Thom

Imagine House of Cards (the good British version) but all the characters were written by a third-rate Jane Austin who lost her sense of humour. That's kinda what The Oubliette is like.

If that sounds like an unpromising premise for a horror novel, that's because this is not in the least bit horrifying. Honestly, I think I've watched scarier episodes of Garth Marenguie's Dark Place. There is a bit of gore, which is probably a touch more graphic than your average Black Library novel, but there is absolutely no tension and the plot lacks any kind of mystery of suspense.

What if we put aside the whole horror thing and just treat this book like any other Black Library novel?

There are certainly some promising elements here. We've had plenty of novels about ordinary Guard troopers and even bog-standard law enforcement in the, far more successful, Warhammer Crime series. But I can't think of a book that focuses exclusively on the high politics of planetary governors before. Ashielle, the book's main character, takes on the throne after her farther and older siblings are assassinated by a rival aristocratic family who seem to be super into BDSM for some reason. She has to assert her authority while avoiding meeting a similar fate and stabilise the political tensions now threatening to boil over on her home world. It's a promising start.

Unfortunately, I think that without the usual set-piece action scenes which characterise Black Library, nor any kind of proper mystery or plot twists, the book just didn't really have much to sustain my interest for a full novel. I cared a little bit about Ashielle, but she is neither particularly deeply, nor sympathetically, sketched out. The book is further slowed down by a largely pointless side plot involving a lower-ranking politician in which he spends most of the time being pretty bored and frustrated, leading to much the same emotions in me.

If you want palace intrigue in the 41st millennium, I'd recommend perhaps the Warhammer Crime novels Bloodlines or Flesh and Steel which play in somewhat similar territory and are far more compelling reads.

The Hollow King asks the question we've all been thinking but were too scared to voice: “what if Edward Cullen but his family got killed by Tzeench and he had a zombie dragon?”

Cado Ezechiar was a mortal king but after his kingdom is destroyed by chaos cultists and he is almost killed, he accepts the curse of the soulblight to give him new un-life to track down the chaos worshippers and exact his revenge. This path leads him to a mortal city in the realm of death where he has to dodge city guards, witch-hunters, psychopathic Lumineth and Ossiarch Bonereapers to try to find the cult of the Burning Hand and bring his justice to bear.

It's a bit unfair to liken this book to Twilight and I did actually like it quite a bit. But I think its worth noting and getting out the way early that is a somewhat defanged soulblight. I can't say I'm the most knowledgeable about soulblight lore, but in the other stories I've read they are definitely not the ‘good guys'. Of course there are plenty of examples in the Black Library of ‘the baddies' being given a sympathetic treatment while, nonetheless, remaining totally terrible people, Arron Demsky Bowden's Night Lords books being perhaps one of the best examples. That's not the approach taken here though. Instead, Cado has all the innocent-murdering, blood-sucking edges knocked off to try to make him a protagonist we want to root for.

It's a choice and I don't think it's an inherently bad one. I just think you should be aware of it before you pick this up, and if that doesn't sound like your thing, maybe read something else.

Also, Cado is an idiot. Much like John French's Ahriman, for some reason, everyone (including a five-year-old girl) somehow gets the better of him. Even when he is confronting bad guys to throw off the mask of their deceit, he still manages to get it wrong and winds up almost dead.

I don't want this review to sound like a panning of this book. I really enjoyed it. Cado is a pretty cool character and he gains some very likeable side-kicks along the way. There are some super cool and creepy baddies, a plot with a few decent twists that sustains your interest throughout and a very metal final battle involving a zombie dragon.

I think this is a very solid mortal realms book and a good introduction to Cado which definitely leaves the door open for his return in future novels. It isn't a classic, but I'd certainly pick up his next adventure if French does write more. In the meantime, if you like this one, I think you'd also like the Vaults of Terra series The Carrion Throne and The Hollow Mountain. Although set in the 41st Millenium, these books are also driven forward by their central mystery and have some good plot twists. For something set in the Mortal Realms, maybe try Callis and Toll: The Silver Shard, which is a more straightforward plot but also very enjoyable.

Overlords of the Iron Dragon gives us a glimpse into what it would be like to voyage with the avaricious, sky-fairing duardin of the Kharadron Overlords.

I like the premise of the book, moving away from the ‘Hero-hammer' world of noble Stormcast and evil, moustache-twiddling Chaos worshipers to take a look at what it's like to voyage in search of profit rather than glory or conquest.

I may also be in the minority in enjoying how the classic fantasy trope whereby dwarfs are obsessed with oaths and honour is subverted by the Kharadron into an obsession with contracts (and their loopholes). I'm not the most experienced fantasy reader, but the idea of a people basing their morality on a very black letter interpretation of contracts, rules and regulations feel fresh and different to me. This aspect of the Kharadron comes through really well in this book and their interactions with these rules help to push the plot forward in a pleasing way.

My main problem with the book is that most of the characters feel a bit thinly drawn. We get some sense of motivation but it's quite basic. Skaggi is the greedy money counter, so everything he does is about trying to increase profits. Brokrin is worried about a curse on his fortunes, so he's always really cautious. Drumark loves beer.

Black Library books are not known for rich and nuanced characterisation, but normally this doesn't matter too much because there is enough action to draw you through the book. Overlords avoids the kind of superfluous fight-scenes for the sake of fight-scenes you get in books like Primogenitor, but this leaves us hanging around on the decks of the Iron Dragon for large parts of the book, waiting for something to happen.

Contract negotiations and legal-wrangling are difficult raw material for a work of fiction, especially the kind of action-packed adventure one expects of Black Library works. Even as a trainee lawyer, I found some parts of this book consequently dragged a little. With the characters so simply drawn, I didn't really care enough about what was going to happen to the protagonists to be especially motivated to carry on reading.

Nevertheless, I persisted but, sadly, was not well rewarded. The climax feels a little bit contrived to me and the final outcome not especially satisfying. Some of the challenges which have driven the Kharadron on through the book haven't really been overcome, but are swept quickly below decks so we can simulate a resolution.

As a glimpse into the life of the Kharadron, I think this book is quite successful. I closed it with a good sense of what they are supposed to be like and a sneaking desire to pop onto the Games Workshop website and take a look at some Ironclads. As a satisfying fantasy adventure novel, however, I think it could have benefited from a bit of editing down into what would be a decent enough 100-odd page novella.

After hard negotiations and careful reading of the small print, I give Overlords of the Iron Dragon two spurts of aether-gold and a barrel of stale grog out of five frigates.

I picked this book up because I love cats. I thought that this slight volume would be a little bit of fun, playfully exploring a little bit of philosophy by taking a look at the - unquestionably - best beings ever. Nothing too serious, nothing too heavy, just a bit of fun.

That is not this book.

That's not to say it isn't playful or easy to read. It is both those things, but also so much more. Cats are a running theme in the book which open the door for the lay reader into a book that is about the biggest subjects you can imagine: does life have meaning? what is the good life? how do we contend with death?

The skill of Gray is to approach these subjects robustly - delving into the history of philosophy which takes in and critiques Plato, the Stoics, and Pascal (to name just a few) alongside a healthy respect for non-Western traditions of thought such as Taoism and Buddism - while still maintaining a lightness of touch which makes this book a thoroughly enjoyable read.
I can honestly say this book made me reconsider some of those fundamental questions about life. I loved it and read it in just a few days (it's only 100 or so pages) but it feels like a book I want to return to again and again.

This is a must for the thinking cat lover, but if you are one of those strange people who are not obsessed with our feline companions, there is still much in this little book for you as well. I'd recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in ideas.

Published to go alongside the launch of the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 and its special edition launch box, Leviathan, one can imagine the author had to work within some pretty tight commercial constraints. Nevertheless, this is a totally solid and fairly enjoyable 40K novel.

Garrisoning the world of Regium,Space Marines of the Ultramarine chapter spot an approaching Tyranid splinter fleet. The novel charts their desperate attempt to steam the unstoppable tide of the Great Devourer.

This is a very standard Black Library affair, lots of gore, lots of action, multiple perspectives and plenty of epic heroism from the boys in blue. Generally, I'd say it's a solid book, not much particularly remarkable but definitely not boring and the plot feels engaging and fairly satisfying. I do want to give a special shout to two civilian characters who we meet trying to escape the death of their planet, I actually really loved these two and found that I was really rooting for them to survive. I think BL books very rarely make you feel anything for the characters, so this was a great little side plot within the novel.

Overall, if you are a BL fan and want to get hyped for the new edition, this book will deliver.

Classic Warhammer 40k Black Library fair.

When the Iron Warriors fall on an impregnable fortress surrounded by a radio-active desert, it is up to a battalion of Imperial Guardsmen and a small cadre of Imperial Fist space marines to try to hold their bastion against the galaxy's best siege breakers, all the while battling duplicitous priests of Mars and trying to discover why the Iron Warriors would come to such a backwater planet in such numbers. Can they hold the line, or will they be swept away by the storm of Iron?

There isn't anything subtle or particularly imaginative about Storm of Iron. But, it is classic Black Library - lots of explosions, gore, death and grim-dark. It is a bit of a classic though, one of the earlier novels and it still holds up well if you like this sort of thing. This is not a clever book, the plot is extremely linear and the characters are generally painted in primary colours. This is the kind of book where you know what you are getting and that is exactly what you get. If that is what you wanted in the first place, then great.

For that reason, I Would not necessarily recommend it to someone who was new to the universe, or to pulp sci-fi in general. But, definitely recommended for any Iron Warriors fans, and it is a solid entry if you already know you love Warhammer 40k novels.

I feel like this book is a little bit tricky for me to review. I am by no means an accomplished reader of the horror genre and am almost completely ignorant of the history of this particular niche. I understand, from a little bit of Googling, that Lovecraft was a pioneer of a sub-genre that has continued and grown well after his death. His ‘Cthulhu mythos' has not only created many imitators but sparked board games, RPGs, video games and all sorts of spin-offs. So there must be something here.

I confess I don't really get it though.

I found very few of these stories gripping or creepy and none of them got close to what I would describe as scary. There are a few troupes in here that reoccur and I think undermine any sense of horror. Firstly, there is the frequent description of things as strange/terrible/horrible/otherworldly ‘beyond description'. Used sparingly it is a nice get out to let the reader's imagination run wild, but when it's used multiple times in every story it just feels like lazy writing. The second, which I think is worse, is that many of the stories are told in the first person by people who have already experienced some horrible thing and are now telling us about it or else are relating the correspondence of some acquaintance who experienced something strange. I found this put a lot of space between me and the horror. Nothing felt immediate, it was like watching everything from a great distance - you can't help but be impacted by it less strongly.

Those few stories that move away from this structure are quite a bit better. I thought that Nyarlathotep was strange and atmospheric. The Picture in the House, which follows it, is for my money the best of the bunch. Here, there is a genuine sense of menace which grows out of uneasiness and into something truly gruesome. You also feel as though you spot the danger well before the protagonist, giving that wonderful ‘don't go down there!' feeling as you will the character to get out of dodge before it is too late.

Sadly these few great stories don't quite redeem the collection for me. Perhaps H.P. Lovecraft is just of his time. Perhaps this is more of interest to those steeped in this genre. Either way, this book probably wasn't for me.

It's time to graduate from Dark Academia University. Congratulations on not getting murdered! Sadly, your humanities degree is useless in the real world - time to enter the equally murderous world of Dark Post-graduate Internships!

The Cloisters is set in a small New York University where a charismatic researcher and his beautiful interns are researching the artistic history of tarot cards. Murder, intrigue, and betrayal ensues.

I really loved this book. I think the characters were really compelling and interesting to read, the occult elements were given just enough ambiguity to make the book feel slightly eerie without tipping into any magical realism territory and there was the odd twist that really took me by surprise.

The one thing that somewhat lets it down, for me, is actually the setting. I kept thinking that the author really wants reviewers to bring out the old ‘the setting was really another character in the book' cliche, but she never really earns it. Every so often we are told how much the Cloisters are impacting the characters' psychologically, but I couldn't see any evidence of it. This element felt like a total miss, which is a great shame given that it's a brilliant idea - a medieval cloister turned into a museum: claustrophobic, haunting, and mysterious - it could have been so great.

But this is a small gripe. Overall I really loved it and would put it up there with books like The Secret History as top reads in the Dark Academia genre. I hope Katy Hayes writes more books, I will definitely read them!

This novel didn't really leave a strong impression on me. It can be fairly well summed up as just ‘another Black Library novel' without a huge amount to distinguish it. Perfectly enjoyable, but certainly not a classic of the genre.

The book was released along with the refresh of the Krieg for the game Kill Team, which might help account for its middle-of-the-road nature. I've found many of the direct product tie-in novels to be pretty generic, perhaps there is something about the way these books get commissioned that means the authors are a bit more prone to phoning it in, I don't know.

The basic plot line follows two different timelines. One tells the origin story of the Death Corps of Krieg as they fight a long and bloody war on their home planet against a rebelling planetary governor. In the other timeline, the Krieg come to help an army of Cadians fighting to retake a hive city infested with orks. Both stories are fine, although the first is far more compelling in my opinion. But I kept expecting to find the stories crossing over and wasn't really sure why they didn't. It ends up feeling like two shorter books stuck together. I didn't find the plot brought many surprises either, and none of the characters were especially standout or memorable.

I don't want to sound too negative, as I did enjoy the book. If you like Warhammer 40,000 novels in general - and I love them - then there is plenty to enjoy here: great action sequences, classic 40k over-the-top-ness, and a focus on a fan-favorite regiment of the Imperial Guard. I think, though, there are just better books out there, and if you haven't read them already, for some Imperial Guard action I'd definitely point readers towards the Gaunt's Ghosts series or Honourbound before this book.

As the guardian for two cats of my own, this book speaks to my soul.

Here we have a set of short stories about human relationships in many different guises told from the perspective of their feline companions. Each story is linked to the others, focusing on different characters but so that by the end the book has sketched an overall satisfying narrative arch.

We meet a succession of women navigating loss; abandonment; guilt; lack of self confidence and loneliness to name a few. But each one is helped to overcome their challenges by their loving and loyal cat companions. This is a book with a deeply humanistic and feminist sensibility at its core, but one that expresses it gently.

I don't think its quite right to say this is a cozy read; some of the themes here are intense, but the sparse style of the authors coupled with the distancing achieved by telling the stories from the perspective of the cats helps to lower the emotional temperature and makes the book feel ultimately wholesome, uplifting and humane. There are also plenty of cute cat moments, which we all need!

A beautiful little book that is the perfect accompaniment to a rainy afternoon, a cozy jumper and a cup of tea. Curl up with your own feline friends and enjoy.

“Thank you,” I said, genuinely sad for her when I thought of all the heartbreak ahead of her— all the phalluses just waiting to be drawn in the dust on the windshield of her future. I wanted to tell her to run. To save herself while she still could. But I had been about the same age when I'd fallen for Steven, and if anyone had told me he'd turn out to be a philandering creep, I never would have believed them.'

It is hard to sum up how much I love this book. For me, this is the perfect comedy novel. There were moments where I didn't want to turn the page because I knew what was about to happen and it was making me cringe too hard (but in the best possible way).

If the setup doesn't swing you, I don't think we can be friends: Finlay is the author of romantic mystery novels and a newly single mother of two young kids, struggling to keep her house afloat and meet her agent's deadlines. At lunch with her agent, in disguise because she's been banned from the establishment for throwing soup on her ex's new girlfriend - she is mistaken for a hit-woman and accidentally hired to kill this woman's husband. Things get worse when she accidentally fulfills the hit! Now, she has a bag of dirty money, and a dead body, and still needs to finish that novel. What's worse, she finds herself in a love triangle with a hot cop Nick, and a trainee lawyer/sexy bartender Julian. Can Finlay finish her novel, stop her husband from taking custody of the kids, work out her feelings, and - ideally, obviously - not go to jail for murder?

This novel is just full of hijinks, Finlay spends most of the book trying desperately to get out of one tight corner only to box herself into an even tighter one. Each time, you can see the car crash coming and you just want to scream at Finlay to stop! It is delicious and hilarious and the romance is enthralling as well. One of my favorite books of the year.

Through four encounters with strange book abusers, the young shut-in Rintaro Natsuki is guided by talking tabby Tiger to explore his relationship with his recently departed grandfarther, books and, above all, his own nature.

This is a very charming little book with a light and playful tone and simple plot that still manages to be engaging and, at times, a little emotional. Its four critiques of ways of engaging with books feel like they hit spot on for anyone who's spent any length of time in reading-adjacent worlds like book-tube or productivity-obsessed podcasting.

My only slight niggles with the book are, firstly, that the cat of the title is only really very lightly sketched out as a character. He is really just a devise to push Rintaro through the four encounters and doesn't play much of a role beyond kicking off each journey before largely disappearing for before the action gets going. This isn't a big issue in and of itself, but I picked up this book because of the cat so I was disappointed. That just isn't really what this book is about.

Secondly, some of the writing is a bit clunky and awkward. Not so much that it's overly distracting and it's always possible this is a product of translation, but the book is definitely not the most beautiful prose you've ever read.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable story which should leave you thinking a bit more critically about your own relationship to reading. I'd definitely recommend spending an afternoon on this small volume as time well spent.

Can you become more happy? How would you do it? What does that even mean?

From Aristotle to Disney, culture low brow and high has put happiness at the top of the tree when it comes to life's prizes. For many, it is the ur-good, from which all other goods derive their instrumental worth. But often, too, the pursuit of happiness is dismissed as a mere frippery.

Bringing together what psychologists have to say on the subject, Gilbert tackles these big questions through engaging and entertaining prose. The book has plenty of practical techniques and insights that you could apply to try to become happier, but it is by no means your typical self-help nonsense. The author is a properly credentialed scientist and expert in the field, his statements are backed up by studies which are clearly explained and the book takes the time to explain. I have no background in the subject, so I can't speak to the accuracy of his presentation of the science, but I have heard the book praised by a number of different people who know more than I do, so I take that it is at least generally accurate.

A really interesting and easy read. I would definitely recommend this to anyone over pretty much any and all of the self-help shelves in your local bookstore.

The temptation to write this review entirely in Orky pseudo cockney slang is extreme, but I'll do my best to resist.

That's the thing about this book, Orks are so joyfully Orky that you just want to get involved. You got a Squig called ‘Princess'; an Ork catapulting himself into an Imperial Knight then accidentally blowing it up with a stick bomb; a grot hero-worshipping an Ork which keeps trying to kill him; plus, (obviously) loads of good ol' fightin'.

What makes this really work is Brook's narrating. It's bags of fun and doesn't at all take itself too seriously. It isn't just played for laughs, however. Brooks captures what the Orks care about (mainly getting stuck into a big scrap) and describes the world the way an Ork would think about it. Everything is very approximate and boiled down to only the essential facts needed for starting and winning a fight. We, of course, know a bit more about what is going on so we get a brilliant contrast between our more ‘sophisticated' take of the situation and the Orks' brutal but efficient word-view.

This works so well because it means the book still feels like Black Library. The Orks are not comic figures per se. They don't stick out like a green thumb in a world of super serious super-soldiers. You still get a very strong sense that you wouldn't want to meet one down a dark alley. They're not going to seem very funny when they try to krump your head in with a ‘uge choppa. But when we get a look inside their world from the comfort of the page, they bring a wonderfully fresh perspective to the grimdark 41st millennium. Instead of the relentless, punishing war toil of the Astra Millitarum, the stoicism of the Space Marines or the zealousness of the Adepta Sororitas, it is basically just one big violent party. After all, for a race of thugs that just love a good scrap, 40k's endless war is kind of like heaven.

The Ork sections of this book are a great romp and absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, we only spend about half the book with them. The rest is mainly with the Ad Mech that the Orks are intent on krumpin. It's really in these sections that the actual plot of the novel occurs. Here is where we get the stakes, the suspense and the plot twists. That's a real shame because this is supposed to be a book about Orks when, really, at its core, it is a book about some kinda annoying robot people.

I think I get it. Building a satisfying narrative around the brutal and simplistic Orks sounds like a real challenge for an author. I see why Brooks wanted to keep a more traditional Black Library style plot in here too. It also is not a bad story at all. I think in another book I'd have really liked it. But when it is set against the riot which is the Orks sections, it feels like leaving a party to go study in the library. Each time the Ad Mech pop back up there is just a bit of a feeling of deflation and I'm just waiting until we can get back to the Orks.

I really enjoyed this book, I just wanted more Orks. I hope this book did well and Black Library is encouraged to commission more books from the perspective of non-humans. I hope next time, too, they feel that the Orks can drive the story forward.

I'm posting this mainly because I am struck by how polarised most of the reviews of this book are. I suppose that is inevitable given how politically sensitive this topic is, but it is a shame none the less.

I don't think anyone who reads this book in good faith can think that it is hateful or transphobic. The author's main point is that there are a large group of young girls who are identifying as trans without the characteristics that are usually associated with gender dysmorphia as it is usually understood. Her worry is that these girls will make choices they later regret, not that people should not be able to transition or that it isn't the right choice for some people. To sum the book up oversimplistically, she is attacking the way society at large treats young women, not attacking trans people. Overall, I thought the book was striving to be compassionate and empathetic towards all it's subjects.

It may well be that the conclusions that the author reaches are wrong and that some or all of her fears are misconceived. However, it is very difficult, especially for a layperson such as myself, to say either way because even the scientific and clinical work on this issue has become so politicized and any work which challenges the prevailing orthodoxy is immediately attacked as ‘hate'.

As a result, in order to develop a narrative, the author is clearly going beyond the evidence and building her book on anecdote and superstition at times. No one should regard this as an authoritative academic work on this issue. That said, the book doesn't claim to be. The author frequently eludes to the fact that she is being bolder in her assertions than many of the experts in the field would be confident being. Furthermore, I don't think that it is reasonable to say that journalistic speculation is hate speech. It might be off the mark, but it is (in this case I believe) a genuine attempt by a none-expert to question and understand these issues.

Overall I thought the book was really interesting. It's ideas will make you think, it has powerful anecdotes and interviews with a wide range of experts and trans people with different perspectives on these issues. There are also some very moving sections on what it is to be a woman which I found extremely illuminating.

Whatever your current views on these hot-button issues, I'd really recommend trying to put them aside when you pick up this book. Whether it is right or wrong, I think everyone will be able to get something out of it as long as they are prepared to approach it in good faith.

For long-time Black Library fans, Gloomspite should be a welcome shot of something a bit different - all be it a shot that will almost certainly transform your writhing body into some foul and distorted creature of the night.

We have all the classic Black Library ingredients, sure: lots of deaths, gore, battles, heroism and nasty gribblies: but Gloomspite mixes things up by not giving us a look at the baddies for a good two-thirds of the book. Instead, in true horror style, our luckless adventurers -trapped in a city surrounded by swampy, unnatural mists cloaking unspecified horrors - are picked off, one by one in various toe-curlingly awful ways. Things get grimmer and grimmer until only when the night is at its darkest, the true horror below emerges.

Honestly, this book was great. Plenty of creepy horror in here, but I also got really invested in the main cast of characters as well.

One of the best Age of Sigmar books out there and up in the top Black Library books for me. Definitely one I'd recommend.

An accessible and incredibly inspiring introduction to meta-learning.

Ultralearning sells a big vision: the author claims to have taught himself an entire computer science degree in under a year; several languages and how to draw. He says you can gain incredible levels of skill in almost anything you want as well in only a few months of intense work.

I think that, when you really look at what it takes to achieve these results, it is probably simply impractical for most people who have jobs; families, and so forth. But that doesn't mean - as Young himself says - that you can't take some of these ideas and adapt them to your own situation to learn more effectively.

Learning new skills is not only an incredibly satisfying way to spend time; for most of us, in a rapidly changing world, it is essential. If you are going to learn, you might as well do it in the most efficient and effective way practical for you in your situation. Ultralearning provides you with a toolbox of techniques and approaches to do exactly that. It sets these out accessibly with plenty of inspiring anecdotes from people who've achieved incredible results of their own which help illustrate the techniques being explained.

If you are already well acquainted with the literature on metalearning, I imagine this book probably won't include much you don't already know; but for literally anyone else; I'd definitely recommend this book.

Describing the distribution of wealth, Katharina Pistor likens the graphical representation to an elephant's head: “The broad forehead holds 50 percent of the world's population; over the past 35 years they captured a paltry 12 percent of growth in global wealth. From the forehead a curve leads down toward the trunk and from there, steeply up to the raised tip. The trunk is where “the one percent” sit; they hold 27 percent of the new wealth, more than double the amount held by the people clustered together on the elephant's forehead. The valley between the forehead and the trunk is where lower-income families in the advanced Western market economies are bundled together, the “squeezed bottom 90 percent” of these economies.”

The Code of Capital seeks to underscore the role that legal structures play in establishing and perpetuating this massively unequal distribution of wealth in today's world. Pistor argues that we can't properly understand inequality without understanding key legal structures - most importantly, the body corporate.

In Pistor's account, there are two key legal processes that occur. The first is to take something of value and transform it into an asset. This is done by giving it the attributes of priority rights (meaning the ability to assert one's control over it), durability, universality (meaning it is recognised widely as an asset), and liquidity (meaning it can be turned into fiat currency reliably). Secondly, these assets are owned by companies that are legally constructed to shield their owners from risk, shift losses away from owners, and can persist indefinitely.

Through these two sets of legal processes, value can be turned into a maximally profitable asset and held in such a way that it acrews to the very rich with minimal risk of losses being sustained and very little way for those assets to be taken away from them.

Pistor supplements this core analysis with plenty of examples and some great legal economic history. She also shows how powerful and wealthy people are able to use their wealth to further change the legal rules to sure up their position, creating a sort of negative flywheel effect whereby they become ever more entrenched in their wealth and accrue ever greater portions of new wealth to themselves.

I think this is a fascinating book and a great read for anyone seeking to understand the modern global economy. Well worth a read. I'd suggest pairing it with something like Martin Wolf's ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism' as I think these together make for a good layman's explainer on some of the causes and effects of our increasingly staggering levels of global inequality.

There are two things we need to separate out here: the Bullet Journal method of organising yourself with the help of one simple notebook and The Bullet Journal Method the book, written by Ryder Caroll, the ‘inventor' of the method.

For anyone who's not come across the Bullet Journal method, or whose main exposure to it is (mostly) women sharing very aesthetic photos of notebook pages on Instagram; Caroll's original idea is extremely simple: just use a single notebook to note down all your tasks, memoranda and other notes on a daily basis using bullet points. It really isn't much more complicated than that.

I've always thought that the best thing about the Bullet Journal method - its simplicity - is also what makes it monetising it so hard. I mean, do you really need an entire book to tell you to ‘write stuff down so you don't need to remember it?' Do you really need to buy special tools or notebooks? Do you need to sign up for courses or membership sites or whatever? No. No, you don't.

That's fundamentally the problem with this book. Caroll made a short set of videos explaining how to bullet journal. You can find them on YouTube. I think the method itself is great. It is simple, cheap, extremely flexible and effective for many people. These short videos explain very clearly in about 10 minutes or so everything you need to know to use the method. Everything else in this book, unfortunately, is basically a waste of dead trees.

The book is not bad: It is easy to read, has some good anecdotes and you can fly through it in no time. Ryder throws in the odd bit of humour and had a nice informal style. It is just that everything is undermined by the fact that this is the archetypical should-have-been-a-blog-post book.

I got it for free as an e-book because I have Amazon Prime. For free, it's alright if you are stuck for something to read, but I do think I would have felt short-changed if I'd actually bought this book.

This book has some really great ideas: focusing on the events around the destruction of Cadia but from the perspective of people living on Terra; the machinations of the high lords, the introduction of the Custodies to the wider theatres of war and the reformation of the sisters of silence into a cohesive force. Unfortunately, for me, it was ultimately a disappointment.

With the exception of the Sister of Silence character - who was completely badass - the point of view characters fell flat for me. We get told about their challenges and personality traits, but I never really felt any of it. With a lot of narrative ground to cover across three separate points of view in less than 300 pages, there just didn't feel like the time for the characters or the setting to really come alive. The result was the characters were thin and the personal stakes for each one never felt especially meaningful to me.

I would recommend Wraight's Vaults of Terra series over this one any day. Those books deal with the same themes and time period as this one but, for my money, the characters are far more compelling and the plot much more exciting and satisfying.

Jordan B. Peterson is definitely a marmite figure. Half the world seem to regard him as an irredeemable bigot while the other half some kind of modern prophet. I don't subscribe to either camp, but this is a review of his book, not his character.

What I would say, however, for any reader who is thinking about picking up the book, is that the portrayal of Professor Peterson in the media, good or bad, is not a very good indicator of what this book is like. Many of the topics he is famous for (like the infamous lobsters or his views on sex-based behaviour differences) do indeed crop up, but they are distinct passages and do not constitute the main themes of 12 Rules.

12 Rules for Life sets out to use a combination of science, philosophy and literary analysis to bring time honoured wisdom about how to live well to a modern audience. Each of the 12 rules is really an essay grouped, some more loosely than others, around the rule set out in the title. Some of the rules are more direct, while others are illustrations of broader points Professor Peterson wishes to riff on.

Overall, I thought that that was quite a compelling premise. By taking well-worn wisdom and expressing it through biblical analogies and Jungian archetypes, I found that the book did make me stop and consider concepts that are usually so ordinary that they slip into the background.
As an example, everyone knows lying is bad from the age of four. But exploring truth-telling concerning our self-concept, life in gulags, marital collapse and the ‘life-giving truth of the word of God' (to name a few of the takes in the book) provides enough context to actually spend some time thinking about the role of truth-telling in our lives and in the world more broadly.

Speaking of truth-telling, that leads me onto the book's main weakness. In the sense of the word as ‘a scientifically provable proposition', I'm not sure how ‘true' much of the book is. In particular, most of the book presents the alternative to sticking to the rules as some form of extreme disaster, often literally described as hell. I'm no psychologist, but I'm also always naturally a bit suspicious whenever figures like Freud and Jung are bought up.

I don't think this would matter if the book was presented a little differently. If it was sold as a set of essays ruminating on ancient wisdom and poetic truths, for example - i.e. truth as the way we often experience the world not what is necessarily objective - then I'd be on board with much of what is said. The exaggeration would be artistic license and to ask for data would completely miss the point. However, Professor Peterson frequently alludes to his clinical psychological practice and at times to various studies in biology and psychology which suggest that the book sees its truths as ‘scientifically' true rather than true in some more artistic sense.

Overall, I thought this book was perfectly fine. I enjoyed it somewhat and I do think it made me consider how I move through the world a little differently. I would recommend readers don't take the book too seriously though. Jordan Peterson is a very charismatic speaker for sure and has some interesting ideas in this book and elsewhere. But he is not the messiah, some would say he is just a very naughty boy.


Looking for an alternative? I'd recommend Feline Philosophy by John Gray which I think touches on the same overall theme of living a good life but does it better, in a shorter form and with way more mentions of cats.

I came across Mark's stuff a while ago, via his podcast, so I had been working out with the method in the book for a while before I read it. It is by far the best regime I've ever tried.

I work out for less time than ever before, I'm making way bigger gains than ever before and it stays around longer if life gets in the way and I have to take a little time off.

I wanted to get the book as it puts all the info in one place and fills out a few of the gaps I had from Mike's other stuff.

I can't speak to anyone who knows there stuff backwards and forwards (although the book is explicitly written for a beginner, so the reviews which slate it for being basic are a missing the point!) However, if you are relatively new to lifting this book is a definite must read.

Brilliant book, and if you like it definitely have a look at Mike's website and podcasts! Also very good!

For one of the galaxy's most powerful minds, Ahriman sure is a dumbass.

The plot of Ahriman: Exile boils down to this supposed master sorcerer and Demi-god among men staggering from failure to disaster through the Eye of Terror. He is variably deceived, betrayed and coerced by his enemies and friends alike into every choice he has sworn not to take.

To be honest, given how useless Ahriman is most of the time, I did sometimes find it difficult to see him as a powerful Astartes sorcerer and not Frank Spencer in power amour.

That said, I loved this book. I think it is probably my favourite Black Library book I've read to date.

As well as being introduced to Ahriman, we meet a cast of characters each in various states of mental transformation. The narrative handling of the warped psyches of these narrators gives the book a semi-dreamlike atmosphere which is added to by frequent phantasmagoric visions and trips to Ahriman's mind palace.

Fittingly for a book set in the Eye of Terror, we are often unsure what is real and what is imagined and even, at times, whether such a distinction makes sense.

Another strength of the book is its treatment of the Chaos Space Marines. Just like in books such as Soul Hunter and Primogenitor, we get a strong sense of tragic figures who feel the loss of their nobility, brotherhood and glory yet know there is no chance of redemption. I find it a much more human and compelling treatment than crazed cultists or moustache twiddling evil-doers which we tend to get when it comes to chaos followers in Black Library novels.

Much of the tension in this book comes from the different ways that these dammed figures handle their fate. From those who accept and even try to accelerate it, to those who - even knowing the futility of the task - seek still to find some kind of escape.

I'd highly recommend Ahriman to anyone looking for an evocative, exciting and entertaining literary jaunt through the Eye of Terror.

Straight Silver is packed with interesting ideas for doing a classic Warhammer 40,000 novel a bit differently. The problem is the execution doesn't always allow the novel to deliver.

The premise of the book is a case in point. Gaunt and his Ghosts are dropped into the hell of trench warfare as part of an Imperial deployment set to break a 40-year war on a minor planet in the Sabbat system. There are plenty of 40K novels, many of them by Dan Abnett, which hint at disparities in technology levels on different worlds, but this book dives into that idea and runs with it to give us quite a different setting and feel to the usual gothic sci-if. It is nakedly ‘WWI in space' but that is (in my opinion at least) fundamentally a cool premise. We get to see the locals marvelling at technology like Lasguns and personal comma beads. We see the locals waging war with cavalry mounted on giant killer birds. We see the cut and thrust of trench warfare 40K style with Chaos cultists, prometheum and, of course, more incompetent commanders for Gaunt to contend with, putting the lives of the Tanith at unnecessary risk. This is a great setting for a very different novel to the usual 40k fare. However, we only really get a couple of trench fights, very little in the way of building the world of 40K trench warfare and a couple of sweeping paragraphs to outline the broader war. In the end, the setting feels under-explored.

After some initial skirmishes, the Ghosts prove their worth and are given a crucial scouting mission. This sees the First split into two sections, one led up by Gaunt on a suicide mission into enemy territory and the other off to scout in the woods. This second mission gives what is, for me, the second cool idea in the book. One of the scout groups finds an abandoned house and sets it up as a base. This kicks off a series of strange occurrences culminating in a typically brutal battle scene. The ‘manse' as it's called by the troopers, is a brilliant opportunity for a much more atmospheric, eerie and small scale novel. It has the promise of something which is a mix of war novel, haunted house and mystery rolled into one. Unfortunately, again, this setting just isn't given enough space so we only really get a taste of what could have been.

I think ultimately it is the classic Gaunt's Ghosts novel structure that lets this book down. All the books in the series, except Necropolis, feel like a series of short stories or novellas stitched together. This is a feature that comes in for a fair bit of flack, normally I'm a defender of it. In this case, I think it is a problem. Dan Abnett's ideas here are great and each one just would have benefited from being given more focus and time, by splitting the book into these distinct parts, nothing is quite given a chance to shine.

This all said the book does succeed in doing some important work for the series in developing characters and plot threads which are set to pay off later. Without giving anything away, some of the most explosive consequences of the previous book in the series are further developed and there are some great new elements that weave the 40K universe's more fantastical and otherworldly elements into a series that is otherwise very grounded in what we can recognise as ‘real life' forces.

The book also has some great character development. As in the previous Gaunt's Ghost novel, The Guns of Tanith, Gaunt himself takes a backseat and Abnett focuses on further developing the ensemble cast. I found in the first two novels, there was such a deluge of names of troopers, many of whom quickly met grizzly ends, that I never quite knew who was who. By now in the series, a defined cast of major and minor characters has emerged and we've spent enough time with them that heroes, villains and favourites have all emerged. Straight Silver pushes these characters still further, which helps raise the stakes for future novels in the series and fleshes out the world of the Ghosts.

As a Black Library novel, Straight Silver is probably one of the weaker in the Gaunt's Ghost series. It isn't as action-packed and its plot isn't as compelling as many of the others. It lacks compelling antagonists and as a stand-alone story feels incomplete. However, when seen as part of the longer form story which is the Gaunt's Ghosts series, I think it does important work.

If you are looking for your first Gaunt's Ghosts or Imperial Guard novel, definitely don't start here. But if you are already a devoted fan of the First and Only, this is still a must not be missed addition to one of the best series in the Black Library in my book.

Beastslayer caps off a longer story arch that has been running in the background of the Gotrek and Felix series since at least its third instalment. Spurred by arcane eldritch forces, the mightiest Chaos army in centuries - led by the invincible Aric Demonclaw - disgorges itself from the Chaos wastes and lays siege to Praag, the first bastion of civilisation against the tides of Chaos.

Having seen the start of this horde on their trip into the wastes, it falls to Gotek, Felix and their companions collected over the series to warn the Kislevites of Praag and fight alongside them against this Chaos horde.

I first read Beastslayer when I was young, I don't remember exactly when but I was an early teenager at the oldest. The powerful sorcerous twins who guide Aric Demonclaw have lodged themselves in my imagination ever since as some of my favourite fantasy characters.

As a result, I have a long-held nostalgic love of the Gotrek series. This book has all the classic features of the series with ferocious adrenaline-packed battle scenes, the stoic Slayers scything their way through monstrous enemies and Felix's reluctant heroism.

In a sense, then, I find it very difficult to be objective about this book. I loved it as a return to the past, made fresh by 20(ish) years of distance.

That said, I can see this book is not perfect. In particular, its insistence on flicking between multiple points of view becomes tiring and breaks up both the flow and atmosphere of the novel. The central focus of the novel is the siege of Praag. The sense of claustrophobia and desperation of citizens trapped within its walls and facing certain death is well done but all too often left to drop away as we flick to points of view outside the city.

Take, as a comparison, the siege of Helm's Deep in the Lord of the Rings. There, Gandalf's reappearance with the riders of Rohan is a miraculous beam of sunlight breaking through the storm clouds. We share in the defenders' surprise and relief. Here, we know the reinforcements are coming because we frequently flick to their point of view for, largely, pointless snippets of dialogue.

I hate to say it, but Grey Seer Thanquol is also an unnecessary distraction here. I love the Grey Seer and the Skaven. They bring real and skillfully balanced humour to these novels which is extremely welcome and unusual for Black Library novels. Unfortunately, in this novel, Thanquol's sub-plot does nothing important for the main story and doesn't even really resolve itself in any satisfactory way. It just serves to take us away from the main action of the book for a few pages. I assume that he will become relevant again later in the series, but I think the continuation of his story could have been handled better here.

Ultimately, however, these are minor gripes. I'm talking about what would have made the novel better rather than outlining fatal floors. I really enjoyed this book. I think anyone who is a fan of the series will too. However, these structural issues mean that I would guess, if you are less familiar with the Gotrek series or the wider universe, there probably are better fantasy books you'll get more out of.