The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

The Blurb On The Back:

”Dear you. The body you are wearing used to be mine.”

A woman awakens in a London park, dripping wet and surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves. In her pocket is a letter from her previous self: Rook Thomas, a superpowered operative in Britain’s most secret of secret agencies.

And then someone tries to kill her. Again.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Daniel O’Malley’s debut fantasy novel is an enjoyable albeit flawed story that reads as SPOOKS meets HARRY DRESDEN. The use of Myfanwy’s letters is a neat way of getting across a lot of complicated backstory and world building while also emphasising the personality changes. Myfanwy’s a likeable character – resourceful and possessing the confidence she’d previously lacked – she’s determined to do a job she finds she actually enjoyed and I liked her growing friendship with her PA Ingrid and Shantay (a Bishop in the Checquy’s US counterpart organisation). However, there are a number of issues with the writing – e.g. the story’s slow to start and it took me a while to get used to the letters from Myfanwy’s past self, and the large cast of characters made it difficult to keep track of who was who on the Court and what they could do, O’Malley uses a number of phrases that aren’t British (which threw me out of the text) and he’s clearly unfamiliar with what a pelvic exam entails and the effects of the same. At times the story threatens to fly apart at the seams and there are a number of areas where Myfanwy veers dangerously close to ‘with one leap our heroine was free’. For all that though, I did find myself enjoying this book – there are some smart one-liners and there’s a lot of potential with the story and O’Malley sets up an interesting overall arc. For those reasons, I will definitely check out the sequel.

Company Of Liars by Karen Maitland

The Blurb On The Back:

1348.

Plague has come to England. And the lies you tell will be the death of you.

A scarred trader in holy relics. A conjuror. A musician and his apprentice. A one-armed storyteller. A young couple on the run. A midwife. And a rune-reading girl.

A group of misfits bands together to escape the plague. But in their midst lurks a curse darker and more malign than the pestilence they flee …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Karen Maitland’s historical thriller is rich on period detail but low on actual thrills while the supernatural elements never really catch fire. I picked this up expecting a literary crime thriller thanks to the blurb on the back but while there’s a great sense of life in 14th century England and the fear that swept it during the arrival of the plague, the slow reveal of each of the company’s secrets is spoilt by the fact that they’re so predictable while a key twist is obvious from the start. I also found the supernatural elements unconvincing, mainly because no one tackles Narigorm on what she’s doing or even asks basic questions about it and while some of that can be explained by the superstitious nature of the times, it nonetheless reduces it to a get out of jail card. At the same time, the company themselves are little more than stock characters, which makes it difficult to care about them. This is a shame because Maitland does well at creating atmosphere and there was enough there for me to be interested in checking out her other work, even if this book didn’t do it for me.