Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview #BlogTour The Black Crescent by Jane Johnson @HoZ_Books #TheBlackCrescent

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Welcome to the opening day of the blog tour for The Black Crescent by Jane Johnson which will be published on 3rd August and is available for pre-order now. My thanks to Poppy at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my review copy. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Sarah at A Cottage Full of Books.

You can listen to Jane talking about the book here.

About the Book

Hamou Badi is born in a mountain village with the magical signs of the zouhry on his hands. In Morocco, the zouhry is a figure of legend, a child of both humans and djinns, capable of finding all manner of lost objects, hidden water.

But instead, Hamou finds a body.

This unsolved murder instils in Hamou a deep desire for order and he trains as an officer of the law, working for the French in Casablanca. But the city is trapped in the turmoil of the nationalist uprising, and soon he will be forced to choose between all he knows and all he loves…

Format: Hardback (400 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 3rd August 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Black Crescent on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Bookshop.org 
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

In her Author Note, Jane Johnson writes, ‘I love to learn when I write fiction, and I hope readers will enjoy learning alongside me.’ I certainly did. Although I was aware of a French influence in the history of Morocco, I knew nothing about the extent of French control over the country and, in particular, the period of unrest that followed the exile of the Sultan of Morocco in 1953. Nor was I aware of the brutal actions taken by the French authorities to suppress the independence movement, some parts of which (like the fictional Black Crescent of the title) turned to increasingly violent measures.

Hamou Badi is our witness to these events, events he views with increasing horror. ‘Violent deaths became a daily occurrence. Regime collaborators killed by nationalists. Nationalists executed by the authorities. Moroccan activists killed by settlers. Settlers murdered by terrorists.’ He struggles with a growing sense of complicity; he joined the French police force out of a desire to do good but finds his integrity increasingly compromised.

Hamou comes to epitomise a person caught between two worlds and two identities. As he observes, ‘There it was, he was alone again, stranded in that no-man’s land between the rock of the French regime and the hard place inhabited by his own people.’ That there will come a breaking point seems unavoidable and when it does, it has devastating consequences.

Hamou is a solitary, self-effacing person making him an entirely sympathetic character. His innate sense of justice and humanity shines through everything he does. For instance, the kindness he shows towards Didi, a young beggar. And his instinctive desire to help those in trouble will reap rewards at crucial points.

Although there are brutal scenes at some points in the story, there’s also humour particularly towards the end of the book as Hamou takes up a new role and is presented with some tricky problems to solve. There was even a laugh out loud moment, which rarely happens for me.

The author’s love for Morocco, its people and its culture is evident throughout the book. (You can read about her very special – and romantic – connection with the country on her website.) In particular, there are wonderful (and mouth-watering) descriptions of the food of Morocco but also of its landscape, architecture, traditions, social and religious customs and rich history. The strong sense of community in which ties of blood are of particular importance is exemplified by Hamou’s family. But there is also a sense of change in the air, a transition from old ways to more modern ways, with some things lost in the process but others gained.

I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read by Jane Johnson – Court of Lions, The Sea Gate and The White Hare – but I think The Black Crescent is her best yet. It had everything I look for in historical fiction: a fascinating period setting, an engaging central character and a compelling story line that transported me to a different time and place. And, for me, it had the perfect ending.

In three words: Immersive, powerful, assured

About the Author

Jane Johnson is a British novelist, historian and publisher. She is the UK publisher of many bestselling authors, including George R.R. Martin. She has written for both adults and children, including the bestselling novels The Tenth Gift and The Salt Road. Jane is married to a Berber chef she met while climbing in Morocco. She divides her time between London, Cornwall and the Anti-Atlas Mountains.

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#BookReview Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang @Inkshares

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About the Book

Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered – savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso – that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder.

To secure their future, each Linwood heir must now dig into the past. As their suspicion mounts – of each other and of peculiar strangers in the churchless town of Linwood Hollow – they come to suspect that the perpetrator lurks in the mysterious origins of their own birth.

Format: eARC (402 pages) Publisher: Inkshares
Publication date: 20th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

Find Unnatural Ends on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Bookshop.org 
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

A new author to me, Christopher Huang is described as a fan of ‘Golden Age’ detective fiction and that’s easy to see because Unnatural Ends has many of the features you’d expect in a classic crime novel – a murder victim found in a locked room, a will, a series of suspicious deaths – plus a touch of the Gothic in the ancient and forbidding Linwood Hall with its stone walls and towers, and servants’ passageways.

To say the contents of their father’s will comes as a surprise to Lord Linwood’s three grown-up children – Alan, Roger and Caroline – is an understatement. They had not expected to be pitted against one another in a contest whose prize is inheritance of the entire Linwood estate. Having said that, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise given their upbringing was more a series of tests by their stern, exacting father than a conventional childhood.

The story alternates between the points of view of the three children so we see how they approach – both separately and together – the search for clues to the identity of the murderer, the means by which the murder was carried out and its motivation. But we also get occasional glimpses of recent events in their lives and recollections of growing up at Linwood Hall, a place dominated by their father. ‘Father himself was like the prelude to a storm, a gathering darkness.’ As the story unfolds and they discover more, these recollections take on a very different complexion. And what they discover is distinctly unsettling and quite unexpectedly dark.

Unnatural Ends is a really cleverly constructed crime mystery with the customary helping of red herrings, sleights of hands and unexpected reveals. But what particularly stood out for me is how the author incorporates into the motivation for the dastardly deeds a philosophy – a quite distasteful one, actually – that was surprising prevalent at the time. Plus a bit of Nietzsche for good measure. And at one point, Caroline read my mind by commenting, “This is King Lear, isn’t it?”. (I do love a bit of intertextuality.)

I usually include a ‘try something similar’ recommendation along with my reviews but in this case it could have been pretty much anything from the oeuvre of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham or Ngaio Marsh because Unnatural Ends pays homage to all of them without being a slavish copy. In the end, I came up with something slightly off-the-wall.

I really enjoyed Unnatural Ends for its ingenious plot and clever evocation of ‘Golden Age’ detective fiction.

My thanks to Adam at Inkshares for my digital review copy.

In three words: Clever, engrossing, intriguing

Try something similar: House of Tigers by William Burton McCormick

About the Author

Christopher Huang was born in Singapore, where he lived out the first seventeen years of his life. He moved to Canada in the expectation of cooler weather, returning to Singapore the following year to serve his two years of National Service in the Singapore Army. He studied architecture at McGill University, and lived the next twenty-odd years in Montreal. He now lives in Calgary, Alberta, where he has yet to find a proper jar of real, actual Bovril. (Photo: Author website)

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