Adventures in the Mouse House

42. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

I reserved this at the library as soon as I heard it was coming out; I didn't expect to get it so quickly, though.

I will come back when I'm feeling less brain dead and write a proper review at some point; the short version is it's wonderful - extremely tense and claustrophobic and insightful. Go read it now.

43. Soul Eaters by Michelle Paver

Book 3 of the children's series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The best so far. It's a lot darker than the first two. There were no slow bits, and the whole second half is quite tense and brings moral ambiguity into play.

39. Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver

I started this some years ago, wasn't that grabbed by it and was too busy to persist. Much later the penny dropped and I realised this was the same person who wrote the wonderful Arctic horror story Dark Matter, so I tried again.

This is definitely aimed at the younger end of the "young adult" market and is a very simple, linear story about a boy, Torak, living during the ice Age. His father dies and makes him swear to go on a quest. Along the way he makes friends with a wolf cub and a girl called Renn, and adventures are had.

Despite being aimed at quite young readers, this was good fun. I have somehow radomly bee given the first and fourth volumes in the series. Volumes two and three have been ordered from the library.

I liked this, but it's not a keeper - shout if you want it.