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Jon Owens

Jon Owens works in the Electricity Industry, and as a possible reaction to its tedious nature has been reading and writing extensively since University. Jon's favourite genre is Historical Fiction, as even after four years of reading Military History at Aberystwyth University learning about new periods has never lost its allure. And what better way than through the medium of well researched fiction? As such Jon's bookshelves are littered with novels that cover over 2000 years of history, as well as a smattering of Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

King Arthur: The Bloody Cup, by M. K. Hume

Reviewed on July 28, 2010

The final book in this debut series was eagerly awaited by this reviewer, intrigued as to how the author would deal with the later stages of Artor’s life. The fact the novel is “The Bloody Cup” is also intriguing, given the obvious link to the Holy Grail and all the connotations thus attached. This aspect [...]

Bloody Belfast: An Oral History of the British Army’s War Against the IRA, by Ken Wharton

Reviewed on July 11, 2010

This book has the immediate opportunity to be utterly fascinating to anyone who is interested in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”. Ken Wharton, as an ex-soldier himself, has painstakingly brought together an impressive array of first hand accounts from soldiers who served during the bloody thirty years of war in the province. The perspective of the men [...]

The Tide of War, by Seth Hunter

Reviewed on June 18, 2010

Occasionally you come across a series of books that stand alone, not needing their fellows to reinforce the mystique of their imagined characters and plot. The Tide of War by Seth Hunter achieves this, and I can say this with confidence as I have never read the first of the trilogy, The Time of Terror. [...]

King Arthur: Dragon’s Child & King Arthur: Warrior of the West, by M. K. Hume

Reviewed on June 12, 2010

Arthurian novels are almost as common as the various myths and legends that inspire them. It is an area of “historical” fiction that has been covered in a variety of ways by a variety of authors, as well as cinematic interpretations that portray the ubiquitous Arthur as a Celt, a Roman or a coconut-carrying Englishman. [...]

Frontline Afghanistan: The Devil’s Playground, by Mark Ryan

Reviewed on April 29, 2010

Given the contentious nature of writing a book about a war that is still being fought, it is brave indeed to throw yourself twice into this particular arena. Mike Ryan has done exactly that, evidently confident in his background on the subject – Ryan is the author of seventeen books prior to this one, including [...]

Soldiers of the Queen, by Stephen Manning

Reviewed on December 16, 2009

Soldiers of the Queen is something of an ambitious concept from the outset. Not only does Manning promise to cover every major conflict embarked upon by the British Army during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in order to do so he draws upon an exceedingly impressive catalogue of first-hand accounts. Using this kind of [...]

Wounds of Honour (Empire), by Anthony Riches

Reviewed on September 8, 2009

It is always with a sense of trepidation that one approaches a new author in the field of historical fiction. When it is a genre awash with heavy-hitters like Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden and Wilbur Smith there is always a sense of what is almost sympathy with the newcomer. As a reader you are hoping [...]

The Tenth Case, by Joseph Teller

Reviewed on July 10, 2009

There are few concepts that are more traditional in the literary world than the good old fashioned “who dun it?”. Indeed murder mysteries themselves cross genres from historical “it was the soldier in the castle with the pike” through to the sci-fi “it was the blue alien with the laser in the bio-contamination pod”. Similarly [...]