Alchemy by Ailsa Abraham

Happy Friday wishes to you!  

A considerable amount of my reading time has lately been non-fiction either from hardback/ paperback or from articles on the internet. However, at the end of a long day whether I've been reading non-fiction or looking after my grand kids, I need to read at least a few pages of fiction before I go to sleep.

I might have mentioned this before but I love reading my kindle books. I follow that statement, though, with a tiny addition of ...when I can find them all. 

I've a number of devices to read them on which leads to some confusion. Driver error you may ask ? And the answer is absolutely! 

• I've a Kindle for PC on my laptop.
• I've an  early version of a kindle
• And...I've a Samsung Tablet 

all of which I use for reading my kindle books, most of which are novels. 

If I go to my tablet and open the Library > All items  function, I expect to see all of my bought (or free) books in this list. The list I see is great but it doesn't mean that I've actually got access to all of them on my tablet because some have not successfully been downloaded onto it. 

I still have some lingering problems from when my internet access at home was pathetically bad. Some books show up on my Kindle for PC list and are also available on my old kindle but it's not been easy to transfer those to my tablet. I find that some appear to have been read i.e. an indicator to 100% but I know I haven't read them. I've also got some from a long time ago which went to the bottom of my kindle pile which now don't seem to be available at all. I know that might be because that edition is no longer available to anyone and that's fine and acceptable. However, I've some others that I don't know why I can't access any more. 

While I was trying to sort out a pile of 'you've read 100%' ones that I knew I hadn't read at all, I realised I'd not read Alchemy by Ailsa Abraham which has been on my kindle for quite some time.

It was bumped up to priority one novel this week and I'm so very glad I did that. I'm also regretful that I didn't read it earlier because it's a fabulous read. 

Here are my thoughts on....

Alchemy by Ailsa Abraham

Having read, and enjoyed, Shaman’s Drum I wondered how I’d find reading the prequel as the second novel. I’m delighted to say my slight concern wasn’t justified at all since I loved reading Alchemy. A lot of things in Shaman’s Drum, admittedly read some years ago, made more sense when given the background to various characters and not just Iamo and Riga. The situation before the ‘Changes to the world’ came about also made what happened in Shaman's Drum more believable.

The characters in Alchemy all come with depth and likeable traits. The writing style is consistently entertaining and well devised and the pace is great throughout the story. Saying the ending was abrupt isn’t quite accurate, but there was an immediate sense of ‘loss’ at the end of the story. However, to say more about my feelings would mean some spoilers here and I always try to avoid that. I’d need to re-read the beginning of Shaman’s Drum to decide if a brand new reader starting with Alchemy would experience the end differently from me. 

Alchemy is a great read!

I've no hesitation in giving it 5 stars and will be spending some time transferring the above to Amazon and other places as soon as possible. 

I now have to ensure I've read more of those novels that still seemed to have slipped through my 'download failed' net because I also want to get on to reading the other new books that I bought in recent weeks.  

Slainthe!