#natasha mostert

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[bristolbookworm]

The Other Side of Silence - Natasha Mostert

The Other Side of Silence – Natasha Mostert

The power of noise over the human mind, in terms of how music can affect us, or noise pollution blight lives, is a known fact in modern life. In The Other Side of Silence, Mostert focuses on this, and on where that power could be played with. Mostert has picked up the concept of a Pythagorean comma, and the stated aim of the book is to derive a musical scale in which this does not exist. But…

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[claudiablanton]

Book Review: Dark Prayer by Natasha Mostert

Title: Dark Prayer Author: Natasha Mostert Publisher: Portable Magic, Ltd Genre: Mystery/Thriller Release Date: Oct. 16th, 2014 Rating: 3/5 Stars

Eloise Blake is on the run from a life she can no longer remember. And from a killer who will stop at nothing, to protect a secret as old as time. From the award-winning author of SEASON OF THE WITCH, comes a thriller about memory, identity and the…

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[innerbohemienne]

"...there is luminosity hiding in the shadow of the mundane. And things that hover at the periphery of our vision. If that’s magic, then I believe in it."

— Natasha Mostert

[editing-everything]

Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert: Book Review

Blurb: In her award-winning novel, Mostert blends alchemy, the art of memory, high magic and murder to create a highly original psychological thriller. 

Gabriel Blackstone is a cool, hip, thoroughly twenty-first century Londoner with an unusual talent. A computer hacker by trade, he is also a remote viewer: able to ‘slam a ride’ through the minds of others. 

But he uses his gift only reluctantly ― until he is contacted by an ex-lover who begs him to find her step-son, last seen months earlier in the company of two sisters. 

And so Gabriel visits Monk House, a place where time seems to stand still, and where the rooms are dominated by the coded symbol of a cross and circle. 

As winter closes in, Gabriel becomes increasingly bewitched by the house, and by its owners, the beautiful and mysterious Monk sisters. But even as he falls in love, he knows that one of them is a killer.

Stars: 3. Maybe 3.5/5 (it’s not a book easily defined)

Days after finishing this book, I’m hard-pressed to pin down a genre or an adjective to describe it. It combines the modern and high tech with magic culminating in something completely unexpected by the time I finished the last page.

Gabriel is a thief – of data. If you need corporate secrets stolen, he’s the man you would go to. It’s made clear that he’s left his past behind and has no wish to revisit it, until it comes knocking on his door – literally.

The very successful and very rich William Whittington comes to him looking for help to try and find his son, Robbie. He’s come to Gabriel because his wife Cecily recommended him as the most talented remote viewer she knows. And she should know – Cecily, or rather Frankie, was in a relationship with Gabriel while they worked at Eyestorm refining their remote viewing talents. She was never as talented as Gabriel though.

In the book, remote viewing is the ability to enter other people’s minds and scan their thoughts – Frankie wants him to find Robbie this way because he’s done it before at Eyestorm. As the case progresses, Gabriel discovers, or rather rediscovers that remote viewing is as dangerous as it is a handy tool to have on an investigation.

Gabriel – very reluctantly – takes on the case, and is introduced to the Monk sisters: Morrighan and Minnaloushe. I still can’t actually pronounce those names! Robbie was quite taken with them, and soon enough Gabriel is the same. Fittingly, it is through the writing on an electronic diary, the currency in which he deals and is most comfortable with, that he falls in love with one of the sisters, though he doesn’t know which one. The sisters are alchemists and involved in magic and memory, and none of this really comes to a head until the end.

Mostert is a sensual writer, never more so than when the Monk sisters are taking centre stage. It’s easy to see why Gabriel is becoming besotted by them, to the point that Frankie and Isidore, his partner in crime, stage an intervention of sorts. They are very much the same in many important ways, enough so that Gabriel can’t actually figure out who the writer of the diary is.

Gabriel is a bit of an arse to be honest. He’s full of himself and his talents as a thief, which is strange considering that sort of over-confidence caused him trouble during his Eyestorm days. Gabriel is the sort of character, I think, who has to be the best at everything and if he isn’t, he’d rather just move on and leave things behind, even if it means not using his remote viewing talent for days. It’s the overconfidence of a egotist.

He seems suited to either sisters, for they are much the same on the surface. Through the manuscript, we’re given short POVs into what they’re thinking and it doesn’t matter whose thoughts they are (we’re never told) because it could fit either sister. That confusion is skilfully maintained through the book to a satisfying conclusion about the difference between the sisters that ties into Gabriel’s feelings.

He also still has feelings for Frankie, despite her marriage and her husband’s terminal health. Frankie is in stark contrast to the Monk sisters and the magic they use; Frankie is real. Perhaps because she is dealing with realities that are in stark contrast to the magic and the alchemy of the rest of the book – the impending loss of her husband, who she loves so much. That lingers in the background of the book, always managing to remind Gabriel of what’s real. I liked that her love for her husband was steadfast, even as Mostert was writing her as Gabriel’s love interest as well — she knows Gabriel, she knows what he’s capable of and his innermost fears, but none of that changes how much she adores her husband and wants desperately to give him some peace regarding his son.

I never quite bought into the “love” Gabriel feels for the writer of the electronic diary, it was perhaps more infatuation than anything. Gabriel believed in it, I guess. The sisters were too mythical and magical to be real in some ways.

The resolution of the story and Robbie’s death is explained far better in the book than I can even attempt to go into here, but what I did not expect was a tie-in to BBC’s Sherlock’s mind palaces. You’re going to have to read it to see what I mean!

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[rosemariecawkwell]

Review: 'The Season of the Witch' by Natasha Mostert

Review: ‘The Season of the Witch’ by Natasha Mostert

Portable Magic Ltd.

  Jan 31 2014  (Originally published 2007)

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[silver-lining123]

“The great events in our lives are physical. Childbirth. Sex. Combat. Death. Not poetry, or music, or the thoughts of great men will flash across the transom of our minds at the moment of dying. We will remember only the moments when we felt the fibers of our body sing. Bloodily. Messily. Ecstatically.”

Natasha Mostert - The Keeper of Light and Dust

[weirdesplinder]

Natasha Mostert

Titolo: LA FIGLIA DELL'ALCHIMISTA

Autore: Natasha Mostert

Editore: Fanucci Trama: William Whittington, milionario londinese in fase terminale di una terribile malattia, ingaggia Gabriel Blackstone perché rintracci il suo figliastro, un ragazzo di ventun anni misteriosamente svanito. Gabriel, un tempo membro di un'organizzazione che usava i poteri della mente per ritrovare oggetti e persone scomparsi, utilizza questa sua capacità e in breve scopre che il giovane è stato assassinato da una delle sorelle Morrighan, donne dal fascino misterioso e ipnotico, dirette discendenti dell'occultista John Dee, un esperto alchimista e maestro nell'Arte della Memoria. E mentre Gabriel tenta di scoprire chi sia la colpevole, che continua a uccidere senza pietà, finirà per innamorarsi disperatamente di una di loro senza sapere quale delle due è l'assassina.