Reading week in review

I have no idea why I feel compelled to add dates but I do so this weeks reading week in review covers March 5-11th.

Thanks to the horror that is the beginning of daylight saving time I’m a tad late in posting this week. Fortunately last week was a fabulous reading week and I’d like to tell you about.

 

The first of these is Force of Nature by Jane Harper. The gist of the story is that  Five  co-workers go on one of those executive bonding experiences in the wilderness but only four come back. Aaron Falk, first introduced in The Dry works in the financial crimes division of the Federal Police. He receives a short vague voice mail from the woman, Alice, who has gone missing. Alice, it turns out, was about to give Falk enough evidence to tank the company she works for.  Is her disappearance due to this or for some other reason?  Chapters alternate between the women’s narratives of what happened during the three days they were out and the present as Aaron Falk and his colleague investigate. Each chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger so the reader wants to keep going. I loved The Dry so initially I was not as taken with this book but as  the story progresses and we learn more about the women, their past and what happened while they were in the wilderness I became much more interested. It was fascinating to me how quickly the women turned into a sort of a female version of the Lord of the Flies. Let’s just say that it isn’t exactly a spoiler to say that there was little to no team building and cooperation.

Ms. Harper continues her excellent use of place as an element in the novel. Things rustle and there is reason to fear that the rustling isn’t due to wildlife. Several women had famously disappeared many years ago. The discovery of an abandoned cabin with a stained mattress eases no one’s apprehensions. The bushland has no distinguishing landmarks and the lack of water for part of the trip highlights the disintegration of the women into something savage as they fight over some water they find in a tree stump.

Ms. Harper also doesn’t stint on character development. We have Alice, who is a nasty piece of work and a bully. There is Jill, one of the owners of the company who had wanted to be a teacher, two twin sisters who have grown apart and Lauren contemporary to and former classmate of Alice.

We continue to learn more about Falk and his relationship with his father. There is something poignant as Falk uses his father’s old hiking maps. Through their use he realizes that this father had hoped to reach out to him.  I would have liked a little more Falk in this book but I still enjoyed it immensely. Now to wait impatiently for another year, drat!

The second book I finished was The Valiant by Lesley Livingston. I was drawn to this book because I’ve long been fascinated with ancient Roman history, the cover is beyond gorgeous, and the concept of female gladiators was intriguing.

The setup for the story is rather long. We are introduced to Fallon as she is practicing a tricky maneuver in a war chariot, along with her current love interest Mael. We then learn that she is the daughter of a king. He had been captured and ransomed back by the Romans and her sister Sorcha was killed after she went to Rome to rescue her father. Fallon has a deep hatred of the Romans because of this and hopes to be inducted into her father’s war band on her seventeenth birthday. She fears the Romans will reappear and she’s eager to be able to battle them if and when that happens.

Before the celebration for her birthday Mael wishes to marry her, but Fallon fears that this may cause her father to not include her in his war band.  She is stunned when ,during her feast, her father announces that she is to be married off to marry Mael’s brother, Aeddan.  Fallon is distressed by this and leaves the feast. Mael and Aeddan have a confrontation which ends badly and Fallon follows Aeddan to bring him back. She is almost immediately captured by slave traders, sold to yet another slave trader and eventually makes it to Rome. She’s sold to a school of female gladiators run by one Lady Achillea.

From this point on we learn about gladiator training along with an underlying plot involving sinister senators (one names the Collector, creepy) and treacherous classmates. There is a new love interest thrown in, one Caius Varro.

I actually enjoyed the book despite its flaws of which there are quite a few.  Fallon often acts irrationally, for example, when she decides she is going to leave her tribe and not marry Aeddan she destroys all her silver jewelry along with her dagger. These would have been handy things out in the wider world. She also takes a liking to Caius far too quickly considering her alleged hatred of the Romans.

However despite these flaws I enjoyed the scenes held within the gladiator school and her friendship with Elka. The underlying plot with the senators and her interactions with her fellow students was also lots of fun. The narration was also excellent.

 

I hope everyone survived the beginnin gof the week and are hopefull alert enough for a good read!