Dr Philip Taiwo has been asked to delve into the killings that have become known as the “Okriki Three”. His studies into racial crimes in the US earned him his Masters and a Doctorate. Now back in his native Nigeria a rich, influential and bereaved father wants answers and perhaps revenge.
When flying to begin his mission he meets his first and by no means last warning that his job will be fraught with difficulties and antagonism. He is met at the airport by Chika, who will be his driver, mentor and sounding board.
The “Okriki Three” were three students from the nearby university who were suspected of theft by the locals of Okriki, were set upon beaten and then “necklaced”. All of which was recorded on phones by bystanders. Philip Taiwo is at a disadvantage because he has been away in the States and is unaware of many of the developments in Nigeria particularly in rural areas.
The case is now three years old and the police, the university and the populace of Okriki have no desire to reopen old wounds. Philip and Chika are looked on with suspicion. They are foreigners. When their investigation becomes clear that suspicion turns to anger, aggression and puts them in grave danger.
Light Seekers is Femi Kayode’s first novel and his settings give the plot a new dimension. The tensions he reveals, political, racial, religious and social give an insight into a country we know very little about. As his narrative unfolds so do the complexities of life for ordinary Nigerians alongside their search for their rightful place in society. This in the end also leads to their propensity to be used by those who can manipulate. Unfortunately this has become so much easier with social media being accessible to all.
Kayode has written a crime thriller which keeps the reader thinking and wanting to know more right to the end. I thoroughly recommend this book.
Themes Nigeria, Crime fiction, Murder.
Fran Knight
Maxwell's demon by Steven Hall
Text Publishing, 2021. ISBN: 9781921922718. (Age:Adult - Senior secondary)
Thomas Quinn’s life is not all it could be. His father was a famous man of letters, poet, journalist and war correspondent. Thomas is noted only for being Dr Stanley Quinn’s son. His wife is away on Easter Island on a long term research project and they connect via video link. He watches her sleep along with thousands of others via the web.
Thomas wrote a book six years ago, but nothing significant since. Life is frustrating! When his father’s old assistant Andrew Black, the author of a very famous novel Cupid’s Engine, contacts him, his life begins to spin out of control. Since publishing Cupid’s Engine, Black has been reclusive. He gives no interviews and has vowed never to publish again if his work is published electronically.
Steven Hall has written a novel which is intriguing - the initial story of Thomas Quinn draws the reader into his thoughts and problems. However when Hall delves into the philosophical, theological and scientific world it left me frustrated. The references to entropy, angels, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Biblical theories were not where I wanted to be led by a narrative that was on the surface a mystery.
The eventual solution found by Quinn after painful self doubt and questioning of his own sanity was as unsatisfactory, to this reader, as the concepts suggested by the author throughout the book. Maxwell’s Demon may be innovative but I would have enjoyed it far more without the innovations.
Layla is back! That funny headstrong and impetuous girl that captured our attention in You must be Layla has now got her sights set on the global Grand Designs Tourismo, and the chance to travel the world to meet great inventors. Things look like they are going her way until, out of the blue, her family gets news that Habooba, her beloved grandmother, is ill in hospital and they need to fly back to Sudan to take care of her.
Layla is distraught because she loves inventing things, and the competition is something she has worked so hard towards. At the same time, she loves her grandmother, and her Sudanese family is very important to her.
This second novel by Abdel-Magied is more subdued than the first, Layla is a little older, and the first chapters fill in a lot of the events of the previous book for the reader coming fresh to this story. It includes serious issues such as the Sudanese protests calling for a new government, and problems in Sudan with lack of water, unreliable electricity and accumulating rubbish. There is also Layla’s struggle to work out where she belongs, torn between the very different worlds of Sudan and Australia.
Abdel-Magied’s second novel for adolescents has strong moral lessons about listening, respecting elders, consideration for others and working as a team. Along the way, we learn more about life within the Sudanese-Australian Muslim family, the values, the prayer time, and the adjustments between country of origin and their new home in Australia.
A fast moving story of coming out to difficult and traditional families/communities in the deep south of Kentucky. To Phil Stamper’s credit, 17 yr old Marty defines himself predominantly as an Oboe virtuoso and someone affected by lifelong anxiety, rather than solely a frustrated young homosexual coming out in tandem with his English cousin - with very different repercussions.
Both musicians are ambitious and even though Marty’s failed entrance audition to the Knightsbridge Academy of Music in London, caused by his anxiety and his parents’ reaction to his coming out, he quickly escapes to London after he graduates, where he can be fully accepted. His Aunt and his cousin Shane’s mother, welcome him with open arms under the pretext of attending a 3 month program at the Academy. But only Marty and his close circle of friends know his term in London is a ruse to emigrate for good, and secure a job as a musician.
Problems arise as he becomes attracted to the Academy bad boy, Pierce. Astutely, Pierce is not entirely self-interested but critical of the dependence Marty had developed for his former American bestie, Megan, who seems to continue to manipulate him from afar.
This is a very detailed memoir, alternating back to Marty’s diary of the turbulent trip to London with his parents, a year prior. The narrator is mindful of his thoughts and triggers and we are privy to his decisions - mostly healthy but for a burgeoning eating disorder. First love is unpacked and not too graphically. Teens may be shepherded by Marty, who is managing his weaknesses and both aware and proactive about the balancing act between opportunity and vulnerability - always tricky in adolescence.
Navel gazing narrators are cathartic but Stamper touched on one or two expansive issues to make this funny antihero even more edifying. High praise comes from Caleb Roehrig…”A heartfelt and unvarnished portrait of the growth queer people experience when they finally set themselves free.”
Topical, given a law to ban conversion therapy in Victoria has recently been proposed.
After rereading The girl of fire and thorns series and The empire of dreams, I decided to try the first in The gold seer trilogy, which I had missed when it was first published in 2016. Once again, I had found a book that I could not put down, with a young woman whose courage and determination made it a stand-out read for me, and I rushed to the public library to put a hold on the next two books in the series.
Walk on Earth a Stranger is essentially an historical adventure set in the days of the gold rush to California in 1849 with a small taste of fantasy thrown in. When Leah Westfall’s parents are murdered by a man who wants to control her ability to sense gold, she disguises herself as a boy and sets off west following the trail to California, where gold has been discovered. She experiences adventure after adventure on her perilous journey. She is attacked by bandits on the road, and manages to escape them, but her biggest adventures occur on the trail to California, after she meets up again with her friend Jefferson. She must maintain her disguise, working as hard as the young men on the trail and it is her skills that give her the ability to help the young trainee doctor when the trail master’s leg must be amputated. Her ability to sense gold helps her track a missing child to whom she has given her gold locket to help him be brave, and she is fearless in her efforts to look after other people in the wagon train.
I found the descriptions of the hardships of life in a wagon train on the road to California engrossing and all the characters, both major and minor, came alive for me. Carson also draws a picture of the diversity of the gold seekers, and the prejudice that faced the confirmed bachelors, African Americans and Native Americans.
Readers who enjoyed this may also like the mixture of Western and fantasy in the Frontier magicseries by Patricia C. Wrede, Dead reckoning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill and Dread Nation by Justina Ireland.
Finbar Hawkins has delivered a confident and accomplished debut with the historical young adult fiction novel, Witch. Quite simply put, Witch is breathtaking. Hawkins writes with a style that is both sparse and lyrical. Chapters are short, dialogue is key and extraneous details are non-existent. The reader can feel, see and hear 17th century England on every page.
The novel tells the story of Evey, also known as Eveline of the Birds, and her younger sister Dill. In the opening pages the sisters watch their mother being beaten to death by self-authorised “witch hunters”. Listening to her dying screams fade behind them, the sisters flee across a bleak landscape to their aunt, leader of a secretive coven.
What follows is a story of revenge, bloodshed, friendship and sisterhood. Evey and Dill lose and find each other multiple times as Evey embarks on a one-woman quest to seek justice. Evey’s fraught relationships with her mother and sister mirror many real life situations; they are universal to any time and any place. Hawkins aims to demonstrate that those we love the most are also the ones that can cause us the most pain. It is up to Evey to come to terms with everything that she has lost, before she can appreciate what she has left. Witch is a quick read and the fast pace makes it difficult to put down. Violence and death are constant themes in the novel however, which make it appropriate for more mature young adult audiences.
As a fan of the The girl of fire and thorns series, I couldn’t resist picking up these three novellas, originally published digitally. They were an enthralling read, giving the background to beloved characters in the series. In a note from Rae Carson at the beginning of the book, she writes that when she was an aspiring author, she was given advice “to imagine a rich and unique personal history for every single character, even the minor ones” even though it might not make it onto the pages. Thus, in this trilogy, the reader finds out the secret that Hector must keep forever, when he is a young recruit in the Royal Guard, in the novella The King’s Guard. How Mara got her scars and her immense courage in guiding child survivors from her devastated village is described vividly in The Shattered Mountain. The shadow cats brings to life the rivalry between Elisa and her sister Alodia and gives the reader a glimpse into Elisa’s life as a younger sister.
I picked these up, thinking that I could take a breather from longer novels, and just read a novella occasionally, but as always I found Carson’s plots and characters enthralling, and couldn’t put the book down until I had devoured all three novellas. Of course, it helped that I had just finished rereading Carson’s trilogy and reading the fourth in the series, The empire of dreams.
This is a series for all readers of fantasy, young and old alike.
Themes Fantasy, Short stories, Courage, Secrets.
Pat Pledger
The fabulous cakes of Zinnia Jakes : The tumbling tortoises by Brenda Gurr
New Frontier, 2020. ISBN: 9781921928796. (Age:9+) Recommended.
Zoe Jones is holding her own as a trendy commercial baker but she’s undercover because she’s just a kid. She shares this trait with her dad, a world famous food critic, travelling incognito for the sake of accurate food journalism. Only Dad, Aunty Jam and her BF, Addie, know her true identity – but increasingly it looks as if Polly, top of their class, has her suspicions.
Tensions mount as Zinnia Jakes (aka Zoe) wins the local zoo’s cake design competition, with a gorgeous Galapagos tortoise design. To complicate matters, her class is awarded an invitation to the Wildside Zoo for the launch of their endangered animal display. Since the “Tumbling Tortoises” cakes will be viewed and launched at the opening, Zoe faces the problem of delivering the cakes without blowing her cover.
Family pitches in with ideas, but what ever goes to plan in a gorgeous easy chapter book, featuring an endearing and enterprising young girl of absent parents? This new series based on Zinnia Jakes, and undoubtedly inspired by pop culture demand for reality cooking shows, has everything you could want in a mystery book plot. Plus, readers score Zoe’s full Chocolate Swirl Cupcakes recipe as well as a sample chapter of “Crumbling Castles”.
Recommended for middle schoolers but cover with clingwrap in the kitchen – you don’t want to stain this culinary mystery for the next borrowers. Better, the publisher’s teaching notes for both books in the series so far, contain recipes for these cupcakes and Medieval Gingerbread.
Themes Mystery, Adventure.
Deborah Robins
Florence Adler swims forever by Rachel Beanland
Simon & Schuster, 2021. ISBN: 9781398501355. (Age:16+) Highly recommended.
Florence is one of those people that everyone loves and admires, beautiful, smart and funny. She easily tunes into the imaginative world of her 7 year-old niece Gussie; she befriends Anna, the Prussian refugee; and she has clearly won the heart of the besotted lifeguard, Stuart. She is a champion swimmer and she is determined to break Gertrude Ederle’s record for swimming the English channel. And yet, in the first chapter, something unimaginable happens, the lifesavers haul back her lifeless body from the sea.
This sets the scene for the central premise of the novel – keeping the news of Florence’s death from her elder sister Fannie, confined to a hospital bed in the last stages of a risky pregnancy, for fear of precipitating another premature birth. Hyram, her first baby, survived only three weeks.
It is 1930’s Atlantic city; a time of bizarre exhibition of premature babies in sideshows, speculative money-making schemes, and the ominous Nazi threat gathering pace in Europe. Florence’s family are Jewish; even in Atlantic city, Jews are excluded from prestigious hotels.
Against this backdrop, Florence’s family, friends, and the hospital staff all conspire to keep Fannie in the dark. It is a story of secrets. There is the overarching secret of Florence’s death, but others also carry hidden stories – their father Joseph and the woman from his past; Anna, the mysterious foreigner; Isaac, Fannie’s husband, with his secret schemes; even young Gussie is aware of the many secrets that adults attempt to keep from her.
The story quickly draws the reader in with each chapter presenting the viewpoint of a different person involved in the lie. We see how people handle grief differently, how each is generally good intentioned. The suspense builds as it becomes more and more difficult to hide the truth. I found the story fascinating and breathlessly read on, but must admit to disappointment that though the threads are all neatly tied at the end, the anticipated climax never really arrives. I think there must be another book in the making – about Fannie. How could one ever reconcile being the centre of such a deceit, no matter how well intentioned?
Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN: 9781471178757. (Age:8-11) Recommended.
This is the fourth book in the Nothing to See Here Hotel series and Frankie Banister is yet again up to his neck in fantasy adventure. In this funkdastardly story Frankie is kidnapped and taken into the lower realms of the sewers where more magical and fantasy creatures with weird and wonderful features are threatening his cleanliness and his normal hotel life. With the threat of being dropped into the poop-laden sewer world with no further contact with his own bizarriferous family, Frankie must use all his wisdom and rely on other stranger-than-true friends to escape before it is too late.
With Dahl-esque created language (akin to BFG creations), that I have mimicked in the paragraph above (note: vocabulary not used by the author), Steven Baker has created a romp that is just a giggle from start to finish. Nothing is real and everything is impossible, but I am sure that children aged 8-11 will appreciate the absolute nonsense in this humorous fantasy adventure. I can also imagine that an adult who likes to read with funny voices or wants a read-aloud adventure into oddities and ‘exciterous’ story-lines will also enjoy this latest romp. Lenton’s illustrations also reveal the quirky world and characters with his cartoon-style creativity.
Nelson hates vegetables but in this story he discovers that broccoli gives him the power to turn invisible. He discovers this, and that vomiting turns him visible again, when he and best friend Olive go to stay with his Grandparents. Nelson’s ex-spy Grandma wants him to use his superpower to catch whoever is stealing her award-winning pumpkins. In a lie that backfires, his Grandpa also teaches him to tap dance. In his pursuit of the pumpkin stealers, he is helicoptered away to spy headquarters that are inside a volcano (a reference to James Bond in You Only Live Twice here!). Tap dancing comes in handy as a way to escape drones firing rockets at him.
Broccoli and Spies is a lightweight, wacky story written for young readers who need short, easy to read, illustrated chapter books. Stories like these have plenty of hooks for reluctant readers and for these reasons they are definitely worthwhile. There’s plenty of bodily functions, slapstick action and humour. The essential ingredients of a spy series; modern gadgets, vehicles and villains, are all here. Plus, the characters have funny food names like Agent Licorice and General Gruyere. Cartoonlike illustrations by Katie Kear definitely match the text, some are full or double page. There is effective use of fluoro-green throughout to match the vegetable hero, broccoli. Children who like Anh Do’s WeirDo series will most likely enjoy the Nelson series too.
Themes Spies, Superheroes.
Jo Marshall
My summer with Grandad by Tom Tinn-Disbury
New Frontier, 2020. ISBN: 9781922326140. (Age:4+)
My Summer with Grandad is an entertaining story about Eric spending time with his Grandad. This is a holiday ritual and this is the year Eric will be finally allowed to go fishing on his Grandad’s boat. However things do not go to plan and Eric is left disheartened. Grandad then gives Eric the job of being the Chief Seagull Shoo-er and Eric takes his new role very seriously. One day Eric and Grandad discover a baby seagull trapped in the net with a damaged wing. They take it home and Eric uses numbered steps to care for the chick and they become firm friends. Of course Eric realizes that the bird must go back to his family on the eighth step but surprise, surprise there is a ninth step still to come.
This a delightful story that will appeal to younger readers. The colourful detailed illustrations complement the text perfectly. Teacher's notes are available.
Centred on one young woman, Alex visits a town that is familiar to her from the past, but to her it seems that it offers no welcoming feel. Weaving the narrative between the past and the present, using ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ to orientate the reader, Watson creates a story that is shrouded in mystery and a sense of dread. As a film-maker, Alex is determined to evoke the sense of place in the town, and photographs and films the local pub, the wild sea shore, the places and people who live there. She hopes to evoke her own buried memories but she can barely recall the events that seemingly caused her to leave, realizing that she had forgotten her former name.
Situating this narrative in the wild coast of Northern England, Watson draws us into the story through the gradual hints of the past that occur and as the story progresses, we read about some of her childhood experiences. Shrouded in a mysterious blankness, she gradually recalls some events that clearly caused her to flee many years ago. Weaving the past and present is a strong hook that captivates the reader and the intriguing nature of her memories.
As a film-maker, Alex is determined to take photographs and film the place and the people whom she meets, somehow hoping that she will be able to recall the events of the past that haunt her. The discomforting uneasiness is strong as she tries but cannot recall the events that caused her to leave the town, and not return for years, but she does begin to remember some things. Alex is not her real name but she cannot remember her former name.
Themes Childhood memories that evoke terror, Fear, Determination to discover the events of the past.
Elizabeth Bondar
The darkest evening by Ann Cleeves
A Vera Stanhope Novel 9. Pan Macmillan, 2020. ISBN: 9781509889525. (Age:Senior secondary - Adult) Highly recommended.
A fan of the TV series, I was delighted to pick up a Vera Stanhope novel, not having read one for several years. When driving home on a dark winter’s night, Vera takes a wrong turn and seeing a car abandoned on the side of the road stops to help and discovers a toddler strapped inside. Knowing how dangerous the weather is, she decides to take him to the nearest house, which turns out to be Brockburn, the manor house where Hector her father had been brought up. There, amidst the gaiety of a party, a young woman’s body is found in the snow, and Vera is plunged into a murder investigation.
This has all the hallmarks of a good mystery. There is a country house that is starting to decay and well fleshed out characters from the wealthy landowners, tenant farmers and village people all provide suspects. Lorna, the young woman who had been murdered had suffered anorexia in her youth and had not disclosed the name of the father of her baby to anyone, so Vera and her offsiders, Joe and Holly are faced with multiple suspects and red herrings to follow up.
It was particularly interesting to find out that Vera was related to the people in the big house and to see the divide between the rich and middle class. The book revolves around family and all the problems and rumours that can ripple even the smoothest surface of a relationship. The Stanhope family needs money and Juliet has been unable to have a baby, no one knows the identity of the father of Lorna’s baby and why she is estranged from her father, and even Vera feels a tug towards the little toddler left motherless.
This was an entertaining and engrossing mystery, easy to read, with an exciting conclusion which I did not expect. I found the book gave insights and background to Vera that added to the picture of her I had built up from the TV series. A most satisfying read.
If you have ever seen Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the Great Depression of the 1930s, particularly ‘Migrant mother’, you will know what this book is about. It was a time of drought, dust-bowl conditions, hardship, and unemployment; families uprooted and constantly on the move, starving, and searching for work.
Hannah’s novel begins with the story of Elsa as a young woman, plain and unloved; then a moment of rebelliousness sees her scorned by her family and married off, pregnant, to Rafe, a young Italian man; joining with his parents in the hard toil of working the land.
In the 1930’s, Oklahoma suffered year after year of drought and stifling dust storms that induced dust pneumonia; people with eyes turning red, short of breath and coughing up mud. Elsa, deserted by her husband, has to face the decision of staying on the land, the only true home she has known, or venturing out with two children to seek a better future elsewhere, amidst hordes of homeless people also hungry for some kind of work.
Hannah’s novel vividly describes the suffering and misery of that era, with desperate itinerant workers abused and vilified by their own countrymen. It is a story of epic proportions, and recounts the battle between cotton magnates and the disposable workers, communism, and the workers’ rights movement. But at the heart of the novel, is the relationship between Elsa and her daughter Loreda, changing from resentment and bitter antagonism, to the girl’s gradual appreciation of the strength and commitment of her mother.
It is in the end a heart-warming story of women, of finding inner strength and standing up for beliefs, with the addition of a pleasing thread of romance.
Themes Women, Courage, Great Depression, Drought, Dust, Workers' rights, Exploitation.
