I, Morgana by Felicity Pulman

I, Morgana by Felicity Pulman(Cover picture courtesy of Momentum Books.)

You know my name, but you don’t know my story …

After being schooled in magic by Merlin and promised a kingdom, Morgana is robbed of her birthright and betrayed by everyone she has ever trusted. Risking everything for revenge, Morgana uses her magical arts to trap Merlin, threaten her half-brother King Arthur, and turn away the only man she will ever love. In destroying King Arthur and Camelot, Morgana sets into motion a catastrophe that can only be reversed if she can learn from the past in time to protect our future … and so fulfill an ancient prophecy.

In the tradition of The Mists of Avalon comes a new story of Morgan le Fay, one of the most enigmatic and reviled characters in Arthurian legend.

[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I requested I, Morgana on a whim one day while browsing through NetGalley.  The blurb sounded interesting enough but when I began the novel I was under the impression it would be all about Morgana railing against her wrongfully deserved evil reputation.  Fortunately, it was nothing like that.

Morgana is an interesting narrator because she’s not very self-pitying.  She accepts that she really did deserve a lot of her reputation and you can really feel her deep regret at all that she did in the name of trying to seize her kingdom back.  Maybe her reputation as evil incarnate is not deserved but she was far from a good person in her younger years.  Still, even though I didn’t like her as a person her introspective voice as she writes looking back on the events is enough to make me keep reading.  Morgana is a complex person whose ultimate downfall was her pride so you really can’t help but empathize with her.

I liked how Felicity Pulman stuck to the traditional Arthurian legends most of us are familiar with but also put her own flair on them.  Morgana can travel into the Otherworlds, which was never really mentioned in the traditional legends.  She was also taught by Merlin himself and that makes for some very interesting confrontations later in the novel as both of them regret their shared past.  Felicity Pulman decided to set her novel much, much later than most authors choose to set King Arthur’s time (she set it around the 1100s) but it works pretty well.

The only thing that disappointed me was that Felicity Pulman’s writing lacks description.  Morgana is always telling us what is going on rather than describing the scene as she saw it at the time.  It makes her a more sympathetic character in general but I would have loved a little more description of the various scenes throughout the novel.  Telling is okay for some purposes but reading a whole novel of it isn’t necessarily the most exciting.

Still, I really did enjoy I, Morgana.  It’s a very interesting take on a complicated woman who has become one of the great villains of legend.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available yet but will be published on June 26.

The Week Ahead (#12)

I didn’t get to do one of these last week, so this Father’s Day I decided I should try to plan a little more in advance.

Monday

I, Morgana by Felicity Pulman

  • A review of I, Morgana by Felicity Pulman.  I saw this one on NetGalley and requested it on a whim and let’s just say it was not what I expected.  At all.

 

 

Tuesday

The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima

  • A review of The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima.  Her Seven Realms series just keeps getting better and better but I’ll admit I was a little worried about how she would end things off.  All in all I’m surprisingly satisfied with how she decided to end it, which is really all I can ask for in such a complicated series.

 

Wednesday

Sins of the Lost by Linda Poitevin

  • A review of Sins of the Lost by Linda Poitevin.  I actually got this through NetGalley months ago but didn’t have the time to read it.  So lately I made the time to reread the first two books and finally read this third book in the Grigori Legacy series.  But was it worth it?

 

 

Thursday

  • My interview with David Litwack.

Friday

  • Book Blast: The Cook’s Temptation by Joyce Wayne
  • Book Blast: Wilder Than the Rest by Shirleen Davis

Saturday

  • TBA

Meet New Kitty

Yep, this is totally off topic but I just had to show him/her off:

Carrie Picutres 2014 005This is him/her meowing rather indignantly at my camera as I took his/her picture.  From comparing it to the rest of the litter I think it’s a boy but knowing my luck it’s probably a girl.  That, and the litter is only two weeks old so it’s pretty hard to tell.

Anyway, my cat Tommy died at the age of 19 in January and in these past few months I’ve realized just how much I’ve missed having a cat.  When a farmer in the area announced he had a new batch of kittens to give away I just couldn’t resist checking them out.  And lo and behold, there was a perfect little striped one!  I’ve always been rather partial to striped cats.

He’s only two weeks old so I won’t be taking him home until sometime in July but until then I’m going to be busy cat-proofing the place again.  It’s going to take a lot of work but it’ll be worth it when I hear the pitter-pattering of tiny clawed feet again.

Book Blast: Love at Pemberly Series by Reina M. Williams

Please join Reina M. Williams on her Love at Pemberley Series Book Blast from May 12-June 13.

About Most Truly

01_Most TrulyPublication Date: December 15, 2013
Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
eBook; 88 pages

Heat level: Sweet

Colonel James Fitzwilliam is home. The war has left him weary, battle-scarred—and a free man of fortune ready to find a wife. He travels to Pemberley, his second home. There he meets Kitty Bennet. Her unexpected charms soon have him questioning his familial duty and his expectations. A fight looms on the horizon when his aunt—Lady Catherine de Bourgh—and his parents arrive with their own plans for his future.

Kitty Bennet has found happiness. At Pemberley, she has improved herself and formed true friendships with her sister Lizzy and Georgiana Darcy. Kitty is captivated by the gentlemanly Colonel Fitzwilliam. But she will not be silly over a redcoat again, and she will not risk her happiness—or his family’s displeasure—for his attentions. Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy, Lizzy, and Georgiana have their say, and Kitty learns a new lesson—love will find you at Pemberley

Continue reading →

Autumn: Disintegration by David Moody

Autumn; Disintegration by David Moody(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Autumn: Disintegration is the penultimate chapter in David Moody’s riveting horror series!

Forty days have passed since the world died. Billions of corpses walk the Earth. Everything is disintegrating. . . .

A group of eleven men and women have survived against the odds. On an almost daily basis, they attack the dead with brutal ferocity, tearing through them with utter contempt.
Somewhere nearby, out of sight and out of earshot, is another group that has adopted a completely different survival strategy. Where the others have used brutality and strength, these people have demonstrated subtlety, planning, and tactics.

A series of horrific events force the two groups together. Backed into a corner and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of corpses, they all know that their final battle with the dead is about to begin.

Like I somehow do with most series, I’m not actually reading Autumn in order.  I read the first book and the second book and since I couldn’t find the third book when I went shopping the other day I decided to pick up book 4, Disintegration.

Unlike with the previous two books, I wasn’t really all that impressed with Disintegration.  Sure, it’s kind of cool to see how two completely different groups are managing to stay alive in such a horrific world, but the formula David Moody uses is getting kind of boring.  (SPOILERS)  Essentially a bunch of survivors mope around for a while, things get bad, they join another group and bring about its downfall.  Sure, he changes the names around a little but they’re basically all the same book at this point.  It’s kind of disappointing as someone who appreciates the overall plot arc of the series.

But as a novel on its own merit, Disintegration isn’t all that bad.  David Moody is still a master of suspense and he’s good at describing such a horrific world without ever going into descriptions of gore for gore’s sake.  Don’t get me wrong, though; this book is still pretty gory.  It’s just that it’s not gratuitous.  I like how he has his zombies develop abilities even as they deteriorate, which is somehow more terrifying because there’s the possibility they could even become fully human as they rot away to nothing.  If that’s not horrific I don’t know what is.

The characters were a solid ‘meh’ in this story.  None of them really stood out to me unless we’re talking about total jerks that get people killed, like Webb.  Yeah I know he’s a hothead kid but he’s the epitome of the Too Stupid to Live trope.  While not exactly being brilliant at it, David Moody still did a good job imagining how the group dynamics would be in such a diverse group of people.  People are constantly getting on each others’ nerves and pretty much no one agrees on what the solution to the zombie problem is.  Essentially, it’s a group of real people and is probably how most people would react in a zombie apocalypse.

So basically this one’s a solid ‘meh’.  I hope the fifth book is better.

I give this book 3/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble     Goodreads