Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Blurb On The Back:

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge.

By the end of that day the lives of all three will have changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

If it wasn't for the fact that the first half of the novel is really slow and a labour to read, I'd think this to be one of the best books I've read all year. The second half is very well written and evocative of the time, with some heartbreaking characterisation and a good twist at the end. Unfortunately, you have to get through the first half to get there and I suspect that the ponderous pace and the fact that so little happens for such contrived reasons will put people off.

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

The Blurb On The Back:

Who or what is Endymion Spring?

In the dead of night, a cloaked figure drags a heavy box through icy streets.

The chest is magically sealed by a carved serpent's head - and can only be opened when the fangs taste blood.

Centuries later, an ordinary boy touches a strange book and feels something sharp pierce his finger. The book is blank, but its paper seems to quiver ... as if it is alive.

Something terrifying has been unleashed ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

For a book with such original ideas in it, the execution is peculiarly flat. Skelton seems more interested in setting up location and places than he is in building up character or sustaining plot tension and the novel really suffers for it. Some sections are plainly overwritten and I feel that the book would have benefitted from a good pruning, aimed at refocusing on the two main characters and their story, rather than the story of the people around them. Puffin is to be commended for the inventiveness of the layout to the book - using different coloured pages for the different segments and experimenting with different fonts, although as an older reader with poor eyesight, I'd have liked the gothic script to be a little more legible as I found those bits difficult to read.