ed_moore's reviews
276 reviews

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I think Jackson’s ‘Good Girl, Bad Blood’ was a rare case where the sequel was better than the initial book. In Pip’s search for her friends missing brother Jamie Reynolds I found the mystery just a little more engaging than her first EPQ project (though it wasn’t in this case a murder mystery). Despite such, it was a little more gritty (as much as a YA murder mystery can be) and generally more engaging, I did listen to it all across two days, the majority in one to its credit. 
 
The audiobook was also a bit less jarring as I had already listened to the first one and the same style, where music and crackling phone line effects are implemented. I still wasn’t a huge fan of this especially when a character has his voice obscured for the recording and from a listening perspective it was impossible to hear what his statement actually was due to how muffled it was. 
Pip also got a little bit of character development this time which she entirely lacked in the first book, so that also counts for something. 
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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hopeful lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

“We’re all mad here! I’m mad! You’re mad!”

Carroll ends ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ describing it as “a book of nonsense” which is more than fitting for his short dreamlike tale. It was pure chaos which I really should’ve read long ago given Carroll was raised in the same village as I and it is a story I am so familiar with. Alice falls down a rabbit hole into wonderland with no prior buildup, and this is common throughout a lot of the book, there is not a moment which is not utterly nonsensical. The scene rapidly changes and introduces so many quirky and fun characters however this does result in little description and development. My greatest surprise was that in the book there is no mention of Alice’s iconic blue dress she has become associated with (though I assume this would’ve featured in Carroll’s illustrations if I were not to have listened to the book). 

In relation to the audiobook, the narrator deserves credit as Jim Dale truly captured the absurdity of the story and acted each and every animal and character pretty well. I cannot hugely criticise level of development as it is a children’s book as affirmed by the afterword which really does stick with you. This was both striking because of how sweet and wholesome it is alike to the rest of the story about maintaining ones childhood, but in light of knowledge about Carroll as a person and the fact that Alice based off an Alice he knew and had great affection for it does also end on a slightly uneasy note. 

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

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funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

“It is like the sunset and the stars, we are not awed by their loveliness as they’re too common to our eyes” 

Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’ was initially written to be a serious guide to boating and then has become recognised as a comedy regarding the failures of J, Harris and George in their attempt at a fortnight boating down the Thames. I however don’t think I learnt anything about boating down the Thames, not that I particularly intended to put it to use anyhow. It was however genuinely quite funny at points which I had doubt wether it would be or not. 

Jerome fills the book with various anecdotes about past trips and ranging from fly fishing to putting up pictures with limited success. The trio are generally a group of bumbling idiots struggling to get by on their river retreat. There was also a long anecdote about wandering graveyards and visiting tombstones, which the narrator states distaste toward (a slight attack given I have a habit for graveyard wandering). 
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”

Dickens’ iconic opening to ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ captures the duality of this book so well. He claimed it to be the best of his writing and of his works I have read I would place it only below ‘A Christmas Carol’ so agree to an extent. It focuses on both sides of the French Revolution (which scores it points as such is perhaps my favourite event in history) with a blurring between the good and the evil. On the one hand Dickens in his usual fashion sympathises with the poor and writes profoundly about the sufferings in Paris, however the protagonists are upper-middle class and aristocrats that fled to London and return to France in the midst of the revolution, caught up in the relentless bloodshed of the guillotine, and the reader seems to be influenced to root for their success. I however don’t know where I was rooting, and didn’t see the Defarge’s as antagonists in the way they are established to be, just do know that the scenes in Paris were leagues above the love story set in London and I really didn’t care for such elements of the book. 

Even in a shorter work of Dickens in contrast to his frequent tomes the lack of editing due to serialised publishing meant the novel suffers. It shone in scenes such as the storming of the Bastille and in establishing ‘la guillotine’ as almost a character in its own right, however I also felt that with editing a few characters should’ve been cut due to them not serving that great a purpose but Dickens being stuck with them due to their initial early inclusion. Another random note is that I noticed Dickens tracked time using Oxford terms such as ‘Hilary’ or ‘Michaelmas’ which I just felt a need to add such observation. 

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ was a nostalgic reread for me. I have  had an audiobook hold on it since the series came out months ago and watching such made me realise I remembered very little of the plot of these books. I need to be mindful of the target age demographic of Percy Jackson being down as ‘middle grade’ hence I am only basing my review from a perspective of enjoyment and nostalgia, and both were there. I flew through the book and did enjoy being reacquainted with Camp Half Blood and my first introduction to mythology which is now one of my favourite areas in literature. The plot was consistently engaging as Percy travels to the Underworld in search for Zeus’ stolen master bolt, but also in the same lens didn’t really ever take a breather, and was just brief monster fight or notable place visited after monster fight. I also forgot it was narrated by Percy in first person, and though I was very much a fan of the bare bones sarcastic first person chapter titles, I really didn’t love the narration. 

The huge difference between my first read years ago and this reread other than my age is my awareness of Greek mythology, given my first read was my introduction to it on a technicality, and with wider knowledge Riordan is very brief on the roles of monsters and their myths, but is also much more accurate than I expected (as accurate as one can be with a myth as their nature is to be retold and passed down). 
Ultimately it was an enjoyable and nostalgic reread and thats what counts in the case of such a book. 
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

“All I know is I’m totally alone, all alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who has lost his compass and map, is that what it means to be free?” 
 
I have so many emotions towards Murakami’s ‘Kafka on the Shore’, and it’s really difficult to determine how I feel about it. It is about a 15 year old boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home and settles in a library. His story is somewhat a retelling of the Oepidus Myth which is already a messed up tale, but combined with the elements of magical realism Murikami implements, this book just becomes really weird. 
 
The other protagonist of whom held the alternate view point is a sixty year old man called Nakata of whom brings many of the weird elements. I adored his storyline and he was so wholesome and just innocently went around talking to cats and making it rain fish while pursuing some goal which he never really knows the true purpose of or even where he is supposed to be going. Nakata was such a fun and wholesome character whose story was just repeatedly ruined by the enveloping perspective of Kafka who really was just a very horny teenager. 
 
On one hand the ‘weird’ of this book reminded me a lot of Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and the Margarita’ with the aforementioned fish and talking cats and unexplainable appearance of Colonel Sanders for a plot convenience which he really did not need to be the face of KFC to convey. The other kind of weird completely ruined all the magic and was just disturbing. Murikami couldn’t go two chapters without describing erection or sexual fantasies, and constantly felt a need to intimately describe the penis. There are two instances of rape which he hardly recognises and handles awfully, many attempts to describe periods and the female body that he clearly had no comprehension of, and though my comprehension is by no means great I can absolutely tell you Murakami’s was beyond awful, and numerous extremely violent episodes of animal cruelty and mutilation which did not need to be so intimate to convey the point that the plot aimed to. Also a lot felt unexplained in the ending, as is probably inevitable with such a wacky book, but that concern is far from the issues I had with the violence and erotica.
 
It is disappointing really, because the plot was captivating and at its heart I felt was about belonging, and not knowing where you truly belong until you are forced to spend time away from there. I adored Nakata’s character and the ending really struck me in the feels, but just so many times I was pulled away from the story with disgusting descriptions and depictions of erotica which were far from necessary and handled awfully. It was a brilliant plot completely ruined because Murakami can’t keep his sexual fantasies to himself.
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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

“We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthly atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us uh the extremity of impotent desire”
 
Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ describes a steamboat journey down the Congo river where the sailor Marlow is in search of the missing esteemed ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad’s work has been praised as a critique of the European blindness towards imperialism and the actions of empire, set in the brutal Leopoldian control of the Congo, however I struggled to identify many places where such was the case. It didn’t have much substance in regards to plot and was just extremely racist in language, (the use of objectifying terminology of the Congolese natives and tribespeople in addition to frequent use of drastic racial slurs), depiction of native characters as below human and also no such narratorial or descriptive condemnation of the actions of colonialism or treatment of native people by the protagonist Marlow or Conrad’s narrative voice. Whilst some claim in highlighting the atrocities of imperialism Conrad was critiquing it, with the awful way such was handled, the tragedies dismissed as normal and even praised in places, I cannot see how ‘Heart of Darkness’ was doing anything but serving as a product of and contributing to the racist societal systems of its time, and struggle to understand even further why it is so frequently referenced and canonised. 

Stepping away from the major problems with ‘Heart of Darkness’ and its handling of race, beyond that the plot nor the characters were even particularly well developed or engaging, Kurtz is just an awful ivory trader that is shaped out to be a hero and Marlow some opinion-less lackey who falls into the colonialist system he has built around him, and the plot of the novel constitutes of primarily racist remarks towards Congolese natives. 

I really struggle to look back and pick up much of value I took from reading ‘Heart of Darkness’ other than not to think or write alike to Jospeh Conrad. 
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The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

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5.0

Having just finished a reread of ‘The Hobbit’ the opportunity falls to backlog ‘The Lord of the Rings’. I first read the trilogy as long ago as 2015 I believe and have reread it, but not very recently so until I reread don’t have loads to offer in terms of review. 

‘The Return of the King’ is the finale of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ concluding Frodo and the fellowships quest, and by far my favourite instalment. I love the dynamic between Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn and the Battle of Rohan is the personal highlight of the trilogy. Within the next year I will probably reread them as my return to ‘The Hobbit’ has absolutely rekindled the spark of Middle Earth within me.
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

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4.5

Having just finished a reread of ‘The Hobbit’ the opportunity falls to backlog ‘The Lord of the Rings’. I first read the trilogy as long ago as 2015 I believe and have reread it, but not very recently so until I reread don’t have loads to offer in terms of review. 

‘The Two Towers’ follows a few narratives due to the dissolution of the Fellowship. I adored the sections with Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn however the ‘Sam and Frodo in the mountains’ chapters that make up 50% of the books are notoriously long and dull, and quite a graft to read through, at least for a much younger me. That perspective may have changed nowadays.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

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4.5

Having just finished a reread of ‘The Hobbit’ the opportunity falls to backlog ‘The Lord of the Rings’. I first read the trilogy as long ago as 2015 I believe and have reread it, but not very recently so until I reread don’t have loads to offer in terms of review. 

‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ begins Frodo’s quest to Mordor to destroy the ring found by Bilbo in the Hobbit and prevent the return of the dark lord Sauron. It is brimming with nature however and still super wholesome, it is outshone by the later two instalments however.