The book...
From the author of The Invisible Hand comes the second book in the spellbinding Shakespeare’s Moon series.
The review...
Having read the synopsis, I was very intrigued to learn more about this book and indeed series. As I haven’t read the first in the Shakespeare’s Moon series, The Invisible Hand, I had very little idea of what to expect but it sounded, at the very least, like an original concept - not just in the re-telling of a classic Shakespeare play but the way in which it is done.
What I found was a highly creative and often fantastical take on the story of Romeo and Juliet - or Gillian, in this case - set in a very unusual boarding school and populated by a cast of characters (with a diverse range of multinational literary names: Sol Kerouac, Alain Verne, Miss Tartt and many more, including some far more obscure).
The school itself was a fascinating mix of the mundane (normal teenagers doing normal things) and the mysterious, magical and faintly sinister (the Magistrate, the Writers). It took me a long time to reach any kind of understanding of the nature of the school... had I read the first book, this would presumably have been slightly easier, but I actually didn’t mind at all as it generated an enigmatic atmosphere which sent my mind frequently spinning in all directions.
While Gillian, Kizzie, Angela, Zak and the rest deal with baffling events in the present day, the story is intercut with scenes from over four hundred years earlier, when a young writer undergoes some deeply strange experiences of his own (meeting a certain dark lady in the process)... and indeed past and present aren’t always so far apart....
There are a lot of literary references here and I quite often found myself heading off to Google in order to better understand certain things. I like that in a book.
Cold Fire was an unusual, absorbing and very thought-provoking read. Many thanks to the author and Rachel’s Random Resources for the opportunity to be part of the blog tour!
Purchase from Amazon UK or Amazon US
Purchase from Amazon UK or Amazon US
The author...
His mother was a hairdresser with her own business and his father worked in a local refinery which pours filth into the sky over the Mersey to this day. They married young and James was their first child. He has two younger brothers and a still-expanding family in the area. As an Everton fan he suffered years of Liverpool success throughout the seventies and was thrilled when his father took a job in Singapore and the family moved lock, stock and two smoking barrels to Asia.
He spent five years growing up in the city state before returning to the rain, storms, comprehensive schools and desolate beauty of the Scottish east coast. Later years took him and his family to baking hot Muscat in Oman, and a Syria that has since been bombed off the surface of the planet.
James lives in Madrid, Spain with his wife and two children.
Social media links...
Giveaway....
Win 5 x signed copies of Cold Fire with a special tactile pen (Open Internationally)
Terms and conditions: Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the link above. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners' information. \This will be passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
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