Mandy

Re-read review (22 Jan 2021): My first re-read of this book in a super long time and if anything, I just love it even more than ever, I burst into tears when I finished (could also be hormones talking).

I love it that we have this female protagonist who is rather insecure and unsure of herself at the beginning of the story, and it's her younger sisters that are trying to bolster her self-worth, which is such a great twist on that usual “evil stepsisters” trope. I love that so much of this book, even though the sisters were apart from each other, Sophie never stopped thinking about them or caring for them in whatever ways she could. I love that we have one sister who wants to get married and have ten children, and another sister who wants to keep on learning and making a name for herself and both of them are fine with that, support each other and help each other achieve their goals even if wildly different.

I love that it shows so many things that aren't very common but which I really like to see in YA stories: a female protagonist that starts off being insecure, but very gradually starts to realise how powerful she is because she took the first step to get out of her comfort zone, and not because anyone else (and not a dude) told her so; a hero that is endearing but so flawed and annoying at the same time; truly believable chemistry between the two leads which develops throughout the book to culminate in a very satisfying ending (that doesn't even need to show them kissing or being all handsy with each otherThis has always been one of my favourite books of all time, and this re-read has only cemented that status.I just love it, OK? *cries*---------------------I bought this many, many years ago, attracted by the colourful cover and the illustration of a handsome, crazy wizard. I did not regret it.Howl's Moving Castle is the kind of book that I come across only very rarely, where the moment I finish reading the last page, I lean back, exhale, try to digest all the plot twists at the end, then I immediately turn back to the first page and begin re-reading immediately. I am personally someone who isn't in the habit of re-reading books almost ever.Though I have owned this book for more than a decade now, but it's still in relatively good condition and I still occasionally re-read it. I think of it as one of my favourite books of all time, and it introduced me to the magical world of Diana Wynne Jones.

This was a fun enough ride, but I also constantly felt like I was just skating on the surface of some deeper meaning that I'm too dense to decipher, and therefore also just skating on the brink of some deeper appreciation and enjoyment of it.

The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie is spectacular. The core ideas and premise in it may not be a breath of fresh air by this point, but the way Leckie constructs those tropes from ground-up and pushes them to its limit will certainly make the books in the series stand out in one's mind, no matter how many iterations of the same tropes one has read before.

But there's also a denseness to Leckie's writing that is not the easiest to parse. It requires the utmost attention as you read it, maybe even demands re-reads to fully understand the intricacies of the world Leckie is building and the nuances of the character interactions here. That is probably why I felt like I was skating on the surface all the time, even more so than I did with the first book.

While the first book, Ancillary Justice, was also dense, it had a lot more action going on so there were moments of re-grouping where we had time to catch up with the information given to us. In this one though, there isn't really that much movement happening. Our ship protagonist, Breq, has now been made Fleet Captain by the Lord of the Radch herself. In such a position, she makes her way towards Athoek station ostensibly to protect that system as a delegate of the Radch. She doesn't tell people that it is also the hometown of her late captain, Lt. Awn, where she intends to find Awn's sister to make amends. Along the way, Breq makes friends and enemies amongst the various races living on Athoek, and serves justice as she understands it.

There is a lot more politics about imperialism here, and the friction not only between colonizer (Radchaai) and the colonized races, but also the friction between colonized races, depending on how closely they have formed alliances with the Radchaai and therefore have moved up the socioeconomic hierarchy. It was all reminiscent (and perhaps deliberately so) of British imperialism and therefore of my own Commonwealth country and history, something that I honestly did not expect from this book. I appreciated the thoughts and discussion the book had on whether Breq's so-called justice was futile and in fact detrimental no matter how well-intentioned.

Overall though, this book was okay. It's a hard one for me to rate. I enjoyed it, but at the same time it didn't blow my mind - and yet, I'm not even sure if I just need to read it closer and harder. I feel like I missed a few points here, and I keep thinking it's entirely my fault for not having paid enough attention while reading, given how popular and beloved this book is. Definitely will read the next one though.

Pretty fun and short course about medical mysteries through the ages. Presented by Dr Roy Benaroch, M.D., the cases in this one are of famous historical figures whose names are obscured so that you can try to guess who it is before Dr Benaroch reveals the answer at the end of the case. It's a simple but interesting gimmick to teach you medical conditions that you never knew these historical figures may have suffered from. Recommended for anybody who enjoys medical information and history!

This was... kind of a weird but good time? Some parts almost felt a little tedious with how completely crazy it was all the time, but tbh I still had a good time overall and wouldn't mind picking up the sequel at some point.

The humour in this one was pretty reminiscent of Terry Pratchett, if he wrote urban fantasy, except it was missing a little focus and pizzazz. Nevertheless, I do think McDonnell's a bit of a hidden gem and can't understand why this book hasn't been more shouted about. It's got pretty quirky and humourous writing, vivid characters, a fairly compelling magic system and backstory, as well as plot twists that, while not earth-shattering revelations., still give you enough of a jolt to be enjoyable.

We have a bit of a character ensemble here. I don't think we really get close enough to any one character to feel particularly attached, but I think that's okay. I enjoyed the superficial tableau of how their dynamics played out against each other. There are stakes in the story too, so it wasn't completely without tension.

Overall, would recommend to those who love urban fantasy with some strong humour!

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

The storyline of this book is not very complex. Dorian Gray is a beautiful young man just in his first bloom of life, his beauty captures the attention of a painter, Basil Hallward, who invites him to sit for a portrait. He perfectly captures Dorian's beauty on the canvas. Dorian, after speaking to Basil's enigmatic and thoroughly hedonistic friend, Lord Henry, suddenly realises just how fleeting and transient youth and beauty really is, while simultaneously becoming jealous of the painting's immortality that he cannot enjoy. He fervently wishes that it was the painting that grew older and more sinful instead of him - and his wish is fulfilled.

It's been a long time since I last read this book, and I think I had a fairly neutral impression of it. After growing older and also having had the advantage of taking a module on Victorian literature since, revisiting this book was an absolute delight. There's so much to unpack and discuss about this book.

A huge theme of this book is the idea of art and beauty - obviously. What exactly does justice to beauty? Is it in an immortal preservation in a frozen “original” state, or is it in molding something already beautiful into an image that further fits one's standards and ideals of beauty? At the very beginning chapters of the book, I kinda felt sorry for Dorian because, due to his beauty, no one seems to treat him like a human individual but as a subject on which to project their own ideals.

Basil, though he is extremely fond of Dorian, nevertheless wants to preserve him as much as possible in an “unspoiled” state, as if he could freeze the human being in a snapshot in time just as he had done on the canvas when painting him. It's simultaneously exalting but also dehumanising at the same time, when you refuse to let a person be the person they are, and just want them to be this ideal muse in your mind.

Lord Henry is both self-centered and also more callously apathetic in his treatment of Dorian. It feels like he wants to create a sculpture out of him, almost in his own image. In Chapter 4, when Lord Henry is musing about Dorian and says “to a large extent, the lad was his own creation”. He preaches a lot of his own hedonistic principles to Dorian, swaying him around like a rag doll but also just apathetically watching how things unfurl (“It was no matter how it all ended”).

Even Sybil Vane, Dorian's first love interest, is satisfied not even knowing his name. She simply calls him Prince Charming, and projects onto him all the ideals of the heroic male lead in the plays that she acts in. There is certainly something tragic in the way that, because he incited passion for the first time in her, it drew its source from her talent for acting, and that in turn caused his love for her to wither away.

Though this book is short, at less than 300 pages, it feels so much longer - but not in a bad way. Every sentence is so thought-provoking, and Wilde doesn't waste a single word. This is one of those rare books that I actually wanted to read on an ebook/physical copy because I wanted to slowly digest each line. Whether Dorian Gray can simply be written off as a “villain” by the end of the book is really so, so up for debate which I don't really want to go into here in a review. Nevertheless, this book was such an excellent introspective read about youth, immortality, art for art's sake, hedonism, morality, and conscience.

This was a really, really fun ride, although one that I think not everyone would appreciate equally. I'd give this about 4 stars. If you treat this as a literary puzzle, rather than an actual story, you might enjoy this. I found the foreword by Shimada Soji to be particularly enlightening on that score, about the history behind this Japanese subgenre of cozy mysteries, inspired by the golden age authors like Agatha Christie, but also giving it a very unique twist of their own.

In fact, Shimada in the foreword touches upon what could be a point of criticism for most readers. Ayatsuji's characters in this book are not meant to be regarded as human beings but rather as pawns or pieces of the puzzle. They feel, think, and say things only as much as it gives you, the reader, hints and clues to the solution of the mystery. Don't go into this one expecting the clinking of champagne glasses or any kind of social commentary that so many golden age authors added alongside their mysteries. Ayatsuji, and perhaps the whole genre of Japanese cozy mysteries in itself as Shimada posits, is only interested in this puzzle in a vacuum, so his characters may act almost “robotically”, to quote Shimada.

The plot in itself is pretty simple. A group of students from K—University's Mystery Club head to an abandoned island for a week-long camping trip. The island was home to a reclusive architect, his wife, and some employees until they had all perished in an unsolved mass killing 6 months before the novel begins, so the Mystery Club students are keen to find some inspiration there to write detective fiction. They take up residence in the Decagon House, an annex to the main Blue Mansion of the island, both of which had been designed and built by the deceased architect. Soon, the students find themselves also victims of mass killing plot, as they are picked off one by one by an unknown murderer apparently in their midst.

I think I managed to appreciate this book a lot more having grown up with many Japanese franchises which were no doubt influenced by this burgeoning mystery genre (Ayatsuji wrote this book in the mid 1980s and I grew up in the 90s). One that came to mind frequently was The Kindaichi Case Files, a manga series that spun off several adaptations - I grew up with the live-action adaptation. In fact, the characteristic way the live-action drama unveiled its murders and solution was how I visualized the plot of this book unfolding, so similar was the vibe and presentation. Other Japanese franchises that could probably draw some parallels are Galileo, Mr Brain, Liar Game, Death Note, and so on. It was with that frame of reference in mind that I felt that I could properly appreciate this book despite the “robotic” characters and sometimes fantastical behaviour.

Another reason for the “robotic” characters could be also lie in the limitations of translation. As someone who is bilingual in Mandarin and English, I can attest that a lot of nuances and tones are completely misinterpreted or eliminated completely when translation happens. Having also studied the Japanese language for a few years before, while I wouldn't boast of any degree of fluency in it, I think I appreciated enough to know that some sentences may sound perfectly fine in Japanese but sound uncommonly stilted and stiff in English. I also think that some clues the author had dropped may have been woven in to the language of writing itself, and so may have been incredibly difficult to translate, while other clues that the author did not intend to give had to be revealed again because of the translation. I'm thinking particularly of (spoiler for the whole mystery) when the Prologue mentions an unknown person making preparations for the mass murders, but refers to them as “he”. We know immediately from the beginning that the culprit is male, barring any crazy twists. Although this doesn't help us that much since there are only a grand total of 2 female characters in the book, but it still does dampen the mystery just a little bit, and we aren't kept guessing about whether Agatha is going to turn out to be the murderer. I've a strong feeling that this is a limitation of translation because Japanese sentences often does away with pronouns all together, so it would've been very possible to write the Prologue without referring to this unknown third person by any gender pronoun at all. This is just my guess though, not having seen the Japanese version of this book.

The book was overall super enjoyable for me. I took up the invitation of trying to solve the mystery along with the characters and kept up a log of who I was suspecting most (my suspicions throughout the book: I had a fleeting suspicion of Van at first because he was the only one who had been on the island before everyone else, but somehow I was more distracted by Poe and Ellery. I was convinced that they were the Murderer and Detective, although I couldn't figure out which was which. I was inclined to think Poe was the Murderer, considering that he was always on hand with each murder and had alone time with each corpse, and thought it was rather suspicious when he didn't let Agatha see Orczy's body. Oh well, how I was mistaken.). It felt like a cozy puzzle to tease apart, and like most cozy mysteries I didn't take the plot too seriously, in that how people can somewhat continue functioning and not finding ways to get off the island even when people around them are getting murdered. There was probably some clear inspiration by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None here, but I don't think reading that one would dampen your enjoyment of this one.

Overall, definitely recommended for cozy mystery fans or those interested in Japanese mysteries.

My second romance title from Tessa Dare but I remain impressed by them, despite their sleazy covers. I can't say it's entirely free of tropes and genre cliches, but she side-steps most of them and turns the typical romance expectations around on its head, which I'm very much down for. True, some of the plot elements may be a little anachronistic as Dare evidently writes with a modern point of view, but I'd rather be reading this than badly handled gender stereotypes.

I've really liked all of Tessa Dare's heroines so far. From the bushy-haired and plain-looking Izzy Goodnight in the first title of the Castles Ever After series, to the non-svelte and fiercely self-reliant Clio Whitmore in this one. They don't fit into the marble statue standard of beauty that typically describes what most romance heroines are, but I like them all the more for it.

Some side characters that I also really liked in this novel are Clio's sister, Phoebe, with all her eccentricities and genius, Ellingworth the bulldog, and Montague/Bruiser with his ridiculous quizzing glass. They all added little quirks and touches of humour that actually worked. I love how Dare's works don't take themselves too seriously and that makes them such a fun, light-hearted read. I'll certainly be reading more from her, and from this series!

This was a really fun read. There were several out-of-this-world elements to it but I found those tolerable if you focus on the main premise of this book: how a “fake” family of 3 people harbouring secrets of their own will deal with that tension while inevitably getting closer and more attached to each other.

Our protagonist is a spy, codename Twilight, who receives a mission to get closer to a reclusive politician. The only public appearance this politician makes is when he attends parent-teacher conferences at the school his son is attending: the prestigious Eden Academy. In order to get close enough to his target, Twilight has to create a “fake” family and pass off as a parent of a legitimate enrolled student in the Academy. He adopts Anya from the orphanage, not knowing that she is in fact psychic and knew from the very beginning about his true job as a spy and the nature of his mission. Later, he meets and proposes a fake marriage to Yor, a salesgirl with a predilection for kicking ass, also without knowing that she is in fact a secret assassin. The scene where Twilight “proposes” to Yor was truly iconic.

While the premise might have the tendency to get gritty, the story is uplifted by good doses of humour. It doesn't hurt to have little Anya around to lift the mood as well. There're some slightly more conservative values in here, at least in this first volume. The reason why Twilight needs to find a fake wife in the first place is because Eden Academy emphasizes traditional family value - so no single-parent families apparently.

Nevertheless, this was a light-hearted, episodic, and enjoyable read and I'd look forward to reading more from the series.

2.5 stars. Finally done with this book and I gotta admit that I skimmed through a large part of the last 1/3. This book was... okay. It threatened to be a train wreck at the beginning but improved a bit in the second half, although I think it was overall just serviceable.

I think the biggest problem I had with this book was how a lot of passages and description felt like unnecessary filler, to the point where I could skip through chapters and simply read the beginning and end of each, and still not miss anything vital. The actual mystery-solving felt fairly linear and dull, and was mainly just the protagonist Bronwyn and her best friend Maisie going around asking people about things, or Googling things to find out new information. with the central action being that straightforward, the rest of the narrative just felt like extra padding to make the book run longer than it should've.

The mystery wasn't as illogical as I thought it was going to be at first, but it was also nothing to shout about. I didn't predict who the killer was going to be in the end, but the book also doesn't give readers hints along the way, which is part of the charm of cozy mysteries - you're supposed to be given as much information as the detective/sleuth is so that if you wanted to, you can solve the mystery along with them. In this case, the plot twist comes by itself, there is absolutely no way you could've solved it before the detective/sleuth does.

I wasn't endeared by any of the characters either. The narrative, which i've already mentioned felt bloated and unnecessary, follows a stream of consciousness first-person perspective but Bronwyn just isn't charming or enigmatic enough to keep my attention for that sort of writing. We also spend huge chunks of time reading about stuff that never seem to matter in the end, like when she invented new ice cream flavours, or when she goes in-depth into her previous life in an ad agency in New York before she moved back to her little village to open the ice cream parlour. Her two best friends were also fairly annoying, particularly Maisie with how much she jumped to conclusions about everyone. To be fair, the book seemed a little self-aware about that, and Bronwyn doesn't exactly trust Maisie's judgement either. it doesn't make it any less annoying when Maisie's going around accusing Ari (the only character of Middle Eastern origin in the village too, if I'm not wrong) of being the murderer with such strong conviction, based off nothing but her own dislike of him and a slight discrepancy that she latches on to as incontrovertible evidence that he must be the killer! She's proven wrong about it at the end but barely seems apologetic about it.

The pacing of the book felt a little off as well. By about 27% into the book, we still hadn't found out who the dead body is, who the prime suspect is, and why we should really care. It takes a long time for the mystery to really get going, which it only really does after maybe the 50ish% mark. I'd enjoy it a lot better if there was a more obvious hook for the readers from earlier on - why should we care about who the real killer is? Why should Bronwyn care, for that matter? If the protagonist has no stake in the mystery for nearly half the book, why would the readers?

Overall, a valiant effort for a debut novel and I hope that the subsequent instalments will see some improvement.

Trigger warnings: Suicide ideation, depression, drug use, drug overdose, toxic relationships, parental deaths

So I'm rather in two minds about this one. On one hand, I appreciated the underlying message of this book and it did make me pretty emotional at the end, but on the other, I couldn't completely get rid of this tiny feeling at the back of my head that some parts of the premise were a little too simplified and too convenient. It's hard to discuss more about that without some pretty big spoilers, so I'll be hiding all of my plot-related thoughts behind spoiler tags.

On a non-spoilery note, the writing was very pleasant and fairly light. It read very smoothly and easily, and I found myself breezing through the book. I'm reading this with an online book club, and some of us complained that there weren't chapter numbers which made it difficult to post our thoughts, but perhaps that is a problem unique to being in an online book club. There were also some chapters that was just one or two pages long, sometimes even just one sentence long. Even after finishing the book, I was never really sure if there was an impactful enough point to this strange chapter structuring. I could probably come up with some fluffy reason for it but I don't know if it was really justified by anything we actually read in the book, and I'd feel like I'm making excuses for Haig.

Nevertheless though, I do feel like Haig might have had personal experiences with the mental health issues dealt with in this book, or at least have been close to people who did. There is a sort of intimacy in the way he describes and depicts depression and even suicide ideation. If this is in any way triggering to you, I'd recommend staying away from this book all together as it is a major theme that the whole plot revolves around.

Now for the spoilery bits. I think I first sat up and paid attention when Nora met Hugo in her Arctic glaciologist life. To know that there were other people out there sliding between lives as well was something I hadn't expected to happen in this book, and I was wondering whether they'd go anywhere with it. I guess perhaps one could argue that the point of Hugo being there was to show how we could easily get lost flicking through possibilities instead of focusing on living the one life we have, but I feel like that point could've been driven home a bit more. The character of Hugo, ironically, felt like a huge potential that was missed. Another thing that kept coming back to me was wondering whether it was deterministic to say that this or that person might've still ended up the same way in these other lives. For example, Dan. Will he always be an asshole in every version of Nora's life? If he is, why is that? Nora can only access lives that branch out from a decision she has made differently at some point in her life, but I feel like what this book didn't (or maybe couldn't) talk about was how in any and every version of our lives, it's just as much influenced by other people's decisions that directly or indirectly impact us. Nora may have chosen to get married to Dan, but Dan also chose to be an asshole. Nora may have chosen to focus on swimming but multiple people made decisions that became stepping stones on her journey to becoming an Olympic swimmer, like perhaps a teacher who decided to give her time off to attend swim training, or a coach who decided to properly focus on her strengths instead of another athlete's. Just as Nora's decisions impacted others (having her brother Joe become her manager, or dying of drug overdose), other people's decisions impacted her too, so I couldn't completely buy into the idea of - “if I had chosen swimming, this is the one and only version of my life that could have happened” or “if I had given up teaching music, this kid Leo would 100% certainly have ended up as a juvenile delinquent”. I think this thought kept recurring to me while reading this book and I kept constantly wondering whether the book was going to resolve it but apparently it didn't.

Overall though, this was a pretty feel-good book that still raised a lot of thought-provoking points, provided that you are OK with the trigger warnings.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable read in a world that I really enjoyed being immersed and which left me wanting more. The world-building and the criticism on colonialism and the relationship between Western powers with Middle East and Asian countries in the 19th century and early 20th are kinda where this book shines, even if I felt that the ending was a little wanting.

Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the first female investigator in the Ministry of Alchemy and something and Supernatural Entities. She's a breath of fresh air by way of fantasy protagonists, wearing English-style suits and ties and bowler hats (considered “exotic” in Cairo) and with an enigmatic girlfriend to boot. We had first met her in A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and the foundations set in that short story continue expanding in this book. The book opens when an apparently long-dead magician, al-Jahiz, reappears and commits a flagrantly flamboyant mass murder. He has long become the stuff of legends for opening the portal between the mortal realm and the djinn and introducing magic and the supernatural into this world, and his reappearance is something akin to a resurrected prophet walking the streets of Cairo again. Fatma is called into investigate, along with her new partner and latest female addition to the Ministry, Agent Hadia (she of the sky-blue hijab), as well as Siti, Fatma's erstwhile lover.

The characters we were introduced to in the two short stories preceding this book (A Dead Djinn and The Haunting of Tram Car 015) reappear in this one, although it is only Fatma and Siti that get fleshed out. Hamed and Onsi, of whom I was looking forward to seeing more, are unfortunately relegated to being almost like cameo appearances. Even so, because of how fast-paced this book is, we barely see much characterisation of Fatma and Siti, and instead just join them as they're swept up along with the whirlwind of action going on around them.

The book clearly has a theme about colonialism and being bound against one's own will. I liked how it was explored in the form of a reimagined Egypt, more affluent, more liberal, and where Cairo and some of its citizens enjoy the same level of prosperity as London and Paris in the early 20th century. The interaction between the African characters with other characters from England, Russia, and Germany gives us a site from which we can think about colonialism, such as when Fatma is irked by an Englishwoman constantly referring to the Egyptians as “natives”, or when England and America are spoken of in a not-so-pleasant light in the same way African and Asian countries are usually described. This percolates to the level of the plot as well, which deals with the idea of djinn being controlled against their will, who gets to do this (if any), and the ethical implications of that power.

The ending felt a little lacking, in my opinion. I guessed the plot twist from the first quarter of the book, and the ending itself wrapped things up a little too conveniently. It did however have some moments that redeemed it a little. I wasn't surprised at the reveal about Abigail at all. I think I guessed it from as early as the first time Fatma found the Portendorf's notes referencing an "AW". I enjoyed the bit where the ifrit told the Ifrit King that he was a pacifist though. Fatma's being able to wield the Seal was also pretty predictable and I'm not sure I understand why the Seal chose her, and what price they exacted (if any) to be able to do so much as to command the Ifrit lords to go back. It all felt a little sudden somehow.

Overall, still a good enjoyable read with a world that I want to see more of (and particularly more of the angels!!! We didn't get as much of them in this book as I would nearly have liked).

4.5/5. Ancient China and wuxia in a dystopia sci-fi Starship Troopers kind of universe. This is every bit as engaging as the premise promises to be and I thoroughly enjoyed my time reading it. I blazed through this one in record time and almost missed my train stop being so engrossed in it. It's been a while since a book has captured me this deeply.

This book is heavily influenced by Chinese mythology, literature, history, and culture, but it mixes this with a very 21st century view on things. I usually am not a fan when historical fiction comes with a protagonist who is very obviously a 21st century self-insert for the readers, but Iron Widow makes things work because it isn't historical fiction. In many aspects, it is a basically an AU, imagining what would happen if ancient China clashed with futuristic technology. We have foot binding existing at the same time as iPads, top knots and flowing sleeves with spaceships and aliens.

I was also a little worried that this book would take on a very ultra-feminist perspective on things, sort of “all women good, all men bad” which is a pitfall that I've seen so many books fall into. It does start off that way and goes on for a good part of the book as if it'd espouse that sort of black and white dichotomy but, without spoiling anything, I'm glad to say that things got a lot more complex than that by the end of the book and I appreciated it.

Wu Zetian is a pretty complicated character and I can't say that I like or dislike her entirely. She has a ton of conflicting ideologies but I suppose that's to be expected for an 18 year old teenager who has been thrust into big-scale situations. I'm also glad that she learns and while she doesn't end up like a completely different person by the end of the book, she begins questioning some of the fundamental beliefs that the book starts with.

The magic-tech system of the book is also pretty complicated and I wouldn't say I completely understood everything by the end of it, but enough to get the gist of the action.

This book also subverts all your usual YA tropes completely and thoroughly and I really appreciated that. I expected it to be certain ways going in and it completely went in another direction.

Some spoilery thoughts: This might be the first time I'm reading a polyamorous relationship and I'm actually really here for it. I loved the dynamic between the main three, and I loved their philosophy that three is more stable than two. I loved this little insight into this relationship, and was truly devastated when Shimin died - or did he? I did feel uncomfortable when they were driven to murder An Lushan and then subsequently the Black Tortoise couple and even Wu Zetian's family, even though they “had it coming”. I also laughed out loud at some parts referencing some cornerstones of Chinese history and culture, such as about Sun Wukong being a pilot going to retrieve some documents from the Western stronghold. Such a clever way of “retelling” Journey to the West.

The only reason why I'm not raving about this more is just because I'm writing this on a tired-feeling day. I'd strongly recommend this book to just about anyone, whether or not you're into sci-fi since that's what it's commonly categorised under. I'm very much intending to continue this series when the next instalment drops next year.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This was more than decently all right and pretty much in line with my expectations for K J Charles, who consistently churns out really great m/m romance. While The Willing Darling Adventures takes place in the 1920s and has a bit more of an adventure vibe to it, it's still pretty much cosy romance at its heart without being annoyingly contrived with the way it throws its main characters together, or being overly saccharine with the romance. It also does have a touch of some politics thrown in, although nowhere near as thorough and involved in the romance element as it sometimes is in her other works (e.g. A Seditious Affair). I don't mind action and adventure but I honestly have a tough time keeping up with it when it's represented in a textual medium, so I had to skim over some parts of this one. I much prefer books with more dialogue and character study than action, but that's really just my own inclinations. Overall though, I enjoyed this one a fair bit and would likely read the next one in the series.

Book's trigger warnings at the end of this review.

OK, so this book wasn't as much like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as I had gone in expecting. This was a really, really good mystery that I couldn't put down and with a structure that I really enjoyed. I did think that some of the pacing elements got a bit repetitive and even formulaic after a while, but overall I'm not mad. Each of the characters were so well fleshed-out that you end up with a lot of things to say about every one of the main ensemble.

The set-up is pretty simple. Successful career woman Jules Keegan is getting married on a remote island off the Irish coast to her celebrity actor boyfriend Will Slater. The action jumps between past and present, as we see the guests first realise that there might be a dead body outside, but also jumping back to the day before the wedding where the main bridal party arrives on the island. This book really got into its element using multiple character perspectives - if that's not your thing, maybe avoid this book.

At first it almost feels like Foley's message with the multiple perspectives is about how everyone's secretly insecure and envious of everyone else around them, even as the other person is envying them back. Later, we realise just how many deep dark secrets each of them are hiding from everyone else. It's the convergence of all these secrets that forms the central mystery.

Of all the characters, Hannah and Olivia were my favourites for most of the story. Olivia because she's just a regular girl stepping out of her teenage years into young adulthood but just not being around the right people, being so unsure of herself, and just being sadly misunderstood by some of her nearest and dearest. I like Hannah on a more personal level, probably because it feels like she's the closest to me in my time of life, being a mom in her 30s. All the men in this one are pretty dislikeable unfortunately, so there's not much to pick from there. I am very familiar with that almost tribal way that some people (usually men) band together over something that happened in their teenage or young adult years, and can agree with how sad it looks on 30 year olds still dredging that up.

I think the only reason why this wasn't a 4.5 or 5 stars for me is that the pacing felt a bit repetitive after a while. More under spoilers as it might give away some parts of the book: You know that certain chapters are going to end with cliffhangers, and after a while you realise that these cliffhangers are red herrings so you don't really pay attention to them after a while. In a sense, the book tries so hard to be shocking at the end of every chapter that you can see it coming. There is set-up but then there is no pay-off, and when that happens a few times you learn to ignore the set-ups. For example, when a chapter ends with the ushers spotting Freddy approaching them and “seeing what he had in his hands” in an ominous way, like he might actually be dangerous. Then it jumps to a flashback again. Then when it jumps back to the ushers, we learn that, oh, Freddy was just carrying a harmless torch and he wasn't threatening them. This is just one example but this sort of thing goes on through the book, so whenever I read another cliffhanger, I stop anticipating anything of real threat coming from it because I figured there probably won't be.

Thoughts on some of the plot twists and the ending: Somehow, after it was revealed that Olivia had gotten pregnant by the mysterious Steven from the dating app, I actually called it that it was Will under a false name. I just couldn't figure out why she wouldn't already have known him given that he is a celebrity, but then remembered later on that Will is only just a rising star and was probably a lesser-known actor when Olivia first met him. At the same time, I also guessed that it was Olivia who had sent Jules that note asking her not to marry Will. After Will's dirty deeds started being dished out, I was wondering whether he was going to be the murder victim and honestly hoping that he would be - and that was before the reveal that he had also been behind Alice's humiliation and subsequent suicide. I was really wondering if everyone would just gang up and kill Will. Aoife caught me by surprise at the end, and even more so that she'd let Johnno take the rap for her. Now that I think about it, though, it was pretty obvious it had to be her because everyone else had too much motive, so if they had done it it would actually have been anti-climactic.I was also so so so enraged by Charlie cheating on Hannah with Jules when she was bloody recovering from childbirth. I mean, I guess because pregnancy and childbirth was a recent experience for me and I know how damned painful and miserable it was, I can't imagine the stomach someone needed to have to decide that your sex drive trumped being a decent human being and standing by your partner who needs your support the most right at that moment when they're physically, emotionally, and mentally at their lowest. I'm kinda miffed that the story doesn't really give Charlie and Hannah a proper break-up which therefore leaves the potential for them to actually brush this aside. I wanted to see Hannah leave Charlie and maybe hit it off with Olivia or something, because they were the two characters who deserved more happiness.

It's easy to recommend this to just about anyone, but definitely please read this if you're a fan of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie, and thrillers.

Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, self-harm, accidental pregnancy, abortion, bullying, infidelity, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, fat shaming, female objectification

3.5/5. Having read Turton's “Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle”, I had an idea of what to expect going into this one. Turton excels in mystery and atmosphere, but falls a little short in characters and writing style. This one was essentially that, except that, while the mystery was serviceable and definitely more interesting than your average run-of-the-mill contemporary mysteries, it still didn't match up to the confounding brilliance of Evelyn Hardcastle. While I read Evelyn Hardcastle almost entirely in one sitting because it was such a page-turner, I took almost a whole 2 weeks to finish this one, and never felt quite as much compelled to continue except when I just wanted to get this over and done with.

Honestly, it could also just be the subject matter for me. I don't think I particularly enjoy books that are excessively to do with ships and sailors and the like. If it's a mystery on a ship, and using the ship simply as a setting to have these people isolated at sea together, that's totally fine. But in this book, the layout of the ship, its crew, its fleet and all of those technical naval terms played a somewhat larger role than I would otherwise have liked. That could have contributed to my finding it more difficult to engage with the mystery than Evelyn Hardcastle.

The characters in this one were also hard to root for. I didn't feel particularly sympathetic towards anyone in this book, and a lot of times I found characters' personalities and decisions to be unrealistic and bewildering, and their dialogue sometimes stilted and unnatural. I found that sometimes things happened almost too conveniently too. A lot of the things that happened, both in the backstories of the characters as well as within the events of the book, just felt exaggerated and contrived for the purpose of creating a colourful mystery. I found this also to be the case in Evelyn Hardcastle (I barely remember any of the characters in there now), so there's no surprise here for me.

I felt like the book could also be shorter too. Despite all the action, I felt like some parts of the book really dragged for me. Plus, I felt like the major events of the book could have been more squeezed together to create more bated-breath tension, but the lulls in between each major event felt a little too long. There were a lot of details that I also kinda missed in the book because there're so many details, and I often found myself wondering, “Wait, how did we get here?” from one chapter to the next.

The resolution of the mystery also somewhat felt a little contrived but I was satisfied with the solution of the mystery. Some parts of it I had guessed or wasn't surprised at, others were a little more interesting and unexpected. Overall it wasn't incredibly mind-blowing plot twists, but it was definitely still satisfying.

I still gave this a 3.5 though because Turton really does a sinister atmosphere really well. One could almost feel the filth and the squalor that the crew of the Sardaam were living in. Despite my complaints about the mystery, there was still enough substance to it to make me at least want to finish the book, instead of being completely apathetic as to the solution, so that's at least a bit of a win.

Honestly, this novella was maybe a 3-star read but it all came together very nicely around the last 25%, so I'd bump it up to 3.5 to 4 stars. I enjoyed the setting, which is a sort of amalgamation of East Asian cultures (primarily Chinese/Vietnamese, I think), thought it was a little bogged down by an overwhelming amount of details and a slight excess of flowery prose, but ended off satisfyingly with a tinge of melancholy and optimism.

Chih is a cleric (using the “they/them” pronoun, which I have so far found to be sadly lacking in the books I've read) traveling with a hoopoe (a kind of feathered bird) named Almost Brilliance. They meet an old lady in the town of Thriving Fortune, who introduces herself as Rabbit, and begins to tell them snippets of her memories as a young serving girl waiting upon the late Empress In-yo. Also known as the Empress of Salt and Fortune, In-yo was married to the Emperor Sung as a young girl but later sent into exile in Thriving Fortune and kept under close watch by the Minister of the Left. Despite the adverse circumstances, she plots an uprising and takes down her enemies.

This novella isn't so much concerned about the actual action of the plot. If you're looking for military strategy or actual details on how In-yo managed her coup, you'd probably be disappointed. Instead, it presents In-yo's apparently quiet life in exile presented through the eyes of a trusted and personally close maidservant, and you are invited to piece together the puzzle of the politics from there. There is more focus on the relationships built within In-yo's precarious personal circle than there really is on the coup that eventually changed the course of her dynasty.

There is a clear feminist theme to the book as well. We see the indignities that In-yo had to put up with, despite being an Empress, simply because she is female, therefore always secondary to the Emperor and his male line, and also a foreigner, therefore always secondary to everyone else. Her story is as old as time - foreign empresses, despite their royal status, have barely been treated as actual personages in most of human history.

The book also acknowledges that though empresses are quite often a mere footnote in history (if they are even recorded at all), how many more nameless and unknown women have been through worse, or sacrificed more for the greater good? There is almost an optimistic revisionist element to the book, where the author imagines an alternative when a patriarchal monarchy is overthrown by a matriarchal one, and that the throne remains stably in the hands of an Empress.

Originally published on Unravellations.

The Anatomist's Wife is a period mystery semi-romance novel set in 1830, Scotland. The writing was all right, wasn't tedious, though can sometimes be bogged down by superfluous descriptions or scenes that I scanned through and skipped over. The style of the narrative and dialogue were not particularly true to the era (I wouldn't expect most contemporary novelists to be able to pull that off anyway). In a sense, I was almost thankful that Huber didn't even try that hard to make the language more fitting for the time the story was set in. From what I've read so far, contemporary novelists who attempt that tend to fall flat on their faces and make it that much harder for me to digest the story. The characters were generally believable, most of them were not extremely in-depth or versatile, but they worked for what they were meant for. What's more important was the mystery! It kept true to its word, with the plot firmly centering around the mystery instead of sidelining it in favour of pursuing romantic subplots which some novels may do. The mystery itself, though not difficult (I guessed the solution at around 45% of the book, though it might have to do with me reading so much Agatha Christie recently), was at least intriguing and engaging enough to press me forward to finish the novel.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Lady Keira Darby is a painter, lives for painting and - shock shock horror horror - has no interest in men or romance! She entrusted her future partner to her father, who matched her up with Sir Anthony Darby, a famous anatomist. Sir Anthony really only bothered marrying her for her artistic talent, because he needed someone to help him illustrate his dissections and was too stingy to hire one. As such, Lady Darby was subjected to the shocking sights of cadavers in mid-autopsy, and the horrors of the dissection room, things that were absolutely taboo for women to have anything to do with. In fact, just the thought of murder was vulgar to women, much less anything else to do beyond death. Sir Anthony apparently didn't care two hoots about Lady Darby, and died soon after, leaving his wife in ignominy as it is uncovered by his former colleagues that she had been assisting him in his anatomical sketches. Lady Darby's reputation in high society is ruined, and she retires to her sister, Alana, Countess Cromarty's seat, Gairloch Castle in Scotland.Reticent and antisocial, Lady Darby wills herself to endure a house full of guests for her brother-in-law's sake, though most of them whisper spiteful comments about her unnatural disposition behind her back. She avoids them as much as possible, being sure that none of them miss the pleasure of her company anyway. On a fateful day, she hears a scream from within the garden maze and goes to investigate. It had been a Lady Lydia who screamed, and had fainted in the arms of her male companion. They had just discovered a body, that of a fellow guest at Gairloch Castle, Lady Godwin.It is abundantly clear that Lady Godwin had been brutally murdered, judging by the amount of blood on her dress and the gash on her neck. Servants are dispatched to fetch the magistrate, but by some legal procedure that could be either invented by Huber or one that I'm unaware of, it would've taken the magistrate at least 4 days to arrive at the Castle. In the meantime, Philip, Count Cromarty, engages the services of Mr. Sebastian Gage, yet another fellow guest in the house, to investigate the murder as his father is a celebrated investigative agent. Lady Darby has her misgivings about Mr. Gage, with his reputation as a rake in society, but is then privately asked by Philip to assist Gage in his investigations. Not wanting to disappoint her brother-in-law, and also wanting to restore the safety and security of Gairloch Castle for her sister, and clear her own name which had been unofficially smeared by the vile gossips running around the guests, Lady Darby agrees.The crux of this novel is supposed to be how Lady Darby uses her experiences as an anatomist's assistant to clear her name. However, there is only one murder in the entire story, and Lady Darby only sees the dead body once, and makes some pretty superficial deductions from it. The rest of the novel runs like any other murder mystery, uncovering clues and discovering what lies people have been telling. As the novel progresses, she deduces that: 1) Lady Godwin had been killed by a slit along the throat (I guess since there's a gaping gash at the throat, that's fairly obvious); 2) Lady Godwin had been struck along the eye shortly after death (because there was a bruise... At first, Lady Darby and Mr. Gage wonder if the murderer had a strong aggression towards Lady Godwin to have wanted to punch her in the eye after killing her, but Lady Darby later connects the kohl make-up on Lady Godwin's eyes with a similar black smudge found along the garden bench where her body was discovered, realising then that the bruise was caused by her body falling forward after her throat had been slit. Plausible, but not an impressive deduction); 3) Lady Godwin was expecting, and her baby was taken from her womb after she was killed (this was treated as the crowning glory of Lady Darby's deductions, though - seriously - anyone who was going to examine the body would've come to that conclusion any way, owing to a T-shaped jagged gash around her pelvic area, and a severed umbilical cord that Lady Darby spotted. It really wouldn't have taken much); 4) A different weapon was used to slit her throat, and then to open her womb (this could've been an important point and pointed to more than one person involved in this murder, but since Lady Darby could not give any firm answers as to whether certain potential murder weapons found had actually been the murder weapon. I get that she's not an experienced investigator, but still... unimpressive).I would say the gimmick about her being an anatomist's wife (or ex-wife, since the anatomist in question is dead) is mostly intended to give her a reason to be that shunned, mysterious beauty with torment and suffering in her past. She really doesn't use much anatomical knowledge throughout the entire novel to solve anything. It is possible that Huber isn't versed in anatomy herself, and didn't want to flounder with inaccurate information, opting instead to veer away from the subject all together. Personally, I think this was a good move. If Huber had managed the put in the anatomical bit well, it would've been the crowning glory of the book. However, if she had not been confident of being able to do it well, I would rather not have read any of it and taken the story simply as a murder mystery, instead of enduring ill-informed and inaccurate anatomical knowledge and information.The little romantic tension between Mr. Gage and Lady Darby, I could smell from a mile off. I knew it from the blurb already. There were plenty of cliches in this book, with Lady Darby being sexually pursued by a rogue, Lord Marsdale, and a rake, Mr. Gage. I wasn't sure what Lord Marsdale's pursuit of her was for, since nothing happened between them and he didn't add much to the plot besides being a suspect himself (though quickly cleared from the crime), making Mr. Gage jealous. Thankfully, the cliches were kept to tolerable levels and I didn't feel too bothered by them. I would've indeed rolled my eyes if there had been an irrelevant sex scene in there somewhere, but there wasn't. Mr. Gage, in fact, went away after the investigation after a poignant meeting with Lady Darby (electric eye contact!) at the end.(Speaking of electric eye contact, I remember reading a Goodreads reviewer say that he lost it after how Lady Darby described her hair as "my chestnut tresses" twice in two different chapters.)This was an OK book. I finished it within a night because I wanted to know if there might be any plot twists, and whether my guess at the solution was right. I scanned and skipped lots of passages in the second half as long as I was sure there wasn't anything relating to the murder happening (mostly to do with how everyone was victimizing Lady Darby and the increasing attraction between herself and Mr. Gage). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either. I sympathized a bit with Lady Darby when she was being openly attacked by the other women in the house, but I didn't develop much attachment to her or any of the other characters. I may or may not pick up another Lady Darby novel in the future.

Hovering in between a 3.5 and a 4.

If I had read this book a year ago, I would've just been meh about it. But because I'm reading this book now, today, in the tail end of 2020 - it hits real hard.

Arthur Leander is an ageing, has-been Hollywood star who one day collapses on stage from a heart attack and dies, just hours before the world starts to end from... a virus. A very rapidly-spreading flu virus that infects and almost immediately kills so many people that civilisation as we know it end within days of the epidemic beginning. Twenty years later, we follow Kirsten Raymonde who is member of the Travelling Symphony, a nomadic theatre troupe that goes around to pockets of people who have managed to carve out a living for themselves in the empty and battered post-apocalyptic world and put on Shakespearean plays for them.

The writing of this book was beautiful, wistful, and asks so many questions that are almost heart-wrenchingly relevant today - shall we say, almost prophetic considering St. John Mandel wrote this in 2014?

Jeevan was crushed by a sudden certainty that this was it, that this illness Hua was describing was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life.

... the first unspeakable years when everyone was traveling, before everyone caught on that there was no place they could walk to where life continued as it had before...

Kirsten realises that the Prophet was quoting passages from the Station Eleven comics, and she starts reciting them as well - it could've been a really cool scene where he responds in some way, whether in quoting back the lines at her, or even just eyes widening in recognition, before he gets shot by the boy. It'd be like Kirsten finding out that this really weird, deranged dude is a tenuous link to her past and then having him snuffed out in front of her eyes.

Interesting and fresh premise that was wittily written.

The unnamed narrator is a priest in some high-ranking special Order that specialises in exorcisms. He meets Prosper of Schanz, the royal tutor who has apparently mastered almost every field imaginable, and notices something special about him - he has a demon in him too.

The writing in this one was refreshingly witty. Demons aren't your regular screeching and screaming monstrosities, but rather sound more like very disgruntled people just trying to find a place to settle down and grumbling when they get evicted by the authorities. “Oh, for crying out loud, not you again.”

About the ending:

I had expected more plot twists, like maybe the POV we have had from the narrator all along was actually the demon that had been (occasionally) haunting him since birth, and that the thing that he keeps trying to hunt down is the actual priest. No such luck, I'm afraid. The actual plot twist, that in helping to make Great Horse for Prosper, the narrator had somehow engineered the mass deaths of the royal famiyl and the tutor, did catch me off guard though, although the novella ended a little abruptly.

Still though, I had a fun time with this one and the writing was really enjoyable. The dark humour was very much up my alley.

just finished with this one. it was - okay. it wasn't bad but i really felt bogged down by the writing style which i wasn't a fan of. all that excessive description and unnecessary metaphors and similes... i started off not caring about the romance but really interested in the central myster of it all. by the end, i don't think i really cared about anything, not the monster or the bugs, or the politics, least of all the romantic shenanigans. and i think the decline of my interest was really just cos of how excessively wordy and dramatic it was. to illustrate, there was one part where Marshall lit a cigarette and it was described as “flaring up like a miniature star”. i specifically kept that in mind cos i wondered if there was a point for that metaphor but there wasn't one in the end. or like when Alisa talks about how she is so familiar with Shanghai - “Alisa Montagova had memorized almost every street in Shanghai. In her head, instead of dendrites and synaptic nerves, she fancied there lived a map of her city, overlying her temporal lobes and amygala pairs until all that she was made of was the places she had been.” like, that is just way too extra for me.

i guess i just kept on going because i was still at least a bit interested in how closely the author was going to follow the storyline of R&J. i certainly did not expect her to end it with the Tybalt/Mercutio thing but then pull a twist on that with Marshall surviving the same way Juliet had in the play. i also thought that the bugs was a way for there to have been a lot of death in the book but without it having been carried out by the main families/characters, so we can blame all that death on a third party instead. we hear a lot about the two gangs killing each other but don't actually see a lot of important people die at each other's hands tbh.

another redeeming point about the book is that it had occasional moments where it talked about the struggle of having been brought up with two or more different cultures, and i think it was done so well because it resonates with the author's life, being a Shanghainese brought up in NZ i believe. i did enjoy what she had to say about how Juliette changed her name to fit in in America, but then slowly lost touch with her actual Chinese name, which is something still very relatable to a lot of people today. some of the Chinese terms used in the book was a little stilted and awkward (and some had wrong hanyupinyin too) but overall i like that she didn't explain every single one of them and just let its meaning be inferred.

so overall... i guess maybe a 2.5 stars from me?

4.5 stars. This was exactly the kind of read I needed right now. It's a light hearted fantasy-mystery-romance-humour kind of thing and manages to create pretty compelling characters and factions within the world for something that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The prologue made me wonder if it was going to be another heavy and grim fantasy because goodness knows I've read quite a lot of that already this month. Then as we got into the story proper, the elements of humour popped up fast and furious, and I fell in love with Kingfisher's writing pretty quickly.

What really worked for this book was how endearing its characters became very quickly. Stephen had me as a knight-paladin working on his guilt complex at the same time as his knitit g hobby, Istvan (I'm still working on remembering how to spell his name) got me with that stupid conversation he had with Stephen on how creatively they could turn decorations into weapons at a boring social event, Bishop Beartongue was a sassy queen, Grace was relatable with her “oh god oh god I'm messing this up aren't I” inner soliloquy, and Marguerite was just downright the most intriguing of the lot.

The mystery in itself wasn't too difficult to guess and wasn't crazy plot-twisty but packed sufficient punch to avoid falling flat. This book in itself zooms in on some “smaller” problems but I've a feeling that as the trilogy progresses, we're going to be confronting higher and higher level layers of plot - which is great as far as I'm concerned!

One of the more enjoyable and engaging reads I've had in a while.

OK, this was actually really so entertaining and enjoyable than I had any reason to expect it to be. I picked it up the title intrigued me in the library and it seemed to have fairly good reviews, but I've been bamboozled by good reviews and aesthetic covers before. Mystery novels are nowadays a dime a dozen, so I was expecting something merely to pass the time but this book was actually more than that.

Willowjean Parker, or Will as she prefers to call herself, is a small-time circus act who gets accidentally caught up in a crime and thus into the orbit of Lilian Pentecost, genius lady detective with a progressive disease. They strike up a investigative partnership and get onto the track of solving crimes together in New York City. Years into their partnership, they are approached to solve a locked-room murder mystery. Abigail Collins, wealthy matriarch of the Collins company, was found bludgeoned to death in her room at her own Halloween party, and the immediate gossip that goes up is that it was the ghost of her late husband, Alistair Collins who had committed suicide a year earlier, that had done it.

Now, rest assured that there isn't any kind of weird supernatural twist to this book. It's a straight up mystery-thriller set in the 1940s, with a lot of free love to boot. There's m/m, f/f, and bisexual representation here but it's delicately portrayed that it doesn't feel like a 21st century work masquerading as historical fiction. It does take into account prevailing social mores of the time, and combined with something that at least sounds like 1940s slang to my layperson's point of view, it did surprisingly well in immersing me in a believable 1940s setting. Will Parker is our narrator and protagonist for the whole novel and there's something about her that does make me want to root for her, which is great.

The solution was satisfyingly unexpected and the pacing was excellent. The book kept me guessing for most of it, and surprise developments kept me on my toes. I guessed about 20% of the solution (I strongly suspected that Becca had murdered Ariel Belestrade because her alibi of being “locked in her room all night” crying over Will just felt very flimsy.) but the rest had been somewhat unexpected and everything fell into place quite nicely, tying up loose ends coming from the very beginning of the mystery, which is exactly what a good cozy mystery ought to be imo!

Thoughts on the ending: I loved that we had a little epilogue with Olivia Waterhouse - a sort of pseudo-altruistic female Moriarty? Very excited to see where that's going to turn up, and I love how the McCloskey case which introduced Will to Lilian in the first place is probably going to end up being one link in the overarching case with Waterhouse. I did suspect Becca to be Belestrade's murderer, but hadn't figured her to be the murderer of her own mother too. I loved that little touch with John Meredith being the twins' father, I hadn't expected that one and really thought he was just getting sleazy with Becca. I kinda figured that the twins' father wasn't going to be Alistair. Thought it might have been Harrison at first, but after the book pointed that out explicitly, I gave up on that line and imagined it to be someone else entirely, but somehow hadn't thought of Meredith.

Overall, a very well-paced and well-written mystery that was both engaging and entertaining throughout. I'd be interested to check out the rest of the series!

Hovering between 4.5 and 5 stars for this one. What a beautifully written book with such a refreshing premise and oh so relatable. If you've ever wondered how to perfectly blend sci-fi and fantasy, look no further than this novella. I went in pretty much blind, and thinking that the book was just mislabelled as being both sci-fi and fantasy at the same time as they usually are on Goodreads, but then quickly found out how wrong I was. I'd recommend this to just about anyone, whether you are a fantasy fan, a sci-fi fan, neither, or both. Honestly, in a weird way, this reminded me a little bit of Howl's Moving Castle even though I'm pretty sure that was not Tchaikovsky's intention, and in a truer way

Lynesse Fourth Daughter is the runt of the royal family of Lannesite, facing the disappoint of her mother and the mockery of her sisters in this matriarchal society where Queens ruled and Princesses were meant to be skilled either in diplomacy and politics, or swordfights and bravery - ideally both. She learns of a demon plaguing a far-off forest kingdom of Ordwood and worries that the death and destruction will eventually spread its way to Lannesite, and so sets off to find an ancient, almost mythical, sorceror asleep in his tower, Nyrgoth the Elder. But Nyr doesn't dabble so much in magic as science.

The story is told through Lynesse and Nyr's perspectives, and Nyr is very quickly the one most modern readers would relate to. Without spoiling too much, Nyr's tone is casual, conversational and he has some sparks of humour, although he struggles vehemently with demons of his own, specifically mental health issues that become all too relatable in this 21st century. I favoured Nyr's chapters for most of the book, although I felt like Lynesse's more detached and stereotypically-fantasy perspective was still a good breath of fresh air from some pretty solemn moments that Nyr goes through, which can cut readers to the quick.

My favourite quote from this book hit so hard about anxiety and panic and paranoia. It doesn't spoil anything about the plot or characters at all but I'll put it under spoilers just in case:

”I know that, while I have real problems in the world, they are not causing the way I feel within myself, this crushing weight, these sudden attacks of clenching fear, the shakes, the wrenching vertiginous horror that doubles me over. These feelings are just recruiting allies of convenience from my rational mind, like a mob lifting up a momentary demagogue who may be discarded a moment later in favour of a better. Even in the grip of my feelings I can still acknowledge al this, and it doesn't help. Know thyself, the wise man wrote, and yet I know myself, none better, and the knowledge gives me no power.”

Spoilery thoughts:

The only reason why this isn't a straight-up 5 stars for me is just because I really wish we had found out what exactly the demon was and what its whole purpose was!! I think that was just a tiny detail that was missing from my complete enjoyment of the book. I just loved the whole idea that it was somehow sending out electromagnetic waves but through some kind of weird alternate dimension and that it made Nyr second-guess how much he actually knew about the universe. I love that fact about the universe - no matter how much you think you know, you are always constantly surprised by how much you don't know.I also liked that we ended with Nyr only possibly offering an apprenticeship to Lyn and it didn't need to become some weird romance - although there're all the hints that it might become that way.

I will just end with an injunction to anyone out there to read this amazing book. I loved it incredibly and almost wish that this was a series rather than a standalone novella. I will certainly read more from Adrian Tchaikovsky after this.

Oh man. I didn't really have a good time with this book. It started off with a really interesting premise but I thought the storytelling got lost with a ton of infodumps. The main character was kinda spunky and held her own, but also seemed to be mired in this “look at how massively unpopular I am” mode for more than three-quarters of the book, which got rather grating after a bit.

The book is centered around a school, the Scholomance, which is some kind of... weird building of concentric circles put together by magic where it rotates students' dormitories down a level every year. By the time they're seniors and ready to graduate, the students find themselves in the lowest level and the center of the whole building, the graduation hall, where they have to fight their way past a horde of dark magic monsters to get to the exit and leave the school. It's kind of like Hunger Games meets Harry Potter.

While this sounds nice in theory, the world building was a little too complex imo. Even when I was more than halfway through, I still wasn't completely sure what the different magic sources - mana and malia - were, or what the difference was between the two types of mages, artificers and malificers. It seemed like every chapter or so our protagonist Galadriel (because of course she's named Galadriel) goes on another info dump about what an enclave is, what the classes are like, what the school cliques means, what this and that is. Because it's also told from a first person perspective, the story always feels like someone trying to tell you some juicy gossip that went down, but then keeps interrupting their own story with a ton of backstory and explanations that ruins the momentum. It felt like a lot happens but also doesn't happen in this book. A simple conversation might take pages to complete because it's interspersed with so much information.

There's a ton of action, don't get me wrong, and there's a lot of death and violence. A bit too much to the point where I felt like a lot of killings were just there for the shock factor and it all began to feel a bit meaningless after a while. It certainly felt that way to the students in the book, where people die around them like flies and they don't even blink an eye, so why should I? It also felt like such a weird world that probably wouldn't really work. How on earth are people supposed to work on essays and attend classes when they are looking over their shoulders literally every second of the day trying to make sure they don't get eaten up or killed by the next monster, and can't get a night's rest unless they have enough magic to charge up a ward around their beds/rooms? And even more so the student next door might be the ones murdering them? It sounds cool but I couldn't suspend my disbelief that far.

I took a break from this one to read another book which was more depressing and I wasn't a huge fan of (Wuthering Heights), but when I finished it and came back to this, I actually found myself less engaged here. By the end of the book, I was kinda skimming because I just wanted to get the book over and done with so I can tick it off my TBR. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, and certainly not the main character even though we spend a lot of time with her and knowing her backstory.

It's a shame because I've read and enjoyed Uprooted and Spinning Silver also by Novik, and this one had a super intriguing premise but I just couldn't really get into it.

4.5 stars. This book was a strange mixture of a lot of things I may not have liked in other books but somehow when it came together in this one, I found myself pretty entranced. This is, I think, a must-read for those who enjoy the dark academia trope/subgenre.

I'm not usually a fan when books name-drop other titles or authors to sell themselves, but I feel like it might be warranted in this case. This book reminded me strongly of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and The Magicians by Lev Grossman. In short, basically everything dark academia. Now, I haven't had a really good experience with dark academia - I DNF'ed two of the above titles and didn't really enjoy the third - but for some odd reason, I was pretty sold on this one. I was engrossed from start to finish.

There was something about the writing style that was entrancing. It was sometimes confusing, sometimes infuriatingly opaque, but there was a rhythm and a style to it that I could get behind. Some may diagnose a mild case of purple prose, but for me it trod the line between annoying and lovely, and more often than not inclined towards the latter.

This sometimes worked to its disadvantage sometimes though. Blake has a tendency to leave things unsaid but in a way that feels like when someone starts a sentence and then stops halfway just before they got to the crux of the statement. Another thing I found that Blake tended to do was describing something happening out of nowhere, and then only explaining it later on (if ever). For example, halfway during a conversation, a character is described as blindfolded without explanation. We only realise a page or so later that they are attempting to play darts without seeing. On a smaller scale like this, it could already get annoying, but this also happens on much larger scales, on plot points that span many Parts of the book.

Two things stood out to me positively in this book: the characters and the magic system.

I won't say the characters are likeable. Honestly, I would be hard pressed to give you a character I even remotely liked, much less have a favourite. But they were all so wonderfully complex and you get such a deep character study into their mental states and how much trauma they've each gone through, both because of their unique powers and outside of it. All of the characters we have here are either annoying, morally gray, or both.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the magic system. Superficially, their powers would be considered pretty “basic” in the realm of fantasy: physical manipulation, telepathy, empathy, nature magic, and anti-illusion. However, Blake really leaned into fleshing those powers out to its fullest extent. So many of us have grown up with Professor X from X-Men but he doesn't seem to hold a candle to just how dangerous Parisa could be. Empathy has always seemed “useless” magic in combat but damn, what happens when it falls into the hands of an actual psychopath? So many possibilities here to explore and I loved everything that Blake did with it.

Also the ending was not in any way an ending! There was really barely any resolution and it felt like a lead-up to the sequel at this point, but I don't really mind. I enjoyed having all that time and space to really flesh the world out so I wouldn't mind if the plot spilled over to another book.

Overall, this book may not be to everyone's tastes and I can absolutely see why. I could wish that its storytelling was just a tiny tad simpler and less needlessly convoluted. Ultimately though, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, was engrossed by it, and I'm glad that it's getting a sequel.