Hidden – DaneCobain.com

Title: Curioddity

Author: Paul Jenkins

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 312

Rating 4/5

This was an interesting little read for me because it isn’t a book that I picked out for myself. Instead, it was sent to me as a belated birthday gift from my BookTube friend Time for Books. In fact, I think it was a thrift shop find and so that makes it my first official thrift shop book. Awesome!

This is a sort of humorous magical realism book, and it reminded me of what The Shadow of the Wind could have been if the author hadn’t disappeared up his own arse. We follow the exploits of a private detective who’s hired to work for the Museum of Curioddity, which houses all sorts of unusual artefacts. He’s actually hunting down a missing box of levity, which is the opposite of gravity.

What was cool about this was the idea that this magic is all around us, and we just need to un-see what we’re looking at if we want this entire hidden world to be revealed to us. It also played with ideas about fate and destiny, as well as the power of narrative in the sense that the characters would often find themselves in just the right place and they’d remark on the fact that the only reason that happened is that it had to happen.

It’s very tongue-in-cheek and reasonably accurately described on the rear cover as a cross between Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams. I’d argue that it’s more like Douglas Adams with Terry Pratchett, but Pratchett is one of my favourite authors and so I was down with that. Sure, there were occasional bits here and there that fell a little flat, but I think you’re always going to have that with a humorous book. I’d recommend it for sure.

Click here to buy Curioddity.

Cassandra Clare – City of Bones | Review

Title: City of Bones

Author: Cassandra Clare

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 448

Rating: 5*/5

Cassandra Clare – City of Bones

Wow. So I suppose I had relatively low expectations for this one, and I’m not really sure why. I think part of it is the fact that everybody has been talking about it non-stop for the last few years and so I automatically assumed that because this series is popular, I wouldn’t like it. But the YA fans on YouTube – and the Netflix adaptation – both helped to convince me to give it a chance. That and the fact that I was able to get it on the cheap from a charity shop.

It turns out that this book is definitely worth the hype. I mean, I loved it, and now I want to read the rest of the series, and I’ll be prioritising it over some of the other series that I have on the go. The characters are three-dimensional and the story line is great, and while it does include a couple of cliches here and there, I kind of feel as though this is what started them off in the first place.

Of course, I have the benefit of having seen the Netflix series (which is good, I guess, but not as good as the book) and some of her interviews with popular booktubers which helps to give you a good idea of what she’s like as a person. This is the kind of series where more context is usually a good thing because there’s so much to the fictional world that you can almost never know it all. Plus it has its own unique political landscape which is well thought out and as absorbing as the stuff that George R. R. Martin writes in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Cassandra Clare

I’m not going to go into detail about the story line because there are potential spoilers and because most people already know about it. But it’s effectively about a teenage girl who discovers a whole hidden side to her life full of shadowhunters, vampires, werewolves and warlocks. It’s YA, but it’s thoughtful YA that reflects the multi-faceted world that we live in today. It’s very well done.

Overall, then, I regret coming to this book late, and I also regret letting my opinion be swayed by the simple fact that other people enjoyed it. It lived up to the hype, which books like this rarely do, and that alone makes it well worth reading. It’s not the right book for everyone of course, but if you’re already on the fence and debating it then definitely – jump right on in. You can thank me later.