The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

 

56%

07.10.21

Interesting from a cultural viewpoint - accounts of everyday life, poverty and starvation in Malawi usually go unchronicled. But otherwise not emotionally gripping, and problematic in terms of the Western privilege of 'choosing' a boy to fund and champion.

Brazzaville Beach - William Boyd

54%
05.02.20

This confident book was so busy trying to be clever that it became confusing and ever-so-slightly dull. The cold and detached 'heroine' commands three separate narratives that are probably meaningfully linked if I felt engaged enough to analyse them.

Tangerine - Christine Mangan

46%
13.06.19

More of a lemon than a tangerine. If this hadn't been a library book, I'd have flung it across the room. A poorly written, badly edited, highly clichéd unconvincing story masquerading as literary fiction.

Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi

51%
14.04.19

Well, I enjoyed the African folklore aspects of this much-hyped YA novel, which are achingly rare in English-language literature. But it just wasn't very well written. Derivative on a macro level (Last Airbender and Hunger Games echoes abound), and stilted on a micro level (far too many repetitive adjectives) so that, despite all the fights and death, it was actually rather boring and unsubtle.

Empire of Ivory - Naomi Novik

56%
06.12.16

Temeraire is as appealing a dragon as you can imagine, so it's a shame that his rather dull human handler/companion Laurence gets most of the page time. Still, the alternative history is diverting even if the story itself isn't and the lack of proofreading too distracting in places.