Pamela FreemanAnmeldelser

Fantasy

Not my usual fare but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I will definitely read more by this author.

Disappointing.

Book 2 in the Floramonde series for young readers (or the young at heart, like me).

The first book had a magical feel to it, that didn't cross over to this book. However, that doesn't mean the book wasn't any good, because it is. This time, instead of the chapters telling many stories to make a whole, the entire book told a single story. Betony sets off to save her father, while her two best friends set off to save Betony from making a bargain she may regret.

In this book there is a dragon, magic, dealing with relationships (good and bad), and love. But the most important thing, in my opinion, is the theme that deals with the lengths we will go to to save those we cherish.

Recommended.

A delightful story told in a fairy tale way, but with a twist. Each chapter felt like a stand alone story, but all the chapters together told the full story. The book is funny, moving and easy to read. There was a bit of everything, and something was always happening. It drew me in, and held me captive.

The characters are charming. I especially liked the main character's strength. It's good to find a princess who doesn't need saving, and has a genuine connection with the people around her.

And there was even a bit of romance.

I'm glad I took a risk with this book. I'll be reading more in the series. No doubt about that.

Recommended.

As a reader, I found that the first two books of the trilogy spoke to me. I enjoyed the characters, especially their depth, and I related to their stories. I also enjoyed finding out what made them tick by reading their “mini stories”. Often we accept traits of characters on face value, but the author of these books offered reasons and circumstances that made me feel sorry for even the nasty characters. As I said in my review of Blood Ties (Book 1), this trilogy is the best adult writing I’ve read in a while.

As a writer, I found the “mini stories” worked well in captivating my interest, yet we are told time and time again that flashbacks should be kept to a minimum. I believe these books prove that rules are meant to be broken, if it is done well. I also took note that the flow of the writing was easy to follow. There were no strange words that stopped me in my tracks because I didn’t know what they meant. The character names and the names of places were easily pronounced, which again didn’t divert my attention away from the storyline. And…there were no long descriptions and no weather reports, which are two of my pet hates.

I think the only real criticism I have about this trilogy is the fact that the story is continuous from one book to the next. I’ve never like books that do that – especially when I have to wait almost a year before the next book is available to continue to read – as my memory isn’t the best anymore. But even when my memory was great, I didn’t like it. I prefer each book of a trilogy to have a main story that starts and ends in that book, even if there is a thread that stretches over all three books (which there should always be, in my opinion).

I enjoyed both books a great deal and they are highly recommended.

Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman is the first book in The Castings Trilogy. It is also the first adult fiction novel the author has published,as she usually writes for children. I have read several of her children’s books and enjoyed them immensely. This book was no exception. In fact, it has qualities that make it stand apart from her previous writings. If you are a fan of the author, then you definitely will not be disappointed with Blood Ties.

The story is well written - smooth and interesting. The characters are not perfect people, which make them realistic, and they are likable and well rounded. And the world is believable yet enchanting.

I was especially impressed with the flow of the story. It is so easy to read, which makes it almost impossible to put down. From what I’ve heard, the second book (Deep Water) is quite the page turner so I’m looking forward to reading it soon. Another unique quality of the book is what I call the mini-stories of the minor characters. They give the story depth and allow the reader to view storylines from different perspectives, which is brilliant.

In all honesty, Blood Ties is the best adult novel I’ve read in a while. I highly recommend it.

Full Circle is a brilliant conclusion to a great story. There were not as many “mini-stories” in this book but as with the other books I totally enjoyed the ones that were included.

The story picks up where the previous one left off and we were guided smoothly to the climax. The story is told from various viewpoints and it was interesting to see how their points of view overlapped and especially how the meaning behind something previously seen from one person’s eyes could change completely when viewed from another set of eyes. It was really well done and felt natural, a bit like a light bulb being switched on allowing everyone to see the full picture.

As the pages turned and we moved towards the climax I found myself thinking I knew how the big confrontation would play out. I thought I saw how the author was positioning the players and I was eager to discover that I was right. Problem is, I wasn’t! I was taken totally by surprise by the turn of events and that made the ending even better.

The ending, without giving anything away, was sad but right. I felt tears welling yet felt satisfied with the outcome. It was strange to feel this way yet as a reader, I think it’s important that the author stirs something in the reader, making them think about the conclusion for a while, allowing emotions to affect the reader momentarily. Full Circle did that.

This trilogy is highly recommended.

A space adventure where living in space is the norm for many children.
Katie and her brother Sam are highly trained in technology and space travel but have always been enclosed in space structures, never knowing the awesome feeling of freedom beneath a blue sky or the pleasure of breathing the scents of nature.
Unwilling to let their grandmother leave them to return to Earth, maybe never to see each other again, Katie and Sam are accidently zoomed away to the moon, on the fastest ship in space. Getting to where you want to be is not easy in space. With so much impacting on their return to their parents, including space station security, smugglers and space pirates, Katie, Sam and their grandmother have to put all their training into action or they may never return to their home ship, or even make it to Earth.
What I really enjoyed about The fastest ship in space were the feelings evoked by the children never having experienced the openness of living on Earth, being able to freely look up and see wide expanses of sky and landscape. I saw Earth in all its beauty through the eyes of a child’s nervousness about experiencing Earth for the first time. It is truly amazing how we take the open expanse of sky and the vivid colours of nature for granted.This book sends us a positive message about looking after our world or our children will lose the honour of living in a natural environment.
Pamela Freeman is an award-winning Australian author of books for both adults and children. I adored her Princess Betony series but this story did not quite hit the spot for me. It felt too contrived and disjointed in the telling. To make an enjoyable read for the target audience, all of the characters, including the secondary characters, could have used some more relationship development woven into the story. However, the settings were well constructed and I could definitely feel the closeness of living in space and the pressure on absolutely everyone, adults and children, to follow protocol for survival.
Yvonne Low’s internal illustrations are enjoyable to examine in detail, excellently represented in black and white, but I feel that the cover illustration has been done an injustice by the difficult to read font, making it seem amateurish. Unfortunately, the internal design by Authors’ Elves, is letting the book down too. The text is too tight for the target audience of early readers and the page number font difficult to read. These issues will be what cause book browsers, looking for inspiration, to pass this book by.
I hope to see readers 8yrs+ enjoying this book and getting the same sense of wonder that Katie does about living on our planet.

Pamela Hart’s novels are a fail-safe read for me. I simply know that they will be interesting with strong female characters and a happy ending. Naturally, The Desert Nurse was a great read for me.

The central character in The Desert Nurse is Evelyn Northey. Evelyn is desperate to become a doctor, but her father (also a doctor) is vehemently against it. Her role is to get married and have children – oh, and work for him as an unpaid nurse. Evelyn has money in a trust which would fund her studies, but her father refuses to release it. So Evelyn becomes a nurse while waiting to turn thirty to access her money. When World War I begins, she sees it as a way to escape her father, learn and earn money. Evelyn is shipped off to Egypt where she will learn a lot more than she expected. She also comes into contact with Dr William Brent, who did her army physical. He is a polio survivor, who wasn’t accepted into the army due to the residual effects on his leg. But William is made of sterner stuff, and takes off the Egypt where (as he correctly surmised) they need doctors, no matter where they came from. William and Evelyn make a good team, but neither wanted to fall in love. Evelyn has her future career to think about, while William is convinced that he’s a bad bet, unworthy of love. Can they overcome their fears?

I really enjoy the period that Pamela writes in (around the time of World War I) because I learn things too. This time I found out about Heliopolis Palace, a grand hotel turned into a hospital in Egypt for the Australian Army. (Google it – it’s 100% true). The scenes where the wounded keep rolling in and even the next door amusement park becomes a hospital (complete with operating theatre) are richly detailed. It’s not gory, but matter of fact as the staff do their best with what they have. As Evelyn and William move through different areas and types of hospitals/casualty clearing stations, I got a taste of what life was like on the front line where there wasn’t time to do things delicately or even complete a procedure. It’s an example of war being one dirty great machine that worked well when it came to casualties. You might think stories of wounds and operations would get a bit boring after some time, but it doesn’t. The plot has been carefully planned, entwining the processes of war with the developing relationship between William and Evelyn. Evelyn’s friendship with fellow nurse Hannah is also a key part to the story and a link to A Letter From Italy, through Rebecca’s brother Linus. The finale was also great where Evelyn challenges her inheritance. In the midst of war, I’d forgotten all about it! Evelyn’s fight is a reminder of how far women’s rights have come in just over a century. Can you imagine a woman not being able to access what it rightfully hers today? It simply wouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Overall, The Desert Nurse has it all – memorable characters, exotic settings, gripping plot and a modern love story. It’s both uplifting and a sober reminder of the horrors of war.

Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

“Blood Ties” is the first book of the Castings trilogy by the Australian writer Pamela Freeman. Set in the Eleven Domains, the story is centred around Bramble and Ash, two troubled young adults belonging to the “old blood”, an oppressed and dispossessed people in their own country. It is an enthralling story full of mystery, magic and dark secrets.

I was very late to discover Pamela Freeman’s work but it is always a pleasure to find another talented Australian fantasy writer along the lines of Sara Douglass and Trudi Canavan. I’m really enjoying the series.½

Just when I thought I couldn’t love Pamela Hart’s books any more, A Letter from Italy arrives. With every book, the stories and emotion become more enjoyable, bringing to life a section of history forgotten about. In A Letter from Italy, Pamela Hart is inspired by the first woman war correspondent, Louise Mack, and weaves a story that is passionate, action packed and fascinating down to the last detail.

Australian Rebecca Quinn has always wanted to move away from the boredom of the women’s pages in the newspaper and report real news. When she and journalist husband Jack move to Italy to report on World War I, it’s possible that she might get that chance, helping Jack with a scoop or two. But when Jack takes off chasing an exclusive, Rebecca is left by herself in Brindisi. She decides to continue to report on the war, but she’s blocked at every turn for her gender. It’s then suggested that she team up with Alessandro Panucci (also known as Al Baker), an Italian-American who wants to make his name as a war photographer. With Sandro, Rebecca can hear about the press conferences and add photos to her story. Together they report on stories big and small, culminating in a story that has them thinking way outside the square and risking their lives. They know they work well as a team, but is there something more?

Rebecca is a modern character for her time, espousing women’s rights (her mother was a suffragette – now there’s a story I’d like to read). She believes in equality and won’t take no for an answer when she is barred from something just due to her sex. The young Italian women are fascinated that she has voted back in Australia, but Rebecca’s simple descriptions get her in big trouble with their husbands and fathers. As Rebecca remarks, it’s a lot more difficult to strip away the centuries of tradition in Italy compared to a young country in Australia. Yet she’s still a product of her time, with her conflicted feelings involving her husband Jack. Divorce is still scandalous, no matter what his crime is. She’s determined, but not willing to break out of the mould entirely.

Sandro is just lovely. His inner conflict as to who he is and where he fits – America? Italy? – is well done and wanting to be an artist via the relatively new medium of photography adds another interesting layer to his character. He comes up against the traditions of Italy, struggles with them, but makes graceful choices. I couldn’t help but cheer him on as much as I did Rebecca. And as for his Nonna Rosa…she has a fascinating history, told briefly but it’s her blunt observations that add a layer of wisdom and humour to the story.

A Letter from Italy also just flows beautifully. The characters are well crafted and the plot contains enough threads to make ‘one more chapter’ a must. The descriptions of Italy and its people are evocative, particularly those of Venice and the gondolas. It’s a great story which is captivating from the very beginning. If you want great Australian historical fiction, look no further than Pamela Hart.

Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

1000 years ago, one group of people invaded a land and dispossessed another group. This series deals with the remnants of that dispossessed and how some want revenge.

The format was different. Each chapter, whether 1 page or 50 pages, followed one character. And it switched between at least 6-10 different characters. By the end of the book you began to see the hint of an outline of how all these different threads were coming together.

I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the rest of this trilogy.

A very satisfactory ending to the trilogy. I have to say though, I really didn't enjoy reading 2 paragraphs from one characters POV and then switching to someone else. Give me whole chapters. Gave me mental whiplash...

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Title: Ember and Ash
Series: Castings
Author: Pamela Freeman
Rating: of 5 Battle Axes
Genre: SFF
Pages: 521
Format: Kindle










Synopsis: The conflict between the peoples didn't end when the original Castings Trilogy ended. Now the gods want in on the conflict. And they'll freeze out the whole domain, kill anyone they want to and generally act like spoiled children until they get what they want. And only Ember and her cousin by adoption, Ash, can stop it. But instalove strikes and makes it really, really hard. Boo hoo. My Thoughts: I read the original Castings Trilogy back in '09 and '10. I really should have left it at that. The Castings ended a 1000 year old feud, had 6 to 10 different character viewpoints and was completely character driven. I was ok with that because of the 6-10 characters helped break things up. This though, had 2 or 3 characters and they all were everything that I can't stand about ya books. Ash and Ember would have fit perfectly into ANY CW network show without missing a beat. "her eyes", "his warm touch", "the smell of her hair", "his strong masculinity". Just gag me right now. Castings did not strike me as young adult or stay focused on a doomed love. This book did nothing but dwell on that. Just about everyone, at some point in their life, will have a doomed love. But most of us grow up, get over it and move on. And find something even better. For example, what I share with my wife is so outside of what I could have imagined as a 22 year old that I probably would have rejected it when I was 22. But now? My wife fits me, complements me and generally makes my life better in ways that I wasn't even aware that I needed when we first got married. And I never would have had that if I was focused on the girl I couldn't have back in my 20's. While I recommend the Castings trilogy, with the caveat about the character driven'ness of it, this I can't recommend. A younger group might enjoy this, but then I don't know if they'd enjoy the Castings and that was the far superior set of books. So it all boils down to "bleh". I won't be trying anymore by Freeman. "

A massive tome, in the full trilogy ... and wonderfully populated with few obvious heroes, although there are mighty deeds (and sacrifices) aplenty.
The author is from "down under" and sees the world, perhaps, askew. I don't quite know what to say, except I read it two years ago and am still waiting for a long vacation to read it again -- "all in one gulp". It haunts me.

The war has ended and the English brides of Australian soldiers are now arriving in Australia. But what happens if the man you married isn’t waiting when the ship arrives? This is exactly what happens to Margaret Dalton.
Sergeant Tom McBride is in charge of checking everyone off the ship and takes Margaret to a hostel while the Army sorts out the whereabouts of her husband, Frank.
They find Frank is no longer at his stated residence and his papers also mention a wife and child.
Margaret feels like a fool but must now put on a brave face and come to terms with the idea that Frank deceived her.

”She’d been gullible, tricked by a warm smile and nice brown eyes. No. Forget him. She would wear her lovely nighties and use those embroidered tablecloths and be damned with him. But it was a hollow kind of defiance, a thin shell over pain and humiliation.”

I found this not only a captivating read it was also a sentimental journey as it was set in the area and time of my Grandmother’s early twenties and through Hart’s descriptions I could clearly see Sydney as my Grandmother would have seen and lived it.

I loved the Australian colloquialisms in the story. Well researched, the story comes across as real and natural.

The War Bride is a stand alone however I would recommend The Soldier’s Wife is read first. Not only because it is a moving read but it’s where the character of Tom McBride is first introduced. It will give you a whole new perspective on Tom’s heartbreak.

There is a lot of angst in this story as the characters rebel, with much soul searching, against the morals of the time.

Hart brings in relevant issues such as divorce, unemployment, religion, fear of being ostracized, dressing and doing what is considered proper. However these are all set around a changing country and Hart integrates the push for acceptance and change on a lot of levels.

My thanks to Hachette Aus via Netgalley for my copy to read and review.
I loved this book so much I have bought myself a paperback copy.

Pamela Hart is an author whose writing I just ‘click’ with. I can pick up her novels anywhere, anytime and be whisked away to an Australia long gone. Her historical fiction pulses with the life of early twentieth century Australia, bringing not only the characters to life but giving noise to the streets and landscape. I loved The Soldier’s Wife and I staked my claim on The War Bride late last year when I first heard about it. It doesn’t disappoint, bringing post WWI Sydney alive with some lesser known history in Margaret, the protagonist.

Margaret is English and married Frank during the war in a whirlwind romance centred around Reading train station. Frank, an Aussie, was injured and sent home to Australia. Now after the war and the Spanish flu, Margaret is ready to leave on a ship for war brides to be reunited with their partners. Margaret can’t wait to start her new life, but when the ship docks, Frank isn’t there. The kind army sergeant (who just happens to be Tom McBride, who readers of The Soldier’s Wife will be familiar with) makes enquiries for her, but it isn’t good. Frank has upped sticks and moved to be with his wife. The wife that isn’t Margaret.

Naturally, Margaret is devastated. But she’s not giving in – she’ll stay in Australia and make her own life. (After all, there’s very little left for her in England). Thanks to Tom, she finds a lovely place to stay and new friends in Jane and Burnsie. She finds a job she enjoys and finally, a new romance with Tom. But then Margaret finds out that Frank didn’t intentionally abandon her and life gets incredibly complicated. Does she lose all the ground she’s made in Australia to return to being Frank’s wife? Or does she face the wrath of society?

Even though it’s historical fiction, The War Bride contains a lot of modern thoughts and feelings, particularly in relation to how women were treated. Margaret and Tom have become a couple, which flies in the face of convention as Margaret is pretending to be a widow. How she can possibly think of another man while she’s dressed in black is beyond society’s wildest dreams. But as it’s preferable to be a widow rather than announce desertion, what choice does Margaret have? She pushes the boundaries of convention as best she can but it’s only a matter of time before society pushes back. For example, she is wracked with guilt after having sex with Tom because not only are they not married, Margaret is married to the absent Frank. Perhaps this is one of the reasons she decides to divorce Frank – to free herself of some of the guilt and allow herself happiness (not something that 1920s Sydney was all that keen on…the Bright Young Things hadn’t quite made it Down Under yet). Margaret is an early bastion of rights for women – jobs, love and the ability to change one’s destiny. Yet she’s not gung-ho, but has doubts and guilt. This only made me like her all the more.

I was so pleased to see Tom back in this book, as he’s so sweet and he deserved better after being unlucky in love in The Soldier’s Wife. Compared to Frank, Tom was even more heroic. Frank just didn’t seem suited to Margaret in my opinion. Perhaps it was the war that brought them together or perhaps it was because we only really got to know Margaret’s character after she was forced to make a new life but…Frank was weak. The reality of him didn’t meet Margaret’s memories and he seemed mixed up, even pathetic at times. I’d consider him to be very lucky to have had Margaret in his life!

The book also reflects on other topics of the time, such as shell shock and returning to home life after the war (there’s a scene where none of the men can stomach the smell of mustard). There’s some mention of what the ramifications are for gay men and how much of a role religion played in day to day lives. I could discuss this book for pages, but what I’d really like you to do is read The War Bride. It’s a captivating story that covers so much ground of Aussie life in the 1920s.

Thanks to Hachette Australia for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

One of my favourite genres is fantasy, but over time, I've been more disappointed by fantasy novels than not. Often, it's not that the stories are unoriginal, but more that the writing is so appallingly bad, the characters so unlikely or two-dimensional, and so forth. Because let's face it: in terms of plot possibilities in this genre, almost everything has already been done. What elevates one book out of the rest is the characters, the writing and the pacing of the story.

The Castings Trilogy combines all three of Pamela Freeman's books about a world of inequity (where a race of invaders oppress the original inhabitants of a place called the Eleven Domains), where stonecasters foretell the future, where the dead can be raised and where one stonecaster/sorcerer decides to raise the dead of his vanquished people and destroy the descendants of the original invaders.
So far - nothing that new. What is great is the pace of this fairly gigantic trilogy (1200+ pages), the vividly realized characters, even the secondary characters whose view points are described to add context and depth to the story. In general, I've disliked the practice of novelists in recent years of having multiple shifting points-of-view in a novel. Curiously, in this trilogy, though the POVs shift constantly, I wasn't troubled - because the writing was so good, the characters so well portrayed, and because the shifting POVs advanced the story almost transparently.
But where are good characters without a good setting to back them up? The world of the Eleven Domains is one of the most fleshed out fantasy settings I can remember, its history being revealed slowly in numerous ways. The Eleven Domains has a tragic and intriguing past, and one which is forgotten and misinterpreted by its own inhabitants.
There is no real good and evil in this novel - except perhaps that of two relatively secondary characters. Rather, the story shows the outcomes of painful choices made, some bad, some good.
I really enjoyed this – and will seek out other work by this author.

The Soldier’s Wife is an intimate tale about World War I. The book is the 30th one to be written by NSW Premier’s Award-winner, Pamela Hart (who has also published children’s and adult fantasy novels under the name, Dr. Pamela Freeman). This is ultimately an emotional story about love, change, hope, grief and longing.

The narrative is mostly told from the perspective of Ruby Hawkins. She is a naïve girl who used to work in her parent’s shop in Bourke. After a whirlwind romance to the dreamy Jimmy she decides to relocate to Sydney so they can get married and she can see him off before he goes over to fight at Gallipoli.

In Sydney, Ruby undergoes a massive transformation after she takes a job in a timber merchant’s yard. It’s a man’s world but Ruby is determined and she learns a lot of lessons along the way. Eventually she blossoms into a smart and strong, independent woman who seems before her time.

The war wages on and Ruby is comforted by Jimmy’s letters that are mostly filled with love and yearning. There is some grief and tragedy along the way and it is interesting to see how the characters deal with this. Hart does an excellent job with the characterisation here, as she really gets at the underlying emotions felt by all of the individuals. She also excels in providing historical context to the setting because it makes us understand what women could and couldn’t do and Ruby’s journey and internal struggle is very much framed by all of this.

The ending to The Soldier’s Wife is a little too swift. But that said, the rest of the book is very detailed and engaging as it really gets at the true cost of war. The Soldier’s Wife is full of characters that feel real and are easy to relate to. It’s a beautifully-written romance and historical fiction book that is entertaining and hits more high notes than low.

I've never read anything by Pamela Freeman before, and I really love the world she's created here.
The world she's created is large and filled with lots of different groups of people. The story runs at an exciting pace; and the plot has lots of interesting twists and turns.
After looking at her website, it seems that her Castings Trilogy books are set in the same world; so I may have to give them a read as well.½

After the moving tributes of ANZAC Day this year, one hundred years after the Gallipoli campaign, I was in the mood to read something set in the time period that celebrated the ANZAC spirit. I couldn’t have picked a better book than The Soldier’s Wife. The book not only chronicles what it was like for those left on the home front, it also goes into detail of the horrors of war and how they affect families and loved one. Plus, it celebrates some girl power in Ruby, a young woman who finds her strength and determination when she is left alone in Sydney after her very new husband departs for the front. Ruby is a country girl from Bourke and the city is new to her – the smells, constant movement and the never-ending buildings. After Jimmy leaves on a troop ship, she organises a place to board and sets off looking for a job.

Ruby finds a place as a bookkeeper as a timber yard, thanks to her experience in her family’s drapers. A timber yard is not the usual place for women to work in 1915 and Ruby finds things uncomfortable at first amongst the men. However, she finds strengths in not only being able to do the work well, but helping new friend Maree and being a voice of calm and reasoning when tragedy strikes her boss’ family. Ruby grows into a strong, admirable woman before the reader’s eyes, but is it enough to sustain her when she gets her own bad news?

It’s at this point that the narrative changes from being about Ruby, relatively free, to being someone’s wife. Having only a couple of weeks of marriage to compare to, life is not easy being half of a pair, especially when the physical and mental scars of war are so fresh. Will Ruby give up her freedom to be a dutiful wife, or does her new life mean more to her?

It was easy to like Ruby and I enjoyed seeing her personal growth from wide eyed country kid to a force to be reckoned with (yet retaining her femininity). Pamela Hart stops Ruby from being the perfect woman in that she slips up sometimes with some razor-sharp verbal barbs. I thought that this made Ruby more realistic and well…conflict does make for an exciting story. I really didn’t know which way Ruby was going to turn towards the end of the book as events cumulate in a race against time. I liked not knowing what would happen – would the ending be happy or sad? Would Ruby end up together with Jimmy (or someone else) or alone? It made the story more exciting and delayed my bedtime somewhat!

Pamela Hart’s research for The Soldier’s Wife was both detailed and interesting. I enjoyed reading about Lassetter’s, a wonderful shopping emporium in Sydney and how the timber was transported. And her words? Well, the pages just flew by. This is a book that you won’t want to tear yourself away from – it contains a myriad of feelings and events that makes for compulsive reading.

Thanks to Hachette Australia and The Reading Room for the ARC, it was a delight to read.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

Better than being merely escapist, the small details and differing points of view in this novel make it a worthwhile read even if I have issues with the pacing.