#49. Contact Zero by David Wolstencroft

Title:	Contact Zero
Author:	David Wolstencroft
Genre:	Thriller/Spy Drama
Synopsis:	Across the world junior British agents are attacked out of the blue whilst on their first assignments, the survivors must find the sanctuary of Contact Zero or perish.
Verdict:	Exciting but also a bit detached, fun and with enough detail to convince without boring you with stats and pages of information.
Pages:	433
Read:	March 2010

#48. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Title:	Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Author:	Jeanette Winterson
Genre:	Fictional Biography (?)
Synopsis:	A young girl growing up in a strictly religious community wrestles with identity and morality.
Verdict:	An interesting read, dreamlike and vague in places. I’m sure I’ve read it before but can’t think when I would have – book déjà vu!
Pages:	176
Read:	March 2010

#47. The Year Of The Flood by Margaret Atwood

Title:	The Year Of The Flood
Author:	Margaret Atwood
Genre:	Fiction/Post Apocalyptic
Synopsis:	We are introduced to members of the God’s Gardeners movement and follow their separate tales leading up to and following their survival of the disaster that decimated civilisation.
Verdict:	Fits in neatly with ‘Oryx and Crake’, showing more of the strange society and its people. The state to which corporations had evolved before the end is worryingly easy to see happening. An enjoyable, quick read.
Pages:	431
Read:	March 2010

#46. Ironside by Holly Black

Title:	Ironside
Author:	Holly Black
Genre:	Fiction/Supernatural
Synopsis:	In the third in Holly Black’s Modern Faerie novels, Kaye must go on a quest to win her place amongst the faeries and save her love and loved ones from a plot that twists both the Seelie and unSeelie courts.
Verdict:	Another excellent novel full of beauty, menace and lovely otherworldly imagery and riddles. Just as striking as ‘Tithe’ and ‘Valiant’, the easy callousness of the fey folk is mesmerising.
Pages:	323
Read:	February 2010

#45. The Ice Wolves: A Hellboy Novel by Mark Chadbourn

Title:	The Ice Wolves: A Hellboy Novel
Author:	Mark Chadbourn
Genre:	Supernatural/Action
Synopsis:	A prophecy that heralds the rise of werewolves and their time of dominion over the Earth sets Hellboy on the path of a lost artefact but will he uncover it first or is he being used to lead the werewolves to it?
Verdict:	A fun, light read, very straightforward with a lot less collateral damage in the way of secondary characters than usual. Interesting take on the werewolf myth.
Pages:	251
Read:	February 2010

#44. Gentlemen Of The Road by Michael Chabon

Title:	Gentlemen Of The Road
Author:	Michael Chabon
Genre:	Historical Fiction
Synopsis:	Two wandering soldiers encounter the last prince of a deposed family and tie their fates to his as they reluctantly agree to help return him to his home if not to his throne.
Verdict:	Interesting for its turns of phrase and historical points but didn’t really draw me in. I felt held at a remove for the most part.
Pages:	204
Read:	February 2010

#43. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Title:	The Girl who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
Author:	Stieg Larsson
Genre:	Murder/Crime Fiction
Synopsis:	After the events of earlier Lisbeth is badly injured, under arrest and it is up to Mikael Blomkvist and her friends to expose the conspiracy before she is convicted for crimes not her own.
Verdict:	Just as intricate and tightly packed as the first two, the sheer amount of build up and detail that lead to the climax would frustrate some but I loved watching all the prep work crash down in devastating waves on those it was aimed against. Very sad there won’t be any more Stieg Larsson novels but glad the ones he did write were so good and ended so well.
Pages:	599
Read:	February 2010