Another entertaining story to this outstanding series

The one and only goal Cade and his brother have is to get Rydstrom back on his thrown and now a simmer of hope is offered. Omort The Deathless is between Rydstrom and his thrown and as his name proclaims, he cannot be killed...until now. As a sword is forged especially for the Woede's to wield that can kill Omort The Deathless, they in return have to find and deliver The Vessel. With every Accession there is a female from The Lore that would come into sexual maturity. Her child would be a warrior of ultimate good or ultimate evil, depending on the side of the father.<br /><br />Cade is indebted to his brother to get him back on his thrown and when he finds The Vessel, he looks into silvery eyes. The eyes with the color of a Valkyrie awoken. Holly felt the rage flow away as the threat subsided and looked in the eyes of another demon. Cade couldn't believe it, this female...his female... against all odds was one of The Lore! Yet apparently she was also The Vessel and his heart struggled with his honor, how could he give up that which he searched for nine hundred years but nor forgo on his vow to his brother? <br /><br />Cade has until next full moon to deliver Holly to Groot The Metallurgist and in return get the sword that will kill Omort The Deathless. But can a demon let go of something as precious as his female?<br /><br />As Kresley Cole let us taste a bit of the Demon world in the previous novels, in DARK DESIRES AFTER DUSK she gives it to us all with one of the Woede brothers, Cadeon"The Kingmaker". I was plunged into a fast paces tale almost from page one without the author losing eye for details and background. Though Cade and Holly are hunted by various Factions this story feels very character driven as much revolves around the couple and their problems.<br /><br />Holly with her OCD problems turns her into such a heroine that you can't help but like and her quirks are just another thing that makes her stand out. She has a whole new side to discover and in combination with Cade she triggers the humorous side in me. If there was one thing that had me stuck to the pages was the formidable verbal sparring between those two, and both give as good as they get! Cade is just a rude, overbearing, chauvinistic demon but has his endearing moments and in the end always tries to do the right thing. The vow to his brother weighs heavily upon him and the fact he has his female in reach makes him torn in two.<br /><br />If there are two minor flaws in this novel, which is colored by preference, it is Rydstrom. I just didn't know what to do with him as he remains a bit of an enigma and in the end he even gets darker which left me a bit ambivalent towards him. Also the ending of the story itself was a bit underdeveloped as to what I'm used to from Kresley Cole. Still, despite this, the romance was beautifully captured again with the road trip Holly and Cade had to take. The sensuous blossoming of Holly was believably integrated within the love story and at times steaming hot and at other times...no, it remains steaming hot!<br /><br />Though Cade is rude and chauvinistic it is his need for Holly that is so evident through all his actions, the torment between his vow and the need for his female is what makes him do all he can to keep both. In doing this he threads dangerous waters that does not always end well and might even cost him that which he wants to protect. This is something that kept me on edge because for quite a while it kept me guessing as how it all would progress and play out in the end. Kresley Cole held me riveted to my seat almost until the ending and surprised me along the way with certain turnabouts that I did not see coming.<br /><br />Of course Nïx also appears in this novel and I have such a fondness for her. The power combined with a bit of arrogance and intertwined with true Nïx humour makes her a formidable secondary character that becomes treasured throughout the series and makes you eager to meet again in future novels. She has such a personality that upon reading an Immortal After Dark without Nïx is like apple-pie without whipped cream.<br /><br />DARK DESIRES AFTER DUSK with Cadeon and Holly add another well entertaining story to this outstanding series!<br /><br />Reviewed by Leontine<br />Courtesy of Realms On Our Bookshelves<br />

Flawed Look at Husbands without Wives and Children without Mothers

Careless in Red will surprise most fans of the Thomas Lynley/Barbara Havers novels. Elizabeth George doesn't return to her roots, but attempts a more literary novel that primarily explores how fragile husbands and children are without wives and mothers to love and nurture them. Those who just want a good mystery will wonder why all the extra characters and plots are in place until they realize that the mystery is secondary to telling stories that build the major theme.<br /><br />As the book opens, Lynley is a wreck following the murder of his wife and unborn child. He's been trekking along the coast without thought to comfort and safety, becoming little more than a homeless man. That mind-numbed state is disturbed when he spots a dead body and is pulled into the investigation. His police instincts are alerted when a woman he meets begins lying and he wants to find out why.<br /><br />The book is rich in character development, relying on many different interacting narrators. Ms. George uses this device to explore many family mysteries, which may or may not be related to the crime mystery. If you find it fascinating to think about all the ways that families can become dysfunctional, this book is for you.<br /><br />Within all these stories, there is a deep tragedy . . . the kind the ancient Greeks would have appreciated. Lynley senses that something like that might be looming behind the current events and helps to bring it to light.<br /><br />I would rate this book higher, but the breakdown of Lynley and his fairly quick recovery didn't ring true to me. I can't exactly tell you why, but it set a false note that undermined the rest of the story for me. I also found the endings (which don't let anyone hint about to you) to be unsatisfying compared to the scale of the foundation for the novel.<br /><br />I did find the book to be compelling. I stayed up late on two nights to finish.

The Best Thirty Minute Read Ever

I found this book breath taking. I felt like a spy, opening and reading these letters between these two fantastic people.
The book really shows how Hitler managed to win over the minds of the German people, whether they wanted him to or not. I also feel that its brevity adds to its poinancy and this book will stay with me forever.
I personally feel that all GCSE history students (myself being one)should read this book. It only takes 30 minutes, and really shows both the political and social views in Germany in 1933. Of course, when reading a book one must remember the context. This was written in 1939 when governments all over the world were denying what was happening in Germany, and now looking back on it, it shows the striking difference between the public view, and the offical view of a country.

Overall, a beautiful book that will stay with me forever.

Great book - you won't be disappointed if you love Jackie Collins

Just finished this book. I love Jackie Collins books and this is written in a similar vein. I thought the characters were great - each one so individual - I think my favourite was Kellyanne but I thought they all had depth. I was really caring about each person and what happened to them. More please JJ.

beautifully written

I saw the ad for this book on the side of a bus and I went straight to a book shop and bought it. I did not start to read it straight away, but when I started I could not put it down. I found it captivating,full of character and my imagination was let loose. <br />I was grumpy when I did not get the time to read it due to a busy weekend. I have not read Labyrinth, as I was not familiar with Kate Mosse, however i have already bought it and will begin reading it as soon as I finish Sepulchre. A really good read. highly recommended

It's a shame there are not six stars

Salinger's The catcher in the Rye is the perfect American Novel. Houlden is a bitter angry, confussed young man, of 16 years old. I read this book as a bitter, angry and confussed 16 year old young man and understood his point of view perfctly, he was telling the truth. I reread the book four year later and still saw his point of view but wanted to help him understand life. I read the book again at 24 and now i work with bitter angry confussed 16 year old and help the, try to come to terms with life, ad understand their world. I cant wait to read it again when i'm 28 and re-interperate this brilliant book again, Read it then later in life read it again and keep doing that every few years because it is a six star book

The front

Cornwell has returned to her formula with avengeance, Wyn Garano is the masculine eqivalent to Scapettas tenacious enquiring mind but has typical male approach to life with women and wine. <br />The story line makes you want to sit and read it in one fell swoop as the plot thickens you avidly read to see the outcome. The dissapointment was perhaps it ended too quickly and certain lines of enquiry were left unanswered. Cornwell has the ability to lead you through the story and let you feel the frustrations and fears of the characters. The plot is believable with the reality of power and corruptness of policiticans. <br />An enjoyable return to Cornwell creating mysteries of a new character that will meet new challenges- can,t wait for the next thrilling plot.

So enjoyable

After reading the Other Boleyn Girl which I throughly enjoyed this was a great sequel though not as good it was still a great read. I am going to read the Queens Fool next!

Nothing like the film is going to be...

This is a rather strange collection of short stories by Ian Fleming which have been gathered together for the first time here. Some of them barely feature Bond at all and none of those that have been the titles of films bear any resemblance to those films. Many of the stories have appeared before in the collection"For your eyes only" so may be familiar already. It is reported that Fleming used the short story formula as a means of gaining commisions to magazines and based many of the stories on personal experience with many of the characters recognisable friends (or enemies) of the author. Well whether or not that is the case the stories themselves are of varying standard and the title"track" is an interesting one in itself but they appear to be hurried affairs and don't add to Fleming's legacy as I don't believe he was comfortable writing short stories. It has also been said that these stories owe much to the Ashenden series by Somerset-Maugham but for me they don't hold a candle to those ones. So all in all a fair collection but not a patch on the novels.

1984 - 1948 - 2008 - whenever

Was he writnig about a distant time or the time he lived in ? Orwellcould never know that he was only 20 years out with his CCTV and his national lottery, there is lots of this book that will hurt your head if you try to understand it too much. All i do understand is that perhaps i dont really understand this book at all, because it can mean many different thing to many diffent people. That is Orwell's master stroke he never knew his books would still have an impact after the fall of dictatorships but his books speak more to us now than perhaps they ever did

Cracking follow-up

Matthew becomes more of an action hero than in the first novel, Dissolusion, as his life is threatened more frequently and intensly. However, he now has a dashing new assistant, Barak. There are two mysteries to solve. His own personal desires are also in need of attention. The pace of the novel is intense as he is under continual pressure from Lord Cromwell who is keen to save his own head. <br />The atmosphere of Tudor England is evoked with great skill and the reader experiences the vulnerabilities of all, from the lowest to the highest on the social ladder.<br />Some of the escapes from situations which Matthew and Barack become entwined in are quite fanciful, and will make better film (hopefully this will happen), than written word.<br />I enjoyed the first novel more, but this is a fantastic read. The plot is incredibly clever as the task Cromwell sets him has massive implications for the military power balance of a very tense Europe.

DEATH, WHERE IS THY POINT?

Chapatis. It is always difficult to start a novel convincingly, but it's a long time since I saw it done better than it is here. The harbinger of the brutal and bloody Indian uprising of 1857 was, in this narrative at least, the secret distribution of chapatis to the intended victims. I have long forgotten what little I may ever have known about these events, and I would actually be delighted to discover that this detail was not an invention of the novelist's but what actually happened. <br /><br />If paraphrased, the amount of gore and squalor that is detailed here on page after page would seem grotesque and even intolerable. As told by Farrell, it manages to be neither. This was the Victorian era, and the story is a scenario of British Victorians subjected to pressure and strain of near-incredible ferocity. The author does not spare us the specifics, and it will be a long time before I forget the spongy piles of corpses, the sense of near-unbearable heat in which I for one would have had difficulty in even wearing the stuffy formal clothes let alone dancing let alone battling for my very life, the pervasive stench, the outbreak of cholera and the indelible vignette of the lapdog chewing the face off a fallen defender. Even more extraordinary, to me, than the way they keep going is what they don't do and in particular what they think and don't think. There is no real instance of irrational panic whatsoever, and although the Padre for one has clearly gone slightly round the bend, the way this manifests itself is in an obsessional fixation with denouncing Sin and Heresy, and largely with his frantic concern to prove that great Victorian preoccupation The Existence of God from something like Aquinas's Argument from Design. <br /><br />At the height of the horror, the Collector is still thinking in Victorian vocabulary and expressing himself in subordinate clauses. Staring death in the eye, the young intellectual Fleury is still concerned with his theories, whether in respect of the operation of guns or of the progress of rationalism. The ladies themselves, who might have been expected to be in a state of blind terror, are still weighing up the niceties of how the matrons and widows on the one hand, and the Fallen Woman on the other, are expected to comport themselves. Most amazingly of all, when the cholera first breaks out the two doctors conduct a lengthy and articulate debate on its causes and remedies, keeping the attention not just of each other but of an attentive audience.<br /><br />The book abounds in unforgettable incidents - the smothering cloud of cockchafer beetles, the snowstorm, the slaughter of one rebel contingent with silver forks from the dining-room and marble busts of Socrates and Keats - but what is distinctive and extraordinary about this book is its tone. Its tone is quiet, detached and wry without being aggressively ironic. No heavy lessons are preached (although it's not hard to see which side the author is on when it comes to religion). No particular political standpoint is adopted either, the nearest we get to that being the shoulder-shrugging last paragraph. The whole saga ought to have been a filthy nightmare, but instead the reader feels rather like the onlookers who have come along with picnic lunches to watch the events as if they were watching a game of cricket. It has all been Virgil's 'plurima mortis imago' - the omnipresent face of death, and yet it has been a bit of a spectator-sport too. I'm actually rather glad I'm no historian in this instance. I don't know what set off the uprising, and once the relief forces turn up so far as I know things went back to much as they were before. The author offers us no theories or explanations: he just leaves us having witnessed wholesale and insensate slaughter and wondering what it can all have been in aid of.

More like a luke warm cup of tea than a delicious mug of hot chocolate

I was so disappointed with this book; when it first came out I even bought it in hardback as I had absolutley loved Chocolat (and the others of Harris's that I have read). I had practically been counting down the days to the release of this book and was left feeling incredibly underwhelmed by the whole thing.<br /><br />The Lollipop Shoes is the story of Vianne and Anouk and Vianne's new daugher who have moved to Paris and set up a chocolate shop there too but there is none of the magic of that first shop, it's very dull and lacks sparkle. Also, the characters in Lollipop Shoes don't even seem to be the same people they were in Chocolat; Vianne was carefree and happy in Chocolat and in this she is dull and conventional (I know she is supposed to be hiding from her past but I just didn't buy it). And I found the storyline of Red coming back to find her almost ludicrous as their relationship in Chocolat never developed into what we are lead to belive it did in this book.<br /><br />Call me an old cynic but I just get the feeling that this book has been penned this in order for it to be made into another film - it had none of the magic I had expected. Infact, it left me feeling flat as a pancake.<br /><br />I would always invite someone to make up their own mind about a book but this really didn't cut it for me.

Good but The Darkest Night was better

I enjoyed this book but not as much as Darkest Night but then I find that with Gena Showalter's trilogies. The first and third are great, the second is okay.

Uhtred Rocks!

This is a typically absorbing 4th installment in the series by Cornwell apparently based on one of his distant relations; the hero, a fictional Uhtred de Bebbanburg, is a Saxon Lord at the time of Alfred The Great who's adventures take place against a background of the birth of England as a nation.<br /><br />Nobody does historical 'faction' quite like Cornwell - all is based on an accurate historical macro with some fictional sub plots and characters to liven things up and personalise the action (like Sharpe) - a soap for grownups based on fact!<br /><br />Once you get hooked you simply cannot put them down.<br /><br />Superb stuff - great characterisation, pace, perspective and, of course, brilliant battle descriptions. Looking forward to the next one!

Fabulous page turner

I bought this book for my summer holiday and had read it in the airport and on the plane by the time I got there!! Loved the characters, story and setting- the perfect recipe for a wonderful book. I would definitely recommend it.

"Lords of the Underworld" series book 1

When Pandora was chosen by the Greek Gods to protect dimOuniak; a sacred box containing demons too destructive even to be trusted in Hell, other warriors, those that guarded the King of the Gods were left embarrassed. Determined to prove their skills, these Guardians stole the box and unwittingly released the most vile demons imaginable into an unsuspecting world; unable to recapture them as Pandora's box had mysteriously disappeared. In retaliation and to prevent further destruction in the world, the Gods cursed these warriors to each contain a demon within their bodies throughout eternity; creating the Lords of the Underworld.<br /><br />Maddox is not only cursed to house the spirit of Violence within him, he is further cursed by the Gods for the death of Pandora; slaughtering her unknowingly whilst under the control of his demon. Every night at midnight he is killed by Reyes (who houses the demon Pain) and his soul is escorted to Hell by Lucien (who contains Death). Constantly battling for control over his demon, Maddox is left unable to form any meaningful relationship; always worried that Violence could explode during a moment of heated passion. Yet both he and his demon are destined to meet a very special woman; a woman capable of taming Violence, twisting his darkness into sensuality and his destructive nature into a deep possessiveness. For once Maddox and Violence are in complete agreement; Ashlyn Darrow has captured the heart of both man and demon. <br /><br />Ashlyn Darrow is utilised by an Institute that studies the paranormal for her ability to hear any conversation ever spoken in any given location, no matter how long ago it was or the language used. Yet she longs for silence and a normal life and searches for someone who could possibly train her to control her gift. Whilst in Budapest she encounters conversations of a group of men with strange abilities so seeks them out hoping they can help her. Unfortunately the men she looks for believe her to be Bait, a beautiful woman used to lure a warrior to his death by a group of mortals known as Hunters. This organisation has one goal only; to destroy the Lords of the Underworld and the demons they contain. <br /><br />I've got to say this may be GS's best book yet, and that's quite an accomplishment considering how much I have enjoyed her"Atlantis" and"Alien Huntress" series. "The Darkest Night" made me smile, laugh and during one particularly emotive chapter featuring an event Maddox is helpless to prevent; blub like a baby. Ashlyn too faces her own horrors; namely the nightly murder of the man she loves; leaving her determined to break Maddox's curse at any cost. <br /><br />From the first page, GS skillfully draws the reader into an exciting new paranormal world. Her heroes certainly have their dark sides, Disease, Wrath, Promiscuity, Lies and Disaster amongst others, all with individual torments created by their unbreakable bond to their personal demon. The adventure is none stop as the splintered tribes of the Lords of the Underworld unite to battle the Hunters that stalk them and the romance between Maddox and Ashlyn absolutely perfect; ranging from tender to heartbreaking to blazingly hot in all the right places. I finished the last page of this book with a deep sigh of satisfaction and have already pre-ordered"The Darkest Kiss" (Lucien's story due for pub. June 08) and"The Darkest Pleasure" (Reyes' story due for pub. July 08), whose love interest is introduced in this book. <br />

Warning - May contain some plot giveaways!

I liked the idea of this book - about an island in turmoil, and the children able to escape into a Dickensian world. The first half of the book is delightfully sweet (almost twee) - with some elements of comedy coming from the Mother's who attend the school to impart their"wisdom". I was considering giving this to my 8 year old niece to read after I'd finished because it seemed like a good children's book. Then it takes a rather sinister twist and some killings are described in rather graphic detail - which somewhat changed my opinion. In this respect it is very much a book of two halves - I am forgetting about the tedious ending where Matilda is in Australia...and finds out the rather deflatingly boring reason for the red nose and the trolley. I felt some characters were poorly represented - particularly Grace who really didn't get an airing until her burial. Where was the description of her madness? We were just supposed to take that for granted because Matilda said"everyone knows she's mad"...Why? And then finding out she went mad because she played a part in a play...? What? I think Jones tried to make Mr Watts and Grace's relationship a fascinating one - but it was never really backed up with any substance. Overall I was glad I read this book, but maybe that's because I'm a very quick reader and it didn't cost me many hours of my life as it's relatively short. The reviews listed about the emotional detachment of the book are warranted, although I'm not sure whether that was deliberate or not. It was weird reading a 13 year old girls narrative (well 20 something when she wrote the book), and glimpsing the fat balding grey New Zealand author in the back cover.

Exercise writing in unimpressive novel

A real change of direction for Jonathan Coe, and it doesn't really come off. Though I found it enjoyable enough, I expected something better, something with more to say, given Coe's previous novels, particularly the classic What a carve Up (which those new to Coe should read before giving up on him).<br /><br />As with rather too many books today, a moderately interesting story is spoiled by the insistence on telling it in a self-imposed arty style. The device here is to tell the tale based on a series of photographs, and after the first few you feel like skipping those pages and getting to the point - something it takes Coe ages to do! Much of it reads like a series of creative writing exercises given to a less than talented class. <br /><br />The plot is the sort of family saga with skeletons revealed along the way that's probably been done to death, and these photograph devices were probably Coe's attempts to breath life into an outmoded genre. But I'd have preferred the story, without the padding. Not that it's a brilliant story; it's readable enough, and passes the time, but you don't really care much for the lead character, who is dead as the novel begins, thus destroying a possible source of suspense. <br /><br />Okay, I suppose, but I suspect Coe fans will be disappointed.