Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - A review by Joe C. ; a Y12 Eng. Lit. Student at Sawtry

Terry Pratchett has long been my favourite author since 'Guards! Guards!' was loaned to me by my year 8 English teacher. I could ramble on about the Discworld series for hours but instead I have chosen to review 'Good Omens', the collaborative work of Mr Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

It's the end of the world... or at least, it will be. Doomsday is near, the Plan has been carried out and the antichrist walks the earth... he's a really nice kid though. The demon Crowley (Architect of the M25 no less) is disenchanted with his job and is depressed with the inevitability of the Earth's destruction, as contrary to Lucifer's will he actually rather likes it in one piece. Another that shares Crowley's interest is the angel Aziraphale, a long time friend of the demon; after all, if you're going to exist for all eternity it's good to have someone to talk to. The four horsemen are gathering (though one's not a man and they don't exactly go for horses anymore) and preparing for their ride.

The book is written with the twisted intellectual humour of Pratchett and tempered with Gaiman's more serious, darker style. There are many brilliant touches such as Pestilence's retirement from the four horsemen upon the invention of penicillin, his position taken up by the 'new boy' Pollution. The entire story is held together by 'The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch' (that's 'nice' as in precise) a book of prophecy so accurate it's almost useless. Once it's introduced you feel the inevitability of the world's occurrences bearing down on all of the characters involved, preparing you for the closing chapters.

The book thrives on dark humour throughout; I particularly recommend the part with Crowley's lead-lined safe as a piece of shining narrative brilliance, showing what two authors working together can achieve. As the plot is split between several characters it weaves the story though the minds of both human and divine characters giving the reader an inescapable view of the emerging apocalypse from different perspectives.

Personally I love Aziraphale as a character; as an angel he feels duty-bound to perform the acts required of him by his superiors but chooses the side of humanity through logical thinking and his own preference of the comforts that the Earth offers: tea being a major factor seeing as heaven doesn't do it ("Why does the earth man like dried leaves in boiled water?" ... quote from the wrong book entirely but it seemed appropriate).

Good Omens is a beautiful piece of work taking the Bible's text and translating it into a modern day narrative. I suspect I would have understood more of the jokes and references if I had more than the vague understanding of the Bible than I currently possess. If you're a fan of slightly black, intellectual humour or have read and enjoyed any Pratchett books before I cannot recommend this book enough.

My question: Do the Biblical references used in the book hamper the comedic effect of Good Omens in any way?

Second Chance by Jane Green- a review by Hollie W., a Y8 from Sawtry

Holly Macintosh has two children, Daisy and Oliver. Her husband Marcus is hardly ever there. He is a divorce lawyer and doesn't really bond with his children.

It is all a big shock when Holly's best friend from school, Tom, dies during a train bombing. The tragic event brings the friends to reunite from school. On the surface all the friends are happy, but dig a little deeper and it's not so straightforward. Will Saffron survive the press? Will Holly and Marcus stay together? Will Paul and Anna have a baby? Will will get it together?

I think this is quite a mature read- there is often a bit of swearing. I would recommend it to young adults.

BEWARE- once you pick it up you will not want to put it down!!

Life Swap by Jane Green- review by Jess L. of Sawtry

This is a story about real life and how our own personal paradise may be someone else's version of hell, or indeed vice versa.

Vicky Townsley is a single 35-year-old woman who's dying for a family with a loving husband, a couple of well-behaved kids and maybe even a dog.

Amber Winslow is a rich wife, mother and boss. Her life is hell with Richard always at work, the children constantly whining and Lavinia doing nothing but clean. She dreams of being single again and not having to care about anyone but herself.

Finally, both Vicky and Amber's dreams come true. I like this book because adult life interests me as I want to understand it before I become an adult!

Flirting for England by Rachel B of Sawtry

Jess Jordan has a French exchange boy who comes to stay with her. Before Edward arrived to stay with Jess he sent over a photo and a letter. In Edward's photo he was a very cool and good looking boy. And when Jess sent her photo, she had hers digitally enhanced!

However, when Edward stepped off the bus it was nothing like Jess expected. A little boy who hardly came up to Jess's nose, with glasses like Harry Potter's. To make things better he is the most shy person Jess has ever met and doesn't speak a word of English.

This book is really girly and is funny because she gets herself into funny and strange situations. I enjoyed it, because it's real girl problems and stuff that does happen with girls every day. Also, jess says what she thinks and she has the worst luck!

Hannibal Rising- a review by Ben of Hinchingbrooke School

The fourth of the Hannibal series written by Thomas Harris. Written as a prequel to the first three novels. However, thinking that the series progressed chronologically, I read this first.

Hannibal Lecter’s traumatic past is revealed, giving readers insight into the demons that haunt him. As a young boy living through Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, his family is killed when a passing tank is blown up near the family shelter. Only Hannibal and his sister survive. However, when a group of starving Lithuanian deserters arrive, Hannibal has to bears witness to the deaths of a captive boy and his sister. What the men do with the bodies is only implied. The haunting memories leave Hannibal a mute, as he is found and returned to his remaining relatives, his uncle and his exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. Hannibal’s first act of murder occurs as his aunt is confronted by a butcher. As Hannibal grows older, he shares his time between being a prodigy at a French medical school, and hunting down the original group of deserters that butchered his sister. During this, Hannibal discovers he has a ‘gift’ for killing people, and to quote the blurb, ‘becomes death’s prodigy’.

Bit grim, but a fantastic book. The chilling character of Hannibal Lecter is explored thoroughly by tiptoeing through the brilliant ‘palace of memories’ that is Hannibal’s mind. The imagery is intensively graphic and Thomas Harris’ characters provide subtle dialogue that connects the readers to the action.

Thanks for reading.
Ben

Joe's review on Skulduggery Pleasant

Well hey guys! It's Joe again with another awesome (if I do say so myself!) review. This week I am going to do a review on Skulduggery Pleasant (by Derek Landy), hence the title.

This book is about a 12 year old girl called Stephanie who inherites a mansion in her Uncle Gordan's will. He wrote horror stories and gothic tales about skeletons and vampires and other such things. But could this peculier man have been writing non-fiction? Could it be that when he writes about these things from experience?

When Stephanie has to stay a night on her own in the mansion she meets a wise- cracking detective, who saves her from certain death from a peculier beast. He tells her that his name is Skulduggery Pleasant. A wizard, a detective........oh...... and dead! From then on Stephanie is thrust into a world of magic where nowhere is safe and no one can be trusted. Can she survive in this world with only a talking skeleton for company? Well you will have to read the book to find out won't you?

I really enjoyed it and, trust me, so will you!
From
Joe Davies

QUESTION: How does this book compare to other fantasies you have read?

NEXT WEEK: I start my four week series review on the Otori Chronicals, starting with Across the Nightingale Floor.

Wormwood by a boy in Y8 at Sawtry Community College

After reading the first few pages of Wormwood by G.P.Taylor, I already had loads of questions that needed to be answered.

At the start, a strange book, the Nemorensis, is introduced, and the story mostly revolves around it. Im the Nemorensis, someone ahs written about out-of-the ordinary occurances, which do actually happen.

Wormwood can be described in many ways. There is some fantasy, science-fiction, horror and mystery. All the characters range from being angles to ghosts, and humans to evil, warped creatures.

Anyway, a new scientist, Dr Sabien Blake, owns the Nemorensis, and partly discover its powers of telling the future. However, the book has a mind of its own. It is able to make people bitter, and have cruel thoughts, and can even create more pages for itself. There is chaos in London when Blake's discovery comes to light, starting with the total darkness, then rabid dogs, and then creatures being created out of clay, and his own fingernails, and sent to kill him. Also when Blake learns that some of his friends have been murdered, and that he has an angel looking after him, he forgets his science and starts to understand magic.

This book has been written as if these extraordinary creatures and occurances could actually happen at any moment, making my spine tingle when I read it alone!

Snap Shot by Ben

This book is about a boy who gets a camera for his birthday. He ends up taking a photo of a robbery and nearly gets shot. It has a great twist to it which it doesn't tell us until the end.

I think it is a very good book for people that like action. I recommend it to everyone that can read, of all ages.

I enjoyed this book because it was very easy to read and doesn't use complex words but mainly because it keeps you reading because it has a great story.

It is written in informal language and the first person. I say it is informal because he uses words like 'bill' meaning the police.

I am very happy with this choice of book and would like to read more like it.

Sons of Destiny by Rebecca

The book I am reviewing is 'Sons of Destiny' by Darren Shan. It is the last of its series. It is a horror book and I would highly recommend it to people who have to be stuck in books to keep them reading. It is abook that has something exciting round every corner. In fact I would highly recommend any of Darren Shan's books because he, in my opinion, is an extremely excellent author whose books are exciting and entertaining.

This particular book is about vampires and the living dead. Darren Shan includes himself in this series.

The Death Worm by Donald

The Death Worm by Rachel Smith is a thriller for teenagers or above.

It is about a family with social issues who are being pursued by a small creature, similar in appearance to a strip of wet leather.

The book covers awide variety of locations across the world. I found it very scary. Some of the gory scenes make your skin crawl. Very few books are as chilling and gripping as this.

My advice is don't read this book before bed!

This book, although containing gratuitous violence, has a clever plot and is a good read for those who like the action/horror book genre!

Fudge-a-mania by Brittany

I have recently been reading Fudge-a-mania be Judy Blume. I really enjoyed it as I don't normally read unless I have to. I had been reading it in my english lessons and whilst on the bus home and at home i'd pick it up. I think it is a really good book as it has humour and real life things included in it.

It is a really good book because it isn't too long and you don't want to put it down. It is about a boy named peter. He and his family are going on holiday to Maine. He invites his friend to come along but his worst enemy Sheila Tubman and her family are sharing the house with them. How will he survive? You'll have to read the book! Good luck findung the right book for you.

A Brave New World by Claire Dewberry

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in 1932 falls into the same 'category' (if you will) of fiction as 1984 and Clockwork Orange, discussing the flaws within our current society and the flaws of a possible future society. Set a few hundred years into the future and primarily within London, a new world is created which is based upon stripping away natural humanity and replacing it with clones of people who believe that 'everyone belongs to everyone else'. Feotuses are conditioned in a factory - before being 'decanted' out of bottles instead of born - to be content within the 'caste' that they are born into (alpha, beta, gamma or delta) and the work that they have to do as a result. Thus those who are born as deltas have their intellectual growth stunted and 'hypnopedia' (repeating government slogans in their sleep) is used to condition them into loving their position in life.

Ofcourse within this new world there are some exceptional people who do not fit within this 'Utopia' and it follows primarily Bernard Marx who finds that even though he was conditioned to be an 'alpha plus' is in fact inferior to the others of his caste. Huxley's choice of name for Bernard is unfortunately obvious in its reference towards Karl Marx and Marxism of the time (a framework of thinking that lead to communism) which is off putting when reading the book. The same can also be said for the main female within the book Lenina Crowne (who shares her name with Russian communist and revolutionist Valdimir Lenin) and indeed many of the other characters. However I feel that their names are not the only problem. These two characters are decidedly unlikeable as main characters go. Bernard Marx offers the reader no confidence within his thoughts and actions as they seem to be simply and inexorably to try and prove himself. But to who? This is also highlighted by another character Helmholtz Watson who is strong, also isolated and more intellectual insitive it seems. Perhaps this is to gain more sympathy from the reader towards Marx or is for some unseen plot device or twist. Lenina is also disappointing, particularly from a feminist point of view, as being one of the few main women she offers no strong character to latch on to and to make you think. Personally she is rather infuriating in her conformity to society and merely tries to tantalize the reader with her potential for being revelutionary.

Having not yet finished the book I realise that the views that I have may well change depending on how Huxley puts across his views of this society, however I feel it brings up some interesting questions about society. To me it is most certainly a dystopian society. Even though all intentions are to create a contented and efficient society the sacrifice is too great: humanity extinct; emotions extinct; the individual extinct. Additionally, although the people are kept 'happy' is happiness not the flip side to unhappiness? Therefore, with the absence of unhappiness would happiness not just become obselete as well? No longer happiness but a 'nothingness'? Could we sacrafice our emotions (and consequently our life experiences) to rid the world of suffering?

Despite some prejudices I am enjoying the book for its explorative ideas, but wonder if it isn't as successful as 1984 as it is further from the contemporary society and therefore loses its shock value.

The Odyssey- a post by Matthew Mordue, Y12

The Odyssey was 'written' by Homer in Classical Greece. It is actually debatable who wrote the Odyssey, after all nobody can know for sure with many people thinking that Homer did not even exist and that the Odyssey is a compilation of short stories that were put together by an unknown person. While I can see why people could think this I personally feel that Homer did exist and indeed did write it. The Odyssey is also not really a novel although it does read as prose. The Odyssey is actually a epic poem.The Odyssey is without question a supreme masterpiece of not only literature but of anything ever. At first glance it appears to be difficult to get into but the more you read into it the easier it becomes. As a matter of fact I would personally say that the Odyssey is quite simple to get into. The Odyssey also has highly memorable characters with, in particular, Odysseus, Telemachus and Athena who stand out.The Odyssey's main story is about Odysseus's adventures as he returns to Ithaca (which he is king of) back from the Trojan War. Unknown to Odysseus the evil suitors have been causing trouble to his ‘polis’ of Ithaca and are trying to gain control of it by pressurising his wife Penelope into marrying one of them. However Penelope being the highly virtuous wife that she is she is always able to find ways to get out of marrying one of the suitors in the hope that Odysseus will one day return. This is however highly doubtful to the citizens of Ithaca who all think that Odysseus is dead after all he has been lost for many years

The storyline shows Odysseus’s journey back to Ithaca were he encounters Cyclopes, nymphs, sirens and a monster Scylla and Charybdis. These journeys are highly dramatic and exciting and are one of the greatest strengths of the epic poem.

When you read The Odyssey you then comprehend just how many works of literature have copied off it. The idea that Odysseus is a king and has to reclaim his throne under a disguise is most noticeably copied off the Lord Of The Rings' character Aragorn. The Odyssey also invented:
- Invention. Funnily enough before this epic poem was composed characters that were used were in literature were based on old legends (such as Achilles). While most of the characters in the Odyssey are based on old legends (Odysseus for example) a swineherd Eumaeus was invented and Homer does seem to ‘brag’ about this in the narrative.
- The idea of a young character maturing through the storyline and becoming a ‘man’. This happens for the first time with Telemachus.
- A king who is having to use a disguise to get his throne back (LOTR) or checking out his hometown he is king of (Measure for Measure).
- The idea of a perfect woman who is completely chaste. Penelope was actually hugely significant in Ancient Greece.
While the Odyssey is a great work there are some elements that would put some people off it:

Some terms such as xenia and kleos really do need to be understood for the story to make complete sense. Without it the way Odysseus treats the suitors at the end and the maids seem very cruel.
it is quite a hard work to get into because the Ancient Greek world is so far detached form ours that it starts off feeling quite alien.

Despite these points The Odyssey is a spectacular work that has greatly inspired many works of literature. The point I ask is: is there any work that is more influential than Homer’s Odyssey?

Why is it called 'A Clockwork Orange' then? by Mr D

My students have been nagging me to start a post about Anthony Burgess' novel, A Clockwork Orange, so here it is. The novel (novella if you like, I'm not bothered) was published in 1962 and personally I have no problem calling it science-fiction, in the same way I call Frankenstein science fiction (in the gothic mode) and 1984 science fiction (in the allegorical mode). CO is science fiction in the psychological mode- it explores questions of free will, and it's also richly comic and satirical. Why do people always slag off genre fiction? Jane Eyre is romantic fiction, Dracula's horror. They're just very good examples of those genres. Call a spade a spade, everyone. If it's a really good spade, it doesn't become a 'personal excavatory device', does it? No. A Clockwork Orange is very good science fiction, thank-you.

Having said that, a lot of people don't rate it that highly in literary terms. Including Burgess himself- "It is not, in my view, a very good novel," Burgess wrote, "but it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the view that some people were criminal and others not. A denial of the universal inheritance of sin is characteristic of Pelagian societies like that of Britain, and it was in Britain, about 1960, that respectable people began to murmur about the growth of juvenile delinquency and suggest [that the young criminals] were a somehow inhuman breed and required inhuman treatment... There were irresponsible people who spoke of aversion therapy... Society, as ever, was put first." In other words, not an especially good novel, but an important statement. You can say the same about George Orwell's 1984- with more justification, I reckon, I think Burgess did a better job with plot and character than Orwell, but that's just my opinion.

A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London. 15-year-old Alex, the main character, and his three friends are devoted to ultra-violence and 'horrorshow'. They beat up old men, torture and murder, with no qualms. Despite this diabolical orgy of criminality, they are merry and spirited and horribly, horrilby likeable. Alex is the only one in his gang who has fully conscience of what he's doing; on the contrary, his 'droogs' arrange horrorshow in a rather childish way, without knowing why. While committing ruthless acts of violence, Alex mantains an 'elevated' attitude. He doesn't listen to pop, but only to classic music. After the government decides to brainwash him by the 'Ludovico therapy', he'll be no more able to appreciate his favorite composers. (The name 'Ludovico' alludes to Ludwig van Beethoven.) That's the big question of the novel- can we, should we, protect humnity as a whole by destroying the individual humanity of the individual? How happy would we be to be obedient robots in paradise? More happy than rugged individuals in a violent anarchy? Or, put it another way, if a man has to do good, has no option to be bad, then he's not good at all, is he?

So why is it called A Clockwork Orange, then?

1. When Alex is treated to become sick at the thought of violence, he turns into 'A Clockwork Orange'. Or as the prison chaplain says, "When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man." A clockwork orange is not an orange, in the same was as a man who can make no decisions is not a man.

2. It's something to do with the contradiction and jarring tragedies involved in trying to force soemthing organic, complex and natural (an orange) into a mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian (you know- like Isaac- he was big on fruit in all kinds of ways and not just oranges...) and ordered (clockwork).

3. Burgess says there's a Cockney phrase, 'weird as a clockwork orange' that he just liked. I'm not sure- I asked my dad once (who was a card-carrying Cockney of Burgess's generation) and he said he's never heard of the phrase- the phrase he used for something odd was much ruder (email me and I'll tell you what it was- if you're over 18...)

4. Burgess knew some Malay, and the word for 'man' is 'orang' or 'orange' (as in 'orang utang'- which means 'man of the forest'. Honest!) So, in a way 'a clockwork orange' is 'a mechanical man'.

5. It's a really cool title. I can only think of five titles that are cooler. Write me a comment and I'll tell you what they are!