Category Archives: Everything

THE DRESDEN FILES BOOK 3 (GRAVE PERIL) (Audiobook Version)

Jim Butcher (Author), James Masters (Reading by)

At The Melbourne Review of Books we attempt to bring intelligent discussion to all forms of fiction, whether popular genre works or more obscure literary pieces. We want to bring something thoughtful to the discussion, not just a simple I liked this or I didn’t.

The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher is a phenomenally successful urban fantasy series mixed up with mystery and gumshoe flavours. Unlike a lot of urban fantasy, it is less of a supernatural romance romp and more of a supernatural crime thriller, though the genre sort of demands some sex somewhere, so you will get that too. Continue reading

STRAVINSKY’S LUNCH

Drusilla Modjeska ISBN 0 330 36186 4

Amongst ordinary things, among cups and saucers, couples chatting in a courtyard, trees, the expression on a face, there may also be questions about what one sees, and what it means. For the artist, these questions might be about Life, they might be about Love, they might be about Art, and the way in which a person may—but here is the tension—live and love and create.  Continue reading

TINDER

Sally Gardner ISBN-10: 1780621493

Many years ago, a strange thing occurred. I was browsing the fiction shelves of a well known, and now defunct, multinational bookstore whilst discussing the reasons books for adults were no longer illustrated (with another person, I’m not entirely mad). One argument was that it was too much trouble for publishers to illustrate books. Another, that adults in order to feel like adults must not read books with pictures in. No luscious illustrations or flowery words for grown-ups. Goodness, no.

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Judecca is a fascinating piece of storytelling and a good example of the ways in which the new media universe has changed what is possible and how people tell stories. Judecca is a webcomic that updates more or less weekly and started way back in 2009. It is beautifully, hauntingly illustrated by Noora Heikkilä, and is co-written by her and Jonathan Meecham. Continue reading

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

Neil Gaiman ISBN 10: 1472200314

One of the reasons that Neil Gaiman is a very interesting writer is the way in which he mixes the mundane and the preternatural. When dredging through the mundane for stories, we all tend to go back to our own lives to pick over. And for this reason I suspect, there are Neil Gaiman stories that look semi-autobiographical on the surface. A couple of the short stories in Smoke and Mirrors give off that illusion. I say illusion because I suspect that stories that seem to (maybe) be about someone who was maybe Neil Gaiman (maybe) in an earlier time of life are no more deeply autobiographical than any story is autobiographical. And all stories are a bit autobiographical. They cannot help but be anything else.

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THE CASUAL VACANCY

J.K. Rowling ISBN 978-1-4087-0420-2

Alright. Yes. Vindictiveness would be standard English, but I wanted to play on The Casual Vacancy, and so I used a -cy ending instead.

But more to the point, vindictiveness is also the standard in J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, her first post-Potter book. This is a very grim, very interesting, very powerful and somewhat disconcerting book. I’ve read some reviewers complain that The Casual Vacancy – being as it is a very adult book about serious and troubling things – is difficult to read because it is written in a style not much different from the style of the Harry Potter books. I’ve read other reviewers complain that without the wonderment of the Potter universe what’s left behind is a grimy world without much redemption. I’ve also read a lot of reviews that sort of flailed around, accusing the prose of being workmanlike or of being overwritten or they accuse the story of being melodramatic or too dull or something, anything to justify a negative feeling about the book. Continue reading