Trade-paperback, published Baen, August 2014.
Just a very quick review on this one. I’ve always liked the Honor Harrington series, and this is the third book of a trilogy that harks back to Honor’s ancestor, Stephanie Harrington and telling of how she first met a treecat in her planet’s wilderness and how they became inseparable friends. Anyone who loves cats will like this trio beginning with A Beautiful Friendship, going on to Fire Season, and culminating in TreeCat Wars. The three books are classified as YA, presumably as a marketing tool to sell more to school libraries and parents, and to the YA sections of public libraries and possibly because the main character is a teenager. But be aware that the YA is something of a misnomer. They are thoroughly readable by adults so if you don’t mind that the main character is a teenage girl, you’ll enjoy the trio.
In fact it irks me that some publishers are now insisting that any genre book using younger characters must be YA, and sold as that, with the suggestion that there is something wrong with either adults reading YA, or children reading more adult books. Some years ago I wrote a book whose main character started at nine and ended as a grandmother. It was rejected by a publisher on those grounds. That it had to be YA because the main character was nine, but it was also inappropriate (they said) for YA because the character was in her sixties when the book ended. Luckily circumstances changed, I offered it where I had originally intended, it was accepted, and has been selling ever since. There seems to be an increasingly narrow classification of books for various age groups by publishers, and I feel it’s wrong. I often enjoy a good YA, despite being a lot older than that classification. Just as when from about twelve, I was reading adult books by authors such as Agatha Christie and Gerald Durrell. It isn’t about a fixed age, it’s about comprehension and enjoyment. And I don’t feel that readers, old or young, should be arbitrarily thrust into a narrower categorization and stranded there.

Hardcover, published 2011 by Two Roads, (UK)
I always enjoy a good ‘vet book’, no vet runs a practise for long without having some great stories to tell so the only question becomes, can the author tell the stories well? And that ranges from adequate to terrific. This book happily falls into the terrific category. Also into that category falls the author’s backdrop, he started out as a qualified vet in 1999 and now has his own practise, Pilgrims Veterinary Practise in the New Forest area of England. However only a few years into his employment he also started the Worldwide Veterinary Service Charity. Frankly this guy reminds me of the Energiser Bunny. His practise, the charity, and then too he runs an emergency service for animals (in Dorset,) and has a pet travel company. And before most of that he attained a karate black belt, and, to raise money to start his charity, ran the Marathon des Sables, a 152mile race across a portion of the Sahara and completed it, despite not being any kind of experienced runner while other, more practised runners, were dropping like flies. Mr Gamble has stamina.
The tales of two of his overseas missions, both to desex dozens of feral dogs, and the other events that happened to him during those missions are poignant and remind the reader that while charity may begin at home, there are times when it should travel further afield. With this book I would say the author has added yet another string to his bow. It’s well-written, often witty, the animal stories, many told against himself, are engrossingly funny or wry, and I read the book at a sitting.
After that I investigated because I’d never heard of the publisher. Two Roads is a small new outfit, an offshoot of Hodder and Stoughton, that began in 2010. Run by Lisa Highton it seems to have the knack of finding new, quality, authors. After all, one of the first books it published was Water For Elephants, promptly optioned and made into a movie. I checked out Luke Gamble then, finding to my pleasure that, yes, he has written more with The Vet:The Big Wide World (out in 2012.) I’ll be adding both books to my ‘wanted’ list and hope to be able to acquire them this year.

theme anthology of stories and poems.
Reviewed by Steve Johnson.
This anthology wins on both counts. The appearance of the anthology is stunning. It’s stark, a mere three colours, but it makes you stop and look and that is exactly what cover art should do. And as for the work, I really liked stories by Tais Ten (With Musket and Ducat) Fiona Moore, (Selma Eats) Lyn McConchie (The Thirteenth Ewe) Liz Argall (Augustus Clementine ) Fran Wilde (A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed) and A.C.Wise’s (Letters to a Body on the Cusp of Drowning.) For me, these tales stood out, but none of the work was anything but well-written and it’s pleasant to find an editor with the ability to choose well. You could do far worse than to buy this anthology, I could name a long list that haven’t been worth the money, this anthology is.

Hardcover, published Robert Hale (London) 2010.
I can only say that this is an excellent example of a book that while ostensibly a romance, has all the ingredients that grab someone like me who isn’t that fixated on romance books. The background of a canal and canal boats is authoratative. The characters are real people and the dialogue is normal, unlike the characters and dialogue of too many other romance writers, (some dialogue I have read is so Edwardian as to be utterly unbelievable, no guy I’ve ever met speaks like that.) And the plot is solid, believable and pleasingly straightforward. I was hauled in to the story and background at once and read the book at a sitting.
Michaela Webster (Mikki) has resigned from her job as an art teacher, and resigned too from her engagement. Now leaving London on her canal boat she is going to stay with family at the Bleakhall Canal in the Midlands while she decides where she goes from here. Where she goes seems, as the story progresses, to be in a number of directions at once as she accepts a job painting a canal boat for an old friend, work that may lead to better things, working as a waitress at the local tavern for extra cash, and keeping an eye on her unruly teenage neice. There was nothing impossible or even unlikely in the plot,. this is a well-written book that reads from chapter to chapter in quiet progression and I loved it. It’s gone into the ‘permanent’ section on my bookshelves, and I hope the author writes more like this soon.