Title: The Juggler’s Box
Author: Clio Gray
Genres: Historical Fiction
Publication date: 1st December 2023
Availability: PB & EB
lSBN: 9781739704278
Price: PB £16.45, EB £2.05
Media folder & enquiries: bit.ly/ClioGray/ info@literallypr.com
Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CINNAMON PRIZE 2022
A body is found in a salt hedge with a crate of purloined books. Ruon Peat is on the case.
Hela believes she has the means to achieve Hungarian independence, if only she can get her hands on it. No one will be allowed to stand in her way.
Greta Finnerty is smuggling a dead English officer through French lines, with urgent news for the Dutch authorities.
Three strands pulling deftly drawn characters together from remote Norwegian mountains, ancient Russian battles, Irish and French uprisings, until all three stands become one in the exciting historical adventure that is The Juggler's Box.
BLOG TOUR REVIEW
Review for 'The Juggler's Box' by Clio Gray.
Read and reviewed a physical copy for Clio Gray, Sparsile Books and Literally PR.
Publication date 1st December 2023.
This is the first book I have read by this author. It is also the second book in 'The Book Finders' series but can be read as a standalone.
This novel consists of a prologue and 37 chapters. The chapters are medium in length so easy to read 'just one more chapter' before bed...OK, I know yeah right, but still just in case!
This book is not my usual choice of genre which is typically crime, comedy and romance but I'm an eclectic reader. I read the synopsis and thought it sounded intriguing so gave it a go. It is definitely a unique, complex and intriguing historical novel. I love the fact that this book is multilayered with several storylines that Clio has woven into one book masterfully and creatively wrapping everything together as you turn the pages. Although this is the second book in the series I had absolutely no problems reading it without reading the first book previously. Any details or events that have previously happened are mentioned in just the right amount of detail to let a new reader know what has happened and yet not too much to bore a previous reader. I will admit that I did struggle a bit at the beginning to get into the storyline and that it was more of a slow burner that I am used to but once I got into it I found that the storyline sped up and I became more invested and used to the characters and plot and it became more enjoyable. In this storyline Napoleon is raising Europe and capturing everything he can. While Napoleon is invading Europe the British sent to stop him have fallen in Heligoland after catching a disease. In the 1800's a frozen body is discovered in a salt hedge in Bad Salzbaum with a crate of books. It is Ruan Peat's job to find out more about the books and the reason they are with the body. Ruan is an excellent detective who is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. Ruan is in love with Greta who is a rebel fighting in the Irish Rebellion. Greta sees the bigger picture when she ends up snuggling an English officer across the enemy lines to get a message through. We also have Hela's story. Hela is looking for an old friend if her mum's and believed that if she can discover an old song she can help people to win against the Russian army making herself a hero. Will Napoleon win or will the British stop him before it's too late? Will Ruan discover the history of the frozen body and the books that was found with it? Will Greta manage to help the officer get his message across or has she signed her own death warrant? Will Hela find her mum's friend or discover the mysterious song? Well, you'll just have to grab your copy of this a action packed book today. The fact that Clio has done her research shines through her writing. It is a huge annoyance for me when I am reading a book and it is blatantly obvious the author hasn't done any or enough research on their topic or timeline and a good storyline is then ruined by unnecessary errors. Clio's evocative writing skills grips the readers attention and takes them from one adventure to another with each of the characters that come to life in front of your eyes. This is one of those books that you want to clear your schedule for so you can really sink your teeth into due to the complexity of the storylines. It isn't a relaxing or an easy read which is what I usually read but this isn't necessarily a bad thing as it kept my mind busy and active. If you are looking for an intriguing and deep read filled with romance, mystery, murder, romance, adventure, action, history and so much more then this is the book for you!! This is a unique, complex and intriguing book that will stay with the reader long after they finished the last page. I am looking forward to reading more books by Clio including the first book in 'The Book Finders' series which is called 'The Legacy Of The Lynx'.
Overall an intriguingly creative and complex historical multilayered read.
474 pages.
This book is just £2.49 to purchase on kindle and £16.99 in paperback via Amazon (at time of review).
Rated 4/5 (I enjoyed it ) on Goodreads, Instagram, Amazon UK and Amazon US and on over 30 Facebook pages plus my blog on Facebook.
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Extract
Out of the Pierced Mountain
Vettie’s Giel, Norway, 1800
A netsuke night, closed and tight: line of river etched by the nail-scratch of a new moon. Hela staring out her window at the familiar landmarks of Vettie’s Giel: stone-tumbled valleys; scree-ridden, grey-sheeted cliffs; the fist of Torghatten Hill on its island rising up from the foam-bitten fjords at its feet.
She swung herself from her scratchy straw-stuffed pallet, wriggled stockinged feet into clogs, climbed down the ladder from the loft where she slept. The goats in the room below jostling and wakening as she alighted, waiting expectantly for their pen to be swept, their detritus shovelled into pails ready for the midden, for Hela to strew out clover-scented hay and softened cakes of beet, refill their basin with fresh water. Goats bleating belligerently as Hela did none of it. Hela instead reaching for her cape, pulling it about her shoulders, going out the door. Began to wind her way through the night-blinkered street, clogs tapping on the cobbles like the heavy hail that so frequently fell upon Vettie’s Giel.
Glancing upwards as she went, seeing clouds to the north bunch and push across the sky ready to let forth rain, send it down fleet and heavy, to gather in torrents, rip through gullies and ginnels like angry tail-whipping snakes.
Didn’t have long.
Vettie’s Giel a place apart, closest township being Bergenstift: thin track from the former to the latter folding like a bird’s leg down the cliff and across a bridge of turf and birch swinging several hundred feet above Kokende Chasm, water thundering below, plummeting between narrow splits and spills of rocks. Terrifying to the newly appointed pastor, who’d swayed for mere moments upon the first few slats before drawing back, declaring he would go no further; that anyone on the other side needing his services would have to walk their own bones down to Bergenstift because he wasn’t going anywhere near Vettie’s Giel.
Not the first, nor the last.
Pastors born and bred in cities not stern enough stuff to suffer the like. Folk wanting marrying or baptising having the whole village packing themselves off down to the churchyard in Bergenstift the neglectful pastors had made their own. Dead folk wrapped in linen, strapped to a plank, two men carrying, one in front, one behind, for that was as wide as path and bridge could take them. And in truth, the folk of Vettie’s Giel were glad they had no pastor to chide and chastise them. Pleased to be left to their own.
Hela crossing the bridge many times, although never in darkness and never when the wind was roaring down the gully scouring those water-whipped serpents on, as no sane person would. Slats of the bridge ready to writhe and buck, throw anyone off its back into Kokende’s maw.
Such a wind on its way now: those malevolent northern clouds already halfway across the sky in a morning not quite dawned. No netsuke night when they reached her, and no way down to Bergenstift when they did.
She quickened her steps, heading for the tiny chapel and its tinier manse in which lived the boy who’d left Vettie’s Giel before Hela was born. Returned a man mysterious: bent-backed, cracked lips spilling over with tales of where he’d been, what he’d seen with those dark eyes of his that glinted like crowberries sparkled over with dew. A man who had half the village enthralled; eschewed by the other half - by those who’d known him as a boy – who’d warned against him. Troubled by his leaving, more so by his return. A man who, in his youth, had crossed to Torgett Island on his home-made raft , despite his parents’ insistent protestations. Sat vigil in the cleft that sundered Torghatten Hill through and through so you could see light from one side to the other, as through the eye of a needle. A boy, returning to Vettie’s Giel on his near-collapsing raft, transformed; who had packed his small life up into a single back-pack and left; never heard of from that day until the night the villagers saw a thin screel of smoke coming from the one-roomed manse the previous pastor had abandoned and the new one had never set foot in.
As if he knew, the older members of Vettie’s Giel had whispered, as if he knew.
Eerie, the word some used; too convenient by half, said others.
How the different circumstances hung together they could not fathom, but you didn’t live in Vettie’s Giel without having a healthy regard for superstition. Seasons came and went; crops burgeoned - given the right amount of sunshine and rain - or straggled and bolted into weedy unproductivity if not. Livestock bred more livestock, mothers looking after their offspring unless they found those offspring unfit, unworthy of investing milk and time in. Like Stefan’s cow, who had splurged out her offspring and promptly walked away, afterbirth still spooling from her uterus. Wobbly-legged calf unable to stand or follow. Stefan gently leading mother back to calf, mother giving her calf a kick that broke its ribs, made it mewl like a punctured toad. Stefan kneeling down and palpating the calf, unwilling to let it go. But it went anyway. Stefan curious, Stefan cutting open the carcass prior to chopping it into usable pieces – for meat was meat, and this the youngest and tastiest you could ever have - Stefan finding the calf had a herniated intestine and would never have thrived.
As if she knew, he told friends and neighbours, as he handed them their portions of meat, share and share alike. Eerie it was. As if she knew.
Hela not so bound by these conventions and superstitions.
Hela knowing more than most.
Bent-backed man, previous absconding boy of Torghatten, selecting Hela from his young story-sucking-up acolytes precisely because she was not so bound. Hela strong, hardened, alone. Keeping her farmstead together these last few years since mother and brother had died. Hela, who had a cape fringed with the ears of the forty nine hares she’d harried and caught, slaughtered and smoked, cooked and eaten, since her brother had gone over a ledge whilst hunting them and not been able to get out. Revenge on her mind, blaming those long men in the grass for Jule’s dying.
Hela, who had one small space on the fringe of her cape for the very last hare needed to complete it.
Complete this task I’m giving you, the boy, the man, who’d returned so unexpectedly had told her, and all your other tasks will be at an end.
Hela believing him.
Hela pulling her almost-finished cape about her shoulders on that night-soon-to-become-morning as she abandoned goats and farmstead, clip-clopped her way through the only street of Vettie’s Giel, hurrying onwards, needing to keep ahead of those threatening clouds.
One task, to end all others.
Bent-backed man’s words in her head as she scuttled forward, reached the chapel, the tumbled-down walls about it. The need strong in her to get on, get her bones down the skinny track rounding rocks and basalt outcrops as it cricked-cracked down the hill towards the rickety bridge.
Only one thing to do before she took that journey.
Hela’s fingers going habitually to the ears fringed about her cape. Nothing like a hare’s ear to give comfort in times of stress. So unexpectedly soft and long. Heart beating hard as she saw the door of the manse open, the man waiting for her a step within, apparently knowing she would come despite her prevarications the night before. Decision made suddenly when she had awoken and listed all the things needed doing: see to the goats, the fields, the dairy; get the butter churned, check on the cheeses, turn the meat above the fire, make sure the fire was smoking properly to smoke the meat.
All too much for Hela.
Had been too much for far too long.
Hela having difficulty getting up some days. Turning her face to the wall, not caring about the goats, the farm, the fields; all those things needing doing that went on and on and on, never an end in sight. The whole of Vettie’s Giel telling her she was long past the age for marriage, needed to do the right thing to keep herself and her homestead, her family name, alive. Prospective matches the ones she’d always known would be on the list, bar the few she might have considered earlier in her life when things had been simpler, when she’d had a parent and a brother and a passable stab at a dowry. Not so now. Only dregs left for her: men who weren’t considering her at all, only the pitiful farmland in her possession.
A life she could see rolling on ahead of her like a field unharrowed of stones.
Hard, bleak, and unrelenting.
A life she didn’t want.
The bent-backed man giving her the chance of getting out, doing as he had done before her.
Take it, Hela, he said. Take it, and don’t look back. This is your time.
Hela taking the package from his hands.
Hela going down the path, across the bridge.
New life beckoning.
Hela on her way.
Author Bio
Clio Gray has won many awards for her writing, including the Harry Bowling First Novel Award. She has been Man Booker Nominated, Long Listed for the Baileys, and Shortlisted for the Cinnamon Prize. Born in Yorkshire, she spent her later childhood in Devon before returning to Yorkshire to go to university, after which she ended up in Scotland. For the past thirty years, she has lived in the Highlands where she intends to remain.
Gray eschewed the usual route of marriage, mortgage, and children, and instead spent her working life in libraries, filling her home with books and sharing that home with her dogs. When she gets a few days off you can find her in her campervan scooting around the lesser-known areas of Scotland and the Highlands that haven’t been brought to ruination by the dreadful tourist push called the NC500. The Juggler’s Box is her 15th publication.
Social Media Links
Website: cliogray.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clio.gray
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClioGray
Purchase Links
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/486HWdR
Amazon US: https://a.co/d/gyhHQtc
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