This Week in Books – 20-11-24

This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:

• What they’ve recently finished reading
• What they are currently reading
• What they are planning to read next

A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

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I finished reading Elusive by Genevieve Cogman, and then read Julia by Sandra Newman.

Revolutionary France is full of blood and bite, as vampires plot for power. Featuring Genevieve Cogman’s trademark wit and fast-paced plotting, Elusive is the second book in the Sunday Times bestselling Scarlet Revolution trilogy.

Eleanor, once a lowly English maid, is now a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, known for their daring deeds and rescuing aristocrat vampires from the guillotine.

Eleanor and the League are investigating the disappearance of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the notorious French statesman and diplomat. But they soon uncover two vampire parties feuding for power, and learn that Talleyrand’s disappearance is part of a bigger, more dangerous scheme – one that threatens to throw France into bloody chaos…

Perfect for fans of The Invisible Library series, Kim Newman and Gail Carriger, Elusive is the thrilling follow-up to Scarlet, a witty and inventive retelling of the beloved tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

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London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceania. It’s 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen – cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She’s very good at staying alive.

But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department – a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith, she comes to realise that she’s losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.

Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.

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I’m currently reading This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.

About to turn forty, Alice feels stuck: She works at the school she attended. Her boyfriend isn’t the man of her dreams. And her beloved father Leonard is dying.

But after one too many drinks, she wakes up in her childhood home to find forty-year-old Leonard celebrating her sixteenth birthday.

Now Alice gets to relive this one day in 1996, over and over. When the slightest change will impact the rest of her life.

Can she fix her life and save her father?

Or will her good intentions only cause harm to those she loves most?

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I’m really not sure what to read next – maybe Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey as something very different to my recent reads.

INFINITY IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

The Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds – except that they’re really just the one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they’ll eradicate it by whatever means necessary, no matter the cost to human life.

Scientist Hadiz Tambuwal is looking for a solution to her own Earth’s environmental collapse when she stumbles across the secret of inter-dimensional travel. It could save everyone on her dying planet, but now she’s walked into the middle of a war on a scale she never dreamed of.

And she needs to choose a side before it kills her.

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And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎