#Blogtour The Grand Illusion by Syd Moore

It’s a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Grand Illusion by Syd Moore, who is back with a thrilling new series set in WW2.

About the Author

Syd Moore is currently Essex Libraries’ first Author in Residence. Twice shortlisted for a CWA Dagger, she is best known for her Essex Witch Museum Mysteries, a series that explores the witch trials in Essex between 1560 to 1680.  The series was shortlisted for the Good Reader Holmes and Watson Award in 2018 and 2019.  Syd founded the Essex Girls’ Liberation Front and successfully got the term ‘Essex Girl’ removed from the Oxford dictionary in 2020. Her debut screenplay, Witch West will go into production in 2024.  She lives in Essex. Follow @SydMoore1 on X

About the book

JUNE 1940.  As Hitler prepares to invade Britain, a secret office hidden away in Whitehall is catapulted into a frenzy of activity and expansion.  Aware of the Nazis’ obsession with the occult, the British Secret Service sets out to exploit this potential weakness in the enemy’s high command.

Twenty-two-year-old Daphne Devine is performing on the London stage as assistant to magician Jonty Trevelyan, aka ‘The Grand Mystique’, when the secret service calls.

Daphne and Jonty find themselves far from the glitz and glamour of the theatre, deep inside the lower levels of Wormwood Scrubs prison.  Here they join secret ranks of astrologers, illusionists and other theatre performers co-opted to the war effort. Soon Daphne realizes she must risk everything if there is any chance of saving her country…

In the opener to a new historical fiction series Syd Moore brings her unique perspective to a different period – the Second World War. The Grand Illusion is inspired by an event alleged to have taken place in the New Forest in the summer of 1940 – a spectacular magical ritual –  “The Cone of Power” – that would be witnessed by German agents in the area and reported back to the Führer.  Its goal: to avert invasion on British shores.

Review

Can you even imagine being recruited to help save your country, to be part of the greater and wider war efforts to deter the enemy. Oh, and your talents are being a magician and his glamourous assistant. Yeh, either the math ain’t mathing or this is going in a very interesting direction. How are you supposed to save everyone? Perhaps with the bunny in a hat trick?

I have always been intrigued by the strategic decision making during WW2 by Germany or Hitler and his leadership team. Just leaving aside the horrific obsession the man had with eugenics and his planned genocide of the Jewish population and just looking at his strategy to occupy one country after the other. From a strategic point of view the choice to focus on Russia and come back to Britain at a later date is what cost him the war. He overestimated his resources and their ability to stretch, supply across such a vast area, and underestimated the country.

By taking the what can only be described as one of many unusual approaches to saving Britain from an invasion or becoming one of the many occupied countries during the Nazi regime, the combination of fact and fiction come together to create this remarkable and interesting story. I kind of love the thought that this could have a smidgen of truth at the core. I’ve read other books that mention a certain obsession with the occult and asking for direction, which would have made a specific person susceptible to being led in decision making.

It has the old-school charm of Foyle’s War with the chaotic element of wartime Jonathan Creek with Daphne as the driving force of the story. She is the glue that keeps Jonty upright, on task and from self-destructing. I can’t wait to see where this series goes next.

Buy The Grand Illusion at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by Magpie, an imprint of Oneworld, pub date 18 April 2024 – Hardback £16.99. Buy at Amazon com.

#Blogtour The Sleeping Beauties by Lucy Ashe

 It’s my turn on the Blogtour The Sleeping Beauties by Lucy Ashe.

About the Author

After training at the Royal Ballet School for eight years, Lucy Ashe decided to change career plans and go to university, where she read English Literature before doing a PGCE teaching qualification, and she is now a teacher. Her poetry and short stories have been published in a number of literary journals and she was shortlisted for the 2020 Impress Prize for New Writers. Follow @LSAshe1 on X

About the book

May, 1945. – At long last, Rosamund Caradon is feeling optimistic. As she returns the last few evacuees to London from her Devonshire manor, she vows to protect dance obsessed daughter Jasmine from further peril. But a chance meeting with a Sadler’s Wells ballerina changes everything. 

When the beautiful, elusive Briar Woods bursts into Rosamund’s train carriage, it’s clear her sights are set on the immediately captivated Jasmine. And Rosamund cannot shake the feeling this accidental encounter is not what it seems. 

While Briar may be far away from the pointe shoes and greasepaint of the Sleeping Beauty ballet that is so much a part of her, this performance might well be her most successful yet. For what she is watching, Rosamund feels, is a strangely unique show, one that’s just for a mother and a daughter… 

Review

Not going to lie, this started out as a bit of a chaotic read for me. It opened up (digital) on the prologue, which I thought was a great beginning to a serial killer murder – in my defence I had forgotten the blurb and the title sounded like a catchy crime story. Then the first chapter – Act 1, it’s war refugees being returned to their homes. Confused, I go back to before the prologue to read Stage Notes, then return to Act 1 for the mysterious and intense ballerina, who has now joined us. To be fair the glaringly obvious references should have been a clue.

Rosamund and her daughter Jasmine meet the persistent and intriguing Briar, whilst returning to London. Something about Briar triggers a gut reaction of concern in Rosamund, something just isn’t right about this young woman, who like Jasmine is a lover of ballet. Briar burrows her way into the relationship between mother and daughter, but why?

Throughout the story there is a constant redefining of what motherhood is and whether being a mother is always the bog standard version of what society expects. Is knowing the truth about who you are always the right answer?

It’s a good read, which gives great insight into the passion, work ethic and the almost obsessive dedication to ballet. How the world within it becomes its own microcosm of beauty, grace, art and expression. Perhaps also on a bigger scale how moments of pure beauty can bring a little joy in the most difficult of situations.

On a side note, there are no serial killers in the story at all, although I stand by the fact the prologue and title sound like a great idea for a crime novel.

Buy The Sleeping Beauties at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by Magpie, pub date 15th February 2024 – Hardback £16.99. Buy at Amazon com.

#Blogtour Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Ma

It’s a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Ma. ‘The eagerly awaited new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing.’

About the Author

Nguyễn Phan Quế Ma is an award-winning Vietnamese poet and novelist. Born in the Red Delta of Northern Việt Nam, she grew up in the Mekong Delta, Southern Việt Nam. She is a writer and translator who has published eight books of poetry, short stories and non-fiction in Vietnamese. Her debut novel and first book in English, The Mountains Sing, is an international bestseller, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and winner of the 2021 PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Award, the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship, and others, and has been translated into fifteen languages. 

She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, and her writing has appeared in various publications including the New York Times. Quế Mai was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of the twenty most inspiring women of 2021. Dust Child is inspired by her many years working as a volunteer helping family members unite, and reflects the real-life experiences of Amerasians and their family members. Visit nguyenphanquemai.com or follow @nguyen_p_quemai on Twitter

About the book

During the Việt Nam War, tens of thousands of children were born into relationships between American soldiers and Việtnamese women. Tragic circumstances separated most of these Amerasian children from their parents. Many have not found each other again…

In 1969, two sisters from rural Việt Nam leave their parents’ home to find work in Sài Gòn. Caught up in the war that is blazing through their country they, like many other young Việtnamese women, are employed as hostesses in a bar frequented by American GIs. Soon they are forced to accept that their own survival, and that of their family back home, might mean compromising the values they have always held dear. As the fighting moves closer to the city, the elder sister, Trang, begins a romance with a young American helicopter pilot.

Decades later, two men wander the streets and marketplaces of modern Sài Gòn. Phong is a ‘Dust Child’ – the son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, abandoned by his mother and ostracized all his life – and is looking for his parents and through them a way out of Việt Nam. Meanwhile war veteran Dan returns with his wife Linda, hoping to ease the PTSD that has plagued him for decades. Neither of them can escape the shadow of decisions made during a time of desperation.

With the same compassion and insight that has made The Mountains Sing a favourite of readers across the world, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai brings to life the interwoven stories of these four unforgettable characters, and asks what it takes to move forward

Review

The author captures the feeling these children have, or in this case Phong, of living in a space of neither here nor there. Never accepted by the people of of his home country and treated as if he was personally responsible for the past. His appearance a constant reminder of the Americans who left and never looked back.

Simultaneously the trauma and PTSD the American GI’s experience is described with a calm intensity and never with an atmosphere of deserved guilt. As a reader you can feel empathy for any of the main characters without delving too far into the right or wrong of the political skirmish. Instead the author allows for the scenario of each as victim of circumstance merely trying to survive the horror of war.

Infused with an almost trademark sense of compassion, clarity and understanding, the story reminds us of not only the trauma, but also of the ripple these events create in the time. The aftermath, which consumes innocent children who by no fault of their own became unwanted  items in the packing area. With no possible avenue to trace parents who didn’t want them or were unable to raise them.

Imagine living in a Catch 22, where you are clearly discriminated against because of your connection to an American parent and yet are unable to fulfil the requirements to leave the country that has never wanted you in the first place.

It’s a story that comprehends the fact that life is imperfect, ergo there isn’t always a perfect ending or resolution. Equally that there can never be any real restitution for a lifetime of rejection or real peace for the those involved in vicious wartime conflicts. It’s a great read.

Buy Dust Child at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by ONEWORLD | pub date 20 April 2023 | Hardback | £16.99. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

It’s a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. A sweeping, evocative family saga, set against the backdrop of twentieth century Việt Nam.

About the Author

Born in Vietnam in 1973, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up in the aftermath of the war and witnessed its devastation on her country. She worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. Her work has received the Hanoi Writers Association ‘Poetry of the Year’ Award (2010). She lives with her family in Jakarta.

Follow @nguyen_p_quemai on Twitter, on Goodreads, Visit nguyenphanquemai.com, Buy The Mountains Sing

About the book

Born in 1920, Tran Dieu Lan and her family lost everything when the Communist government came to power in North Việt Nam. Forced to flee with her six children, she knows she must do whatever it takes to keep her family alive.

Fifty years later, her country is again at war, and her young granddaughter Huong grieves the loss of her parents, who have disappeared to the South along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Vivid, compelling and deeply moving, The Mountains Sing introduces a Vietnamese voice to the post-war literary canon. Drawing on her family history, and the stories of other survivors, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s debut novel in English, brings to life the true human cost of a devastating war, and the improbable power of hope to sustain us when all seems lost.

Review

I think it’s important to note that the majority of books written about Vietnam tend to be written from the perspective of the outsider, occupier or the invader. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai tells it from the perspective of the insider, albeit a fictional story mixed with factual memories and eyewitness accounts.

The story is told by the grandmother Trấn Diệu Lan and Hủỏng her granddaughter. Some of the scenes are set before the 1970s  and told in first-person by the grandmother and others post 1970 by the granddaughter. Often the story is narrated by Trấn Diệu Lan as a young woman, whilst in the next chapter she may be recounting a memory or telling a story as an old woman.

Often the two characters become intermingled and sound quite similar, which I personally thought was intent from a storytelling perspective. Making the reader more aware that it is but mere chance which one of them lives through certain trauma, especially if you live in a country that is in constant conflict that pits neighbour, friends and family against each other.

The author creates a scenario of granddaughter and grandmother, which is an homage to the grandmothers she never knew and wished she had, and inserts the story with an atmosphere of nostalgia. Now that might seem like a bizarre thing to say given the brutal details of violence, oppression, grief, betrayal and anger, but it’s there you can feel it. The lyrical prose lends itself to exactly that sense of longing, the visceral connection to country of birth and ancestors, and ultimately to one of loss.

It’s easy to forget that the country in the midst of war, especially one with a division like that of North and South Vietnam, becomes torn to the point of devastation and destruction. Those who remain have to rebuild and to live with the nightmares, and often make a choice between letting pain and anger eat away at them or trying to regain some semblance of peace. 

Buy The Mountains Sing at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by Oneworld Publications; pub date 20 August 2020 – Hardback £14.99. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at One World Publications.