This was surprisingly good. I never got round to watching the Netflix adaptation, even though people were raving about it. I probably will now, having read the book. It’s just an interesting story following the coming-of-age difficulties of a young chess prodigy as she fights to first get access to the game, then to break through because of her gender and her age, and then to battle her own demons to try and get to the top. The chess sections are meaningless to me as someone who can only just about tell you what the different pieces are called, but still it remained engaging which is a difficult thing to do. And I loved the ending, that sometimes reaching the pinnacle isn’t everything and you want to just go back to the simple pleasures that got you into it in the first place.

I’ve read a couple of Nora’s non-fiction memoir style books but this is a work of fiction, although it still just feels like Nora sitting you down and telling you a story. It’s a relatively short book and I think that’s good because there’s not a lot of story or plot progression to follow.

I’ve read a handful of Dirk Pitt books but not for a long while and I thought it made sense to go right back to the beginning of the adventure. This book wasn’t the first one published but it is the first in Pitt’s timeline, and therefore we see him right at the start of his journey.