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Zorpia - Meet friends, chat, flirt

Social Networking and Lifestyle

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Zorpia is a people meeting network that offers a friendly and interactive way of finding new mates...

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2165 KP) rated With a Little Bit of Blood in Books

Jun 20, 2018

Henry and Eliza Must Solve a House Party Murder

Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins have been invited to the first house party thrown by the new Lord and Lady Ashford (she the former Clara Eynsford-Hill). The timing is perfect since a couple of strange things have forced the duo to look for a place to stay. However, the first morning a fellow guest is killed during the rabbit hunt. Henry is sure it was a hunting accident, but Eliza isn’t so sure. Who is right?

This is another fun mystery with the characters made famous by Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. The plot did seem to start slowly, however by the end I realized how things played into the overall story. A few of the regulars are reduced to cameos, but it was still nice to catch up with them. We have a rather large cast of characters, but it was always easy to keep them straight as the story unfolded. We get some fun with new (for 1913) things like airplanes and cars as well as mentions of the more serious things unfolding in the world at the time.

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Play Magazine: The home of PS4, PS3 & PS Vita

Book and Magazines & Newspapers

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Love PlayStation? You need Play, your one stop for all PS4, PS3 and PS Vita content. The gospel of...

The Craft of Contemporary Commercial Music

Greg McCandless and Daniel McIntyre

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In the contemporary world, the role of the commercial composer has grown to include a wide range of...

Phil Leader (619 KP) rated Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3) in Books

Nov 14, 2019

This is the third book of the Shattered Sea trilogy and takes place a couple of years after the previous book, Half the World. The long forecast war between Gettland and the High King commences with the High King's champion, Bright Yilling, invading Throvenland. Princess Skara manages to escape to Gettland where she joins the allies so that she can take her homeland back from the invaders.

Father Yarvi is also determined to strike back, to carry out the oath of vengeance he swore against his father's killers. To do this he must defeat Bright Yilling and his army and then take on the High King himself. But just how far is he prepared to go in order to secure victory?

I actually can't say too much in detail about this book without giving anything away. Much like the previous book, this one seems like a fairly conventional epic fantasy style story for a good half. But then Abercrombie starts to twist the knife as the reader's expectations based on the usual fantasy tropes are knocked down one by one.

Certainly there is much here that is unconventional in many ways and I confess to having a rather mad smile on my face at one point due to the utter craziness of what is going on - but Abercrombie handles it well having laid the groundwork well in advance. It is never clear who is going live and who is going to die, and who is going to win and who is going to lose.

After the first two books, which have quite a lot of conversations and philosophy, this is essentailly one long drawn out battle against various parties in various locations. Some battles are fought with swords and others with words, but both are just as deadly for the loser. The fight scenes are very violent and as expected it's pretty grim and dark at times.

There is plenty of scope left at the end for more stories set in the world of the Shattered Sea and these would be welcome but it also clear that the story of Yarvi and his revenge has been completed.

Not the best of the series, the first half is probably too conventional but the second half turns so much on its head it redeems the book completely.

Rating: Lots of violent battles and deaths, some scatalogical phrases and some non-explict sexual scenes. Young Adult but more at the Adult than Young end of that spectrum