The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

Book review: My version of “The Gracekeepers” is a lovely hardback version with dust jacket. The cover shows the girl North in the arms of her bear as they travel the seas inside their coracle. The stars are silver etched as are the ripples in the sea. The back cover shows the girl Callanish on her little island. The inside covers show maps of the fantasy world and beneath the dust jacket is another cover showing mermaids and mermen beneath the sea.
 

As for the story the first paragraph introduces the fantasy world this novel is set in perfectly. It says “In a world that is almost entirely sea, placing your feet on land was a privilege that must be earned.”
 

There are two types of people in this world, landlockers and damplings. Damplings travel the sea, landlockers stay on the land. And the two don’t really mix.
 

The book follows two young women, North and Callanish, one dampling and one landlocker, and their separate lives. Callanish is a gracekeeper. This means she lives isolated on her own small island where she performs resting ceremonies for dead damplings that are brought to her by passing ships. One day the group that visits is a travelling circus of which North is part of. She is the bear-girl. Her act is dancing with a bear. 
 

They bond but soon are leading their separate lives again, of which more and more is revealed as the story progresses to its thrilling conclusion.
 

A very good book.

 

Publication date: 23 April 2015

 

Amazon UK link: The Gracekeepers

 

 

Fishbowl by Bradley Somer

Book review: “The heartbreaking sweetness of love, the rending hatred, the slippery lust, the sorrow of losing a family member , the pain of loneliness, all thoughts that were ever thought, every word ever said and even those that were not, the joys of birth and the sorrows of death and everything else will be experienced in this one vessel.”

 

That is what is says near the beginning of the book and in many ways this book does do that, although maybe not using every word ever said and maybe excluding some thoughts that were ever thought, yet the quote is not about the book (or is it?) but about the block of flats (or apartments as this is an American setting) where this story is set.

 

The story is essentially about a goldfish making a jump for it out of his fishbowl on his “little corner of the balcony” of a 27th floor apartment. After all “an entire life devoted to a fishbowl will make one die an old fish with not one adventure had.”

 

He then takes four seconds to descend but in those four seconds we learn about some of the residents’ lives within that block as he passes them by in the glint of eye. In many ways they are all living in their own fishbowls although some of their lives/fishbowls connect as the story gets told. And whilst this goes on the book also explores the idea of time, whether that be through Homeschooled Herman and his ability to time travel, or through the slow motion descent of the fish with its “stresses and terrors to last a lifetime”.

 

Through this method we get to see the different points of view of the separate characters, and get to hear the same stories from the different viewpoints.

 

Maybe at the end of the book you’ll want to know what happens next in some of the character stories, but the nature of this book is that it is only following the characters, and the lives they lead within their separate fishbowls, for a particular moment in time and therefore the stories are obviously going to be incomplete as it were. And is it not the sign of a good book that it makes you want more.

 

The only other thing to mention is that my version of the book came with an excellent cover and the pages formed a flipbook of a fish falling from the top of the book to the bottom. This fish aided me in working out my rough progress through the book at any one time and the cover was excellent because the “O” had a hole in it revealing the fish which then appeared beneath on a second cover where he is falling from his bowl. Therefore initial impressions are good just on flicking through the book too.

 

Amazon UK link: Fishbowl

 

Publication date: 6 August 2015

Charlie Merrick's Misfits in I'm a Nobody, Get Me Out of Here! by Dave Cousins

Book review: The first Charlie Merrick book saw him and his team of “misfits” in a tale that was essentially about football, with a theme of friendship running through it. This time, as the title “Charlie Merrick’s Misfits in I’m a Nobody, Get Me Out of Here!” suggests, the story is more about survival in the wild, although it still had the friendship theme running through it.

Therefore the book is more suitable for girls than the first book given the move away from football. Indeed whereas in the first book Charlie says “FOOTBALL – it’s all I ever think about” in this one there is a point where he refuses a game of football leading to his friend Jasmine remarking, “No time for football! OK, Where’s the real Charlie Merrick?”

Anyway the story of this book is that North Star Galaxy Under-12s football team are going to a football camp but when they arrive they realise their manager has accidentally signed them up for a survival course instead. With all soccer camps’ places being filled by that time they decide they may as well stay and do the survival course.

There they are split into squads of fours with the other kids and compete against each other on bushtucker-like trials and spending time out in the wild. The competitive nature is taken up a notch as Charlie has made a secret bet with a member of another squad that the losing squad all need to jump off “the Leap of Doom” at a place called Devil Falls.

The book is set up to be narrator Charlie’s notebook of his time at the survival camp (all the children were given one) and, as Charlie is a budding cartoonist, there are pictures to accompany the text, pictures that tell bits of the story, as well as things like survival tips and squad profiles that help to break up the text which is of benefit to young readers. The text itself is in a child friendly font too as it is made to look like it is handwritten rather than a typed font.

The book features an excellent crescendo, just like the first one, and there are funny moments along the way. Readers of all ages should enjoy.

Publication date: 4 June 2015

Amazon UK link (£6.99): Charlie Merrick's Misfits in I'm a Nobody, Get Me Out of Here!