Category: Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday: The Scribe’s Daughter by Stephanie Churchill

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed in 2017, The Scribe’s Daughter by Stephanie Churchill, which was published in August 2015. Awarding The Scribe’s Daughter one of its coveted Discovered Diamond badges, the Discovering Diamonds reviewer said, “If you like George R.R. Martin and Sarah J. Maas, this is absolutely for you. Definitely a brilliant diamond of a discovery!”

The Scribe’s Daughter was followed by The King’s Daughter in September 2017.  Whilst the first book focuses on the adventures of Kassia, The King’s Daughter brings the reader the story from the viewpoint of her older sister, Irisa.   Unfortunately, The King’s Daughter hasn’t yet reached the top of my author review pile, although it’s sitting in third place so not long now! I’m really looking forward to reading it.

And the good news is that Stephanie Churchill is working on a third book, as yet untitled, featuring one of the characters from The King’s Daughter who proved particularly fascinating to readers.

TheScribesDaughterAbout the Book

Kassia is a thief and a soon-to-be oath breaker. Armed with only a reckless wit and sheer bravado, seventeen-year-old Kassia barely scrapes out a life with her older sister in a back-alley of the market district of the Imperial city of Corium. When a stranger shows up at her market stall, offering her work for which she is utterly unqualified, Kassia cautiously takes him on. Very soon however, she finds herself embroiled in a mystery involving a usurped foreign throne and a vengeful nobleman. Most intriguing of all, she discovers a connection with the disappearance of her father three years prior.

When Kassia is forced to flee her home, suffering extreme hardship, danger and personal trauma along the way, she feels powerless to control what happens around her. Rewarding revelations concerning the mysteries of her family’s past are tempered by the reality of a future she doesn’t want. In the end, Kassia discovers an unyielding inner strength and that, contrary to her prior beliefs, she is not defined by external things – she discovers that she is worthy to be loved.

Format: ebook (302 pp.)                Publisher:
Published: 25th August 2015         Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, YA

Purchase Links*
 Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  |
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Scribe’s Daughter and The King’s Daughter on Goodreads

My Review

The Scribe’s Daughter is an exciting, action-packed adventure story set in a fictional imagined world.  Although not specified, the time period has the feel of the medieval and I imagined the story taking place somewhere in the countries around the Mediterranean.

Kassia is a sparky, feisty heroine.  She’s a tomboy when we first meet her, brave if a little reckless.  Kassia has need to be brave, though, because her father disappeared three years after failing to return from a trip, and she has to look after her sister, Irisa, and somehow find a way for them to survive.  Although suspicious of the stranger who turns up offering her handsome payment in return for repairing a piece of jewellery, Kassia decides it is better than the undesirable alternatives on offer.  This decision will have consequences for both Kassia and her sister.

Carrying out the task takes Kassia out of the city of Corium and it soon becomes apparent that someone is out to get her (for unknown reasons) but that others are out to protect her (for equally unknown reasons).    A story that has started out fairly light suddenly gets darker as we see that Kassia is not immune from the dangers facing a woman travelling alone.   I did find this part of the book surprisingly unsettling.  Kassia’s  terrible experiences will scar her physically and emotionally, making her unwilling to trust anyone and leave her seeing herself as damaged and unworthy of another’s love.

Many adventures and strange new places await Kassia and the group of fellow travellers she encounters.  She learns surprising things about her past that cast her in a new and unwelcome role.  Can she be more than a pawn in a political game or a chattel to be negotiated over and possessed? Will she eventually be able to trust someone with her heart?  The author skilfully brings Kassia’s story to a satisfying conclusion but leaves strands to be picked up and woven into a new story in The King’s Daughter.

I received a review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest review.

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In three words: Entertaining, action-packed, lively

Try something similar…The Du Lac Chronicles by Mary Anne Yarde

StephanieChurchillAbout the Author

When Stephanie was a child, she was curious about everything, particularly as it related to “old stuff.” And because in those days there was no internet, when she was bored or wanted to learn something new about history or anything else, she could be found sitting on the floor at home reading an encyclopaedia. Her fondest memories are of wandering her grandparents’ farm in rural Nebraska, daydreaming and telling herself fairy tales, usually with a medieval twist.

Upon reaching adulthood, Stephanie developed a love of reading history and historical fiction.  But never once did it occur to her to become a writer.  Working in the field of law instead, it took a nudge from her favourite author suggesting that she try her hand at becoming an author.

Evoking the essence of historical fiction but without the history, Stephanie’s writing draws on her knowledge of history even while set in purely fictional places existing only in her imagination.  Filled with action and romance, loyalty and betrayal, her writing relies on deeply drawn and complex characters, exploring the subtleties of imperfect people living in a gritty, sometimes dark world.  Her unique blend of historical fiction and fantasy ensures that her books are sure to please fans of historical fiction or epic fantasy literature alike.

Connect with Stephanie

Website  ǀ   Facebook  | Twitter ǀ  Goodreads

 

Throwback Thursday: The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 by Nicole Dieker

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed in December last year – The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 by Nicole Dieker.  Published in May 2017, The Biographies of Ordinary People is a two volume series about the fictional Gruber family that’s been described as a millennial era Little Women.  It covers the period from July 1989 to November 2016, with volume one focusing on the years 1989 to 2000.

I’m delighted to say that the second volume, covering the years 2004 to 2016, is due to be published on 22nd May 2018.  The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2 is available for pre-order from Amazon.  Watch out for my review of volume two next week.

TheBiographiesofOrdinaryPeopleAbout the Book

The Biographies of Ordinary People is the story of the Gruber family: Rosemary and Jack, and their daughters Meredith, Natalie, and Jackie. The two-volume series begins in July 1989, on Rosemary’s thirty-fifth birthday; it ends in November 2016, on Meredith’s thirty-fifth birthday.  When the Grubers move to a small Midwestern town so Jack can teach music at a local college, each family member has an idea of who they might become. Jack wants to foster intellectual curiosity in his students. Rosemary wants to be “the most important person in her own life for the length of an afternoon.” Meredith wants to model herself after the girls she’s read about in books: Betsy Ray, Pauline Fossil, Jo March. Natalie wants to figure out how she’s different from her sisters—and Jackie, the youngest, wants to sing.  Set against the past thirty years of social and cultural changes, this story of family, friendship, and artistic ambition takes us into intimately familiar experiences: putting on a play, falling out with a best friend, getting dial-up internet for the first time. Drinking sparkling wine out of a paper cup on December 31, 1999 and wondering what will happen next.

Format: ebook (435 pp.)                Publisher:
Published: 23rd May 2017            Genre: Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  | Barnes and Noble
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1 and The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2 on Goodreads

My Review

In her guest post published on my blog in July 2017 (click here to read it), Nicole talked about her inspiration for The Biographies of Ordinary People and her reason for focussing on the lives of just one family.  She illustrated this with a quote from volume two in which Meredith asks:

“There are all these biographies of famous people and how they lived their lives, but most of us aren’t going to be famous. It’s like we’ve gotten these models for life that aren’t applicable…We’ve learned about all of these well-known artists and how they did their work, but we don’t ever study how the rest of us do it. Where are the biographies of ordinary people?”

The Biographies of Ordinary People has been described as, ‘a millennial-era Little Women’ but don’t think that this means it is at all sentimental, preachy or twee (not that I’m suggesting Little Women deserves those descriptions either).  I saw a one-star review that said (summarising) “not much happens” and feel that the reviewer missed the point of the book really.  Yes, there are no dramatic events like murders, violent deaths, family break-ups, etc. but then those things are not a feature of normal family life for most of us, unless you’re really unlucky.

Things do happen in The Biographies of Ordinary People but they’re the things that make up everyday domestic life and reflect the experience of most of us growing up: making up games for entertainment on car journeys, starting school, making new friends, moving to a new town, going to the swimming pool, visiting the video store, attending your first prom.  In the case of the Gruber girls, their experiences also reflect the period covered by the book so it’s videos not DVDs or streaming, video games not apps on your phone.  There are also the sad events that unfortunately occur in any family over time.

Meredith is the character that resonated most strongly with me.  She’s clever, thoughtful, bookish, protective towards her younger sister, competitive but perhaps over-absorbed by the desire to get things right and, in this respect, can come across as mature beyond her years.  At one point she muses, “I wonder if I am good at anything that I haven’t practiced”.  Meredith seems absolutely real as a character with the good points and flaws that make up all humans and I think this is the author’s chief accomplishment that in this book she has created truly realistic characters that you feel you could meet in the street or the local shop.

I found the Gruber parents – Rosemary and Jack – really interesting although not altogether likeable.  They seem so careful and controlled in their parenting and in bringing up their girls so that this carefulness becomes ingrained in Meredith, in particular.  In fact, at the town’s annual Easter Egg Hunt, Rosemary does seem to recognise this.

‘Rosemary often didn’t know how to feel about her daughter; certainly there was a sense of pride and love and accomplishment in the idea that she had raised a child who would hold back, whose sharp, smart eyes would case the room for eggs and then help her younger sisters find them.  But she also felt a little sad, watching this, because she saw her daughter growing up and doing exactly what she and Jack had taught her, think before you speak and before you act – and she worried that Meredith thought too much.’

I really liked the contrast made with the arrangements in the household of Meredith’s best friend, Alex.

‘[Meredith] had never known anyone like Alex, who walked down the sidewalks saying hello to everyone, who climbed up on a library stepstool without asking, who ran towards her father every evening shouting “Daddy, daddy, daddy!”  Mike MacAllister was big and red-headed and he would lift Alex off the ground or tousle her tangled hair.  When Meredith went back to her own home she said “Hello” and whichever parent was in the living room said “Hello” and asked how her visit had been…’

‘That was one of the reasons Meredith and Alex were best friends.  They talked, in Alex’s bedroom, about the Gruber way and the MacAllister way.’

I received a review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.   I really enjoyed the first volume of The Biographies of Ordinary People and I’m looking forward to reading the second volume covering the years 2004 to 2016 and seeing what life has in store for Meredith, her siblings and friends.

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In three words: Intimate, realistic, engaging

NicoleDiekerAbout the Author

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer, a senior editor at The Billfold, and a columnist at The Write Life. Her work has appeared in Boing Boing, Popular Science, Scratch, SparkLife, The Freelancer, The Toast, and numerous other publications. The Biographies of Ordinary People is her debut novel, if you don’t count the speculative fiction epic she wrote when she was in high school.

Connect with Nicole

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