Germanic Gods and Goblins

In Gateway to Nifleheim, Glenn G. Thater delves into the Germanic world of gods and goblins that are related to Valhalla and Nifleheim, the powers of good and evil to spin her yarn. This is the first book in the Harbinger of Doom Series. I have to confess at the start, I skipped many a page to keep going. The story doesn't so much move as that it plods on, tediously.

Hero, Sword, and Dragons

The Hero, the Sword, and the Dragons by Craig Halloran is the first book in The Chronicles of Dragon series. It has everything it takes to give it lift-off, yet strangely it failed to captivate either me or my imagination. Best thing you can do is try it for yourself; at the time this review is published it's available for free on Amazon for Kindle.

Heroes Lacking Definition

The word hero conveys all kinds of images to us. When writing about heroes, you would expect that an author comes up with some sort of definition; it might even be a personal one. Lord Ashcroft wrote a book about heroes, and he didn't put a heroic effort into it. Special Forces Heroes is not that special and lacks in force. Heroically, though, I read it from beginning to end.

Three Generations: The Forgotten Garden

Pan Books published The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. In it, she tells the stories of three women in search of their roots covering a hundred years of family history. While two of them were displaced by no choice of their own, the third is set upon her quest by her grandmother to solve a family mystery.

Heligan Gardens

Roger Moore Biography

Roger Moore’s My Word Is My Bond was published by Michael O’Mara Books. I don’t know where Moore found his ghost-writer, but maybe it was his accountant. The book could qualify as an accountant’s joke anytime. It is probably the most boring biography that ever came into my hands.

Duchess of Death

It is always difficult to come second and later. When writing a biography, it makes your job as a writer that much harder and your research must be more thorough than that previously done. Still, the outcome might be a book that contains nothing new over what has already been written. It ends up being a rehash of well known and acclaimed books with no merit of its own.

Poking Fun at Book Critics

Rupert Thomson has written a novel under the title of a memoir. He is out to take book critics for a ride. As far as I was able to find reviews, he was extremely successful even though plot, style, and hyperbole used are a dead give-away. But the book offers much more than schadenfreude at the expense of hapless professional book reviewers.