A Tangle of Magicks by Stephanie Burgis

The Blurb On The Back:

Regency England’s feistiest twelve year old is back!

When Kat Stephenson’s family arrive in Bath in search of a suitor for her sister, it’s not long before Kat discovers that the town of Bath is fizzing with wild magic. Stumbling upon a plot to harness the magic in the Roman Baths, Kat finds that her brother is unwittingly involved. To foil the plot and save her brother she must defy the Order of the Guardians and risk losing her magical powers, forever …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

A lively and fast-paced sequel to A MOST IMPROPER MAGICK, this is an entertaining, fast-paced historical fantasy and although I was a bit irritated by Kat’s tendency to give in to her temper and also disappointed that the book doesn’t focus on her Guardian training, it is still well worth checking out.

A TANGLE OF MAGICKS was released in the UK in August. Thanks to Templar for the ARC of this book.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

The Blurb On The Back:

Everybody says there’s a war but I haven’t seen it yet.

There’s a hell of wars going on all the time:

Wars
Kids vs Teachers, Northwell Manor High vs Leabridge High, Dell Farm Crew vs Lewsey Hill Crew, Emos vs Sunshine, Turkey vs Russia, Arsenal vs Chelsea, Black vs White, Police vs Kids, God vs Allah, Chicken Joe’s vs KFC, Cats vs Dogs, Aliens vs Predators.

I haven’t seen any of them. You’d know if there was a war because all the windows would be broken and the helicopters would have guns on them. The helicopters don’t even have guns, just torchlights. I don’t even think there’s a war. I haven’t seen it.

I don’t even know what side I’m on. Nobody’s told me yet.

Vs just means against.

Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on an inner-city housing estate. The second best runner in the whole of Year 7, Harri races through his new life in his personalised trainers – the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him.

With equal fascination for the local gang – the Dell Farm Crew – and for the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of life in England: watching, listening and learning the tricks of urban survival.

But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try to keep them safe.

A story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Stephen Kelman’s debut novel is a touching, chilling, funny and desperately sad story of an innocent young boy in a brutal world. Although the sections narrated by a pigeon was too much of a literary device to work for me, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel and I think it deserves its place on the 2011 Booker short list.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the free copy of this book.

The Genius In My Basement by Alexander Masters

The Blurb On The Back:

Alexander Masters, the bestselling author of Stuart: A Life Backwards, discovered his first subject on the streets; the second, he’s found under his floorboards.

Dr Simon Philips Norton lives under Alexander’s flat in Cambridge. One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the 20th century, today he stomps about his rooms in semi-darkness eating tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay mix, fulminating against automobiles and attacking a theoretical concundrum so vast and intricate that he calls it ‘The Monster’. He says it is the Voice of God. The Monster looks like a Sudoku table. A Sudoku table has nine columns of numbers. The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000.

Simon’s toilet has fallen through the floor. Supermarket bags swollen with bus timetables pile like stalagmites on his tables and chairs. Ruts in the floor debris mark his route from bed to kitchen, kitchen to toilet, toilet back to bed. He is unemployed and unemployable.

In The Genius In My Basement, Alexander Masters offers a tender, humorous, intimate portrait of a supposedly ‘collapsed’ genius and a happy man.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Although this book doesn’t offer any real explanations for how Simon Norton came to be the person he is or what happened to his early maths genius, it’s nevertheless an entertaining book that shows who Simon is and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

THE GENIUS IN MY BASEMENT was released in the UK on 1st September. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.