Reviews and Comments

Thomas Rigby

hryggrbyr@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 8 months ago

When I'm not building things for the internet, I take photos of stuff.

  • ScandiNoir
  • HighFantasy
  • UrbanFantasy
  • Fantasy
  • YoungAdult
  • SwordAndSorcery
  • Dystopia
  • DystopianFuture

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Lilja Sigurdardóttir: Cage (2019, Orenda Books)

Drugs, smuggling, big money and political intrigue in Iceland rally with love, passion, murder and …

Exactly how I imagine the shady world of international banking works

Sigurðardóttir's writing is strong and the plot is juicy enough to still be interesting after three books; enough intrigue and mystery without feeling like it can't all be resolved.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-cage-lilja-sigurdardottir/

Lilja Sigurðardóttir: Snare (2018, Orenda Books)

After a messy divorce, attractive young mother Sonia is struggling to provide for herself and …

Colin Walsh: Kala (2023, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

In the seaside village of Kinlough, on Ireland's west coast, three old friends meet for …

Even though it's a horrific story of ruined childhood, I did not want this book to end!

Effervescent teenager Kala goes missing after leaving her home in an Irish coastal town one winter evening in 2003 and is never seen again. Her besties, left behind, recall the tale spurred by the discovery of a body in a nearby forest some 15 years later.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-kala-a-novel-colin-walsh/

Bridget Collins: The Silence Factory (2025, HarperCollins Publishers)

In the Factory, the looms clatter all day. Cobwebs found in ancient Mediterranean glades are …

A compelling novel about passion and desire; both amorous and ambitious.

When Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy, owner of the famous (in the right circles) Telverton Silk Factory, enlists the help of aurist Henry Latimer –a maker of fine acoustic instruments and recent widower– to fit his deaf daughter with a hearing aid, young Henry is introduced to a fantastical world as familiar as it is strange.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-the-silence-factory-bridget-collins/

Gareth Brown: The Book of Doors (2024, Transworld Publishers Limited)

If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go?

In New York …

Brown's debut novel is an accomplishment

Opening this book in a cosy, shabby-chic bookshop is a sneaky lawyer's trick designed to make me care and I'm annoyed it worked.

I can't stay mad for long though because I am in love with this world! A world where there are magic books — not spell books but the books themselves are the spells. Use the Book of Pain to impart excruciating agony, the Book of Illusion can conjure a facsimile of your every heart's desire, and the Book of Doors will take you anywhere in the world.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-the-book-of-doors-gareth-brown/

John le Carré: Silverview (Hardcover, 2021, Viking)

An agent of the British secret service gets jarred loose from his setting, and his …

If you’ve got a treff in Warsaw and there’s a faculty bus going, take it.

Infested with interminable, impenetrable prose, Le Carré's final_finalv2 (posthumous) novel bears all the hallmarks of man who knows his craft too well.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-silverview-john-lecarre/

Lev Grossman: The Magician's Land (Paperback, 2015, Plume, Penguin Publishing Group)

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood …

I shall miss these characters and this world.

As with all good final parts, The Magician's Land ties up many loose ends, brings the grandiose at hitherto unseen levels (including a battle that gives Lord of the Rings a run for its money), and leaves you wanting more even though there is no more. The story could continue, it doesn't need to.

thomasrigby.com/posts/book-review-the-magicians-land-lev-grossman/

reviewed The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Magicians Trilogy, #1)

Lev Grossman: The Magicians (Paperback, 2009, Viking Press, Penguin Books, A Plume Book)

"Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up …