The Excursion Train and The Warden reviews

I like Detective Inspector Colbeck so much!  The Excursion Train is the second in his series by Edward Marston, which continues to be an excellent, albeit rather gentle, historical crime series.  Book two sees the well-turned-out detective, and his staunch ally, Sergeant Leeming, investigating a murder on a train, which eventually leads them to look into a past hanging, which may have been unjust.  The writing is good, the setting is vivid, the characters are wonderful, and you know there are never going to be any moments where your heart is in your mouth or you're uncertain of a satisfactory conclusion.  As I said about the first one, not for everyone (as the lack of excitement might irritate some), but great for me.


Anthony Trollope has been recommended to me on numerous occasions by at least two good sources of literary suggestions, so I thought I'd give his first Barchester novel a try, when I saw it randomly in Waterstone's one day last month.  I have to say it took me a little while to get into it - the prose is rather dense, and the subject matter rather dry - but the strength of his characterisation and occasional wit won me over in the end.  The ending was more of a downer than I'd expected, but considering the whole book was a rather heavy handed attack on the Church of England, I guess this shouldn't have surprised me.  I found the authorial voice quite strange in places - he takes time out from the narrative on several occasions either to defend his characters or himself to the reader - but also quite engaging.  As I have been told the second, and more well-known, volume of the series, Barchester Towers, is better, I shall persevere.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince review

All the elements were there, and for the most part were very well done.  I found all the relationship stuff very funny, all the emotional stuff very emotional, and all the action stuff pretty exciting.  But, somehow, it didn't quite fit together into a cohesive whole.  Everything was touched on effectively, but nothing was given the time it deserved to properly resonate.  Don't get me wrong - it's a tough book to sell on screen, and overall I think it was adapted pretty well.  I just don't think it would be possible to convey the depth of the narrative even in two and a half hours.  Book Six took me a couple of readings to fully appreciate - it's not the easiest book to get along with - and I think it was always going to be a weak link in the film series, because it doesn't really have a firm hook of its own to latch onto.

Alan Rickman, as always, was worth the ticket price, and I think the main three youngsters continue to show their growing strength as actors, but it was a shame to see some of the other great characters so marginalised (Neville in particular), and the power of the ending seemed somehow diffused and a bit lacklustre.