First books of 2024.

Unlike January 2023, 'this' year has started well as regards books. (Last year started with The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafar neither of which were all that great, in fact the latter got my only 2 star rating of 2023, if memory serves.)  My first book, The Awakening by Nora Roberts, was unfinished from 2023, so doesn't really feel like the first book for this year, but Children of Time does and it was an excellent book to start a new year with.

First up, The Awakening by Nora Roberts. My daughter recommended this trilogy and, although I'm not a massive fan of the author's Fey, Irish books, I'm nevertheless  willing to try almost anything. 

Breen Kelly lives in Philadelphia, sharing a flat with her gay best friend, Marco. She's a teacher who hates teaching but was rather forced into it by a domineering mother who has convinced Breen that she will never be more than 'average'. Looking after her mother's house one day, while her mother is away, Breen discovers that she has money, lots of it, left to her by her Irish father who disappeared when she was 10: her mother has kept this information from her. It is life changing of course and Breen makes the decision to go to Ireland to see if she can discover what happened to her father and also to see if she can kick-start the writing career that she's always dreamed of. So that's how the story begins. It turns into something very different of course as Breen discovers a portal into another realm and thus where her father went and the family she never knew about. I haven't read enough of Nora Roberts' Fey books, set in Ireland, to judge whether this is a good representation of them or not. (I read one, eons ago, and wasn't struck.) So, I have to judge it on its own merit as something new to me, and I did actually rather enjoy it. Yes, it was quite predictable, and I did think it got a bit bogged down in the detail of Breen's 'learning' in the middle. I also found the hero character rather abrasive but suspect his appeal is not aimed at a jaded old biddy like me. But what I loved was the setting on the west coast of Ireland. It shone like a wonderful character in its own right and oh gosh would I love a cottage like that on the shores of a bay in Ireland. Wild and woolly, Atlantic storms, what's not to love? The other realm was well depicted too and I did rather like the people she found there. So, swings and roundabouts but basically a success with me and I will read book 2, The Becoming, sometime this year, luckily my local library has it. 

So, in my mind, my first book of 2024 was Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is a sweeping space opera of a book which I've been meaning to read since I bought it in 2022. 

Hmm, this one's going to be difficult to describe. So, there's this planet which is being terraformed by the last of a sort of super-race from Earth, Dr. Avrana Kern. She presses the button, so to speak, releases a capsule of monkeys who carry a virus which means they will advance quickly, but there's a sabateur on her ship, all goes pear-shaped, and she has no idea whether said monkeys survive to inhabit the planet. Fast forward a couple of thousand years and her brain is inside a computer when another ship approaches. It's from Earth and is an Ark ship, carrying the remnants of the civilisation that followed Kern's. Earth is dead and thousands of people in stasis have nowhere to go, except Kern's planet. She's not having any of that for one reason or another and sends them on their way, but not before they get a glimpse of what is actually on the planet and the civilisation it's building. So, I've tried to make this spoiler free although anyone who knows of this book is probably aware of the twist. This is my first book by sci-fi writer, Adrian Tchaikovsky. His reputation goes before him so I was intrigued to read something and I was not disappointed. I'd heard that characteristaion was not his strongest point and I would say, yes, perhaps. People talk about his world building and that I would very much agree with. The beings on the planet, the world they have created: brilliant. The book is written from two perspectives, that of the people on the ship coming from Earth and that of the inhabitants of the planet. I preferred the latter but both were excellent. There were difficult decisions, ethical dilemmas, both on the ship and on the planet. It was fascinating. And the end surprised me. I gave this one 5 stars on Goodreads, if 4.5 was available it probably would've got that as I did think it wouldn't have harmed to lose a few pages. But all in all an amazing sci-fi read and as it's part one of a trilogy I'll be reading on sometime this year.

So, two very good books to start my reading for 2024. One hundred per cent better than last year. I hope you too have started your reading year well? Also that you're staying safe and well. Happy January reading.