Fantasy

I know that many people were struggling to read at the beginning of the lockdown but that wasn’t a problem I had. All I wanted to do was devour books all day long. However, as the weeks have gone on I’ve found that my reading rate has slowed down considerably. I couldn’t really understand it as I was fairly sure that I was spending the same amount of time reading. Having said that, I have also been keeping myself very busy with other things such as chores outside, painting and crochet – things I never normally make the time to do.

My reading had definitely slowed down though and in the end I decided it must be because of my reading choices – I was steadily reading my way through the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. I absolutely love these books but I do have to admit that they are very gentle stories and not action packed – they are not the kind of fast-paced book which forces you to keep reading so you know what happens next. They very much allow you to take your time and luxuriate in them.

It has been wonderful to re-read my way through the series in order (apart from Winter Holiday which I read every Christmas and didn’t want to read again so soon) but I am beginning to feel the need to read something a bit more gripping. Not that I will stop reading Swallows and Amazons – I will just intersperse them a bit with something else. My first choice was Ben Aaronovitch’s Lies Sleeping – I bought his latest book just before the lockdown started and I’ve been catching up with the series since then. I don’t just enjoy the stories themselves – I love how intellectual the Latin and historical references make me feel!

I am very late to the Six of Crows party. I have heard people raving about the books for years but for some reason I never picked them up.

Then somebody shared a quote from Leigh Bardugo’s latest book which made me sit up and think, ‘Oh that’s clever!’ I was drawn to the books but thought that although the books set in the Grishaverse don’t exactly follow on from one another, it would be better to start at the beginning. I realise now of course that actually the first book written was Shadow and Bone but Six of Crows was the one which drew me in.

I was very pleased to be given a copy for Christmas and couldn’t wait to get started. It took me a little while to get into it – I don’t read a huge amount of fantasy so I’m not used to learning about a brand new world and its magic. Pretty soon though I was hooked and I raced through it.

In fact, it was so gripping that I finished it one evening and went straight out in the morning to buy book two – Crooked Kingdom. I just had to know what happened next and for those few hours in between I felt bereft.

The book has a great plot which is full of surprising twists and turns. The thing I loved most about it though was the characters – how they interacted with each other and the way there was so much more to them than just the main plot. They all had their own sub plots and motives, plus intriguing backstories which came out gradually through the books.

Obviously, I loved these books. The only question is – do I go back and read the Grisha trilogy next or move on to King of Scars?