Thanthi TV
1.0
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YouTube Channel
Thanthi TV is a News and Infotainment Channel in Tamil Language, based in Chennai, caters to Tamil...
His Majesty's Hope (Maggie Hope Mystery, #3)
8.5
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Book
World War II has finally come home to Britain, but it takes more than nightly air raids to rattle...
Small Island
6.5
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Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart...
The Selfish Society
9.0
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Ambitious and wide-ranging, The Selfish Societyreveals the vital importance of understanding our...
Parenting children education self development
The True Queen
10.0
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When sisters Muna and Sakti wake up on the peaceful beach of the island of Janda Baik, they can’t...
Fantasy Historical Fantasy Fiction Novels
Of Manners and Murder
8.0
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Book
Of Manners and Murder is the first in the delightful new Dear Miss Hermione mystery series from...
Malcolm Of Earth
Book
They took him from his world to end a war on theirs… They got more than they bargained for. ...
science fiction sci-fi military sci-fi
Even though there’s a huge shortage of young men (they’ve been ‘shipped off’ to the rest of occupied Europe to ‘work’) and women greatly outnumber men, women are divided into categories, or castes. These depend on their age, heritage, reproductive status and physical characteristics, and each category is named after a significant woman in Hitlers life. Rose is a Geli, one of the elite. Young, beautiful, and most importantly, fertile.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and read it far too quickly. It had a black and white, 1950’s movie atmosphere about it, and I could easily picture the people and scenes in my head. It brought to mind The Man in the High Castle with regards to Occupation, and 1984 with regards to feeling as though you’re constantly watched - as well as the people being told how to react, think and live. This was especially evident in Rose’s job: she rewrites classics so that they’re in line with the regimes ideals: so no independent, strong females, and all the male leads are changed to Sturmbannführer (at least!).
The drudgery of everyday life made me think of how I envisaged life in the GDR - as well as only allowing state sanctioned literature, there was only one radio channel in Grand Alliance Britain, with some brave people listening to illegal foreign radio stations, knowing that this could result in extreme punishment.
When Rose goes to Widowland near Oxford (there are a few throughout the country) to find the source of a potential rebellion, she’s shocked to see older women living in abject poverty, only permitted to eat a subsistence diet and work menial jobs. But these women are intelligent, and they’re not happy in their state regulated lives. Between her reading of classic books and meeting these women, Rose begins to see what’s wrong with the world she has been living in, and this dawning realisation is so well described. We see how reading ‘subversive’ classics seems to get under her skin, and how she realises that the treatment of women is wrong in this Grand Alliance.
I could go on and on. I raced through this book, and I loved the ending, which came far too quickly!
Many thanks to Quercus for my copy of this book through NetGalley.
Coalitions
Tabletop Game
Coalitions is based on the series of conflicts known as the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars....