Tag: Accuracy

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The White Company | Review

Title: The White Company

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 338

Rating: 3/5

This is some more of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historic fiction, but unfortunately I didn’t quite find it as gripping as his Brigadier Gerard stories. I liked the accuracy and the research that he’d put in clearly comes across, but the plot itself wasn’t quite as gripping, perhaps because Sir Nigel Loring is less gripping than Gerard was. And both are pretty much standard old school colonialist types fighting for queen and country, which I can’t exactly relate to.

As you might expect from the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the plotting and the pacing was pretty good. Some of the dialogue was questionable because he spent a lot of time trying to imitate dialects etc, but overall it was readable enough. If anything, it was more the setting and the characters that held me back from loving it, although I did appreciate it for what it is.

There’s always something kind of fascinating about reading historical fiction that itself is historical, and I’ve always thought it was kind of cool that as well as writing the Holmes books, Conan Doyle also wrote The Lost World (a cracking read) and some historical fiction. Let’s just not talk about when he started to believe in fairies and stuff.

So this isn’t really something for the general reader, and it’s probably best avoided if you only know of Conan Doyle because of Holmes. If you’re a long-term fan and want to delve deeper into his work though, or if you’re particularly interested in historical fiction, it might be worth checking out.

For my part, I’m glad I read it, but I’m also glad that I read it as a bedtime book and so I didn’t have to spend huge chunks of time with it. I could dip in and out at will, often reading chapters instead of entire stories, so there was plenty there to enjoy – just over time.

Learn more about The White Company.


Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give | Review

Title: The Hate U Give

Author: Angie Thomas

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 448

Rating: 4.5*/5

 

Angie Thomas - The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give

 

I was a little bit worried about picking this one up because there’s been a lot of hype around its release and I knew before going in that it dealt with a policeman shooting an unarmed black dude. I worried that if it wasn’t well-executed, the whole thing would just feel off somehow. But I needn’t have worried.

True, I did have occasional problems with the book, but it was mostly just where stuff didn’t relate too well to what things are like here in the UK. Even the way that the characters talked is so different to how people talk here in the UK, but at the same time it was consistent with itself, if that makes sense. I might not have heard some of the slang, but it definitely felt like the dialogue was realistic and true to the characters.

I was also worried to begin with that because Khalil is killed so early in the book that there was a risk we wouldn’t ever get to know him. Luckily, Thomas thought of that and made sure that we continue to learn more about him after his death, and that actually reflects what generally happens when a cop kills someone. Considering it’s such sensitive material, it’s really, really well handled.

 

Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas

 

Honestly, I can see The Hate U Give going on to be considered a contemporary classic, and while I did have a couple of problems with it here and there, there was nothing that I’d consider a deal-breaker. It took me a little while to get used to the dialogue, but the same thing happens when I read an Irvine Welsh book. And after the first fifty or sixty pages, it became hard to put it down, even though strictly speaking not a great deal actually happens. Or more accurately, the biggest thing to happen is what happens right at the start of the book, and they spend the rest of the book coming to terms with it. It’s a pretty powerful way to tell a story.

All in all then, there’s not much that I can say here that hasn’t already been said somewhere else. I also see a lot of people saying that because they’re not black, they’re less qualified to share an opinion as to the accuracy of its depictions of race and culture. I’m not sure if that’s true, because I think that being from a different culture to the one portrayed made me appreciate it even more. Ultimately, it made me want to be a good person. Excellent.

 

Angie Thomas Quote

Angie Thomas Quote

 

Click here to buy The Hate U Give.