I Haven't Fallen Off the Face of the Earth, I'm Just Travelling Around It!

Hey guys! Just a very quick video to let you know I'll be in Taiwan between July 11th - 2nd August 2013 so there won't be any posts or updates on my blog or Facebook.

P.S. Please excuse the phone bleep!

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Agent of Rome, The Siege, Nick Brown

Publishers: Hodder

Pages: 383

Main Characters:

Cassius Corbulo, Strabo, Crispus,

The Siege is the first book in Nick Brown’s debut the Agent of Rome series and tells the tale of Cassius Corbulo, a young Roman aristocrat who after too much boozing and womanizing is forced to join the army by his Senator father. Luckily because of his standing in Roman society, Corbulo manages to gain a place in the Imperial Security Service, which in normal circumstances would handle administration within the army such as gaining food and supplies and not really fight on the front line with normal Legionaries. 

However, when Queen Zenobia of Palmyra throws off the shackles of Rome and revolts in 270 AD, Corbulo finds himself been the highest ranking officer on the Syrian boundary and is tasked with holding an important fort called Alauran on the Roman supply line. Been a fresh recruit and only just passing his officer training, Corbulo is uneasy about taking a posting as the commander of the fort and when he learns that the cohort which is guarding Alauran are veterans from the Third Legion, Corbulo’s insecurity is made much worse.

When Corbulo arrives at Alauran he finds the fort in a state of severe disrepair and with the death of their commander, the Legionaries of the defences have become lazy and ill disciplined. Nevertheless, Corbulo has to find a way to repair the fort and get the Legionaries on his side as news arrives that a Palmyran force has been dispatched to attack and capture Alauran. Lacking in leadership skills, Corbulo uses other methods such as bribes to gain the support of the fort’s most influential officers and manages to motivate the men and their allies to fight and repair the defences with the promise of a relief column arriving within the next week (which Corbulo is not 100% sure will arrive!). However, this may not be enough as the unexplained murder of one of Corbulo’s best men reveals that there is a traitor in the camp. In addition, the sheer number of Palmyran forces which arrives to siege Alauran means Corbulo will have to use all of his limited knowledge of soldiering and the experience of his officers to stem the tide of the Syrian conquest of Roman land!

As a debut novel this book was extremely well written and thought out and different to any other Roman novels I have read. Yes, like Scarrow’s Cato and Riches’s Corvus, the main character was an inexperienced young aristocrat who is thrown into leadership and has to make the best of a bad situation. But what I really enjoyed about this book and what I thought made it refreshing to this genre, is that whereas Cato and Corvus evolve into great leaders charging into battle and killing numerous foes, in this book at least, Corbulo doesn’t. He is still nervous and confused about what he has to do as a leader and often times would rather let others tell him what to do instead of the other way round. I thought this was a great factor because it made the book seem much more realistic because I know if I was thrown into that situation, I’d have no clue what to do! I also think this factor helps portray the situation the Roman Empire was in in 270 AD as they would fast track young aristocrats into leadership roles because they had no other experienced men to fill them. I don’t know, maybe in the later books Corbulo will evolve into a great leader but in this first novel I’m glad Brown made him the nervous young man I think he should have been.

I’d suggest this book to anyone who enjoys Roman historical novels and authors such as Simon Scarrow, Anthony Riches, Ben Kane and Gordon Doherty. I’d also suggest it to anyone who is looking for a great historical fiction novel because this book was brilliant and I’m sure is going to be a part of an amazing series. By the way, I’d like to say a massive thank you to Nick Brown for getting in touch and introducing me to his work- look out for his new novel Agent of Rome, The Far Shore which will be released on July 18^th!

For author’s official website click here.

P.S. Don't forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for a chance to win a FREE copy of The Hundred Year-Old-Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and The Iron King by Maurice Druon. To enter this great competition just follow the instructions on this link.

Inferno, Dan Brown

Publishers: Bantam Press

Pages: 463

Main Characters:

Robert Langdon, Sienna Brooks, Elizabeth Sinskey

Inferno is the fourth book in Dan Brown's truly captivating Robert Langdon series and the novel finds our favourite art historian in the beautiful and historic city of Florence to solve his next art puzzle and mystery. After waking up in a hospital bed, Langdon has no recollection of how he got there or where he is! It isn’t until his Doctor (Sienna Brooks) informs him that he has been shot in the head with minor amnesia and that he is currently in Florence. 

Poor Langdon has no idea why he is in Florence but more importantly, why someone would want to shoot him. All he does know is that the weird and demonic visions which keep coming to him of a grey haired woman telling him to ‘seek and ye shall find’ seem more and more real, but Langdon has no idea what they mean! However, Langdon’s ponderings and confusion is soon ended as a blonde spiked haired woman wearing black motor cycling leathers, bursts into his hospital room and tries to shoot him! Luckily, his quick thinking doctor manages to whisk Robert away to the safety of her flat and tries to explain what is going on, revealing to Langdon that when he arrived at the hospital he was carrying a very peculiar object with him.

The object is a long metallic tube with a biohazard symbol on it that looks like it will only open with the use of a specific person’s fingerprint. Again, Langdon has no idea how he got it, however, when he places his finger on the device it opens. Luckily the item inside is not radioactive but is instead a small projector which when turned on, projects one of the most famous images of the Renaissance era, the La Mappa dell’Inferno by Sandro Botticelli. After this revelation, Langdon and Sienna are taken on a journey through Dante’s Inferno and discover that the person behind the projector and the reason for Langdon’s presence in Florence, is an extremely rich and powerful biogenetic scientist who believes that the human population needs to be culled for it to further evolve. Langdon and Sienna must work out the mad-scientist’s riddles and puzzles to discover where he has hidden his ‘solution’ to the problem of overpopulation and prevent it from been released to the world!

Botticelli's La Mappa

Once again Dan Brown has produced an astounding, bum on the end of your seat thriller! I’m always amazed at how he manages to consistently produce a remarkable plot but at the same time fill his books with so much historical detail, which I think Inferno has the most of. Brown’s understanding of Dante’s Divine Comedy is apparent throughout the novel but I really like how he manages to convey the information and story and twist it to his own plot.

Overall this was a great book and I’d suggest it to anyone who likes Brown’s other novels or to anyone who just wants to read a great novel!

For author’s official website click here.

P.S. Don't forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for a chance to win a FREE copy of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson or The Iron King by Maurice Druon. To enter this great competition just follow the instructions on this link. 

Book of the Month Competition- June

It’s back, yay!

That’s right my Book of the Month Competition is back and this month I’ve not got one but TWO great books to giveaway to make up for the last two months absence! The reason there has been no competition during April and May is because I had to write my dissertation and revise for my exams and didn’t want the added work of running a competition on top of that. But now I’ve finished university I can restart the competition and give you guys an opportunity to win some great books!

So what are these great books you may ask? Well, the first novel is The Iron King by Maurice Druon. George R. R. Martin called this book one of the biggest influences behind A Game of Thrones. The novel is based in 13^th Century France and tells the tale of the decline of the Capet dynasty over a seven book series. The Iron King is the first book in the series and well worth entering my competition to win!

The second novel is The Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared and is based around the adventures of Allan Karlsson, a hundred-year-old man who wants some action in his life and climbs out of his retirement home window to find it! Again, this is a great novel so why not enter the competition to try and win it? There will be two winners (one for each book) however if you have a preference of the book you’d like to win(maybe because you’ve already read the other one) then feel free to send me an e-mail at adampreviews@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get that book if you win :) 

So, if you’d like a chance to win these two great novels, all you have to do is click on this link to my Facebook page, ‘like’ my page and then write a comment saying you would like to enter the competition. If you are not on Facebook but are a member of Blogger, you can enter the competition by following my Blog directly through Blogger, by clicking on the ‘join this site’ button on the right hand side of the page. You can also enter by subscribing to my Youtube page by clicking on this link here. If you're already a member of one of my various social media sites, all you have to do is leave me a comment on one of them saying you'd like to enter- it's that easy!

Remember it’s FREE to enter and it will not cost you a penny to get the book in the post. So why not have a go? You could win one of these excellent novels for absolutely FREE!

Good luck to everyone that enters, I hope you’ll have as much fun with the competition as I will.

I'll be choosing the winner on the 30^th June. For further details on the competition, such as how the winner will be chosen and how the winner will be announced please click here.

Also don't forget to check out my Youtube video for more info!

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson

Publishers: Herperus Press Limited

Pages: 387

Main Characters:

Allan Karlsson, Julius, Benny, Bosse.

I’d noticed this book on bookshelves many weeks before I actually purchased it. For some reason I’ve always held a prejudice against novels with really random names such as The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared, because I always think that the random titles are just a marketing scheme to get readers to buy the books, but I suppose all book titles do that… Anyway, for that reason I decided not to give this novel a read, however, after a friend of mine suggested this book I thought I’d give it a go- and when I saw the novel was on a ‘buy-one-get-one-half-price’ deal I decided, ‘why not’? And to be perfectly honest, I’m so glad I picked this book up, it was great!

The novel is split into two parts based around the adventures of Allan Karlsson, a ninety-nine year old Swede who decides his mundane life in a retirement home is not the life for him. The first story is that of Allan’s escape from the home (through his window) and his accidental theft of a suitcase from a rude man in a bus station. Allan has no idea that the rude man is in fact a notorious Never Again gang member or that the suitcase has 50 million Swedish Krona in it! Needless to say, when the gangster finds out Allan has stolen his suitcase, he immediately groups all of the gang's resources to hunt down the hundred-year-old man. However, what the gangster doesn’t realise is that though Allan is old, he is also very resourceful and manages to make new friends to evade the gang members and even the police! Nevertheless, when the leader of Never Again gets involved, Allan and his friends have to be careful or they could end up losing their lives!

The second story (and the one which I preferred) is that of Allan’s life. What’s so interesting about Allan’s life is that he seems to have been at nearly every major historical incident in the 20^th Century! Whether that be a friend of Franco’s in the Spanish Civil War, working on the A-Bomb, working with Stalin, been thrown into a Soviet Gulag, been in the Korean War and working for the CIA, Allan seems to have been a major influence on all of these events. I really loved this side of the book because one I love history and two because it makes you think about older people and some of the major events in world history which they have lived through. I think this novel makes this a key point in a sort of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ way. Many people judge the older generation as been boring and sometimes a bit of a nuisance, but in reality they have all lived through these extraordinary events and many (like Allan) may have taken part in them, which I think is amazing!

All in all, this was a great book and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read an interesting and humorous novel with a bit of history thrown in on the side! I don’t know what books to compare it to because I’ve never really read anything like it before, but it has definitely persuaded me to give books with really random names such as Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Monk who sold his Ferrari and A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine a chance! In fact, if you can think of any other books with really unusual names please leave them in the comments below!

For author's official website click here.

To Be Read List May/June 2013

Hey guys! I just posted a quick video on YouTube of my To Be Read List for May and June. Check it out and let me know if you've read any of the books on there and what you thought. Also, please remember to comment, rate, share and subscribe to my videos! Thanks :)

 

The Iron King, Maurice Druon

Publishers: Harper

Pages: 328

Main Characters:

Philip the Fair, Queen Isabella of England,

Spinello Tolomei, Guccio Baglioni

After reading on George R. R. Martin’s blog that this series of books was the inspiration behind the A Song of Ice and Fire series, I eagerly picked up this book from my local bookstore. As Martin said, the characters in this tale were as clever and as cunning as any in the Game of Thrones, however, the fact that all of them were real people made this book extremely appealing to me because you all know how much I love historical fiction. Alongside this, the fact that the novel was written by a French author about French history also had a great appeal to me because most of the historical fiction I’ve read has always been written by Englishmen and therefore, I think always making the stories a little one sided!

The book takes place in the early 14^th century and is based around the court of Philip the Fair, or as some call him the ‘Iron King’. King Philip and his advisors have just managed to finally murder the last of the innocent Templar Knights that had been living in France since the last Crusade. In an attempt to seize their money and power, Philip and his advisors had created false accusations of heresy, sodomy and many other vile acts to create a case against the once respected Templars. However, just before the Grand Master of the Knights, Jacques De Molay is finally burned, he puts a curse on Philip’s family (the Capets) which curses their line to the 13^th generation.

Meanwhile in England, the new Queen Isabella (Philip’s daughter) is plotting against her three sister-in-laws. There are rumours circulating around Paris and even in London that her three sister-in-laws; Marguerite, Jeanne and Blanche have lovers other than their husbands. If proved to be true, this outrage could bring great shame to the House of Capet. Isabella uses her quick mind to try and find out if the rumours are true and punish her sister-in-laws for the shame they are bringing to France.

The final story in the novel is that of Guccio Baglioni who is the nephew of a wealthy Italian banker called Spinello Tolomei. Guccio is tasked with sending a message to Queen Isabella to help her find evidence against her sister-in-laws. On his way back from England, Guccio is also given the chore of retrieving a debt from a noble family that has fallen on hard times. However, when he gets to the family’s house, he falls in love with their daughter and gives them a further year to pay off their debts. This act of kindness helps Guccio and his uncle later on in the novel after it is discovered that King Philip is moving to expel all of the Italian bankers from France. Tolomei tasks his nephew with finding a safe place to hide a document that could be used to blackmail one of the King’s advisors into preventing the expulsion. Guccio decides the best place to hide the item is at his new love’s run down home.

As I said before I was excited to read this book because of the amount of social intrigue George R. R. Martin said there was in it. If I’m been honest, this aspect of the novel was a little disappointing for me because there was no point in the book where I was on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next, like I always am when I’m reading Martin’s novels. However, as a historical fiction novel I thought it was brilliant and as Martin said, the characters in the book are great because they are so evil, naïve and cunning like many of the characters in the Game of Thrones, however, these characters are all real, making the events in the book seem even more cold and hard-heated then they already are! Moreover, the events of this time were interesting to read because it was the prelude to the Hundred Years War, which I'm fascinated with and it was interesting to see these events from a French perspective.

All in all, this was a good historical fiction novel but I think it was a little misleading with some of the marketing on the book. I am definitely going to continue the series and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next novel! I would suggest this book to anyone who is a historical fiction fan and enjoys books such as Bernard Cornwell’s Thomas Hookton novels. I would also suggest it to fans of George R. R. Martin and I’d be really interested to hear what you thought of the book, so please let me know if you have read it!

For author’s official HarperCollins page click here.