The Mountains of Instead

Championing fiction as an escape from pandemics, politics and bad TV.

I Am Not Yet Born; Forgive Me (review: Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta)

Quintana of Charyn Melina Marchetta Viking Australia 2012

Quintana of Charyn is the third and final book of the Lumatere Chronicles and this review contains spoilers for both Finnikin of the Rock and Froi of the Exiles. You have been warned.
Shot through with arrows, Froi of the Exiles awakes to find…

Super Short Hiatus

Due to a very poorly child and a house which sounds like a veritable consumption ward, I'm taking a short break.  I'll be back in about a week, once I've managed to rid the place of snotty tissues and written up some of the many books I'm getting through.
Au revoir.




A Great Perhaps (Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green)

Looking for Alaska
John Green
Dutton 2005

Warning:here be spoilers...

Miles Halter is sixteen years old and going nowhere. His grades at school are good enough, he perfectly fits the parental mould of ‘good soon' but something is lacking. As a shy, awkward teen he has some problems making friends. …

Of Gods and Monsters (Review: The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks)

The Bunker Diary
Kevin Brooks
Penguin 2013
Linus has been snatched from the street by a man he believed to be blind.Clearly, he was tricked by the man’s helpless act, because he wakes to find himself in a sparsely furnished room – just a bed, a bedside cabinet, a blank notebook, a pen and a bible.On e…