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Die Trying (Jack Reacher Book#2)
Die Trying (Jack Reacher Book#2)
Lee Child | 2010 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.4 (12 Ratings)
Book Rating
Another action-packed outing for the lone star.
This is just the book I needed to be reading by the side of the pool this summer, hard to put down; an easy enjoyable read.

In Die Trying we meet up again with ex-military police Major Jack reacher, who accidentally gets swept up in the kidnapping of an FBI special agent (no surprises she happens to be hot!?!) While following the attempts of the FBI to get their agent back and Jack’s attempts to free her, an ever-larger plot unfolds raising the stakes.

Ok, you are going to have to be ready to suspend belief a lot in this book, which I usually struggle with (I love a good eye-roll) but it is fairly easy to do with this book thanks to fast pacing and great characters. I do recommend you just go along for the ride. I have very little in the way of military, combat or arms knowledge and no idea how accurate the details in this book are but they are written in such a commanding and interesting way I was more than happy to nod along and go with it.

It does slow a bit in the early to middle stages but the last quarter is full in your face action.

Reacher is just what you want from a hero no-nonsense and a lot of great walking through his thought processes. He's not an overcomplicated character and that feels nice and fresh to me. There is the all too predictable romance angle but its fairly concise and not too in your face.

This is just a fun read.
  
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ClareR (6106 KP) rated The Unravelling in Books

Feb 23, 2022  
The Unravelling
The Unravelling
Polly Crosby | 2022 | Fiction & Poetry, Mystery
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I absolutely adored this thoughtful, beautiful story of a young woman, Tartelin, going to live on the island of Dohhalund as an assistant to Marianne Stourbridge, and elderly lepidopterist.

Marianne is a difficult woman to get to know: she’s short tempered, doesn’t really want to share any of herself with Tartelin - and she has a lot of secrets to share.

Tartelin is mourning the death of her mother. She’s a young woman, alone in the world. She probably chooses the job with Marianne because it’s somewhere so different from her childhood home and her mother’s art studio.

I do think that Dohhalund goes some way to helping Tartelin begin the grieving process. It sounds like a stark, beautiful place. At one end is a military base, and at the other is Marianne’s house and land. Her family had lived on Dohhalund for generations, until the military had ordered them to leave. After her return, it’s evident that many of the buildings have started to fall into the sea. This reflects to some extent, Marianne’s physical and Tartelin’s mental states. Both women are deeply affected by what has happened in their pasts.

This is such an emotive, beautifully descriptive book. It’s a slow burner, a story of friendship and love, where secrets are revealed, people are reunited and new friendships forged.

This gorgeous book had me in tears by the end, with characters I really cared for. As the Pearl Women in the book often said: “The sea is made up of unspeakable sadness”, and whilst this novel was sad, there was also hope.
Highly recommended (as is Polly Crosby’s first book “The Illustrated Child”).
  
War of the Ring (First Edition)
War of the Ring (First Edition)
2004 | Adventure, Book, Dice Game, Fantasy, Miniatures
WAR OF THE RING REVIEW
This game is huge in more ways than one. Firstly the board is 41 by 54 inches so you are going to need a big table. Then there are a mass of plastic figures representing military units, blue for the Free Peoples and Red for the forces of Shadow. There are also figures for the main characters and others, and four decks of character and event cards. There is a 48 page reasonably well written and illustrated rule book. War of the Ring is a complex game and after set up which can take some time, play takes somewhere in the region of three hours.

So is it worth it? In my view yes.

Reviewer: Ashley Perryman
Read the full review here: https://www.board-game.co.uk/war-of-the-ring-review/
  
The Boys Volume 9: Big Ride
The Boys Volume 9: Big Ride
Garth Ennis | 2011 | Comics & Graphic Novels
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Exposition ahoy!
Hughie is back from his sabbatical and contemplating rejoining The Boys in their crusade against capes. He spends some time with Colonel Mallory, the man who set The Boys up in the first place, and learns more about the history of corrupt corporation Vought American, and their attempts to use superheroes in the military.
Meanwhile, one of the Seven, Jack from Jupiter, is being framed for the murder of a trans prostitute. This story was harder to read, because of the language used by Butcher in speaking to and about the trans people.
Things are starting to come to a head, and it feels like Ennis has his eyes on the finish line, and is now putting in all the back story and setting up the inevitable conflict.
  
WO
Wars Of The Roses
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I think the title of the book is rather misleading - it's not really about the Wars of the Roses per se. The blurb on the inside of the dust jacket tells me it's a book looking more at the impact of this civil strife and the political, social and military situation. It does, as it claims, include many primary sources; 'English and European writings, diplomatic correspondence, personal letters and propoganda', but it is the promised 'detailed interpretation based on modern research' that I must have missed while reading this! To me this was a series of unconnected original documents linked with short paragraphs of text by Lander. In many places the book is so bogged down with inumerable footnotes that the flow of the text is completely lost.

Nice idea, but it doesn't work here.