, but I know from my roleplaying days that having a framework within which to set a story makes the story-telling and character development a lot easier.

There are still a lot of words to go for me to reach my target (which doesn’t include the 50,000 I intend to churn during November, as part of National Novel Writing Month), but now that I have most of my backdrops and backstory all set up, that writing is a little easier.

I haven’t written – or read – as much poetry as I’d hoped though. I also had a bit of a setback with a hard drive failure that lost me 4 or 5 poems I’d written this year; on the other hand, they weren’t ones I was particularly attached to, and I don’t miss them. I don’t think they were the sort that I could have come across in a few years and thought ‘Oh, that’s better than I remembered’ about. So no great loss, really… (And they were already counted in my year’s total.) But I think I need to make myself a regular date with my brown paper notebook, and just pick a subject at random, if the ideas aren’t going to arrive spontaneously.

Really, I need to get back into the habit of writing regularly, no matter what sort of writing it is that I do. I have a few ideas for blog posts stored up, not counting the usual Word- and Quote-of-the-Day type. And as November gets ever closer, of course I’ll be blathering about NaNoWriMo.

Keep an eye out anyway, dear readers, and if you don’t hear anything from me within a week, give me a kick!

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To Green Angel Tower (Part 1: Siege and Part 2: Storm), Tad Williams. Own copies.
This was apparently such a huge hardback that it was split into two separate paperbacks. And since each is well over 700 pages, I’m counting them separately in my tally.
Anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve re-read this series, and it’s interesting to see how the writing tightens up throughout it. The first book, The Dragonbone Chair has a lot of stuff I think I personally would have cut, but the amount of possibly extraneous material lessens as the story progresses. It’s a fantastic fantasy epic either way, with great characters and an engrossing plot.

The Twelve, Stuart Neville. Own copy, first read.
I really really want to review this. But that means reading it again, and I haven’t been quite ready for that yet. Perhaps next month? It’s a bloody brilliant thriller set in contemporary Northern Ireland anyway, and I highly recommend it.

Lords and Ladies and Maskerade, Terry Pratchett. Own copies.
I needed some comic relief after reading The Twelve. And the Discworld witches never fail to make me laugh.

remix, Jon Courtenay Grimwood. BookMooched copy, first read.
I’m catching up on his earlier novels – this is good and imaginative, but I definitely prefer his later stuff.

Shadow Gate, Kate Elliott. Own copy, first read.
I love getting the next in a series by a favourite writer, and I always hope I won’t be disappointed. And I really really wasn’t.

Dead Witch Walking, Kim Harrison. Own copy.
This is a great urban fantasy series. And I’ve finally started buying them instead of relying on the library.

The Janissary Tree and The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin. Library books, first reads.
A new author for me. I don’t read many mystery novels, but I do enjoy them (so should probably read more), and Goodwin is a great find. He really brings to life the flavours of mid-19th century Istanbul and Venice.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy, Jennifer Rardin. Library book, first read.
Urban fantasy with a decent bite to it, about CIA assassins and vampires and demon-worship. I definitely want to read the rest of this series.

The Season of the Witch, Natasha Mostert. Library book, first read.
I got pretty confused in the first few chapters of this novel, as it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be – cyberthriller, supernatural mystery, or psychological romance. It did eventually settle down into an intriguing blend of all three though, and I eventually enjoyed it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J K Rowling. Own copy.
I watched the film and had the urge to re-read this to see what the film had left out. Not as much as I’d thought, it turns out.

After Dark, Haruki Murakami. Library book, first read.
I’ve had Murakami on my want-to-read list for a while, having heard good things. I didn’t like this novel all that much – it seemed to be all style and no substance, although I certainly applaud the translator for keeping the language so lovely – but I’ll probably try something else of his.

Total for July 2009: 15 + 0 re-reads

Ongoing total for 2009: 116 + 2 re-reads

[Yep, this post is shamelessly backdated.]

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