Once Upon a Bookshelf

The Story

It is 1808, and the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. First Lieutenant Heironymus Bonaventure serves on the HMS Fortitude. After a run-in with a Spanish frigate and a horrendous storm, the Fortitude finds an island paradise repair serious damage to their ship. When they come across a couple of members of the Spanish crew, only to learn of a madness that has effected the remainder of the Spanish crew on a neighbouring island. But the native people of this island paradise warn only of how the island is forbidden, and is the home of fire and death.

The Review

Hmm. This wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped it was going to be.

I was hoping for something that would cross Horatio Hornblower with fantasy. It was more like Robinson Crusoe with fantasy elements (and a lot more characters stranded on the island).

The characters lacked depth, there was nothing that made me care about any of them. And their relationships didn’t feel as developed as they should have been seeing as the characters had been stuck on a ship together for months on end with each other.

Then there was the ending, which was a bit anticlimactic and rushed. I expected more than the group of crew and islanders seeing the monsters, attempting to fight them for a little bit and then retreating. Especially for the islanders – this is supposed to be a trial where they can show their courage and their worth, and yet they’re going to have to live with knowing that they ran away from the danger – it didn’t feel consistent with who they were at all.

The one bright spot in the book was Giles Dulac, the man who teaches Bonaventure how to fence. I blame this on Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, which has made me have a bit of love for characters who fight with swords. Sadly, he was only really around for four chapters, all of which were looks back into Bonaventure’s past. And I really wish we had explored Dulac more – there was so much more to him, including his relationship with a friend from army days. Hmm.

The Bottom Line

Overall, it was alright, but nothing super-special. It had the potential to be more than it was, but unfortunately, for me, it fell a little flat.

Other Reviews

Neth Space, Fantasy Book Critic. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

This novel starts when seventeen year old Bess has first learned that she will not be returning to the boarding school she has been to for years, situated in view of the Horseshoe falls. Her father has lost his job at the power plant, her older sister’s fiance broke off their engagement, and her family is now struggling to make ends meet.

Soon Bess meets Tom, a local “ne’er-do-well” that none of her family and friends approve of. But Tom is able to hear the river, can see signs from it that no one else can, and Bess becomes enthralled. She begins spurning off her own fiance, and disgraces her family, but Bess has decided that it’s all worth it for love.

Taking place in the early 20th century on the Canadian side of the falls, this book is a picture of what living in WWI-era rural Canada would have been like.

The Review

This book had a beautiful melancholy to it – beautiful like so many books try to be but fall short. This one thankfully grasped that beauty. It was sad and steady, and had such strength in it. It’s not a fast-paced book, more like a meander through Bess’s life. And did I mention that it was beautiful?

I do love books with really strong female characters… and that’s not always so easy to find in contemporary books. But Bess is a survivor – she doesn’t give up and throw herself over the falls like she could have, she doesn’t wallow in her misery. No, she finds a way through it and keeps herself together to keep those around her from falling apart. She is the one who tries to get Isabel through her own depression at losing her fiance. She goes to work when she was raised in a family where she wouldn’t have had to work if not for her father’s mistake. She raises a son when her husband is off fighting in WWI.

And I love how well this book portrayed the falls. You can practically feel the mist from the falls soaking into your being when Bess and Tom visit the falls. It’s refreshing and full of majesty, and I love how it is depicted.

I found the newspaper clippings a little distracting from the story, and will admit that after the first couple I skipped the remaining ones (unless they were specifically about Tom). They do certainly give a bit more history about what happened surrounding the falls, but I didn’t like the interruption to the narrative.

The Bottom Line

Definitely a solid Canadian historical fiction. Gives an awesome glimpse of how life in WWI on the home-front in rural Ontario would have been, and I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.

Other Reviews

A Fair Substitute for Heaven, Kailana’s Written World, Back to Books. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

In the beginning of 1946, Juliet, an author, receives a letter from someone who came across an old book that used to belong to her, written by Charles Lamb. This person had fallen in love with Lamb’s work, and is writing Juliet to see if she knows where he can get some more. Thus begins the correspondence between Juliet and a literary society on the island of Guernsey that was formed during the German occupation of the Channel Islands.

This book tells the stories of how the war affected the people in this literary society, and how their discovery of the written word built relationships that helped them survive the war.

The Review

I did not except to like this as much as I did for two reasons.

Firstly, all I’ve heard about this book were VERY good things, and I was afraid that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. I mean, if everyone says it’s one of the best books they’ve read in a long time (or at least that it is a really, really good book), of course I’m going to expect something stunning, and do you know how hard it is for me to think a book is really THAT good?

Then, there’s the fact that this is an epistolary novel, and typically I loath epistolary novels. The only few I really enjoy are this one and Sorcery and Cecelia by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede.

So needless to say, I was shocked.

Read this in the span of a few hours, could not put it down, positively loved every second of it! And it went from being laugh-out-loud funny to making tears run down my face. Touching and heartbreaking and warm-and-fuzzy.

What was totally awesome was how each of the people writing the letters in this book all had such different voices, and yet how real they all came across. Like real-live people, and they sounded so much like people I actually knew in real life, which made it even more real.

I especially loved both Juliet, the main character in the book, and Isola, one of the members of the literary society. Most of all Isola, though. She reminded me so much of a LMM character – not a main character, but one of her awesome secondary characters with so much colour in their beings. You know?

And I loved that the setting was so real, even though it was conveyed strictly through letters.

And then the fact that it took place right after WWII?? How much do I love books about WWI and WWII? Not that it’s a pleasant topic, but it teaches so much about history, about the human spirit, about who we are… and there’s always so much heart and emotion in stories about wars and it usually rips you apart before showing that there may be hope in the world somewhere. Love!

The Bottom Line

A few pages into this, I knew I was going to need to own a copy of my own. There are so many paragraphs and phrases and such that I need to go back and underline. So many bits that really SPOKE to me, you know? Cannot wait to get my hands on my own copy!

Other Reviews

Otahyoni’s LJ, The Book Lady’s Blog, Becky’s Book Reviews, Rebecca Reid’s, Maw Books Blog, Reading Matters, Books I Done Read, One Librarian’s Book Reviews. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.