Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have loved each of the Shardlake novels.

If you have not read any of these novels I will give you a brief outline. Shardlake starts out as a strong reformist working for Cromwell during the dissolution of the monasteries. In Dissolution he has to investigate a murder in a monastery. In Darkfire (the 2nd in the series) it is the pursuit of Greek Fire which once again brings him into the political stage.

This third novel follows on a year after the events of Dark Fire. Shardlake has to catch up with the 1541 King’s Progress to the North at York (the aim of which were to bring the North back into loyalty to the King after the revolts of recent years).

Sent on a secret mission by Cranmer, Shardlake soon gets embroiled in a new plot against Henry VIII when a workman is killed and he soon finds his life is in danger.

This story winds its self around the Progress, the King’s growing tyranny, the affairs of Catherine Howard and the corrupt goings on at court. Shardlake has already lost his zeal for religious reform and in this book comes to realise even more just what a monster Henry has become.

Sansom brings this world vibrantly to life with such delicious detail that you feel you are walking the street sof 16th century London and York. You too feel the fear the king brings and the horrors of torture and execution that were instruments of state and power.

I will be buying the next in the series very soon.

View all my reviews

I am a self published author and – for the sake of transparency – I am one of the authors mentioned in this book.

WAIT – don’t just assume I have given it a good rating because of this fact. I received a review copy and read the book in 3 days and did so because it was very readable and very accessible and summarized in 150 pages the essence of good book promotion.

Debbie Young has spent a long time pulling together all the various aspects of book promotion that a self published author needs to look at. I started on my own self publishing journey in October 2009. I made a LOT of mistakes in my journey and as a result wasted a lot of time and money. Now – 3 years on I can honestly say I WISH this book was available then.

Any criticism or comments? Well IMHO I think the chapter at the end on editing, typesetting and cover design really belongs at the very beginning. I wasted a LOT of time and effort producing poor quality designs and because at the start I had no editor my product suffered. I now have an editor and a book design artist and have learnt quite a bit about typesetting. So READ chapter 12 FIRST and get all those ducks in a line before you proceed.

I would also have liked to see an advanced chapter for those of us doing all this stuff already

Having said all that I found that the book prompted me to look at areas where I was not active enough and in January when I sit down to work out my plan for 2013 I will refer to this book.

So if you are a starting out self published author read this book. It will tell you all you need to know to begin book promotion.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sell-Your-Books-Promotion-Self-published/dp/1906236348/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353793784&sr=8-1

Book review of Historical Fantasy Pirate Code by Helen Hollick

Cover from Pirate Code

We first met Jesamiah Acorne in the superb first novel in this series – Sea Witch (Sea Witch Series). Jesamiah just wants to marry Tiola and live out his years on his beloved ship but fate has other things in store. To begin with Tiola’s husband will only divorce her if Jesamiah goes to Hispianola and finds some barrels of precious Indigo. War with Spain looms and it turns out that the Governor of Nassau wants Jesamaiah to go to Hispaniola anyway to find a missing spy.

Jesamiah is thrust into the middle of not just a war between Spain and England but also both the mission to discover who is a spy (who can be trusted and who not) and a rebellion against the governor of Hispaniola.

Jesamiah needs all his luck and guile as well as courage to get out all this alive. Along the way we find out a little more about his past. The end is dramatic, exciting and just very well written.

For me this is better than the first book and I recommend it for anyone who loves a good pirate romp.

Why would you not like it? Well if you don’t like Historical Fiction or don’t like elements of fantasy in your fiction then this might not be for you but the level of authenticity in recreation of period which reflects the depth of historical research by the author is so impressive I would urge you to give it a go.

I gave it 5 stars.

When I started reading this Sci Fi novel I took a while to get into it. I was expecting a heroic tale of daring do set in a future British Space Empire – a sort of Space 1899 type adventure. And in a way that is what I got. We have a future world where the nations have spread out into space and the UK has carved out its chunk of territory very much like the 19th century expansion of the empire under Victoria.

However whilst that is the type of background world Toby Frost has created the style of this book is a comedy. We Brits have carried with us stiff upper lips, cold showers, traditions and tea. The hero, Captain smith has a crew consisting of a sex mad android pilot and a blood thirsty warrior alien who collects his victims skulls.

The story is actually pretty straight forward – alien race who want to wipe out humanity are after the passenger on Captain Smith’s ship for reasons it is best to read the book to find out.The crew get into a series of adventures before winning the day.

As a story it is nothing that special but the humour is entertaining and the banter between the crew amusing and at times laugh out loud funny. It is a light read and whilst maybe rating say not more than 3.5 to 4 stars out of 5 (in my opinion) I would be up for a sequel.