Incendiary (Hollow Crown)

Product Information

Hi Aelish – great that you mention Roddy Doyle – I’m a huge admirer of his books for adults, and recently I discovered that he has a lot of clever, funny kids’ books that my children really love. The narrator is an obsessive---the kind who alphabetizes everything in her kitchen cupboards and freezer. I was so struck with your words that by page 8 I had broken with my personal policy of treating books with care so as to preserve their “brand newishness”…and I got out a pencil to underline things.

You do grow to like her for all her faults, and I think it is good that peoples’ appearances are left largely for us to picture. Little Bee caused me to look inwards and see a more practical thing that I could offer, something that could truly be life changing for someone. The author tried to make up for it by throwing lots of surprising twists and turns in the end and they really worked. She tries to make a go of life afterwards, but while she never explicitly asks the question, it's embedded in every word: how does one regain one's own sanity when the entire world has gone crazy?As a widow (died suddenly of heart problems)…you captured the grief and post traumatic stress a person goes through. You had this beautiful, powerful book that you had put so much of yourself into (especially your own, parental love); it must have felt like it had been blown up too. m. This has never been allowed because it has always been thought that attendance at games would be affected and the clubs would lose financially. It is a breathless, racing novel, and once you pick it up it is impossible not to become fully absorbed into the narrative. There were so many emotions that were running rampant inside me I needed to put it aside for a couple of days.

This structure gives the plot a somewhat uneven pacing, but the battery of revelations during the finale was perfectly pitched. As newspaperman Cleave knows, there's no way this information could get published in a UK paper (at least not the way they plan to do it) -- but, in the Internet-age (and with streaming video) there's almost no reason they would even bother mentioning it to the newspaper first.It's an idea, a feeling, communicated in the book's opener, set up like you’re starting in the middle of something.

In addition to writing novels, she serves on the Board of We Need Diverse Books, and is the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Vampires Never Get Old, as well as the cohost of the writing podcast, Deadline City.

Even the villains were multi-faceted characters who were nuanced and although not exactly sympathetic to them, I could understand some of their decisions and actions. This is my absolute favourite kind of fantasy book – one with captivating characters, fascinating worldbuilding and fast-paced, heart-in-your-mouth action. It's a word peculiar to my family, although I can't remember where it came from or which of my kids coined it.

Now, having just finished Incendiary, I think I’ve no choice but to be a Chris Cleave pusher all around! Incendiary 's claim on the imagination, its literary power, if it can be said to have any, is its narrator's voice. In the days after 7th July 2005, as the posters for Incendiary were hastily pulled down, the advertisements cancelled, my book tour shelved, and the novel temporarily withdrawn from sale by many UK retailers, I didn’t have an answer. The letter is written, mainly in the authentic language of an East End gal, but with snippets of people from other worlds. But Cleave's prose style, richly elastic and pumping, rescues the novel from being overly formulaic.Instead I’m simply proud of Incendiary because I think my heroine is riotous and unforgettable, and if you read it I hope you’ll like her too. There are plenty of other twists in there to keep you guessing and with the authors writing style you find yourself flying through the pages, unable to put it down.