It is the end of the month and time for readers to share a good book that they have read during the past few weeks. hosted by the Armchair Squid we can find many different and varied genres of books to pique our interest.
http://armchairsquid.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-cephalopod-coffeehouse-january-2015.html
Join in the fun and share.
The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez
(The
Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez Book 1)
by
Ann Swinfen
This is the book I have chosen to share this month. I gave it a rating of 5* which is rare for me and a book has to be outstanding (in my opinion) to achieve that. There was one other book I read that was also deserving of a 5* rating but Ann Swinfen just had that little bit more of 'je ne sais quoi' - it was that indefinable quality that made you invest your thoughts outside of the book into the characters portrayed.
It is approximately 293 pages and the first in a series of four books and the next three are available.
Product Description from Amazon
It is the year 1586. England is awash with traitors, plotting to
assassinate the Queen and bring about a foreign invasion. The young physician
Christoval Alvarez, a refugee from the horrors of the Portuguese Inquisition,
is coerced into becoming a code-breaker and spy in Sir Francis Walsingham’s
espionage service. In the race to thwart the plot, who will triumph – the
ruthless conspirators or the equally ruthless State?
The year is 1586, Queen Elizabeth
I is on the throne and there are plots afoot to replace her with Queen Mary,
her sister. The Alvarez family came to
London four years ago as refugees from Portugal. Christoval is working as a
trainee physician with his father in a London hospital, living in a house
supplied by the hospital. The story
starts in the winter and the author describes the poor living conditions, even
sitting in my centrally heated living room I was shivering the description was that
good.
A love of helping people
medically combined with a love of mathematics and music leads this brainy
youngster in to a position of secrecy after being brought to Marshalsea prison,
when his father is not available, to help someone who is sick. The prisoner is
a privileged person but even so it is a harrowing experience for Christoval who
is so thankful not to be incarcerated himself.
“The cold London fog, tainted
with the smoke of many fires and the sewer scent of the river, seemed pure
after the smell of human misery that filled Marshalsea. I realised that all the while we had been
inside the prison; my heart had been struggling like a pigeon trapped in a
chimney. Only now did it steady and
slow.”
Now he finds he is helping break
codes and his adventures are only just beginning.
The author brings in great
historical detail of the time, political and social aspects of the time are
well described, including the theatrical profession which is a nice
diversion. Every page turned or every
click of the Kindle is worth reading, there is no page that you want to
skip.
This
is the first in a series.
I look forward
to reading the rest of the books.
I would just like to mention a short story I read at the beginning of the month and worthy of a 4* rating - it is only 31 pages and well worth a read as a prequel to his End of Days
The Soul Flies Free
by
Roland Yeomans
Product Description from Amazon
Think THE HOBBIT meets I AM LEGEND.
Doomsday has come … and gone. What can the
Spirit of the Earth do when all hope is gone?
Create Hope … or rather a clone of the last
Sidhe. But when you’re a small fae girl just awakened to find you are the only
hope for the world, the chances for a happy ending seem … hopeless.
The eternal night beckons. Doom is on the
horizon. The odds are against her.
But in Faerie, it is wiser to bet against a
cornered dragon than a Sidhe.
This is a
short story to give us a taste for the novel End of Days but that doesn’t
distract from the lyrical writing. This
is not a read to skim and skimp on, you can’t speed read this short story as
every word counts, every sentence sets you thinking, every phrase is carefully
constructed, every chapter takes us a little further into the journey and the
supernatural, alien worlds come to mean something even when you are just young
and immature and not worldly wise.