Recent Book Reviews

My first experience of wuthering heights was the play adaptation I saw in 2022, and I don't remember understanding anything that happened, nor enjoying it particularly, so I was hoping the original text would be able to offer me clarity and joy. Perhaps expecting joy was a mistake as that is deliberately lacking from the text, but I think a want for clarity is warranted.

I find myself able to draw a lot of parallels with Frankenstein, another early gothic work, with the structure of the novel being a diary entry from Lockwood, retelling Nelly's story about Heathcliff, similar to Frankenstein's letters from the ship captain retelling Victor's story about the creature. Perhaps that was just the way books were written back then, but it necessitates being able to understand the timelines we are dealing with, going back and forth through times like a wave. Where Wuthering Heights lost me therefore is with the naming; at the start I was completely with it on who was who, but then Cathy's daughter was named Cathy, Isabella Linton's son is called Linton and Hareton is sometimes referred to as Earnshaw after the original Earnshaw died. Perhaps a little muddling of surnames is inevitable when there are only two families getting married between each other 4 times (incest being another similarity with Frankenstein), but any sort of differentiation would have helped. It was fortunate my copy came with a family tree or I would have been truly lost but I just don't think its possible to truly enjoy a story when you need to consult additional resources to understand what is going on.

Of course the most important thing to discuss when reading it this year is how it relates to the film, and for that I was left even more baffled, there isn't a hint of romance in the entire novel and the characters are all cruel and vindictive. Most importantly perhaps Cathy dies before the midpoint so even if the supposed romance existed it is only a small portion of a greater novel on revenge. For that theme I cannot fault her, there is no doubt the novel is clear in its messaging that Heathcliff's quest to punish the Lintons only serves to bring about his own destruction.

All together I think I just found it to be a confounding read, and whilst I'm glad I've read it I'm also happy its over and probably won't read it again. It is quite possible I will enjoy the film more, as long as I am willing to consider it an entirely separate piece of fiction.

This was an emotional collection of short stories and poems. The stories varied between fantasy and real world fiction, most commonly addressing themes of love and identity. In the introduction we are told that Amal loves women and that’s undeniable from the text, where roughly half were about lesbians, and many more focusing on a female perspective in other ways. Consuming so much of her works together like this paints a very vivid picture of Amal herself, whether that be her Lebanese heritage, experiences with discrimination in Canada, her queerness or her love of Scotland.

This did unfortunately create a divide in the collection for me though, where this was described as containing ‘fairy tales with teeth’ which technically true as there were many stories like that; they were contrasted with the previously mentioned personal perspectives offered in the rest of the stories and all of the poems. I think this could have been two books, one more focused on fantasy and one on her more personal pieces as having them side by side in unclear ordering forced a comparison I didn’t want to make.

As a more fantasy reader, who’s only engaged with Amal previously in ‘This is how you lose the time war’, I enjoyed the fantasy offerings more. In particular my favourites were ‘Seasons of Glass and Iron’, ‘madeleine’ and ‘The lonely sea in the sky’. Interestingly these, three were all in the first four stories of the collection which offered a very strong start but the later ones were also of high quality. I did also write in my notes on each of them they were lesbian so that’s another commonality. In my eyes for a short story more than novels the main thing you need is a good concept as that will stick with the reader much longer than the execution and this definitely delivers on that with a wide variety of ideas that I’d never seen before.

All together I found this to be a strong collection of impactful works that gives a clear insight into Amal El-Mohtar’s thoughts and experiences which I think I could recommend to anyone.

This was a true beauty to read and it felt so modern I’d believe it was written yesterday. All four sisters offer unique personalities and joyful tales from their lives together. Unfortunately my copy only includes the originally published part one of little women so I’ll need to locate a copy of the second part but I look forward to seeing where the little women go in their future.

Before reading this I’d been given two drastically different reviews, first I was told it was mid and then the next person told me it was great so I was a little confused going into it and now at the end I’d have to say it was a bit of both. I think it suffers greatly from being a middle book which needs to develop everything but isn’t really allowed to pay it off fully. The greatest weakness though is that’s it’s three parallel stories following the same person that don’t ever cross over. While yes they are literally worlds apart it was just a strange experience knowing the happenings for whatever section I was reading would have no impact on the other two. Yes they will certainly come together in the next book, but that could be years away so what I’m left with now felt disconnected.

However as much as I say that it was also three incredible stories that each kept me very engaged and differed enough from each other that I was able to enjoy them all for different reasons as they pitted Vis against distinct challenges. Perhaps I wish these would have shaped his personality a bit more between them so we can understand what being in these other worlds does to his psyche but people don’t change that quickly so I cant really complain. I think my favourite was the Draoi world as we got to see him develop new connections and other significant personal developments but the other two also held their own.

The ending was very dramatic and definitely left me excited to see where it would go in each of the stories but similar to my initial complaint it did make the whole book feel like run up without any strength on its own. It broke my heart that we have been introduced to a character that can travel between two of the worlds (the two most interesting) and they don’t use that yet, keeping it for the finale and that just doesn’t leave me feeling satisfied with this book. I’m definitely going to read the next one but I just don’t know if I can say I’m fully happy with this one.

I found this to be a truly beautiful book to read. As someone who is dyspraxic when I saw this available as an arc I just knew I needed to read it and I am very grateful to be accepted. While this is definitely aimed at a pre-teen audience, often focusing on school experiences and tips and tricks for that environment I still learnt so much about dyspraxia and at many points felt aspects of myself explained as I realised that it was related. I’ve lived my whole life with it and yet clearly I still have so much to learn and this was able to give me information that I wish I’d known sooner. Charlotte’s personal experiences mirrored my own in a way that I’ve never had in a book before and really what more could I have wanted from this. It was educational, enjoyable and, more importantly, human. I can’t promise that everyone reading it will be able to relate as deeply as I do, and that’s probably a good thing, but I cannot recommend it enough if you know someone with dyspraxia or just want to learn more about it.

It's hard to know what I think about this book, its without a doubt the longest book I've ever read at 1300 pages and I managed to get through it without much struggle which means I must have subconsciously found it engaging enough to continue and yet when I sit and look back the main thought I have is that nothing happened.

In truth this was actually an entire trilogy in one, covering Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter (no autumn unfortunately) each covering their titular season through the planet Helliconia's 2592 year long 'great year' so it had a lot of time to cover. In reality this meant that each book covered one person's life in each of the time periods centuries apart. There's nothing inherently wrong with that format, and certainly if I had read the three further apart as separate novels maybe I'd have less of an issue, but it meant every time the next book started it felt like they needed to redescribe entire environment, as everything had changed drastically in the centuries since the last one ended. This need to tell rather than show hurt the story in my eyes because the overarching narrative is all about how drastic seasonal changes affect society, whether that be 600 year long winters or summers. I wanted to really get my claws into the world that Aldiss created and see granular change which I felt robbed off when there was no transitional state between the vast extremes we are shown; Tell me how and why one government fell, or slavery's legality was changed, or the invention of guns and machinery, not that it was since we last checked in. And this is perhaps why I feel like nothing happened, because whilst I can't deny that there were well written and engaging short term stories about war or divorce, they felt disjointed from each other to the point where if you look at them on the time scale the trilogy wants us to then they are blips of irrelevancy on the grander scope of the world.

It's all well and good to criticise but what would i have done differently? I think perhaps in each of the books I would have had at least 3 smaller timeframes, focusing on a wider variety of things at once to soften the whiplash of jumping forward so far. Unfortunately I do think this might well make the book longer which isn't ideal but clearly length wasn't his issue or even just make it 4 books and get autumn in there without publishing it as one huge copy. Luckily I'm not an author so I don't need to try to make this happen

As one final gripe about the structure I also disliked that for Summer they started by telling us the middle section of that story and then jumped back to the start and continued on chronologically. For a book so committed to the linear progression of time it was a strange writing choice to break that only one time and somewhat spoil half of that story.

Normally I'd also tell you a bit about how I feel about the characters but given the structure I can't really focus in on any ones. Overall though I think they were well written if not perhaps a little rapey at all times, maybe I would have liked to see opinions on rape change over the millennia but that was not destined to be. I think Spring had the best characters of the lot, and also good female representation less present in the later ones. Of course you could argue that in primitive societies that wasn't how things are, but like my rape point they go through an entire industrial revolution throughout I think they can also learn about women's rights and equality.

All together, like I said at the start, I don't really know what to think. It was a grand story that kept me engaged throughout but I don't think it paid off on everything it promised so I think I need to give it the meh rating of 3 stars.

I found this to be a perfect combination of satire and soul. Contrary to what I said about the light fantastic this knew exactly where it was going and it had a lot of fun going there. The characters were great, the setting was great like always and the plot was heartfelt. In fact I’d even say Granny Weatherwax might be competing with the luggage for my favourite character in discworld. But we’ll need to read more to find out fully.

Absolutely a recommendation from me

I think Fleming truly found his footing with this one; all of the complaints I made on the previous two have been resolved. Firstly he’s actually good at his job which I think is sometimes important in spy stories and also he wasn’t a complete womaniser. Unfortunately he hasn’t quite figured out how to describe women without giving you ample bodily descriptions and sometimes measurements, but the main female character was a police officer (position of authority) who was good at her job and ended the story not sleeping with Bond which I found to be a pleasant surprise. In fact he doesn’t sleep with anyone in the book which helped him stay more on track with his job.

The plot of course had everything you could want, card playing, Nazis and evil schemes. Of course he gets captured and monologued at about how genius the plan is but honestly if you’re reading this not expecting cliches it’s the wrong series for you. All together it’s a book where you get what’s on the tin, an exciting spy adventure. For the first time in the series I’d actually recommend general people to read this because it’s fun.

To be honest I was quite disappointed with this, maybe I’m too old to be reading these and I’m meant to think like a child but it just felt kind of directionless. The main impression I got was that the plot was essentially a vessel to get from skit to skit and whilst I can’t deny some of the skits were very funny I was left wanting to them to just hurry up and get on with the actual story rather than jumping from situation to situations without making any progress towards anything.

Perhaps the bigger issue is that I’d already read Mort, which he wrote later, and that didn’t have these issues so to me it felt like a downgrade, though I should remember that in fact it means he got better as time went on. I’m exited to get to the next one in the series and hopefully see Terry’s writing improve.

Overall a good comedy just maybe not a good story

I found this to be a somewhat return to form for Jeff, not as good as annihilation but better than authority. With the trajectory the series was going I feared I was on track for 2 stars but fortunately I was surprised.

I think the best choice he made was not to tie the plot so closely to the trilogy as there was such density of information to remember from those that it would have immediately suffocated me to be buried in it again. This might seem odd given its meant to be a prequel, which somewhat necessitates tying in to the rest of the series but I think you could call it more of a spin off because although the story does entirely take place before annihilation that still overlaps significantly with authority’s timeline and focuses on a character introduced there.

Anyway on timelines this book had three timeframes it was set, 20 years before the border, 6 months before the border and during the first expedition. For the first two we follow Old Jim, introduced in Authority, who we discover was actually an agent for central, quite the twist, as he tries to solve the mysteries of the forgotten coast, even before the area comes to be. In the final ie we instead follow Lowry during the expedition, which ties more into the main trilogy but also connects with the Old Jim segments.

What Vandermeer does well, as with his previous books, is painting a scene. Whilst I can’t deny I don’t think I understand exactly what was going on, the set dressing the environmental storytelling was incredible. The pictures he can evoke make me forget about needed to know what all of it means. On that note I think this was perhaps the easiest book to understand which is quite a relief after the questions piled up as I read the last three. It unfortunately doesn’t answer any of the previous questions but at least could solve its own.

All together I’m glad I read it and saw the series to its completion but I don’t think I’d go back around again any time soon

This has managed to surpass even my love of the last book. What I think Hobb has done better than perhaps any author I’ve read before is to make every one of the 10 or more POV character relatable and realistically motivated. I wouldn’t say there were villains in the story because even the characters who do bad things are so well characterised I could understand what led to them having to make that choice. Maybe I wouldn’t have done some of the things they did but I never doubted that they would do it. There was perhaps a single action by a main character within the book that I thought was truly reprehensible and that did hurt to read but I suppose you can’t like everyone.

It was also just impressive she was able to juggle so many different points of view and storylines mingling like a tangle of threads (fool reference) without losing track of any. It all managed to wrap up so neatly in the end which I was almost shocked by because tying up a story like this felt impossible until I saw it done.

There was one twist that I unfortunately spoiled for myself which really changed how the entire trilogy can be seen which I won’t go into too deeply here for my friend Sandra’s sake but I do believe I would have gleaned it from the text anyway, some very particular descriptive choices involved.

I’ll be onto the next trilogy very soon.

This was a story about an unfulfilled woman in a marriage to a man 30 years her senior, and whilst it could certainly make me relate to her struggles I do think they could have perhaps focused more on the age gap thing, I think at the point in the story they had also been married for 30 years so I guess they are both plenty old now but you do the maths backwards on what kinda ages are possible if he’s not dead. But aside from that really it was a story about how you need to be satisfied with what you have, a cracked looking glass doesn’t need to be replaced if it still works, which is a message I can appreciate if it wasn’t that I felt that what she needs to be satisfied with was a much older man. Nevetheless I’m glad it took the bold stance against cheating

My expectations going into this was slightly marred by my good friend Sof’s 3 star rating, though I rightly chose not to read the actual review which would have spoiled the story. Because I know Sof loved Alastair Reynold’s works it was apparent there would be some flaw in this story, and having now finished the book and read the review I don’t really know if I agree.

It’s definitely not his best work, compared in particular to The Prefect, but also this was the second book he ever published so I’m maybe more willing to forgive the clunkiness. Primarily this clunkiness does come from the decision to write the majority of the story in a first person point of view, something that he’s clearly not used to as it just doesn’t quite sound right; the third person flashbacks felt a lot easier to read. But sof’s main gripe was with the twists, and this I can’t really forgive, they were undeniably very poorly hinted to, with a character having a slip of the tongue, immediately revealing a certain thing. When you really think about it how many books have you read where a slip of the tongue was genuinely nothing? None! Because authors don’t do that so if you want to keep the reading even slightly uncertain about a twist before it’s revealed don’t use that. I’ll admit some of the obvious things I did genuinely miss so it wasn’t as catastrophic to me but there’s still a certain irksomeness to knowing something certainly that the narrative doesn’t want you to yet.

Nevertheless I do think the twists (if they had been revealed at the right time) were very good and brought the narrative together strongly, there were no plot holes that I noticed so I guess congrats to him for not contradicting himself within the book. As for the plot more generally, the Sky Haussman story was a lot more engaging but I wouldn’t say I was ever so bored with the primary Tanner plot that I wished I was back with Sky, so I don’t think it could have been that bad. If anything I think the plot was very real, it’s like the old adage ‘hurt people hurt people’ where you follow this man on his quest for vengeance but by the time the story ends you’re not even sure what the best outcome would have been. Also even though the main story was tied up to some degree there were definitely some loose ends on the side plots in particular with dream fuel, which never really got clarified but I think I can naively hope that might come up in the many later stories but I’m not sure how. On that night I liked that it tied in well enough with the other books I’d read without requiring any knowledge from them offering pieces of information that supplemented the storylines without feeling like I needed to have read this to understand the other ones or vice versa.

All together a good Alastair Reynolds book, even if there were some plot choices I didn’t necessarily like

We seem to be back on track with front to back stories, this one a biting look at the life of an elderly woman living alone in a tiny town out west after the Great Depression. In short this was just a downer, the misery she exudes is palpable and infectious, which while impressive doesn’t make for an enjoyable read. The narrative does come together to somewhat wrap up in the short length and I think maybe it’s a book people should read solely to appreciate what they have

A fascinating interview with Marlon Brando in 1956 during the filming of Sayonara in Japan. You get a wonderful insight into his temperament, lifestyle and childhood (briefly). What I found most interesting was the mentions of his desires to write fiction novels, which upon research he actually did. In itself this isn’t too unique but in this discussion he actively brags that he’s never read a single fiction book, only caring about non-fiction, so how on earth did he plan to write one, or perhaps why did he want to if he doesn’t like them. I think this is the only thing I now need to know about him because it says so much.

A collection of three stories from 1931-32 Germany, following a wide variety of situations. The first is a man telling the story of why he wears a cheap watch (he keeps losing the nice ones), the second follows a small town deciding whether to build a petrol station and the final follows a couple struggling to afford Christmas (very timely).

I think my favourite of the three was the middle one, as it balanced an engaging story with a subtextual criticism of German politics at that time, which of course comes right before the nazi’s rise to power. This made the petrol station feel like more of a metaphor for more larger national change and modernisation of Germany, with the nazis in the story pushing for the new ideas and big changes, somewhat predicting what would happen in the future in real life.

The third felt a little slow at the start but came around in the finale, as it slowly builds up the desperation they feel and the struggles they have in the economy until it all comes to a head in the end, and we get to see them happy.

I really enjoyed these stories and I think they may well all have had deeper themes I didn’t dig into

When I saw the most common rating was a 3 I was expecting much less from this but I think I really enjoyed it. It was one story (big plus) following Fussy Joe, a trumpeter in Lagos who spends his days juggling being broke with having a great many women in his life. Whilst I do think as a necessity of this characterisation almost all the women were quite one note and submissive I can’t deny it made for an interesting story, about essentially the biggest bum around trying to leech off of enough women to keep getting by. Fortunately his lies do catch up to him and in a very circular narrative I think the women win in their own way in the end.

I think the biggest takeaway I got from these stories is that I didn’t know what gigolo meant, I thought it was similar to a pimp, which left me a little confused upon reading it. Fortunately after actually looking up the definition I can understand the title more. The other three were of a slightly lower grade but none directly unenjoyable just perhaps uninspired.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a vampire? well as it turns out you’d have the same problems as the living! This book delves into the life of James Sugre, a broke vampire, as he tries to find a way to make some money without angering the Vampire Nation, leading to him creating a pyramid scheme for turning people into vampires. I do wish we had gotten a chance to have more plot development as certain steps were jumped in the business process that could have been interesting to explore.

Stylistically I really enjoyed using his bank balance as a form of chapter title, helping segregate the story into different stages of success. I also really enjoyed the drawings dotted throughout keeping things light hearted. For such a short book though I think the spreadsheets and graphs could have been left out as they were very difficult to read and took up quite a bit of space without providing any benefit to the narrative.

For lovers of vampires in need of a quick easy read I’d say pick this up when it comes out and decide for yourself if it’s the life you want!

Whilst this was a lovely story about family and Italy I think there was one glaring issue that there seemed to be one page per paragraph with unclear reasoning. I know I harp on about them splitting the books into multiple stories but the solution isn’t to leave half the pages empty, if it’s one continuous story you can carry them on after each other. I know maybe that’s how it was originally published but for a book this short I expect the pages there are to at least be utilised. Apart from that very heartwarming and philosophical so could have been 4 stars normally

It is very rare these days to find a book that is able to truly break boundaries, but Allen manages to achieve that here. Whether it's the unique typesetting or the subversive story structure everything comes together to offer me an experience I have never had before. That's not to say it's uniquity is always perfect; The stylistic choice to change perspectives in the middle of paragraphs or even sentences sometimes left me disorientated and having to backtrack, but I also believe that was what the author was going for so I don't really know if I can fault them for it. Off of that I would also comment that overall I did enjoy the non-linear storytelling, combining flashbacks from many different periods together to round out the narrative right up until the very end, working to meld together the time periods, echoing the themes of the story more generally.

Onto the plot itself, I'd say it almost defies genre, to pin it to one I agree its a romance as advertised but its also so much more than that, its adventure, its fantasy, its sci-fi, I might even call it psychological horror. Onto the romance though, I think its a little misleading to pen this as an enemies to lovers story, as they are introduced as lovers before we flashback to enemies, but also its a sort of ebb and flow, as we explore the intricacies and history of their relationship through the years and the struggles they each have. In other stories hating both the main characters might be a flaw, as you have no one to root for but I find that Violet keeps them just on the cusp of relatability that you can't ever want them to suffer. Acrasia, our protagonist, is a sort of moth goddess, alongside her cousins/sisters who each have a power bestowed upon them by their possibly evil mother, and each pursuing a different art. Acrasia's art is writing, primarily poetry, shown by her slightly pretentious style of speaking, but each other the cousins offer a unique and interesting perspective on the place of art in the modern day. Acrasia's romantic interest, Opus, is a sort of cyborg spaceman from another dimension, meaning they can only see each other very irregularly. All of the characters bounce off of each other in a very believable way, and you can especially glean the family dynamic very quickly between all of the cousins.

The tension was held high throughout the story and always gave just enough information to keep me wanting more from each of the timestreams, piecing together the puzzle throughout, until a very dramatic ending that had me begging for more. I guess I now see the issue with reading ARCs as now I have to wait even longer before I can read the next book, though maybe if I'm lucky they will let me advance read that too :))))

Anyway I would 100% recommend this for fans of experimental literature and in particular fans of XX with the design choices.

A brilliant pair of essays, the first attempting to pin down what ‘camp’ truly entails and offering different factors that go into it, whether that be intention, history or popularity. The second covered the idea of the modern separation of culture between the arts and sciences and refutes that idea by showing their similarity. One complaint I had from that though was in her point about art constantly innovating (like science) she seemingly says there hasn’t been any recent innovation in novels which felt like a strange and arguably incorrect thing to say. Nevertheless these were fascinating reads and now I think I can truly categorise things as camp

When I saw the blurb say this was essays I wasn’t looking forward at all, call that the anti-intellectual inside me, nevertheless I still needed to read it and whilst it wasn’t my favourite I’m glad I did. As with all non fiction it didn’t have any thrill but I learnt a lot about Nigeria in the 80s and 90s as well as the surrounding areas. Our narrator is a Nigerian man who had to flee the country after a coup and tells us about the journeys back, over the years as well as other European and global conferences they attended, all surrounding the narrative of the European treatment of Africa and the impact it has had.

Two in one day, I was eager! Mainly because I saw it had pictures and I knew that would make it a quick read before bed. To be honest the pictures didn’t really stand out but the text was great, it was a sort of study on sexuality in New York, first looking at a group of sex workers and then introducing us to the recurring Janey as she tackles her own sexuality, spliced in with other anecdotes from the city. It was brief, it was graphic and I think it worked.

It turns out Beckett was a friend of the family so I do feel a little mean rating this so long but my reputation relies on being unbiased so I can’t let that sway me.

There wasn’t anything actually wrong with the stories I just felt like they were both holding something back from me in some way. There was plenty of potential with the characters and yet they meandered through the story not doing anything. This was perhaps the point, to show a sense of meaningless in life but I think that could have been portrayed in a way that didn’t also infect the prose with meaningless. Very well written though so enjoyable text to parse even if the meanings didn’t shine though.

This was made of six stories, although I’m pretty sure the last three followed the same person so could definitely be considered one more overarching story. Whilst each interesting I struggled to find a lot of substance in the majority, particularly the last three which started out on such a strange footing that I felt lost in an already pretty loose narrative. The start being what I believe was someone ejaculating to death at the sight of a boy in shorts, but that seemingly never comes up outside of the first paragraph so maybe I misunderstood. The standout for me was ‘The Junky’s Christmas’ which followed the titular junky as he is released from jail at Christmas and scrambles to find a hit, selfishly and singlemindedly. This very efficiently characterises him as only really caring about getting his high which is then flipped at the end, on an optimistic note which you don’t see much of in this collection.

This was a collection of 7!!! Short horror stories. I think it might have also been the quickest read yet, though I don’t actually track that. The actual horrorness did vary a lot between the stories and seemed to on average decrease as it went on. My personal favourite was the one where they start whipping sentient vegetables to make their aunt like them. It was perhaps a little unclear if that is actually what happened but I’m pretty sure that’s what it said and it was so funny I just went with it. I do think the author likes making things talk, especially horses but that’s just the fun of fiction I suppose.

Tbh idk if I’m going to review every volume cos that might add up but this one was yet another banger. Glad to see the two nanas meet and more importantly one gets a nickname so I don’t get confused. It’s all so fun and beautiful to look at. Idk why I don’t read more comics but this was a great pick. Slightly more plot in this one which is good as we get to see them truly starting on each of their arcs.

With a name like that it’s easy to know what the book will be about. Set in a slightly more dystopian version of our world we follow a teenage Australian girl as she has to find the solution to climate change; you can probably guess what she decides upon. Whilst this was technically a multi POV story, Kayla dominates the narrative with her witty humour and intelligent solutions to any problem that comes her way. We also get some chapters with our ‘antagonist’, Kate, a headstrong policewoman who is destined for success with her ability to actually think like Kayla and somewhat predict the next moves. These are supplemented by an excellent secondary cast of Mr P, Nancy and Brian each with their own unique and slightly outlandish character traits. I wish we had gotten more from Dmitri the hacker friend whose presence was limited to when they needed something from him and then discarded. All together I’d say this is definitely a book that doesn’t tie itself to realism and flanderises current affairs to provide a stronger message about what needs to be done, although I fear it might come to fruition in the not so far future. If I had one minor gripe it’s that the phrase ‘kill billionaire’, which is used throughout the novel and is of course the title, doesn’t feel grammatically correct; I did check and turns out its allowed but ‘kill billionaires’ sounds much better and is also more accurate.

As soon as I saw the title of this book last night I knew it was going to be powerful and yet even then it overcame my expectations. I shan’t even try to summarise the content of the five essays included within it but they each follow a different aspect of fighting discrimination as a lesbian black woman, whether that be feminist panels that ignore the intersectionality of racism or the denigration of the erotic. I’d definitely recommend anyone to read it.

These were definitely very unique stories and I appreciated that a lot. It was made of four that sort of each followed a different physics concept, all narrated by the lovable Qfwfq.

The first two I’d definitely say were stronger than the second two, coincidentally both semi love stories so maybe that’s Calino’s speciality.

The first followed Qfwfq as he ventured with his cousin and crew to harvest moon milk (the moon was only a few metres up at this time) and falls in love with the captains wife. The trouble is the captain’s wife loves his cousin, his cousin loves the moon and the captain loves no one (not even his wife). During one trip to the moon it starts to drift away with the wife still on it, so Qfwfq tried to jump up to save her but ends up stuck on the moon as well, forced to be alone together for a month until it comes back around again. At first he’s excited by the prospect until he realises she’s hopeless and doesn’t want to talk to him at all, when at last they are rescued she chooses to stay on the moon instead so at least she can be a park of what the cousin loves. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it’s meant to mean but it was a very enjoyable read and sort of felt like a fable of sorts.

The second this time followed Qfwfq on an earth where there is no colour so everything looks grey as he falls in love with a different woman named ayl. Unfortunately he seems cursed because she doesn’t seem to love him either as they have too different tastes in beauty; where he loves the rocks she hates them and refuses his gifts and runs away. When suddenly colour appears in the world he goes to find her to see what she looks like but she’s hidden in a cave as she hates colour too. He eventually lies to her to coax her out hoping once she sees it she will like it but when she finds out she’s been tricked she hides again and then an earthquake buries her underground permanently. What we can learn from this is that Qfwfq is not very appealing because that’s two different people who’d rather be trapped somewhere inhospitable than be around him. Anyway despite the way I wrote this summary it really was much more than that and I really enjoyed it.

The last two were shorter than followed the idea of the sun turning into a red giant, and then people having the choice to either explode or implode. These didn’t really have much of a plot so I can’t say much, same style just less interesting

Things really be heating up, can’t wait for the final one in the trilogy. The twists and turns be going crazy, and very well balanced between the many points of view. I think it helps plentifully that every single pov character is smarter than fitz so that keeps me far more engaged and less frustrated.

Overall I found these kinda mid. Each one got better than the last, peaking by far with the final one, but even that wasn’t ground breaking enough for me. Maybe I’m reading too many short stories these days because I found these a little generic, which is a shame but also if it’s going to be picked as a modern classic it needs to stand out. Definitely not a pain to read like the others but I probably don’t explore their other works.

Heartbreaking! This was a five start right up until the very end and then it flopped.

The first stories followed a girl who’s roommate had disappeared but neither she nor anyone tasked with searching for her could really remember anything about her and in the end the parent essentially says give up she was my least important child. I think this was exploring themes of childhood neglect, no one cared about her until she disappeared and then eventually they didn’t even care then either.

The second, continuing with the childhood themes, was about a young boy on a train to visit his grandparents when a lady who’d just committed a robbery sits next to him and pretends to be his mother to escape the police, until they eventually arrive at the station. This I believe in contrast was exploring childhood whimsy and lack of belief by adults. When he gets to his grandfather and comments that the woman is being taken away and arrested they respond saying not to be dramatic and they probably just know each other, dismissing the experience as just childhood imagination even though we know it’s all true.

So those two were great and definitely five stars to me.

The final one was not about a child but instead a receptionist tasked with delivering a package across town but as she goes on this journey she realises that there’s loads of ads and a speaker van following her announcing if they find ‘Miss X’ they will win all sorts of prizes. The description of miss X matches our protagonist perfectly of course, even as she changes hats to try to escape this. That was all quite compelling but when eventually she gets found the ending was so profoundly unsatisfying it took the entire book down for me

This was a hard book to numerically review because to be honest the poems themselves were probably a 4 star read. What had to drag it down though was that I believe that there was meant to be an overarching aspect of each section being written by a different one of Pessoa’s personalities. While they were definitely separated into 4 sections I just didn’t feel like there was any distinct difference between each of them, so really what was the whole point of it. I was hoping a change of style or voice somehow, maybe some rhymed and some didn’t but that just wasn’t present. If you presented them to me blindly and unsorted (like nyt game connections) I would fail miserably as often poems have more in common with ones by other personalities so it all made no sense. This did mean I needed to deduct the score a bit as even if it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the poems themselves it’s a fundamental part of the book that was promised in the title itself.

These were three very poignant stories written in such an approachable way. Perhaps I’ve been scarred by some of the previous ones but I was able to breeze through these as such a pace I couldn’t believe it was over in just half an hour.

The first story followed a man after he takes part in a lynching, as he contends with how it made him feel and I think I could call it the Lolita of Lynching because the narrator undoubtedly enjoyed the lynching so a surface level reading could easily see this as an endorsement but the subtext really brings that into question. We are never told what the man that they murdered was accused of doing, just that he must have been a fiend because the papers said so and that even though our narrator was one of the first ones there he personally believes he took a very passive role in the whole affair even after admitting he pulled the rope. The story almost makes you feel bad for him which was very unsettling to read but showed that maybe I’m not as immune to mob mentality as I’d like to be, although to be clear I don’t believe I’ll ever be doing any lynching.

The middle one I perhaps didn’t completely understand what he was going for so I can’t say much but it essentially about a woman buying a snake from a medical animal killer (for anatomical models and stuff). And it glimpses into his mind as he feels repulsed by her emotional investment in the snake killing and eating the rat, contrasting with his thoughts that even though he kills and cuts up many animals every single day he’s never felt any emotions about it so he sees himself as better than her. As I write this maybe I do understand what Steinbeck was going for, it’s a question on violence, is it better to commit far more violence for what you see as a moral cause than take pleasure in seeing it.

Finally it ended on a slightly lighter note with The Chrysanthemums, a story about a woman living on a farm in California who meets a travelling pot repair man. This one was perhaps the clearest to me what it was meant to be evoking, the sense of entrapment women in those situations felt. The true freedom she had in the beginning was growing her chrysanthemums, so when she meets his man who she sees as truly free and able to travel anywhere he wants her desire for more ignites but alas that isn’t possible and she must go back to her normal life and give up her dreams, the only solace being the chrysanthemum she gave him that ‘escaped’.

Anyway three amazing stories and I’m sure my chrysanthemum loving friend will enjoy them greatly

I do wish Camus had dangerously created a more engaging book, the subject matters were undeniably interesting but I found the prose too dry. In the titular story calling artists to action to speak for those unable to speak and challenge the status quo I oddly found it not particularly provocative. It is likely the modern times have changed since this was written but should not good analysis be timeless? It’s hard to know what more I have to say, the ideas were all there but for a book this short it felt much longer.

To be honest I had no clue what this would be about but I’d heard great things from people in the know (mainly Alisha) so I thought I ought to read it. I did initially request the 25th anniversary edition as an ARC but got rejected so an online copy has to suffice. In essence it follows two separate girls called nana, it’s important you know they are separate I got very confused in the middle when nana changed appearance, age and lifestyle but eventually did figure it out. Anyway in this volume they both want to reach Tokyo to achieve their separate goals for success and it just sort of sets up backstory so not a very plot heavy one as a prologue. What really stands out however was the character design, with the second nana being styled very deliberately and recognisably in Vivienne Westwood. You can know that is well designed because I recognised it, and I barely know my designers. Anyway I can’t wait to read the next one.

Whilst the saying ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ might not fully apply here the way these beautiful vignettes of rural polish life were written gave them a mythical quality. I did in fact have to look up if it was real because the style lent itself so well to a sense of fiction, even though there was nothing textually that should have made me doubt it. I shall briefly summarise the stories, which I don’t think can be spoilers because they happened in the past.

The first eases you in well with a story of a social mixer in a town of only 4 young boys to 14 girls which really showed the desperation these girls felt to be picked and taken to the city to escape the life they live in, despite knowing the odds were not in their favour. The title of this story and the book references the observation that these girls’ teeth are all rotten as they can’t afford toothpaste alongside the small luxuries they feel they must buy in order to make themselves more appealing.

The second further emphasises the themes of poverty and desperation from the first, this time looking at a mother who’s dying of tuberculosis but sold all the medicine she was given in order to pay for her daughter’s education so she could become a teacher and move up in the world but once the daughter became qualified she decided instead to become a nun, destroying her mother far more than the tuberculosis ever did. I think it was in this one especially that I felt this very much could have been fiction, with all the themes and plot tying together incredibly well, feeling a little like a fable.

The third this time differs a little from the first and investigates a village in which a sculptor had come to town with his muse ostensibly to sculpt the Virgin Mary for the church but as it is being completed the villagers realise that the face is of the muse and break out in outrage. This was perhaps the most light hearted and least thematic which did serve a nice break

Finally my favourite story was perhaps the simplest. A young miner had been crushed by a boulder and his family was too sick to come and see the body at the mines so six men are tasked with bringing the body back to the family instead. However, when they are almost there the truck breaks down so they decide carry the coffin all the way there instead out of respect for him and his family. What was really powerful about this to me was that none of these men actually knew the miner at all but the way the journalist recounts it it becomes clear that it does not matter as they all see themselves in part in the boy so even though it is incredibly painful to carry this coffin for hours they know it must be done. Knowing that this truly happens is what made me make my statement at the very start, in a fiction book I might say it’s a writers convenience that they all selflessly decided to do this painful act for someone they didn’t know but you can’t really say that about real events.

All together this was a beautiful collection that offers a startling insight into soviet polish life.

Oh to be a young lady in daydream and drunkness, perhaps then I could be more effusive about these stories. As it stands I feel somewhat meh, they were enjoyable for sure but I don’t feel like they had the buzz I was looking for. The middle definitely had the most to say and could have been expanded to a longer literary form but I fear even then it wouldn’t be elevated to timeless classic.

This was an excellent collection of the first 9 chapters of the Parasyte manga in English. The story was incredible, mixing horror and sci fi elements together very well with fast paced action. I was able to whizz through this in a single night as I just couldn’t put it down and kept wanting more. The characters were amazing making you feel bad for Migi despite his irredeemable nature. I can’t wait to read the second collection to see where it goes next

This book was exactly what I thought it would be, a very well illustrated adaptation of animal farm, one of my favourite books. I would not however say it is a sufficient replacement of the original text, as I found it a little too succinct in certain areas, rushing over parts that were better covered in the original. It was nonetheless an enjoyable read and elevated the themes of the story greatly with the depth and stylistic choices of the art within.

I have to say I found this book profoundly disappointing, I thought myself an enjoyed of Kafka’s work, though perhaps not a fan but this was just a slog. The worst part is I’ve spent all this time saying I wanted less collections and more single story books and yet when I finally get it I say it drags. I guess I can’t win, but I just found the thoughts of the dog unengaging I guess.

Many people say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I don’t think that’s good advice at all; What’s the point of a book cover if not to distill the essence of the story into a single picture. Therefore when I saw the cover art for Meat Bees I knew I just had to read it, even if that meant trying my first horror novel. Unfortunately for me it seemed it was quite popular on NetGalley so I feared my request would be rejected, and after more than a week of waiting to my surprise I was approved for an ARC so away I went.

If I had to distill it into a vibe I’d say ‘fun 00s horror flick’. The characterisation and mood of the entire book were a real treat throughout and kept me coming back for more.

What really makes it stand out however was the heart contained in it. Often in stories like this the action and horror can cause the interpersonal relationship take a backseat but that didn’t apply at all here, I loved the relationship between Scarlett and her dad as it built over the course of the story, going against the more typical absentee father in these kinds of stories. Obviously the friendship between Liv and Scarlett was also a high point, accurately reflecting what I believe teenage girls are like, though I fear I’ve never been one.

That is not to say the action wasn’t also incredible, it had everything I could have wanted and more, beautifully balancing the stress and comedy to keep me on the edge of my seat. I enjoyed the change of perspective for each death allowing you to piece together more than the main characters would be aware of without the need for heavy exposition.

All together a brilliant read and definitely recommend to horror fans when it comes out

To be honest this collection was somewhat unmemorable, the first story was the only one that I truly engaged with, being a sort of study on the colonisation of the West Indies and life as a child from that. The next three while being good stories didn’t draw my attention so well so I can’t say too much

This was another collection I’m afraid but that didn’t let it down in the slightest, finally making me enjoy the benefits of the medium. This followed four stories about black American experiences during segregation and the Second World War. Not to say I don’t think about the books I read but when I finished the third, titular story, ‘the black ball’ I had to stop before continuing to the final one to digest the themes and metaphor. Perhaps I’m coming around to ultra-short form stories as it was very easy to connect together the entirely of the text given it only covered a little over ten pages meaning I could remember certain innocuous phrasing’s used at the very start which took on a new light in the finale. It was a highlight of showing rather than telling as being shown took the entire story to come together but offered a much larger payoff than if it was made explicit at the start what the black ball really meant. The other three stories while not as evocative to me personally were also all incredibly unique characterisations of unique experiences I will never have and joined together they offer a deeply rounded and personal view into what it was like to live through that.

I was unfortunately unable to finish this in a day which might have ruined my advent of classics but alas that was not the book’s fault. It was two retellings of biblical stories of which the second I found better by far. Unfortunately my knowledge of the original stories was poor so I couldn’t really understand what the retelling added or changed but still an interesting read

Not much I can really say about this, it was the best poetry collection by far as it thematically held together and had a rhyme scheme I enjoyed. An interesting collection mostly about the Irish famine and other related things. The titular poem was 30 pages long which I felt did drag a little but the rest were more reasonable lengths. Still another series of smaller items though I just want an individual story.

Maybe it’s because I’m reading these so close together but this is like the fifth anthology in a row and at least this one had a stronger interconnected theme on the place of royalty and the hubris that role brings uniting the four stories a little into one overarching moral. Also it was sci fi which I naturally did prefer. I’d have to say the third one was my favourite but they were all just kinda mid. I do really wonder who was picking these as the best 50 modern classics because I get novelettes aren’t as common as novels but I know there are better ones than these. This isn’t really a complaint about this book in particular it’s earned its place well enough but I needed to say it somewhere.

I wish I could give this zero stars, or even negative stars if it was possible. I don't know who curated the penguin modern classics box set but they may well have the worst taste in poems I have ever seen. Allen Ginsburg was bad but at least I could divine meaning from the text, this had no meaning at all and felt as though she randomly picked words and put them down. The poems didn't even relate at all to the food they were named after.

The first and longest poem went on for a full six pages which was torturous, fortunately they got shorter as they went on, some being only a single line. The pinnacle was a three word poem 'dining is west'. If it was not a 50 page book in which the majority was empty page I genuinely would have dnfed before the first poem ended but I am a completionist to a fault so I did need to get through it.

I would highly recommend you read this just so you can suffer through the worst book i've ever written and I believe the worst rated book on goodreads (by a serious author with genuine reviews)

This built excellently upon ‘bored gay werewolf’, expanding the great parts and adding even more to love. Being set in London was a personal improvement but even aside from that the prose felt smoother and quicker to read, holding my attention throughout. Maeve made a great addition to counteract the wacky nature of the previously established characters.

Those are all immaterial compared to the excellent plot construction that tied everything together so well that I’m pretty sure if I read this again I’d discover dozens of previously innocuous lines that built out the ending even more so. I guess that’s the beauty of having a banshee being a key character, they be knowing the future.

Anyway I hope the next one is something like ‘anxious bisexual vampire’

I’m starting to question penguin’s selection/ordering of these classics as this is the third anthology in the row and reading an anthology of anthologies gets a little boring. Fortunately this was non-fiction made a somewhat change of pace.

Regardless of the background this was a very solid collection of essays on nationalism, antisemitism and sports? Strangely I think the sports essay was the most interesting as I’d dove into breaking down the notion that international sports work as a form of preventing war and easing tension, which was interestingly an idea presented in ‘eyeless in Gaza’ so it was interesting to see a counter to that. The first two were pretty standard Orwell essays

I believe this may well be the first erotica novelette I’ve read and I’d say it was a pretty good start. It’s made up of four stories, mostly focusing on the women’s pleasure aspect, with one being a lesbian relationship.

I think my favourite was the first and titular short story which follows a man as he’s taken into a mysterious women’s house and paid to have sex with her, only to discover at the end that she’s charging people much more money to watch her have sex with random men, making him feel betrayed and scared to have sex again. This was a very interesting twist as throughout the story you get the sense that he feels superior to her as he thinks he’s won by being paid to have sex with a very attractive women, when truly she was the one succeeding, and we love to see women win.

The second follows a women as she ventures to find someone who can sexually satisfy her more than the last, somewhat using and discarding many men along the way when they get boring, I guess another win for women’s autonomy and empowerment, making the men the objects in the story.

The third follows a lesbian women who tries to court married women while their husbands are there and succeeds quite well.

The final, and my second favourite, follows an artist who gets commissioned to draw a nude portrait of a man but he’s rock hard the entire time and eventually she decides she wants to have sex with him but it turns out he’s just an exhibitionist and doesn’t care at all about her wants and needs so she destroys all the paintings to get back at him.

All together a food erotic anthology so that’s a win, although I guess I don’t have much to compare it to

I’ve got to say for a book called ‘three Japanese short stories’ there were barely even 2 stories in it. The first two are pretty much the same plotless study for someone who finished uni and now doesn’t want to do anything and just mopes, it could have been an interesting character study but by nature of short stories there was very little time to develop them so they just felt whiny and annoying. Luckily the third one at least slightly redeemed the collection, being a slightly mystical story about mistellings of historical events and the biases authors put into their writing.

A solid collection of short stories by Philip K Dick. I liked the little introductions before each of them, explaining why they were picked and often including a personal story of their connection to it. I’d say the highlights for me were The Commuter, The Hanging Stranger and Autofac but there were no misses so honestly just read them all

This was very different from my normal reads, the plot was minimal, especially as it jumped around years every chapter so you knew what was going to happen quite early on. Fortunately it was really more of a book about political philosophies so the happenings acted more as a vessel for conversation about the pros and cons of pascifism vs direct action vs other stuff. This is of course something that’s been discussed for thousands of years and will be for thousands more but what makes this stand out to me in particular was the period it was written in. It was published in 1936, during the rise of the nazi party, but before the Second World War, meaning that even though it speaks to the morality of revolution and political actions in vague terms it’s all really asking ‘what can a civil British person do to stop the nazis’. Civil is important because a lot of the overtones of the novel surround the fact that these are all upper class, privately educated people who have the privilege and luxury to spend decades pondering what the moral thing to do is, and never really do anything at all, except lead a failed coup in a village in South America and then go home to their comfortable lives.

I read this to try to understand what the title of 'eyeless in gaza' was meant to evoke and to be honest it just left me more confused. Interesting poem though

Lots of shapes in this; circles (titularly), triangles, squares? Maybe.

Anyway I loved it, this had everything I could have wanted: mystery, real estate, lesbians? Maybe.

I really enjoyed the structure of this, moving forwards in the ‘present’ while backwards in the ‘past’ to unwind a story in both directions to come together to a shocking, satisfying but believable ending. I found all the character arcs engaging and well combined together to create a believable web of relationships that drive the story forward. The setting was also immaculate, dropping enough hints to the setting without feeling the need to explicitly tell us what’s happened and what it all means. I don’t know if there’s other stories coming from this world but I’m eager for it!!

Definitely a recommended read from me

I’ll start with the necessary statement that the book was so drastically different from the film that I won’t be comparing them. Oh and also there will definitely be spoilers for the book

Before I read this I never really understood what the title really meant, to be honest I thought it was about counting sheep to get to sleep, an interesting but hardly meaningful title, but really it served to works to show the mirror between Decker and the androids. At the very start of the novel we are introduced to Decker’s electric sheep, which he had to buy to avoid the shame of letting his real sheep die, and his constant desire to get enough money to buy another sheep. In many ways animals in the book serve as a metaphor for his desire for success, from the goat he buys after his first set of successes to the toad at the very end. So then to circle back the title what it was really asking was do androids have hopes and dreams. After this realisation I was very glad that I did get a copy with the original name not the renamed ones with the film title as that truly is meaningless and actually comes from a completely different book.

Anyway this had far more philosophical themes than I’d imagined it would, through the concept of mercerism, a sort of religion surrounding sharing your emotions by connecting to a box that combines your mind with everyone else and shows you Mercer climbing a hill while rocks are chucked at him but also the very interesting choice to have almost all of the androids have a deep sense of respect for a human’s ability to have empathy, something they cannot do and importantly how they get detected and killed. I think this aspect of respect and jealously ironically humanised the androids because trying to imagine a life where you are completely able to understand something that is able to unite huge groups of people but never having access would eat away at me too, which is why of course in their they seeked to disprove Mercer is real in a hope to destroy the human sense of connection which divides them from the androids.

Back to Decker’s characterisation though and his animals, his arc throughout the story was almost the opposite, he gained empathy for androids as he realised he wasn’t able to properly distinguish humans and androids without the testing any more, because he had no choice to have empathy for all people rather than cast both groups out. That’s why in the end when he thinks he finds a toad in the desert, which was previously thought to be extinct, his excitement does not fade when he discovers it was an electric toad, because the journey he has taken has stripped down the barrier he had between living creatures and electric creatures, he can be content with looking after an animal no matter its constitution.

This has kind of rambled which I do regret but I’d definitely recommend you reading it and hopefully my half baked analysis hasn’t spoiled it

I’m glad this went in a more exciting direction than the blurb promised but still a somewhat middle of the road sci fi story, fun but not too deep.

The plot followed a nice arc and the characters were fun but I struggled to understand their motivations at times, nevertheless the main character was fun to follow and very driven.

I’ll probably read the second one given there are only two and this was so short

I think the greatest strength and weakness of this book was the fact that’s it’s (currently) a strictly standalone novel, which meant the arcs did actually finish within the book. One of my biggest gripes with modern fantasy literature is they are always setting up millions of sequels and it makes the first few entries nothing but setup and background, which this doesn’t do. I found the characters very compelling although some areas were left a little unanswered, like the whole father thing, but at least they all acted humanly.

I did like how the magic was presented, perhaps because it was essentially just computer programming which I personally enjoy, but it also felt unique from other stories which made the novel stand out.

I’d give it a definite recommendation to read if you like programming and magic

What a great finale to the His Dark Materials hexalogy, it followed strongly from the previous novel with a more restrained tone, marking the difference between Lyra’s childhood wonder in the Northern Lights to a more adult emptiness as her story continues even after being the chosen one. It wrapped it up neatly and I wish I had chosen to reread the previous five before this so I could have greater comprehended the connections.

I started this book in the hope that I could finally read my first romance book, still science fiction though, I wasn’t going to push the boat out too far. Alas despite being marketed as romance this is quite the opposite. I’d say it’s more of a psychological thriller, and I’d be genuinely concerned if you felt there was any love involved in the story. Read very easily and enjoyed it throughout, plot was solid with a nice twist at the end. Character(s) were somewhat one note but that didn’t take away from it too much.

I’d kinda recommend everyone read it so they can enjoy watching an insane amount of intergalactic gaslighting

I’d like to start by personally thanking Tim Vee for letting me read this, I don’t read many self published books and yours was a great pick.

Post apocalyptic sci-fi is a genre I can’t help but enjoy and that is a trend that continued with this book. Despite its relatively length I felt that the plot very strong and was able to hit all of its points without rushing which I really appreciated. Although there was one plotline which unfortunately never got resolved, probably could have been removed entirely to be honest.

What I do think unfortunately limited my enjoyment was the prose itself, which I felt often told what was going on rather than showing me. Although it is sometimes hard to avoid doing, especially with a third person omniscient perspective, I was often almost too certain what was going on, when a bit of uncertainty to mirror Squirt’s situation would have been beneficial. That’s not to say there was no subtlety at all, I appreciated the subtle way we were introduced to the possibility of there being robots currently in the world when Squirt, our protagonist, talks to a broken down one as a friend, a very human and believable thing to happen in a post apocalyptic world.

Alongside that, and this is perhaps a more personal nitpick was the usage of different words for something that already exists in the world, here being ‘notches’ instead of ‘years’, a little bit of a trope in media now to have a different word for birthdays. The one that really took me out of it during the novel was ‘the hard goodbye’ as the term for when someone was exiled, it’s a term that gets used a lot throughout the story and I could never get used to it. Also he loves PVC, he mentions things being made of PVC so much in the start and then I was like oh good he’s stopped and then he does it one last time at the end.

Lastly back to praise, the character work was very strong and I appreciated that Squirt didn’t inexplicably become stupid at any point and truly acted like someone who has lived in a wasteland since birth and fights to survive. I could really relate to her character and think the story ended off at a perfect point in her story.

I’d have to say this is the strangest book I’ve ever read but I really can’t help but love it. The characters (or perhaps just character) make it such an enjoyable read that I just couldn’t stop. Reality is such a unique protagonist that it really forced me to engage with the content far more than I normally would, everything she sees and does is expressed to us through a lens so warped that it’s a struggle to really know what’s happening but throughout the novel you can slowly piece together and understand why she is the way she is.

I obviously don’t want to spoil it too much but it followed reality on her adventure to become the perfect boyfriend and the hijinks that ensue from that. It’s a story that will make you laugh but also feel other emotions which will be revealed to you when you read it.

I don’t know if it’s a book for everyone but it’s relatively short so I’d say everyone should try to read it and hope you are the kind of person who’d enjoy it

My connection to this book happened this past Tuesday when I was walking with my Grandmother, we passed a local bookshop and I see in the window a book called ‘shy trans banshee’ and that’s definitely a title of a book I need to read to I added it on Goodreads. From there I saw it had a prequel (this book) so alas it was a necessary for me to read it to understand the emotional lgbtq monster universe.

The book was very solid, and enjoyable with some laughs. Not the most unique story but it’s structured well and the character work made it engaging. I would recommend Sofia reads it!

Can’t wait for ‘nervous lesbian vampire’

Having just read another book about the Tower of Babel, I can confirm this is the better one, though it might not be a very fair comparison that one was more light hearted and unserious.

Anywho it was definitely a great book, if not perhaps a little preachy, I’m not a man who necessarily enjoys footnotes and Kuang is clearly an author who does. Perhaps it would not have been so bad if I wasn’t listening to the audiobook at the same time which interjects at whichever point in the page it chooses with the lengthy footnote (in a different voice) which really does take me out of the story.

Anyway the concept of a magic system that works on the difference of meanings between words in languages could well be the most unique I’ve seen for a very long time if ever. However I’d have to say I expected more issues with robin needing to use a bar and it not being in a language he spoke. Very odd how almost every bar they encountered was in mandarin.

The characters were good too, but I did feel like I wished they didn’t make Letty the villain, felt a little predicable but I guess that’s kinda the point of the story, colonisers will do what they do best.

Anyway give it a read, seems to be the most popular book with my Goodreads friends so that’s a good sign

Definitely some stories worth reading, my highlights were ‘a separate war’, ‘Giza’, ‘rememberance of things past’ and ‘finding my shadow’. He is clearly best at using science fiction as a medium to highlight human nature in different situations. The rest were ok and all still enjoyable stories, just not as unique in concept, which I feel limits a story with so little space to work with. Good read though give it a go it’s a nice short anthology

When I read ‘the prefect’, to which this book is a sequel, I was a very different person, it was the first hard sci fi novel I’d properly delved into, as by pure luck. Now I’ve read so much more of Reynold’s works and yet it took me six years to get around to reading this. That did make it a little difficult to understand quite what was going on at the beginning but soon enough I was racing along wither story.

The world building remains incredible, combining with my knowledge from ‘revelation space’ to paint a more detailed picture of the glitter band and its surroundings, while also not necessitating reading the other ones to understand.

The characters remained solid, with the antagonist being compelling and offering a more subtle threat at the beginning. I was almost starting to think Dreyfus might just be a hater for a while, but luckily the pieces all fell into place.

I enjoyed the switching between two time periods to offer parallel intrigue, and also not being too obvious on how they would link together so I was kept invested until the end.

All together very solid and definitely a read recommendation.

Reynolds just doesn’t miss (except for terminal world)

This took me more than a year to get through. The story itself is very good I’ll admit but it’s just so long and doesn’t flow nearly well enough to keep me coming back. I’ll need to think deeply about whether I wish to continue the series but at least this is another one down

This was an excellent introduction to how to write an essay which would have been useful to read before I had to write my dissertation, alas that has passed so I don’t have any need for it anymore so wasn’t really worth reading but still good skills for life I guess

Tried to do a change of genre with more of a thriller, it was very good and an excellent twist at the end but I fear that the gratuitous S&M sex scenes did not aid the plot very much. With a little bit of a spoiler I did think they’d be the same person but I’m happy with the way it went so can’t complain

I’ll admit I don’t read much romance so it’s hard to review this but it was a very compelling story told in a very compelling way and I really enjoyed the ending so yeah it was a good book

I’ve always been aware of Judith butler but hadn’t delved into her work as I’m not one who often reads non-fiction. However I was was reading the essential dykes to watch out for and they got mentioned and I felt that I was on such a roll of reading a book every day that there was no better time to delve into it.

The book itself was brilliant, structured as an explanation of each group of contemporary critics and their reasoning and motivations to oppose more complex theories of gender and then of course demonstrating why it is flawed.

I can’t say I fully understood all of it, particularly the section about monolingualism so hopefully once someone else reads it they can explain. It did help that it was written in 2024 so it covered a lot more examples that I was already aware of such as trump and jk Rowling so that was nice

You should read this if you like trans people

This book first came to my attention one short month ago when many people at my book club said it was one of their favourites. I had strangely never heard of it but put it down as one I should read nonetheless. Fast forward to this week when the new book chosen has been described as being just like red rising, however I still hadn’t read it so the only logical choice for me to take was to read it immediately in order to prepare to read the actual book i am meant to read. Luckily it was good enough that I have finished it within a day so I think I’ll managed to fit them all in.

So now I’ve explained how I got here I might as well review the book, it was incredible. While not the most unique premise it was so well written that it goes far being other similar books.

Without veering too far into spoilers I did appreciate the subtlety physical differences between the reds and the golds which wasn’t so extreme that it made no sense but also didn’t go for the ‘we are all the same’ approach which wouldn’t have made the story to compelling. It made it murkier about whether Darrow was unique or just lucky to have gotten the opportunity to show what any red was capable of.

That leads onto the character work which was also amazing, and managed to balance a wide range of secondary characters so well, making you like the people you in theory should hate is a difficult thing and I do think that Darrow will have similar issues in the future books.

Definitely read it although now I’ve retrospected it might not have been a good idea to read this before the other one because if they are so similar and it’s not as good that will be even worse

Another day, another southern reach book read.

As the finale of the book I had very high hopes and many questions and I think it did a good job providing me the pieces to build up the answers without stating anything too explicitly, preserving the mystery of the novels.

I think my main issue was with the structure of the book, the first two followed one primary character throughout a mostly linear plot and that worked well, this one followed four characters over three different time periods and I got the impression Jeff felt required to rotate through each one at regular intervals. This made the plot feel very stop start as we had to change focus every 5-10 pages. None of the stories were necessarily bad in their own right but the lack of synergy of the stories irked me on every rotation.

The structure did benefit the construction of the grand reveal bit by bit at the end from all directions, which was a brilliant feeling to have the entire jigsaw come down into place, but to weigh up the options I think I’d rather a more fluid structure even if that meant the big reveals weren’t synchronised as nicely.

As for what I actually thought of the big picture in the end, most of the sections I liked and made sense within the universe but I did feel like there was still some gaps that either seemingly contradicted each other or needed further clarification.

Don’t let that get you down though this was still a good book and great trilogy so read it

I’d heard this was the worst book in the trilogy and I can definitely understand why people say that, there’s no denying that the middle half drags on far too long and develops nothing but oh wow does it really pick up at the end and concludes so perfectly.

It’s definitely a different kind of book from annihilation and does provide far more answers but it also makes you ask many more questions that will bind me to reading the finale in the hope that it clarifies even a little

Definitely a recommend for if you enjoyed annihilation

Another bond book down, this one wasn’t quite as strong and the antagonist being a black man didn’t help with the bigotry and word choices, a little surprisingly none of the characters actually seem to be racist and sort of goes in the other direction and they all seem to be thrilled that the life of a criminal mastermind is now available to black people too, inclusivity win!! One positive is that bond actually takes an active role to move the plot forward this time rather than seeming like more of a victim of circumstance. He’s terrible at his job though how on earth can a spy get caught like 6 different times.

This is a book that I do not feel qualified to review, but I would feel even worse trying to quantify it with a number so a review is the only option.

I will start by admitting that though I have marked this as read, I did not read all of it; I read all of the narrative sections, I read some of the poems, I listened to the musical album released alongside it, but I simply could not read all of the world that was offered in it.

The structure of the book was definitely interesting, a collection of almost anthropological records, the bedtime stories of the kesh, the poems, the songs, the religious texts etc. And that definitely would have been an interesting choice of a book to write, but there was also an actual story within it, scattered throughout the book, taking up probably about 40% of the pages. Great, I love plots, so surely that's a good thing right? Unfortunately not, I felt that it almost took away from what Le Guin was doing with the rest of the structure. I couldn't say whether it was present in the original text but in my edition, at the end of every section of story, it said 'The xnd part of Stone Telling begins on page xxx' which is almost begging me to skip to that. In the end I did start skipping to the next part because I didn't want to read 100 pages of children's stories in-between.

Eventually I had to accept that the real issue with reading all of this book was me. I was seeking a completion from the book that it was not able to offer. In my research into other people's thoughts on it the ones who enjoyed it most said they had read a different bit every morning for 6 months, or studied it for years and that is truly something I don't believe I will ever be willing to do. But maybe I would have been if there was no other option, I can't help but feel that if there was no plot, or better yet it was weaved into the many different sections of their lives offered from the rest of the novel I would have been more inclined to study it. What I felt offered to me was a core story and 300 pages of unnecessary but related background information, so is it truly wrong that I only read the story. If I was to read it again forgetting everything, I would tear out every page of story and leave myself with just the background, just the raw information that Ursula so clearly wanted to focus on, maybe it was editorial intervention that forced the story to be there but the beauty of the book is in the periphery and that is a beauty I can never reach with a shortcut readily available to me.

I might as well review the plot since I've gone on so much about how it shouldn't be there, it was meh, pretty cookie cutter, and very clearly not science fiction, its at best alternate history, what if native americans had guns, tanks and planes, but that's sort of a stretch, saying its in the far future does not make it science fiction. Importantly there was nothing in the story that I was confused about, which should be a good thing but really I wanted to be confused, I wanted to be unable to understand things unless I had read a certain story the main character was told as a child or something, I wanted to feel like investing time into navigating the lore added to anything, but it didn't so oh well.

So uh should you read it? yes, will you enjoy it? I don't know, please try what I said and let me know if that makes a difference, because I truly do believe it will offer you at least a different experience.

There isn't too much to say about this to be honest, it feels a bit like a penny dreadful: short, easy to read and a good plot. I feel it is hard to talk about it without comparing to the films, and while they are similar in plot I've got to say Bond himself is starkly different. It would be hard to say I like novel bond more, as he is undoubtedly a worse person, but he also felt more real; He admits within the novel that he's not actually a very good spy and only became 007 because he was willing to kill people if he was ordered to. One thing I am sort of glad they removed though was his perhaps a little excessive smoking and drinking, within this he is established to spoke 70 cigarettes a day, and ordered a half litre carafe of vodka to drink at dinner. Maybe that was just how things went back in the day though. Apart from that very good and I plan to read the rest very soon, addictive.

I was motivated to read this book as I saw my local Waterstones had a monthly Science Fiction and Fantasy book club and this was this month's book. Unfortunately I was halfway into the month when I saw it so I feared I would not manage in time. Nevertheless I decided to buy it and give it a go.

My fears were not necessary because as soon as I started I just couldn't stop and managed to finish it in just 9 days, not my fastest but I was working full time so I forgive myself. What really kept me coming back was the character work, it followed a lot of different points of view, all equally incredible and well developed. I never felt confused about who I was with or why they were doing what they were doing. Most importantly though they all felt real and I was very immersed in their lives. The prose was not too difficult at all and rolled very well.

My favourite was Hilo, which everyone else at book club agreed, who is the sort of tough guy of the novel who needs to take charge when others aren't able to.

But I've read books with well written men before, that's nothing new, what did catch me by surprise was how well written the women were, compared to almost all fantasy and science fiction I've read. This should have come to no surprise to me as it was written by a women (the fifth female author i've read)

In essence this book was not really a fantasy at all, but rather a mafia gang war with some magic thrown in to keep people engaged, to the point where i'd say you could remove the fantasy and the plot doesn't shift at all. Whether that is a positive or negative I will leave as an exercise to you, the reader, but don't go into it expecting anything too fantastical.

What did hold this back for me though was the ending, not so much that it got worse but just that it ended in such a poor position. People told me it was meant to be a cliffhanger but it didn't end on a cliff really it just kinda stopped with loose ends. This is all to say I'd recommend reading the book as long as you are willing to read the sequels.

My Sister, Sophie (not to be confused with Sofia), has been recommending that I read this for a very long time since she read it but I had always felt it wasn't going to be my kind of thing. Despite that when given the opportunity to get a free audiobook about a year ago I chose this, committing at least to give it a go.

At last after finishing my last exam of university I knew it was time to get back to what I enjoyed most in my free time, reading, and such I chose to start this book, once again committing to at least give it a go. And indeed I did give it a go, finishing it in just one night from 6:20PM until 1:50AM (7.5 hours). Perhaps finishing it within one night can be attributed to the audiobook format which makes it hard to stop, but really I didn't want to stop anyway so I'm sure if it was in my hands I would have managed anyway.

Enough about my life though onto the book itself, starting with plot. I went into this almost blind, only reading the blurb before I started, and I think that was the right way to do it. Many of my long time fans will know I have a certain disdain for romance in my novels, as often it takes away from the core story and serves as pure fan service, but the blurb was right when it said "it's not a romance, but it is about love", and I think that's a distinction that many authors have failed to draw in their works. I should mention now that this will almost certainly contain spoilers. The core plot of the story follows 2.5 main characters (Sam, Sadie and Marx partially) as they work to create a games company, but really that is more of a vessel for the deeper plot, what really matters is the relationship between Sam and Sadie throughout their lives, from meeting in the hospital to saying goodbye at the airport and beyond. It worked so well to me because it felt so real, and even when I couldn't necessarily relate to the choices they were making, they were making them for reasons I could understand. A lesser novel oft rely on misunderstandings, or seemingly irrational choices to guide their characters to go to the places they want to go, but I never felt like Zevin was forcing them to do anything they wouldn't and that made the plot feel so organic and real. That's not to say there weren't many misunderstandings that felt frustrating I couldn't resolve, but sadly that's the nature of real relationships so I could always understand the lack of communication through character motivations. I also felt relieved that Sam and Sadie never ended up together romantically, as I did fear they would, because that would have somewhat invalidated huge sections of the message I got from it, that sometimes no matter how much you love someone you just aren't right for each other. Their love felt obsessive, and perhaps only ever peripheral to their love of the game, so why should they deserve that sort of happy ending.

That leads very well onto the characters which hopefully you can tell I loved. Marx was probably my favourite character, although it does feel unfair to make them compete, and although I did describe him as only half of a main character above he held the most depth for me. This was greatly aided by the NPC chapter, which was wholly dedicated to him, in there was something he said that I can't quite remember but goes like 'If I make enough of an impact when i'm there, they will imagine me there when i'm not'. This was perhaps a little on the nose considering the main plot of that chapter but it was moving and encapsulates his impact on the novel so well, even if he wasn't there for a lot of it. Sam and Sadie are far harder pin down, they both felt selfish and dislikable and yet it was very hard not to understand why they are the way that they are. Situations don't excuse actions but it was hard to blame them for the cruelty they inflicted upon each other in pursuit of an aim they didn't truly reap the pleasures of. When I think back upon when in the novel they were happiest the only real answer was when they first met as children, everything later when they reached their own ideas of success felt as though it only made them more miserable and pulled them apart.

Finally I would like to touch on the prose briefly, as I feel like it is harder to comment on when only consumed audibly. Zevins ability to carefully weave together jumps between times in their lives was masterful and there was never a point when I felt confused about when we were supposed to be, as often there are in other novels. The two 'special' chapters were also an incredible achievement to pull off so well, changing perspective so drastically not once but twice requires a lot of confidence in your work, and clearly she was right to be confident as it drew me in even closer.

I would highly recommend you read this book, even if I have spoiled many sections, and it was incredible and thank you for reading this review.

I really wanted to like this book, as I did enjoy Vonnegut's other books I've read, especially [b:Slaughterhouse-Five|4981|Slaughterhouse-Five|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440319389l/4981._SY75_.jpg|1683562]. It was unfortunately more like the first of his books I read, [b:Breakfast of Champions|4980|Breakfast of Champions|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327934446l/4980._SY75_.jpg|2859378], in the sense that I didn't have a clue what was going on in the whole thing. That does seem to be his style and there's nothing wrong with an interesting style, but I didn't understand what it was all meant to mean. Slaughterhouse Five was weird and wacky and hard to follow but it was also very clearly a novel that had something to say about war and its impact on life. Why did it succeed more than the other two? well that answer to me is simple, the book is a semi-autobiography, Kurt himself was within the real slaughterhouse five when he was young and in the war. But this isn't a review of slaughterhouse five, which I do still need to write so I apologise to my fans.

If we put aside slaughterhouse five, the real question then is what made this worse to me than Breakfast of Champions? I would have to say the structure, breakfast pulled me right in by giving me the end but sirens did not. And obviously maybe doing the exact same starting technique in two novels isn't a great idea, but it would have worked so well. Essentially the only driving force of the novel is Rumfoord (and the Tralfamadorians by proxy) who's entire thing is that he is scattered through space and time and knows the future, which lends itself quite well to that sort of narrative structure. In fairness he does 'predict' the general plot of the story at the beginning but that didn't really bring much joy.

Onto the plot then, it just didn't interest me, it felt as though it was three vaguely related plots that jumped so randomly one onto the next that it didn't lend itself to an enjoyable flow. I think what really held it back was as previously said Rumfoord steers everything that happens and frankly I never actually knew why he did anything and it's very hard to get stuck into a plot that seems to be happening because it was always going to happen and he's just pushing the cart down a pre-determined road with no enjoyment. In many places he is shown to not be enjoying what he is doing, as though everything that was happening was not his own doing. And at a shallow level I can understand its meant to be a criticism of organised religion, which I think he directly says somewhere in the novel but I can't quite remember because it took so long to read. But I think a critique has to be a critique textually rather than just nominally and it failed at that.

Characters:
There certainly were characters, none of them really got me invested and much like my criticism of the plot they all felt like they were doing things because the novel required them to do that not for any logical reason. Half of the main characters forget who they are and are mind controlled for a third of the novel, quite literally making them quite literally do whatever is required of them.
It was only in the epilogue when we could sit with the characters for any period of time that I felt even a hint of connection to them, and even that was fleeting.

In the end this review has become more negative than I had hoped for but if you liked Vonnegut's other works I do think its worth at least trying to read, but Slaughterhouse Five was better and I really do need to write a positive review for it :)

Anyone who's even glanced at my read books will know that I don't read non-fiction, in fact I dare say this might be one of only two that I recall. But when its time to leave your comfort zone it's good to do it with a bang. This book definitely achieved that and more.

I will start by mentioning I 'read' this as an audiobook, for I had heard it was the best medium for an autobiography and I can see why people say that, having Fox tell the stories in her own voice adds a lot of weight to the story, making you really appreciate that everything you hear did actually happen to her.

I'll admit I knew very little about Julia Fox's life before this, just she was famous in the New York scene and referenced in the hit album BRAT. I think knowing so little played to the book's benefit, as every twist and turn of her life came as a shock, and golly were there are a lot of shocks. I never knew quite how much she had done in her life, from work as a dominatrix to an acting career, it's really all there.

I don't really know what I can say, normally i'd talk about the plot and characters in these reviews but I don't think that's how it works for autobiographies, can't really review real life people, or maybe you can idk?

What's important is it was a fascinating read and I believe I made a great choice for my first autobiography. Jennette McCurdy's one is coming next I believe, whenever I get around to that.

I will admit I read this almost a year ago so my memory of the text might not be the best but better late than never.

I will start by saying I loved [b:Hyperion|77566|Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)|Dan Simmons|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405546838l/77566._SY75_.jpg|1383900], it was a truly brilliant book, very cleverly in the format of the Canterbury Tales, with the pilgrims taking turns telling their story, and importantly the book ending before they arrive. This made sense because its about the journey not the destination, which I loved. So then when I saw there was a sequel I was confused, in my mind it did not need one because the story was complete.

Assuming you've already seen that I've given this 4 stars, it is clear that I changed my mind while reading the book. I think it succeeding in convincing me that it should exist by being so different to the first. Simmons did not shy away from changing the formula, gone was the recounting the past, it was all go go go in the future. It was also nice to get the outer world fleshed out a lot more, what it takes to choose to send 7 people into what is thought to be eternal torture in the hopes of preventing disaster, and what that does for the greater society is a fascinating concept. Unsurprisingly the character work remained incredible, benefited by the plentiful background we had from the previous book.

All together this is a great book and a worthy sequel to Hyperion, now its time to see if the next few in the series can continue to hold up as well.

I’m in two minds about ringworld because it’s undeniably a brilliant sci fi book with excellent and unique aliens and technology, but it’s single flaw was so damming it meant I couldn’t give it 5 stars.

I’ll start with the positives as I know I will ramble about the negative. The kzin and puppeteers were both excellently fleshed out species of aliens, one a war species committed to attacking anything and everything that insults it, and the other a species so cowardly they will not do anything unless they deem it completely safe. The kzin were the less exciting of the two, with their fighting spirit not as unique but still done well enough to make it feel fresh. The puppeteers were amazing, it was fascinating seeing how a species so cautious would act in a sci fi environment, such as being too scared to leave their planet so instead they move their entire planet to get around, although I do question whether that is actually safer.
The humans were well human so nothing too exciting except one part I’ll come back to later. The Ringworld itself was an excellent setting, it was easy for us the reader to understand but also easy to understand why the characters couldn’t understand it. A giant ring around a sun is a very easy thing to wrap your head around until it actually exists because of the scale.

So all good so far so what is this negative I alluded to at the start? Ringworld has a problem with women!

I’ll start with the aspect that I made a note of while reading it because I didn’t want to forget it before the review. The two species I mentioned earlier are both described as having ‘non-sentient females’ for reproduction. With the kzin requiring only a sentient male and non-sentient female, and the puppeteers requiring two sentient males and one non-sentient female to reproduce. If this had been the case for only the kzin, as it appeared initially, I’d have written it off as an interesting quirk of a stereotypical male war race, no problem there. But when it was mentioned the puppeteers had it too that made things so much more strange. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the book went into no details about how this actually works so from the sparse information we get both species essentially use their females as sex objects and baby factories. This becomes even more apparent when the puppeteer character, who is established as being shunned by this species for being too brave, negotiates that if he completes his mission he will be allowed to mate and bear a child. The (male) leader of the species agrees to it and says he will partake as he would not wish the shame onto anyone else, ignoring that there will be someone else involved, even if they are not aware of it. Alas that was only half the problem though, and the next part does unfortunately contain spoilers.

There were two female characters in the story, which actually wasn’t too bad since there were only really five characters at all so I guess that is a win. Prill, the less important of the two, is easier to address, she is the first intelligent person the crew meet on ringworld, as she has actually arrived from outside on a ship. All good so far, except it turns out she was a ‘ship whore’, one of three women on a ship of 36 all who’s only role were to keep the male crew happy over the years long space flight. She did this by essentially being a sex witch who knew the best ways to touch someone to ensure they were satisfied. It also being established she was also able to understand all the ship systems and advanced physics but only so she could step in as a spare if one of the crew weren’t able. Then at the end of the novel she decides to join the crew to leave ringworld to escape the savages (fair enough) but also so our poor male lead wouldn’t be lonely on his way back by providing him stimulation. It is needless to say this was a very reductionist caricature of a woman who only existed as a sex object and a spare, much like the females of the other species mentioned before.

As a side note I do wonder whether Frank Herbert got his idea for the honoured matres from her with the whole sex witch thing.

Teela, the main woman the story, is a far more complex character to analyse. She is arguably the most important character in the book and yet it all comes to nothing in the end. Her ‘gimmick’ is that the puppeteers have been trying to breed for luck and she was the result of 7 generations of good luck, so she is very lucky and nothing bad ever happens to her. This essentially turns her into a manic pixie dream girl, maybe one the first. At her introduction she flits around the party and when talking to the main character fails to understand his talk of heartbreak, as it turns out she has never had her heart broken, and never even been hurt at all before on account of her luck. It is this luck that makes it so hard to know what to think of her as all her actions take on a double meaning. On the surface level she goes on the ship because she’s in love with the protagonist and eventually decides to stay on the ringworld because she fell in love with someone else, making it seem like she’s just some floozy who goes with whoever her heart desires. Before I explain why it’s more complex I need to add that it was established early on that a group of starts in the centre of the universe had exploded and the explosion was slowly spreading out at light speed to consume everything in its path including all habituated worlds in about 20,000 years. The twist comes at the end when the rest of the crew realise that the ringworld is the only place safe from the core explosion because the material it is made out of, which they had never seen before, would be able to withstand the explosion. This then meant the whole story was put in motion as a way for her to survive due to her luck. This then turns into a question of determinism, did she only make such shallow decisions because she was forced to by ‘luck’ to survive or would she have always made those decisions by free will. I don’t have an answer for you and in terms of critiquing the book it doesn’t make a difference because the author still chose to write her that way.

And that’s the end of my section on why ringworld has bad women. I won’t bore you with my usual summary of the plot or other such things because they don’t really matter, it’s a great book that you should read with the awareness of its flaws, although I’ve spoiled part of it so idk whether that will affect your enjoyment

I'll start by saying it has been almost a year since I finished this book so I can't promise the most in depth analysis but while reviewing [b:The Sirens of Titan|4982|The Sirens of Titan|Kurt Vonnegut Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1419363185l/4982._SY75_.jpg|905970], I was reminded that I had not written a review yet and that was a true tragedy. If you want a brief comparison of the two you can find that in my review of sirens (below this if you're reading on my website or click the link and scroll down if you're on Goodreads).

But enough about what brought me to writing this, this book was definitely strange, as all of Vonnegut's novels tend to be, but it had a very strong heart which kept me invested throughout the jumps forwards and backwards through time. Time is a very important part of this novel, our main character, Billy Pilgrim, lives his life jumping between different points in time, which lead to a structure that could have been very hard to follow if not for the grounding of Pilgrim also being in the same confusing situation.

Unsurprisingly the plot goes to a lot of places, including space, but the most important location is the titular Slaughterhouse Five in Dresden during World War II. Hopefully if you are reading this you know that Dresden was bombed heavily during the war, something Vonnegut certainly knew as he was there in the war. This makes the novel a sort of semi-autobiography because certainly he lived through a lot of the events of it, though I do not believe he went to space. This added clearer messaging to the novel about the damage that war can have on everyone involved. One possible reading of the text is that Pilgrim does not actually jump through time but instead it is told from within the head of an older version of him who has PTSD and is reliving his experiences. I can't say with any certainty if this is true but it's an interesting interpretation for sure. Regardless the novel is written with an apathetic view of death, where after every one he says 'so it goes', forcing a sort of passiveness onto the events. What stuck with me the most though was Billy Pilgrim's thought of a potential epitaph for himself: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt". This was objectively not true and yet to Pilgrim it might well have been, in the end he knew it would all work out so why shouldn't life be beautiful.

I absolutely think you should read this, especially if you are Sofia, because it is the best Vonnegut novel I have read and you liked his other works.

I’ll start with the negatives, it was predictable, cookie-cutter and cliched. But maybe I’d rather use the terms careful, assiduous and by the book. I’d rather use those because while I have to admit it felt like a story I’d read before that’s exactly what I wanted it to be; I didn’t pick up a Star Wars book expecting it to break new ground, I picked it up because I wanted space battles and Jedi, which is exactly what it delivered to me.

Perhaps this makes me biased in my reviewing since if I was to be objective it was likely a worse book than some I’ve rated lower, but the difference in my eyes is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is, which I can’t say for others.

But enough of my meta-commentary back to the actual review. I’m glad I read it as a omnibus instead of three separate books since it started slowly with a lot of set up throughout the first book, which would have frustrated me if I’d finished an entire book with no payoff. Luckily that’s a situation I only need to imagine as I was straight onto the second book which picked up heavily and really put the trilogy in gear, with the antagonists establishing their threat and the protagonists at their lowest. The third book then paid it all off with the protagonists coming back and vanquishing evil. This was a standard hero’s journey that worked really well for me because the scope of the trilogy allowed for about 4 protagonists and 3 villains. This number of main characters could make a lesser book confusing but it was balanced really well so kept things flowing between them all. What I also enjoyed was that the antagonists were realistically also opposed to each other which added an extra layer to the stakes.

Now onto the actual negatives this time, the ‘sun crusher’ itself unbalanced the stakes of the novel, it’s a small ship with indestructible armour that can shoot torpedoes that cause a sun to explode and destroy its surrounding system and ships, which then also has a hyperdrive so can get anywhere it needs to. I understand what the author was trying to do by making it something every side would want and explaining how a second one can never be built, but it is simply too perfect for a story like this. It’s hard to be invested in a space battle where one side cannot lose. My other complaint is more of an annoyance that the largest villain who is established to have been able to drain an entire planet’s life force was destroyed by the power of friendship, but this is more forgivable since his power mostly came from influencing other people.

All together I thought it was a good book that I’d recommend to Star Wars fans. If you aren’t a Star Wars fan it’s probably not worth the read as you’d need to know who all of the pre-established characters are and there are a lot

I would like to start this review with an apology to my adoring fans, I know it must have been tough surviving my review hiatus but I am back and in full swing.

This book disappointed me, having read their more famous work ‘roadside picnic’ which I enjoyed I was hopeful this would be like it. In many ways it was like it, unfortunately those ways were the least appealing parts of it. The first of note would be the way the novel was split up. It was really three stories, when Sasha is first recruited, the second I’ve forgotten, and the third a much more interesting story about Sasha’s time in NITWITT. From that poor description of its structure you will gather that I didn’t very much enjoy the first two, since they were quite frankly boring. I don’t really understand how you can make a world where magic exists and all these crazy people can do crazy things and then write stories about such mundane things. The first one was partially about how he found a coin that when he spends it, it reappears in his pocket, where there were pages dedicated to what he bought now and how it ended up back in his pocket. Sure it’s an interesting idea but hardly worthy of such in depth analysis. Alas I move on to the bit that I found interesting. The third story follows him as he is put onto night watch for the institute and has to deal with all the things that go wrong and ends with a fun mystery about a parrot that travels backwards through time. It all ends with an enjoyable revelation about one of the previously established characters and adds depth to previous events. Enjoyable not nothing new

Ok so perhaps none of the plot was particularly gripping but was the prose good? Not really, I found it quite confusing but I find that is often the case with translations so I can’t fault it on that.

You might now be asking why I even gave it three stars since the longer I write this review the less I seem to like it but don’t worry it redeems itself all on its political commentary. This was written under the Soviet Union and therefore a lot of it may have gone over my head but the parts that I did understand made the story much more interesting. I was initially going to explain some of it but I realised I’m really bad at explaining why satire works so I’ll leave you the first one I wrote for you to judge:
The title is the most obvious, ‘Monday starts on Saturday’ is a commentary on government researchers not getting a weekend off, meaning their work week starts again on Saturday


All together I’d describe the book as just ‘meh’ it was an interesting book with interesting ideas and commentary it was just let down by focusing on the wrong things, this might be because I was approaching it as a sci fi novel when it should have been a political novel bur I don’t know. What I do know is while writing this conclusion I’ve realised that the story about the coin might have been a commentary about how he had essentially infinite money but the only luxuries he could buy was sparkling water and newspapers because there were no luxuries in the society union.

Anyway you can read it if you want but I wouldn’t advise you in either direction, if it sounds interesting read it if not don’t.

This book haunted me for a long time, I started it 7 long months ago and it was a struggle getting through it, I don't really know what made this one so much harder than previous ones, although I do think the previous (5th) was also slower. The two share a lot in common, that being a slower more political approach to the world, spending pages poring over why people made the choices they made and what they are scared will happen, and what they think good will happen if they do it, and what they think their coworkers will think, and the reasons the coworkers won't like it, you get my point, it dragged on for every decision. This on its own isn't a bad thing at all, its a part of what i loved about the first 4 books, but it felt different this time, to me the stakes had shifted poorly. When before you got to see how small decisions could change everything in the future due to huge knock on effects (due to the characters prescience), now the small decisions did genuinely feel small, and often times by the time the character had stopped thinking, I forgot what they were even going to be doing that was so important.

This did not deter me from pushing through however, I was determined to finish the book no matter what. What did stop me however was the introduction of a secret society of Jewish rabbis a couple of hundred pages in. This might seem like an odd thing to stop reading a book over but it really took me out of the story, not because I don't believe that Judaism can exist in sci-fi, but simply because it felt like such a strange decision to make in a narrative deeply critical of religion. It not only seemed to play into antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish cabals, but just felt unnecessary, they only appeared for a few pages and their Jewishness added nothing to the narrative that could not have been filled by a fictitious religion, as has been done many times in the previous 5 books. My best guess is that they would have had a bigger role in the 7th dune book, where the relevancy becomes more clear. Unfortunately Frank Herbert died before writing the 7th (and final) dune book so this is not something that will ever be resolved.

After watching Dune part 2 in the cinema I was reinvigorated to finish the series so we can now go back onto the plot. Despite the regular breaks I do genuinely think the plot was pretty good (even if I did have to look up a summary before writing this review to make sure I remembered it correctly). It started out predictable but good, keeping tensions high while having solid character development. In the middle it did start to get repetitive with very little of the main plot developing, leaving me waiting for the side stories where the real development was happening. The ending however took me by surprise, cleaning up the main story nicely while adding strange new elements that left me wanting to know more. Sadly as I mentioned earlier we will never get to know how Frank planned to wrap it up, and from general consensus his son's attempts to continue the story fall short, so I likely never will find out. Even with a slightly open ended conclusion to the series I did feel satisfied.

Dune as a series never felt like it needed to have everything explained because it often valued the themes over the characters or plot and this book continued that trend. As an ending to the series it provided finality to elements that had continued since the beginning while also opening up whole new avenues for thought, which is exactly how I would have wanted it to be. It is a shame that it felt so much harder to read but I still managed it and feel satisfied knowing I got to see it to the end.

I probably wouldn't recommend it normally but to be honest if you have read the first 5 you have nothing left to lose and might as well see it to a close so I guess I would recommend it since you'd only listen if you had.

I remembered this book because it was in the New York Times mini today (sorry if that’s a spoiler), and it was on my shelf so I though I might as well read it again on my coach journey home. It’s definitely less good than I remembered, the grammar parts were fine and disambiguated certain edge cases that I didn’t fully understand even now, but the ramblings and calls to action held it back, while I love good grammar she seemed obsessed with being right and proving that to others. Alright book if you wanna learn how to use an apostrophe correctly

Took me long time to read, but then I went on a castle retreat and read it, was very good, will read sequel.

This was my first book of 2024 and it was a great place to start. With an interesting concept and excellent execution I couldn’t recommend it more. The physiology of the genians was a brilliant aspect making it an intriguing piece of gender literature. The genians are presented as sexless and go through a cycle similar to a period where they become fertile and can take on either male or female traits, something genly, our protagonist takes great interest in as he fits a more earthly concept of sex. One flaw with this presentation is le guin uses he for essentially all characters, and through the character of genly describes any character doing traditional female roles as being female-like. Although this does take away from the nuance of having sexless species I think overall it was quite well executed and added an interesting layer to the novel. I did find it quite hard to keep at as it didn’t have a page turning nature but in the end the plot held up and I was hoping for their success. The political narrative of monarchy’s vs more socialist structures is very interesting and notes the strengths and weaknesses of both but was not too deep and I didn’t think there was an underlying message. Overall it was good and I’d recommend you read it if you like gender.

I decided to start the year off strongly by giving up on this book. I had hoped that a short story collection would fix some of the shortcomings of Neuromancer but it just didn’t. Once again he would randomly change focus with no softening leaving me a paragraph deep into a new section confused when it even started. My trouble with his writing style this should really be about the stories. That also fell flat for me, it kicked off strong with Johnny Mnemonic a story about a man who works as a human usb drive kinda thing and I’d already heard of and it kept to what I expected if not a little random nearer the end I still found it enjoyable. My personal favourite was The Belonging Kind which was a through provoking dive into aliens? That fitted in perfectly to the world and a linguistics professors attempts to find them of which the ending was nice. I liked not being told exactly what they were as the mystery is what makes it compelling. The rest that I bothered to read were just kinda nothing to me, I’m sure they would have been more interesting if I could fully understand what was going on because they appeared to have deeper meanings but the structure locked that away from me. Also for those of you who got to the end thinking why did he mark at as read if he didn’t finish it it’s because I can’t be asked to make a new category and I did read some of it.

This took me ages to read which is a shame and not indicative of my enjoyment I just became really busy with work, you know how it is. Alas I loved this book but can’t say too much about it because my thoughts drifted out of my head by the time it was over, but Death/Bill Door was amazing and the whole story was incredible. I didn’t enjoy the Whindle Poons and wizards story quite as much it felt slightly more like a cutaway to make more jokes than a plot which was a shame but it was fun none the less. All together good read it if you haven’t

I will start this review by giving thanks to my good friend Sofia who lent me this book, she read it and knew I’d enjoy it and she was right. I don’t think she knew how much I’d enjoy it. I related to this book immensely, a statement I doubt many people have said about it but for me it’s true. It was wild, wacky, meta and more but it felt like real life more than the majority of books I’ve read. Both Kilgore trout and Dwayne hoover were deeply human characters, I have often felt like both of them. Kilgore trout mirrored my less sensical side, doing things purely because they were interesting to do and would create an interesting reaction. Whereas Dwayne mirrored my less healthy side, doing things because bad chemicals in your brain won’t let you not do it. It is because of the combination of these two characters that I felt so seen. It also had fun little pictures and tangents which I also love. Which I didn’t love was the unnecessary sexual details and slurs. It was alright the first couple of times he described penis length and diameter bur then it just kept happening throughout and it felt gratuitous. The use of the n word was even more gratuitous, it could not be explained away as just being a product of the time because it was clearly used as a bad thing within the novel and that really harmed my ability to enjoy the book. I should also note that I have more sides to me than just those two I’m not mentally unwell. Telling you what was going to happen from the beginning also made the stakes higher as you could see how things were falling into place. Anyway thank you Sofia I really loved this and it was really me. Oh I forgot about the formatting that was really good too.

Picture this scene, I was in a train station obnoxiously early and I had just finished my book so had nothing to do. But wait there’s a book shop, I need to go in… The rows of books are daunting but I go to the one place I know is safe: Sci-fi and Fantasy. I scoured the shelves until I found a book I hadn’t read, an increasingly difficult task recently, and I pick up Mort. I had never read a discworld novel, to my memory, but I knew my good friend Sofia (who you might know because it’s you) loved them so I decided to get it and read it, I got far on that train journey and I loved it, I also read it on the train back. So imagine my immense horror when I get home and I see on my shelf that I already own this book, I wept. Now onto the review, I loved this it was great, the characters were fun and the stakes were the perfect level for a book of this genre. The humour was immaculate and the plot was compelling. My favourite character would have to be death itself, who was personified as an almost pitiable figure who wishes he had more to his death (sorry for the poor joke). Mort, the titular character was also great, you felt bad for him at the start but as he grew he became more and more admirable. Overall I loved it and I highly recommend you read (or reread) this book.

I was afraid when I started this book, a far lesser known sequel to one of the most famous sci fi books ever written tends to be code for a drop in quality but I was glad to find that wasn’t the case for this book. It managed to expand on what was set up in 2001 in a very interesting direction that surprised and pleased me. We get little glimpses into the nature of the creators of the monolith but not too much to make it unexciting, as many authors fall into. The appeal of the first novel was the mystery which I’m glad they kept rather than cashing in on just explaining all the details. Definitely recommend reading if you have read 2001 or even watched it as I recently learnt the film came out before the book, which is why it a very good adaptation as they were produced simultaneously.

It might have taken me many months to read but I’ve finally finished. I should say now the time to read is not an indication it is bad at all, as you will see from my rating I loved it, I just kinda forgot about it after getting 100 pages in. Perhaps that is testament that the first part of the three novels was a little slow, and this I can admit to be true. It I was reviewing all three separately I might look more harshly upon it, but as this book is 3 in 1, I will look at the trilogy as a whole and judge it as such. This book stands out for the lack of focus on any one character, a key part of the message that change only occurs on massive scales and any one person cannot change the future. This is bent slightly askew in later novels but the premise still stands. Instead what makes the book excel so much is the world building, we follow this galaxy through 4 centuries of development and twists and turns seeing how things change or stay the same and the threats that face the foundation. What made me love the trilogy was the cliffhangers and twists, the amount of reveals and re-reveals made this book a joy to read, even if they might have gotten slightly excessive near the end, with 4 characters making a different reveal to override one in a row. Ironically the second one was right, not that any of them knew that since they got too caught up in their own intelligence but alas they tried(I should apologise here to Sofia for making her wait so long to read something I planned to be funny). On the subject of funny though I really enjoyed the books sense of humour, whether that be the connected chapter titles or just little writing flourishes I found certain parts funny even if they weren’t meant to be, maybe my life has become so boring that chapter titles make me laugh now. Although now we are talking about chapters he changed how chapters worked after the first book and I didn’t like that, not asimovs fault but whoever edited it should have at least made it consistent if you want it to be one continuous novel. Anyway great book definitely recommend reading even if it’s a little longer than most and slow to pick up.

I will start this review with a spoiler warning, not that I need one cos the only person who reads my reviews is Sofia (pls read this Sofia) but in case a random person does read it there are spoilers, could I use the spoiler button? Yes, but I find these long and unnecessary rambles more fun. Now onto the actual review.

This is a difficult review to write because I wanted to like the book, and maybe I did like the book, I’m undecided, but it felt stale. It’s an interesting story, but it’s not a new story and that’s what’s holding it back for me. We are now at the 5th book in the series and it feels it’s afraid to try anything truly new. They still got Duncan Idaho back again, despite him dying in the first book, I could understand Leto II wanting him around for whatever weird plan he had, cos at least he knew the guy and was like a family friend and whatever, but at this point it’s legitimately been 5000 years since he died and now the religious order is cloning him for their plans. Like he’s cool sure but he’s not actually that special within the universe, why not clone the dude who turned into an immortal worm or the person who could see the entire future, why do they keep reviving the a pretty generic soldier, idk it bothered me, as you might tell from this long rant. The problem isn’t just with Duncan though, everything just felt the same, sure they changed the names of places but that doesn’t make it different, its just another appearance of someone with incredible powers and all the other manipulative factions plotting some convoluted plan to use them while also plotting against each other. That’s a perfectly good story structure and I liked it the first four times, because each one added a different twist or a new faction, but this one just felt like the same thing with nothing to make it stand out. It wasn’t all bad tho concept still great and still excited to see how the story ends in the next one, just hope something big mixes it up again.

This was a good omnibus with a wide variety of stories, both good and bad but they averaged pretty good, individual reviews below.

The half-wit of xeenemuende: 4/5
I quite liked this story it was brief and too the point and kinda had a message about not underestimating people with learning disabilities which I liked. The ending was also an interesting twist which I liked.

Alter ego: 2/5
This story was too basic and predictable for me, from the name and the first page it was clear what was going to happen and then it happened with no real flair to make it unique. Luckily it was really short so it was quick

A perfect marriage: 5/5
I really liked this story, it was a good piece of speculative science fiction and the ending was really uplifting. This book gave me hope for the future and was a beautiful story so I loved it.

The legend of the paper spaceship: 1/5
Right after I finished this story I wrote a very long review more in line with my reviews of full novels because of just how many thought I had, but with time to think about it I realised that most of it was just me being annoyed at it. This book drew me in at the start and then never explained anything leaving me confused and disappointed at the end. It was also included gratuitous amounts of sexual violence which I didn’t enjoy reading. I don’t want to read it ever again.
Feel free to ask for the full review I just didn’t want to clog up the list

Small world: 4/5
This story surprised me, I was a bit confused where it was going for quite a while and how it would link both stories together in such a short story but the end was a pleasantly elegant little twist which made me happy and optimistic.

The Whore of Babylon: 4/5
This story surprised me, at first it felt a little like a standard authoritarian rule story (1984, Brave new world, Fahrenheit 451, etc) but the ending was a nice twist, the wording used early on implied a whore of the traditional sense but the reality was a really nice surprise that made it stray from its influences.

Cost of Living: 3/5
This was a pretty clear critique of Cold War USA consumer culture which was an interesting thing to explore. However, they didn’t really do much with it other than say look how bad debt is cos they are buying useless stuff. An interesting dystopian idea of being able to sign away your children’s earning to buy more stuff though.

Night Broadcast: 2/5
I wasn’t very keen on this story, it wasn’t necessarily bad but the premise of a transmission from the future isn’t very unique and nothing was done to expand it (the downside to short stories) so it didn’t feel like anything happened, he got the transmission, wow it might be from the future, end.

A Perfect Christmas Evening: 2/5
No clue what this story was about something about phone calls and the past, maybe they were dead? Probably a bad translation

A Meeting In Georgestown: 3/5
This didn’t really have a plot but was an interesting look into cybersecurity the possibilities of blackmail.

Victims of Time: 5/5
I loved this, uses a narrator very strongly and makes me feel bad for him even if what is happening is good, an impressive feat in just 4 pages. Also an incredible starting premise

Myxamatosis Forte: 4/5
I really liked this story, it distributed the exposition well through the story so it was able to set everything up perfectly for the ending. The setting was really well thought out and the ending was a brilliant shock which I liked.

BCO equipment: 4/5
This story had a fascinating format, being an advert for the BCOs which I really enjoyed. Although there was no plot in the traditional sense it still felt like it had good development. It made an interesting critique of racism and misogyny and the concept of humanity.

Six Matches: 3/5
This was an interesting story about the risks of experimentation, but also the possible gains. It was good but somewhat forgettable. Shame because I really liked their other work

The Ring: 5/5
This was a brilliant story about time travel and how it could make you rich. I enjoyed the format of him telling the inspector how he may or may not have done it and the inspectors frustration. It was a brilliant and simple story that I really enjoyed.

‘Oh Lenore!’ came the echo: 3/5
That was an interesting story that started out about progression of culture and then turned into a story about space racism. I especially liked the description of the other species which added good depth to the plot.

Quo Vadis, Francisco?:4/5
This was an interesting look into preaching religion on another planet and integration with culture. The characters were the best part of this novel as we found out more about what the priest has had to do and the ending was very cathartic.

Forward, mankind!: 5/5
I loved this story it was a brilliant look at how we treat people we call insane, humanity’s desire of violence and first contact with other civilisations. Love a good story about humanity being bad

The mirror image of the world: 3/5
This was a little disappointing, it gripped me at the start with the premise but they never really went anywhere with it. ‘Wow they were watching us’ and then proceeds to never meet them or get any closure on why or who or what or how.

The new prehistory: 4/5
Was a fun little horror sci fi, the concept is terrifying and it was built up to really well, at first questioning what’s happening before things become more clear and scary

Equality: 4/5
A brilliant story about thinking machines and desire for equality. A bittersweet ending that I appreciated. Not necessarily unique premise but very well done.

The rising sun: 3/5
I think this story was too long for its own good. I got quite bored of it quickly, perhaps affected by it’s presence in a short story anthology but idk it had an alright story just told too long

The lens: 4/5
This was an interesting little story about loss and grief. Although little happens throughout we can get an insight into the narrators mind over his loss and his feelings of belonging somewhere else

Progenitor:4/5
Spoilers: at first I was really confused what it was about, probably cos I had no clue what a progenital was, anyway turns out his dick fell off and is going to become a new person and his wife is gonna chop him and up feed him to his dick baby, brilliant story would recommend.


The cage:5/5
I really liked this one, it had a lot of good plot progression at a good pace which I liked, we saw them get into a situation, adapt, get into another situation, adapt again and at last got a really good ending that is both commentary and humorous

An imaginary journey to the moon: 2/5
I really thought there would be a twist, there wasn’t. Either I got terrible reading skills or this dude literally trained and flew to the moon at some food and went home, not exactly gripping stuff

This book might be almost 300 years but it’s satire remains just as relevant today as it did back then. The logical explanation he gives for why the proposal is good mirrors exact thought processes modern politicians would use for similar (though likely less drastic) proposals, giving it a grounded and real feeling that I’d almost believe he was actually suggesting it.

My friend, Sofia, lent me this book telling me it was a nice short read and the ending made her love it, and she was absolutely right. It took me about 30 minutes to read and the ending was brilliant. The poems are pretty good with my favourite being ‘science, where are you?’ But on their own they are not particularly special, but the last 15 pages tell a brilliant meta story about itself which I won’t spoil but it’s brilliant.
Good recommendation Sofia

I really liked this novel, it was beautifully written and the world building has both good breadth and depth which I really appreciated. Most of the novel was spent following redrick, a thief for alien goods, but about 1/4 was spent following noonan, a business man, and this split helped build the world and make me feel like a part of it. I could feel the soviet influences on the novel from the descriptions of governmental structures and bureaucratic processes, which fit well with the themes of a place where everything is very tightly controlled by the institute. A lot of time is spent setting up the world, showing us all of the characters’ motivations, and explaining the culture and atmosphere of the town it is set which I really appreciated because it made it feel real and lived in. Onto the plot, I adored it, it was both very traditional while also being completely different from most other sci fi novels, we follow a redrick who makes a living by sneaking into the “zone”, a place where aliens had previously appeared, and stealing things they had left behind to sell. We follow redrick during his highs and lows in this career, and the measures he has to take to survive, until it culminated in one last adventure to find something that can grant any wish. This final concept is obviously well trodden, an adventure to find something that fixes all the problems is not a new concept, but having the character be a thief well versed in what it would take makes it much more interesting. It is also what I would describe as philosophical sci-fi which I appreciated, as it looked at what it would mean if aliens did visit and disappear again, giving meaning to the book’s name, as well as what it means to be happy and what people truly desire. All together I loved this book and would recommend it to people who enjoy science fiction

This book was quite fun to read, but it felt a little disappointing to me, there was no real conclusion to the plot. My primary issue is that nothing really happened with the Elois he just kinda finds his Time Machine and goes home again to describe what happens, which was a shame. The formatting of him telling it all as a story was nice but I wish the other characters were more varied, all 7 of the other mentioned characters were just sceptics of his work inside of having different opinions on the validity of his claims. Overall a fun read but left me a little underwhelmed.

This book was good, it is a shame that through popularity I knew the main twist of the novel but nothing I can really do about that. It was still a fascinating plot that I really enjoyed. I’m pretty certain it isn’t but I felt like it was a metaphor for alcoholism, he drinks a liquid and gets a new personality that’s more erratic and violent and wakes up forgetting what he did as this personality? Sounds like alcoholism to me.

This story was alright, the pacing was a little off, a lot of build up for a rushed ending. Even for a short story it felt like it dragged in the middle which was a shame and the plot was pretty basic

I loved this book, it built tension beautifully and painted a terrifying picture of General Zaroff. The ending was also incredible and I highly recommend this to anyone who likes short stories.

Was short, was good, was scary. An interesting critique of contemporary views of mental illness and traditional gender roles. Definitely recommend people read it as I managed it in 20 minutes so nice and easy to get though.

This book was good. My favourite part has to be the world building which was very well done, making this planet have a unique and fleshed out history, made even better by the inclusion of little hints to where the story is actually set, or at least where I think it’s meant to be set. It’s never actually said in the book but the first hint I got that it wasn’t on earth (aside from the giant tower) was the repeated usage of 12 months and a year as different amounts of times, it also referenced change in height from people found on a spaceship, which we can assume is from mars’ lower gravity. That part wasn’t really a review I just wanted to show how smart I was for getting some of the hints that were there. The weakest part for me was the ending however, I didn’t feel very satisfied, the second half of the book was about getting the girl to the tower to save the world and get rid of the zones and then it turns out they need more than one???? This isn’t part of a series why not just have it conclude with a happy ending and she saves the world. They also left all of the other stuff on what I would call a cliffhanger except there’s never going to be any resolution. It’s a real shame because the rest of the book was so good and then the ending left me disappointed. The characters were also good, I loved the internal conflict of quillions transformation but once again it never actually amounted to anything in the end which is a real shame, there could have been an emotional climax when he fully becomes an angel and the consequences of that but he just kinda keeps saying he’s transforming but then nothing actually changes. The more I write this review i kinda think I’m gonna change my rating, it was 4 but now I think it deserves three. Real shame cos it was good right until the end when it didn’t resolve any of the plot.

I loved this book, I loved the plot, I loved the characters, I loved the world building. Everything was well constructed and thoughtful. The main character (Gully Foyle) was a deeply complex character who draws the line of what it means to be a good person, he is both deeply calculating but also doesn’t think about the consequences of his quest for revenge. He hurts many people in his pursuit of the truth but in the end he does do the right thing, he clearly has a conscience, or at least grows one as the story progresses and can see the flaws with his actions but that doesn’t stop him from doing what he things is right anyway. His growth throughout the novel was incredible, because it both manages to stay completely consistent while also changing everything which is very hard to do. ‘Jaunting’, this book’s word for teleportation was a very interesting addition that made the plot more exhilarating while not being overused or unbalanced, it is well defined when it can and cannot be used and therefore it never felt like a missed payoff. I am also very proud of myself for guessing the big twist as the end and if recontextualised the second half of the book very well. It also included one of my favourite literary device by making use of the format and having words in different sizes and fonts and placements on the page which long time readers of my reviews know I love. Overall I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction.

I adored this book, so much so that I finished it within a day. I was in the lucky situation where I didn’t actually know what the book was about, which made it so much better for me, I had never watched the film despite wanting to for a while but now that I’ve read the book I am glad of that. I can’t comment on how good the film is but the experience I had reading it could not be matched, the imagery that was laid out could never be truly matched in a visual form because there is no real way to represent the entirety of the imagery that was described. I found the beginning sub story an excellent opener, many novels would have simply excluded something like that, leaving what would still be a well written and enclosed book but the inclusion helped prepare us for what was to come as well as making the book feel poetic, we were shaped by beings beyond our comprehension which led the entire story to beginning. Overall an breathtaking book. One small complaint would be that I had to pay £9 for this book because someone ‘stole’ the copy I wanted to buy for only £1.50 out of what I can only assume was spite for me, leaving me with the next two books without the original. Not the books fault though and I am sure he will get what’s coming to him.

[lots of spoilers, this is a rant not a review]
This book was tricky, it has been a while since I finished children of dune so that might have effected my ability to enjoy it slightly but given the 3000 year time skip I can’t imagine the details were essential. Leto II was an annoying character and although I’m sure it was intentional, for a supposed genius who can see the future he was really stupid. While I can understand that he knew he could not avoid loving Hwi did he really have to give up on everything he had built just to clap some cheeks (which he can’t even do cos he’s a worm). The book was an enjoyable read and the story progressed nicely, it was just really frustrating to see every character make the least logical choices possible, why is this family of prophets who have been bred to be great at everything so stupid, I know that’s somewhat the point of the series, and is present in the first few books but at least things worked out like Paul Muad-Dib had planned, Leto just died because he wanted to marry a pretty women his enemies sent to woo him. Anyway fun read very frustrating I wanna know what happens next now that his genius plan has supposedly succeeded even tho he fell of a cliff and died.

I loved this book, it was a brilliant mystery throughout and although I took a 2 month hiatus from reading it the second I got back into it I could’t stop and finished it in an evening. The plot was incredible and well connected with the events of the first book while sprinkling in references to his dark materials. I loved the expansion of the world, instead of treading old ground again Pullman managed to explore different aspects of what he has already created. The ending was incredible and has left me needing to know what will happen next.

It was a beautiful story and a beautiful but sad ending, didn’t quite live up to all the hype but was still a very good book that I enjoyed. There is not much to say in terms of plot it was a lot of remembering things that had happened and the majority of the plot was at the end with the beginning being mostly character growth and making you care about the people and their history. It was a bittersweet ending and almost made me cry. Would have to say that the donations were not very well explained so it was harder to understand what actually happened to them.

Reviewing this book is hard, on one hand the plot is great, if you actually know what’s going on. And that’s the issue with the book, I can accept that it’s a foundational book for the cyberpunk genre and introduced a lot of key element but in my honest opinion it is terribly written. it jumps around with no rhyme or reason and is basically impossible to follow. Maybe I’m just bad at reading but he moves from different plots between sentences with no warning and it makes it nearly impossible to actually know what’s going on. This is the opposite of a hand holding book in the sense it doesn’t give any context for any sentence, you just have to know what’s happening before you start the sentence.

The story was incredible and had me wanting to know what would happen next the whole time, and if I was to rate it purely on the main plot would deserve five stars. However, with this book in particular there is much more to it than just the main story, and while some some of the flair definitely added to the experience, other parts did not. Starting with the good, I loved the usage of fonts throughout the book, Rian Hughes is a font designer so that shouldn't be too surprising, but even considering that it blew me away how much you could tell about characters based on their font design. Some of the fonts I did struggle to read, but luckily those were not used too regularly so I did manage to work through them, with some difficulty. On a similar vein, the positioning of the text on the pages was another fun thing he played around with, but there were some pages that were almost completely unreadable due to stylistic choices. In terms of the content, as I said at the start the main plot was incredible, both the main plot lines worked well and came together very tightly in the end, with a satisfying conclusion to both. There was also a third plot written in the form of 8 chapters published in a magazine within the book, which was also good, and related well to the actual plot. There were also lots of one off new articles, interviews and debates which were interesting and brings up interesting questions about our thoughts on aliens, but I would say there were too many and that took away from the main story. Overall, I really liked this book, it had a brilliant story and a fun medium, however some aspects clashed which made the reading experience harder than it needed to be. Rian Hughes has clearly spent a long time creating such a interconnected story, including actual websites and real world music, and his efforts have payed off it is a brilliant book which I would recommend for sci-fi lovers, but is commitment to read and not for the faint of heart.

I have liked this book for many years, but just reread it and it’s the perfect time to review it (and yes Ella I am gonna talk about my personal connection to the book in the review). The structure is always funny to me it’s written in the form of letters from a sailor which is fun but it gets ridiculous as the layers of story telling add up, there’s a point when it’s a letter from a sailor who’s recounting being told a story by Frankenstein about being told a story by the monster about being told a story about some people in a hut, which is needless to say a little convoluted. Nothing wrong with that tho it makes it more fun. What I really like about the book though is how different it is from adaptations, because the most interesting parts get cut out. Most notably of this is the intelligence of the creature, he is meant to be incredibly well spoken and really convincing when he speaks, due to reading classical literature and philosophy, but that’s stripped away in popular renditions. When I had my breakout role as William and Felix in a stage adaptation we stuck much more closely to the source which is perhaps why I prefer the original much more, bur I digress. The book is about the debt a creator owes to its creation and how neglect can force children to murder their parents friends and family. The main moral question is who is more to blame, Frankenstein or the creature, I’m not gonna tell you the answer, read the book yourself if you wanna know. Anyway the book is good I liked it, but my adaptation was better so if you’re interested i’m working on finding a recording.