Tournament by Matthew Riley.
It 's great to see Mr. Riley bounce back from the tragedy in his life that happened after his previous release. It looks like he may have found his mojo once again. For once there are no Mag guns, high tech weaponry or aircraft in sight. What we have is a period who-done-it staring Queen Elizabeth- the first one. Riley still manages to write prose that makes you speed read but this time he fills it with history, detective work and something new to his writing –sex. The book tells of Queen Elizabeth as a young teenager being sent to Turkey to attend a chess tournament by her father Henry the Eighth. She is accompanied by her tutor the every resourceful and ahead of his time: Roger Ashcam. What transpires is a very satisfactory mystery and some hints to why the “Virgin” Queen grew to be the monarch she became. This is an encouraging career path for Riley who uses historical conjecture for his own story telling. purpose. I hope he does more in this vein.Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Stephen King’s last two novels 11-22-63 and Under The Dome saw him, in my opinion bounce back to his best. With his latest Doctor Sleep he continues the streak. As a sequel to the Shining, we get to see the man Danny Torrance grew up to be and how the “shining” influenced his life. Which in his early years wasn’t that great. To make this even more interesting King (who channels the early Clive Barker) introduces The True Knot, a group of Grey Nomads who travel the sight seeing routes of America in their Campervans. This of course is their cover as they actually hunt down and feed on children with the "shining". Danny’s travels find him in a town where he discovers another child with shining powers that far exceed his own and when the True Knot zero in on the child he finds himself back at the site of the Overlook Hotel Hotel for a chilling showdown/
This is a great read and classic King returning to his earlier roots.The Girl With All The Gift by M.R Carey
I can say with out fear that this book is probably the best book I’ll read this year. I found myself turning each page with anticipation for what was to come next and I was never disappointed. This is a Zombie story with a difference, whilst it could be accused of channelling The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later and even The Road it’s originality shines through. Set in a not too distant future, a group of children are held in a military base where they are treated with extreme caution. We discover they are a different breed of self aware and intelligent species of what most of the world has become thanks to a fungus that has the ability to turn humans into zombie like flesh eaters. The author uses scientific fact as the basis of the outbreak which makes this novel much the more scarier. Carey has made his main character Melanie, one of the children an anti hero right up to the last page where her good nature despite her infliction is realized. A masterpiece I predict will be on everyone’s best book list later this year. READ IT.
