Riven

Riven is the second in the Arinthian Line series by Sever Bronny.

It still walks an odd line between Harry Potter and Game of Thrones - a fair amount of teenage angst and silliness, juxtaposed with torture, trauma and many deaths.

I still liked the main characters - the arc of one of the peripheral girls was well done.

But it's a very long book, which comes in the middle of a much longer over-arching story, so it did feel a bit episodic in places, and also as if not much progression was actually achieved.

There's also a weird occasional use of the present tense where it's not correct, which pulled me out of the narrative now and then.

I did like the limitations set on the new 'deus ex' type spell the youngsters learned - good use of a magic system that could have been massively overpowered.

The Rice Mother

I picked up The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka from a bookshelf honesty-box shop in a theatre lobby a few weeks ago, as the blub described a grand, sweeping, multi-generational saga, set in Malaysia, starting in 1916.

I thought it might tell an interesting story of a young woman creating a life for herself and her children out of difficult circumstances. And it does to a certain extent.

But it's so unrelentingly grim - with a prophecy and clunky 'if I had only known...' statements that foretell much more tragedy and trauma to come - that I had to give up after less than a third of the way through.