Author Interviews, Book Reviews & Promotions discussion

A Dangerous Fortune



I had to finish this last night. Obsessed!

The book had is all! Intrigue, murder, lust & love, a variety of interesting characters (I'm thinking Dallas and Dynasty here), double-crossing, backstabbing...

Basically, if you have not read this author before, I recommend this book as a starter. Just don't be too surprised by some of the things the author makes the characters do - consider it trademark Follett!

In a nutshell, the corrupt & mysterious world of banking set in the 19th Century.

Rated: 5 Stars

It seemed to be strange that the day after I finished this book was the 22nd January 2015, exactly 70 years since the liberation of captives held in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp.

This book was not an easy read. It deals with a time in history that many of us choose to remember (or forget) in a variety of ways. Yet, this is the first time I have read about the events surrounding the war from a different point of view. "The Book Thief" and "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" are notable examples of alternative reads in this genre.

Some of the characters in this book are Jews who have never actively followed their faith, and are willing to give up their religious views to convert into Christianity. However, nothing seems to be enough to hide their background and a lot of emphasis was placed on physical features, e.g. someone's nose!

Truly, the extent to which the Nazi regime went to justify their actions (i.e. murdering innocent people who did not fit their idea of the acceptable) is truly appalling, but the fact people believed it as the truth is worse.

I read the book and was in awe of the way the author told his story in a way in which you actually felt for most of the characters, even the ones that were truly stupid!

I recommend this for those wanting to read about events during the Second World War from a different perspective. A few times, the pace was very slow, but stick with it. It was truly thought-provoking.

Rated: 4 Stars

I have been recovering from a cold and sought comfort in a book or two...

My Blog post on this http://theevolutiontrilogy.blogspot.c...

Devoured the rest of this trilogy yesterday! Really enjoyed it too :)

Finally got round to reading this... being ill always helps!

It would have helped to have re-read Divergent since I read it ages ago, so at times I had to remember what had happened before.

Either way, I was totally hooked and ate it up.

In this installment, Tris and Tobias have to figure out what future they have within the confines of the community. When the truth is revealed, they have to decide whether to stay in its sanctuary or to discover to truth about their existence.

When I read Divergent I thought it was like Hunger Games, but in this second book it morphed into something better. Having read "Dust" and "Shift" I really enjoyed this take on a new society and way of life. The idea that genetic manipulation can lead to catastrophe interests me a lot.

The style is definitely YA, so at times it is too tame. Teenagers would do a lot more than what is implied...

Needless to say, I went straight on to the last book - eager to find out the outcome for Tris and Tobias.


So engrossed in the story-line that I read this straight after Insurgent.

Ultimately, this is my kind of story. A surreal future awaits humanity after it tries to genetically enhance humans. Destroy or be destroyed.

The future for Tris and Tobias looks bleak on the outside, even the community had more to offer.

Without spoilers, the ending nearly brought me to tears, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

It would be great to read what happens in another 20 years!

Highly recommend.

I Truly Lament
Working through the Holocaust
By Mathias B. Freese
I truly Lament is a unique and remarkable compilation of 27 Holocaust stories. Each story explores different points of view, concepts and theses all corresponding to the Holocaust. The stories take the reader on a deep, psychological and profound emotional journey into the stark reality of what it was like to live, exist or to die in the inhumane conditions of the concentration camps run by the Nazis. In the opening chapters the stories deal mostly with the plight of Jews in concentration camps that have no choice to endure the cruel and unjustified punishments of the prison guards who would decide their own type of weapon as they saw fit. Many of the men were ordered to dig trenches for hours on end, often resulting in their death as the Nazi ideology behind this cruel task was to wear the men out to a point where they evolved into Muselmänner (the stage before the ovens). Existence in the camps was short, nasty and brutish without meaning. The Nazis kept the men alive upon the barest thread of existence, teased individuality out of them as they wanted the men to loath themselves to their last dying moment. Most vile of all the Nazis wanted the men to willingly go along with their own extermination.
Perhaps the most harrowing of all the stories is “Hummingbird” where a Holocaust survivor tells us his own unique story at the age of 82. Part of him wants to live, and a part of him doesn’t mind dying as his life was so consumed by his existence in the camps that he doesn’t know what it was like to grow up without those horrors. He is damaged in so many ways and feels his life is in transit as he was made to slog through one camp to another in his younger years. He concludes that he now wanders the earth as an old man in search of a planet and the only reason he survived the camps was that his body desired to go on long after his mind had given up.
Mathias B. Freese has created a powerful thought-provoking work of fiction that cleverly examines a number of diverse perspectives on the Holocaust through several different writing styles, ranging from gothic, Utopian, romantic and chimerical. Each and every story will no doubt leave the reader speechless as we follow the few survivors that managed to outlive the brutality and starvation imposed by the Nazis, only to find their lives are full of insecurities and there is no escape from the torment they once suffered. All of which leads me to close and agree that we will never be done with the Holocaust and this book is living proof of that and I fully agree with other reviewers that it should be mandatory reading for all.
My Ranking:
5 Stars




I Truly Lament