This week....

I'm reading...

Big news this week! I finished my audiobook of The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts this week! It has taken me nearly two months to get through it. I was listening to it whenever I walked from the train station to work, so with no commute and no walking it took a lot longer than it could have. I did try to listen again a couple of weeks ago while working but I don't think the time was right given that it was about a a post virus world where millions were killed before there is an almighty battle between good and evil.

I thought I would go for something light and fun, but I think I missed that when I chose for my next book to listen to though. I ended up deciding to listen to The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan. Irish crime is going to be light and fun right?

I have also just started The Postmistress by Alison Stuart, by which I mean I am just a couple of pages in. I want to read this one now as I have this author's newest book for review. I don't know 100% if the two books are linked but they are set in the same town so I figure there will be some crossover.

The ebook that I am reading at the moment is Jilted by Rachael Johns. I thought that I had read most of this author's books but I recently discovered that there are quite a few to read. I read Talk of the Town a couple of weeks ago but now I am going back to the very beginning!

The last book I will mention this week is a book called Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kaufmann. This is the next book for the Cook the Books online bookclub. It's not my normal kind of read at all, and it isn't the kind of food that I normally eat either so it will be very interesting to see how I go with this book!

I'm watching....

If I achieved one thing this week it is that I am now all up to date with Outlander. That means I now have to wait for each new episode and then I will be waiting impatiently throughout the next #droughtlander.

I think I am getting a bit of entertainment overload to be honest. I have been watching lots of things over the last couple of months, and there is still a lot of interesting things available, but I just can't be bothered to actually watch any of it. So where I have watched musicals, theatre performances, symphony performances in previous weekends this weekend .....nothing. And that's despite the fact that I know that there will be things that I have missed the opportunity to see by not watching them.

One thing I did watch was the Music from the Home Front Anzac Day concert which was a concert featuring Australian and Kiwi music artists coming together to thank both our service men and women and those who are working on the front lines against COVID19. There were lots of amazing performances and it was a really nice way to spend a Saturday night. What it did reiterate is that I am very out of touch with the new music coming out of this country.

Life...

Bob the Builder has been busy again this weekend. This year our plan is to renovate both of the bathrooms and the front yard. We thought though we would start with a smaller project which is the laundry and toilet so that we can then take the lessons that we learned this time when we do the bathrooms a bit later this year. This will therefore be a practice run in terms of the tiling process. There's a bit of painting to be done still so I will share a picture next week

I thought I would share one performance from the Music from the Home Front Anzac Day concert. I am not sure how well known this song is around the world but it certainly is a song that is well known here.

Posts from the last week

Review: Chocolate Cake for Breakfast by Danielle Hawkins
Weekend Cooking: April Bakes
Alphabet 2020: D is for Diggers

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

Year One by Nora Roberts

I've been reading Nora Roberts books for a long time now. Whilst there are plenty of her books that I have really enjoyed, over the last few years there have been a number of her books, particularly the trilogies, where I felt like I had read them all before. Yes, the names have been changed, and the locations but there was a certain sameness that lead me to think that maybe, just maybe I was done with her books. At least the trilogies with a paranormal bent. I didn't necessarily feel that way about the standalone suspense titles, but I also haven't read any, mainly because I haven't been reading very much anyway.

Recently, a few of my online friends began talking about this book and how it was different from other books by her. After one person said it was different I wasn't interested, but after hearing several people saying the same my interest began to be piqued. I was looking for a new audiobook and I wanted something different from the historical fiction and crime I had been listening to so I thought I would give this a go.

So, was it different? It most certainly was, and yet there were also parts of the book where  it was definitely a Nora Roberts book.

The story basically unfolds as an epidemic called the Doom spreads around the world. It starts in Scotland but soon spreads all around the world as people travel and make contact with strangers who then make contact with others and and travel etc etc. Soon, law and order, government and communication collapses as millions of people die. For those who are immune, or who have special talents, survival becomes paramount, and it soon becomes survival of the fittest.

There are entire sections in this book where it is full of the horror of a world falling to pieces and it was really well done. The fear that the characters feel as they try to get out of New York, running the gauntlet through humans who fear the uncanny - the faeries, the witches and warlocks, the elves - but also the uncanny who are on the dark side and who prey on humans. Really, these scenes are the strength of the novel.

It is, however, this same uncanny element which had me thinking wait, this is definitely Nora writing here. For example, there are times when one of the main characters, Lana, lapses into trance and starts prophesying (for want of a better word) and that felt familiar and there were times when I wondered if maybe we weren't sure about what type of book it was meant to be. Is it meant to be a horror novel, or a paranormal fantasy, or a combination, or something different again.

While I was reading (or should I say listening?) I did find myself looking for the tell tale NR signs.  In a normal NR trilogy you have six people who come together and then pair off into romantic partnerships. There were times when I thought well here it comes, but in the end where ever this happened it was in effect off the page.

Now I need to wait for the next book in the trilogy which is due out at the end of the year.  I hope that the next two books are still in the same vein as this book. Undeniably Nora Roberts, but undeniably different, with the potential to be even more different if she could just step away from some of her  normal cliches.