Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson - Blog Tour and Review

 

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson! It is a pleasure to welcome you here! Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I've read a lot of books by Victoria and always love her, so there's a few reviews of her books around. 

I love Victoria's books and think she's a great Middle Grade author who we need more of in the UK, so I was pleased to see a new book by her arrive and signed up immediately. I was lucky enough to receive a physical copy which came in a very cute box with some pirate themed goodies in it too, so thank you very much for those, I really enjoyed them! Such a cute little gift from Tiny Tree Books, thank you. I was provided with a copy of this book for review purposes but all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The hero of the book is Kittiwake Stormhaven, who is around twelve years old. She lives in a world where there isn't much, if any, land left. There are a few seaports around the world, but most of the population lives on ships and the world is divided into quadrants. Kittiwake lives on the Amazon Princess, living a luxury, pampered life. Her mother Mollyhawk is the captain of this ship. Her sister Petrel went missing and their father Kestrel went off to look for her and is presumed dead. 

Kittiwake has a friend, Scallion, known as Scally, who was caught on a pirate ship so is branded on his forehead with a P. He is a stowaway on the Amazon Princess and is careful to not be found. Kittiwake also has a pet monkey, Caboodle. The three get into mischief and such, which is funny. But then there come rumours that Petrel is the captain of a pirate ship, the Seawitch. Mollyhawk is rightfully shocked and upset about this.

Meanwhile, the material that the ships are fuelled by is running scarce. It comes from a meteor and one is expected to land soon, so all ships are trying to get a piece of it. I liked this environmental aspect of the book. I also liked the setting, it felt old fashioned but with more modern inventions. I think this is a fun swashbuckling adventure book. I recommend it for middle graders! 

Eerie Exhibitions by Victoria Williamson - Blog Tour and Review

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Eerie Exhibitions by Victoria Williamson. It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around to read some of my other reviews. I've read quite a few books by Victoria over the past couple of years and I've really liked them and think she's a great writer. So I was excited to join in with this tour!

I got a physical copy of the book and with it some cute little gifts that matched up to some of the stories in the book. So thank you to Silver Thistle Press for that, too! I appreciate it. 

The book is made up of five short stories which all revolve around the same museum and include some of the same characters. It was inspired by Victoria's trips as a child to Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow. I loved this because I could imagine the museum perfectly. Especially because I recently when to Leeds City museum where there's an actual real mummy, and there is one in this book, too. 

I liked all the stories, but especially the one about the mummy's sarcophogus and the little girl, the one about the painting - which was SO eerie - and the last one, which was about a shell and which was literally terrifying. I really feel like Victoria has nailed creepy and eerie here. I'm giving the book four out of five. 

Thank you for having me along on the tour, I'll be back for Victoria's next book I'm sure! 

Red Runs the Witch's Thread by Victoria Williamson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the blog tour for Red Runs the Witch's Thread. I hope you like my review and I invite you to click around a little bit and read some of my other reviews. I've read a lot of Victoria Williamson's books now and enjoyed all of them so when I saw there was another of her books on tour I grabbed at the chance! I was lucky enough to receive a paper copy of this book and it came with some other goodies too, including a raven necklace, a mini sewing kit, and some sweeties! Amazing, it really brightened up my day so thank you!

First of all I'm not really sure where to put this book in terms of genre. It's kind of got a Young Adult feel to it even though the main characters are adults. I think that's partly because there are flashbacks to when the main character, Christian, was a small child. The book is set around 1720 and I really liked the historical setting. Victoria is good at historical fiction and makes it feel accessible to a modern reader. 

She is now thirty something and she is a widow. She has had to move back into her childhood home, with her mother and her two sisters. She is trying to perfect the art of bleaching thread, so that her thread would be the finest in the land and she can sell a lot and regain her family's fortune. She is a lady, after all, but the family has been on hard times since the death of Christian's father three years previously. Christian is sending herself a bit mad with the soap and the lye and the sun bleaching of the thread, but she is determined to do it. But everyone in the house is a bit wary of Christian because of what happened when she was a child. Christian is aware of this but also thinks she's being stalked by the ravens which come to the window and haunt the house and gardens. She begins to have flashbacks of what happened before and it's clear madness is taking its hold on her. 

The parallel narrative tells us what happened when Christian was little. She fell ill and accused several people in the area of being witches. Eight people were condemned to death and Christian and her father went to watch them being hanged. Since then she has never had a monthly bleed, making her barren, which shortened the list of men who would marry her... And now it is now and she is carrying a lot of guilt around. Christian's youngest sister is desperate to get married but Christian's reputation may stop that. A potential suitor comes to visit, and everything goes really wrong. 

In all I liked the story; I liked the setting and Christian and her sisters (the other one is really mean and spiteful, which is actually quite funny within the story), but I wish we had seen a little more of her mother. Christian's descent into madness is all too real and I really liked it. I did guess the twist around two thirds of the way through, but I thought it was set up really well and done well. 

Thank you for having me along! 

War of The Wind by Victoria Williamson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the blog tour for War of the Wind by Victoria Williamson! It is so nice to welcome you to my blog today - please do have a click round and read some of my other reviews.

It is a pleasure to be back reviewing Victoria Williamson! She was one of my favourite author discoveries last year; everything I've read by her has been so good and I really enjoy what she is doing with fiction and with middle grade in particular. Her middle grade is really engaging and perfect for the age group. I also love her settings, especially as she often sets books in Scotland where she grew up. I am excited to see what else she writes in the future and I'm really glad to be on this tour!

The book is set on a remote Scottish island called Scragness. Max is fourteen and lives on the bay there with his mum, dad, and baby sister Sally. A couple of years ago Max had an accident off his dad's boat and nearly drowned. He ended up losing his hearing. He is now in a special class at school and hates it. He has lost touch with all his old friends, including his best friend Calum. His mum struggles with sign language and his dad hasn't learnt any and refuses to write things down for Max. He wants Max to wear his hearing aid, but Max hates it as it doesn't really help him. Max really resents Sally because he thinks that his parents prefer her, and think that they just had her to replace their 'broken' son. Max's only friend is his Uncle Stuart's dog Twister who the family looks after when Stuart works away. 

Max is taught by Mrs Brody, who taught him most of the sign language he knows. Her daughter, Erin, is also in his special class - she was born deaf and is really clever. She is friends with Beanie, who has Down Syndrome and who lives with her grandma. Beanie is horribly bullied by Max's old gang, and Max feels like he has to stand up for her even though he doesn't really want to. Beanie knows a lot of sign language thanks to Erin, but she also speaks slowly enough for Max to mostly catch what she's saying to him. She gets easily upset by disruptions in her routine. Also in the class is David, who has a high level of special needs - he uses a wheelchair and can't speak. Max basically hates them all and just thinks of himself as better, I think. 

The island has never had any smart phones or internet because of its remoteness, but there are new wind turbines coming and there is a deal for them to also have mobile masts and for each of the islanders to be provided with a smart phone. Max is really excited about this because he knows there's a voice to text app that his dad and friends can use to communicate with him. There are a few islanders who are protesting the turbines, but Max knows they won't win. The turbines go up, but very quickly it is obvious that they're making animals behave strangely. Then all the humans start acting strangely too - can all the hearing people on the island hear something that Max and Erin can't? 

Then the mysterious scientist turns up, defended by three soldiers. Max knows something dodgy is going on, but how can he make people believe him?

I loved this book; it's pacy and fun and I loved Max and his friends and wanted them to succeed. I would actually really like it if there was a sequel to this book! I did think Max skewed a tiny bit younger than fourteen, but I can forgive that. I liked the setting and I liked the way it drew on classic sci fi literature. I'm giving this four out of five, and many thanks to Victoria! 

The Haunting Scent of Poppies by Victoria Williamson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my post for this tour for Victoria Williamson's brilliant new ghost story, The Haunting Scent of Poppies. I signed up for this tour because I've really enjoyed everything I've previously read by Victoria and also because I really like ghost stories! This novella is less than a hundred pages long, but it fits a lot in in that time! It's set at Christmas too so it helped get me into a festive mood. 

The book is set the first Christmas after World War One ended, which had ended obviously just a few weeks earlier. Charlie didn't serve as a soldier and in fact is very scathing of those who did. He is a small time thief who has had to escape London due to his crimes, and has arrived in Petersfield just a few days before Christmas. He needs to lie low to escape the heat, but he also doesn't have a lot of spare cash. He plans on robbing a few shops or something, and he finds a book shop that is barely open. He talks to the owner and the assistant, and happens to notice that the owner is reading a very rare book. Stealing the book and selling it on would set Charlie up for quite a while, so he manages to make that happen. He takes it back to his hotel, where he has several other of his ill gotten gains - a fancy watch, a sharp suit, a bag. And then of course the book. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up all the stolen stuff is gone, except for the book. Charlie assumes he has been robbed, and possibly that he was sedated, as he's suffering some weird effects.

He has to leave the hotel suddenly and ends up in a downtrodden B&B. It turns out that the book belonged to the nephew of the owner there and that he died in the trenches. Charlie begins to see flashbacks of this, and is haunted by something very, very weird. The ghost in this story is all too real and believable. I really liked it. I'm giving this four out of five, and I'm so glad I was on this tour! Victoria Williamson just keeps writing amazing stuff! 

Whistlers in the Dark by Victoria Williamson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my stop on the tour ofr Whistlers in the Dark by Victoria Williamson! It is nice to welcome you to my blog today. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. This is my second Victoria Williamson book and I really liked it too! You can find my review of Norah's Ark here. 

So this book is set in the second century AD, in what is now Scotland. Jinny is from the Damnonii tribe, who are native to the area. The area has been colonised by the Romans, who have built the Antonine Wall across the land, meaning the Damnonii can't graze their cattle on land they still see as theirs. Jinny is twelve years old and angry about the situation. Before the beginning of the book, something happened that hurt Jinny's brother and she blames Felix, a Roman boy, because it's easier that blaming herself. She was partly blamed, though, and she wasn't allowed to partake in the coming of age ceremony alongside the other girls in the tribe her own age, who were allowed. She's still given child's chores, because of that, and she's steaming mad about it. 

Felix, meanwhile, is half Damnonii. His dad is Roman and he's been sent up north with his soldiers in order to map the land up there. He's been gone ages though and everyone is beginning to think he's dead. That threatens Felix's place in the fort, because of his Damnonii mother (now dead) and the fact he's not a 'pure' Roman. He has acted as translator between the Damnonii and the Romans (the 'metal men' as Jinny calls them) which resulted in Jinny's brother's accident. Bram and Felix had been friends before, but since the accident Felix has avoided Bram and the tribe.

One day, Jinny sees Felix and, still angry with him, chases him in to the sacred stone circle that the tribe has. She fires a stone at him, but ends up damaging one of the stones. She then believes she has woken the stones and that they are walking across fields to come and get her. Then four people from the local area go missing - which Jinny thinks is further proof that she has woken the stones. 

The two have to work together to sort all of this out! It's a really good book, fast paced with a lot of peril involved. I liked both Felix and Jinny and wanted them both to succeed. I really liked the setting and could picture it perfectly, even though it felt like the story was modern and that any kid would empathise with what was happening. I liked the bits of history I leant - I didn't know there was a wall other than Hadrian's Wall! So it taught me something too. I'm giving this four out of five and would thoroughly recommend it!

Norah's Ark

I am so happy to welcome you to my blog today for my stop on the tour for Norah's Ark by Victoria Williamson. I love good middle grade books and if you look around my blog you'll find reviews of other middle grade books. This book is a stand out of the genre and I am so glad I got to join in the tour!

The book is told from two perspectives, those of Norah and Adam. They are the same age and will be going to senior school in September. However, at the beginning of the book they don't know each other.

Norah is small for her age and is living in a hostel with her dad. They are technically homeless and her dad doesn't have a job. They have very little money and Norah is often hungry. They have to use the foodbank and Norah's dad has to spend a lot of time at the job centre and looking for a job. He struggles to read, though, which doesn't help him. She also struggles with things like reading and counting, which means she is in a special class and is bullied at school. 

She is bullied by a girl called Chelsea, who lives with a foster family and who is also in the special class, but she has a lot of fancy things so she's quite in with the popular girls. Norah has a bike that she loves, and she spends a lot of time in the park by herself while her dad is in the betting shop with his friend Ed. She also loves animals - she has a pet spider that she rescued and she has been feeding a nest of baby birds. This is how she meets Adam. 

Adam lives in a "big, posh" house that backs on to the park. He has been ill for years with leukaemia but he's finally better. But his mum still thinks he's ill and won't let him go back to school, or go back to swimming, or even leave the garden. His dad is a lawyer and working hard and is barely around, and his mum gave up her job and now mostly keeps herself busy worrying over Adam. He would love to go back to school but isn't allowed. He finds the nest of baby birds and brings them into his treehouse. When Norah arrives, the two become friends eventually and work together on the birds. 

The very best of middle grade does a thing where it tells very complex stories - homelessness! lack of money! childhood cancer! - and makes them accessible to nine, ten, eleven years olds in a clear, concise way. This does exactly that and that makes it a joy to read. It is so empathetic towards both kids that I really feel like any child could understand their circumstances even if their lives are very different. I also thought it was really good that both Norah and Adam at first think that the other lives a perfectly charmed life. It's a true life lesson to learn that things aren't always as they seem on the outside. I also liked the very frank look at the benefits that Norah and her dad were living on and how they sometimes got messed up by things out of her dad's control. 

I also thought the ending was really good - it was really well drawn and while not a perfectly happy ending, it worked well for the age group. 

I will say that my only criticism is that the book is set in Hull but there were some phrases that sounded really un Yorkshire to me (I am from West Yorkshire!). When I read that the author is Scottish that made more sense because a lot of the phrases are used by my Scottish friends. For example Norah at one point picks up the laundry that "needs washed". We in Yorkshire would say "needs washing". I also doubt that a kid would pick up on these, but it's my only criticism. 

I am giving this book four out of five because I just LOVED it! I loved Norah and Adam. 

I was provided with a paper copy of this book for review purposes only. I was not otherwise compensated for this post and all thoughts and opinions are my own.