December 2022 and January 2023 Reading

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I do a monthly round up for everything we’ve read each month. Himself focuses on science articles and forums and news, so he’s not getting a section – books only!

I think I’ve done well extracting reviews from them this month, especially from large boy.

Large boy

The Novice, The Inquisition, The Battlemage, and The Outcast by Taran Matharu

Yep, large boy found another series and consumed them all in super-fast succession. And yes, again, he’s refusing to try any other series by the same author. I really don’t understand his logic, but there’s no reasoning with this boy when it comes to books. Or anything else to be fair.

It’s about a boy called Fletcher who lives in a village in the middle of nowhere. One day, soldiers are passing through and one of them gives him a book, a diary of a summoner and a summoning leather. Somehow, Fletcher becomes a commoner summoner who can summon demons. He has a very rare demon. He is then sent to a school for learning how to summon demons to make them become battlemages to fight against the orcs. On a school battle mission, he learns who his parents were and that they came from a town that is now entirely full of orcs.

He goes to their town and fights all the orcs and the orc shamans (who can summon demons) with his small army.

The Outcast is a prequel about one of Fletcher’s teachers who had a similar story and becomes the first commoner summoner.

Large boy says this series was amazing!

Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen

This is about a boy who lived in a tower block with his mother who’s scared to go outside. It’s a first person thing, so it doesn’t mention his name much. One day, there’s poison in the air and horrible plants destroy tower blocks. But, for some reason, it doesn’t destroy his block. He later discovers that there were people who also live in his tower block who figured out how to stop the plants. After a few weeks, a rescue team comes in a helicopter. His mum slowly gets better throughout the story.

It was “decent”, he says.

Podkin One-Ear, Uki and the Outcasts, The Gift of Dark Hollow and the Beast of Grimheart by Kieran Larwood

It’s about a world entirely populated by rabbits instead of humans. There is Gormolech, an ancient power made of iron that infects anything that it touches. It started off taking over the chief of a small village who had one of the first twelve gifts that the ancients (humans) left behind. Podkin, a rabbit who’s village was destroyed by Gormolech and his first chief (Scramashank), has to venture with his friends to collect the hammer of Applecross. another of the twelve gifts. The hammer can create iron-piercing weapons.

Uki and the Outcasts is set after they’ve defeated Gormolech. This features a two furred rabbit kicked out of his village who is fused with a spirit, given extra strength as he, two other rabbits, one is a dusk wraith and one is a jerboa racer. They have to travel the globe to capture evil spirits to stop them from inhabiting rabbit hosts and making the world chaos.

(review written and typed personally by large boy)

Also read:

• The Jamie Drake Equation by Christopher Edge
• Happy to Help (eventually) by Liz Pichon
• Brain Freeze by Tom Fletcher
• Space Boy by David Walliams
• Kay’s Anatomy by Adam Kay

Small boy

Happy to Help (eventually) by Liz Pichon

It’s very good. Tom Gates gets his pants up a tree in storm Delia. It was really funny and he’s now read all the Tom Gates books. I’m relieved because I don’t have to put up with any more of that garbage.

How to Train your Parents by Pete Johnson

It’s about Louis, a boy who moves to a new school and he went to a theatre and did something which small boy has forgotten, because he read this book last year and that’s a long time ago now. I don’t think I’m going to get anything else out of him, sorry.

Also read:

• By Jeff Kinney
  • Rodrick Rules
  • The Long Haul
  • Dog Days
  • The Ugly Truth
  • Cabin Fever
  • The Third Wheel
  • Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories
• Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
• Spacebaby by Henriette Branford
• You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum by Andy Stanton
• The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams
• My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord by David Solomons
• Miroc the Goblin Shark by Adam Blade
• The Battle of Kupe and Te Wheke by Leonie Agnew

Me

Peril en mer d’Iroise Jean-Luc Bannalec

Sad to say I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the rest of the Commissaire Dupin series that I’ve been reading for a good while. It took my a whole 6 weeks to get though the entire book, partly because reading in French is always slower, partly because I was sick for a week and just needed my sleep, and partly because I wasn’t that motivated to pick it up and to keep reading each night.

It’s hard to put my finger on why I wasn’t as absorbed as I have been by other books in the series. I think maybe because a lot of the action takes part at sea, there are storms and tempests and lots of getting soaked. It just didn’t have the same evocative atmosphere as the other books. I think I found the premise, of a discovered, stolen and hidden 2m tall artefact, a bit far-fetched too.

I won’t be put off picking up the next in the series though.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

At face value this is a lovely story of intense love and terrible tragedy. It has some fabulous quirky characters, excellent feminist principles and the inevitable happy ending. I found it compelling and sped through it in about a week. However, it has the distinct feeling of having been written for screen. I’m sure it’s my own prejudice, but I feel kind of cheated when a novel seems not focussed on being a literary work, but more aimed at getting a film made and thus more for the purpose of making lots of money than the purity of storytelling. Like I said, that’s my prejudice and it detracted from the story for me.

How about you?

What books have you and your family enjoyed lately?